I just started a "Detoxification Diet". Why? Just 'cause it's another step I want to take toward healthy. Here is my first post on the CleanProgram.com blog.... Thought I would share.
I'm Day 3, but this feels like I've been doing this all along....
I'm here because I'm going through "professional" changes. Not really a new job, but a revitalization of something I've loved all along. I'm just taking things to a new level.
I'm asking my patients to become healthier. Here I am, over a year ago, lecturing. Notice my belly? I realized I'd be a poor role model for health if I looked like that and was on BP meds and was out of breath from walking stairs.
Then one of my colleagues (Thanks, Gwen!) gave me Dr. Junger's book. I started the Elimination Diet right away....Slowly right away. I'd known from multiple attempts at losing weight that if the effort stressed me out it either wouldn't work or wouldn't last.
So I took it slow. I ate only foods from the Elimination Diet (Whole foods. No sugar. No wheat. No dairy. No red meat) that I liked and ate as much of them as I wanted. It was a qualitative diet instead of a quantitative diet. And it began to work.
Then I saw "Forks over Knives", and read "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and William Davis' "Wheat Belly", and studied Joel Furman's "Eat to Live" program. Each time, I picked up on something new, maybe dropped something off my menu. I got a Health-master blender for my birthday.
And little by little, I lost 30 lbs over 9 months. Here's me in August. Better right? And over the summer I maintained just by eating good food - real food- only. I also started lifting ("The Power of 10") and walking Casper, my white lab.
But now it's time to take my eating to the next level. And that's why I'm here.
Day 3: It's been pretty easy. Actually, I'm kinda stuffed after lunch. I've been pretty much eating this way all along.
Come 21 (days on the whole program), I hope to feel like I know what I'm talking about when I tell the kids that they need to make a change in the way they eat (and breathe and stand and sleep...) and they CAN do it.
Wish me luck!
Dr. Barry Raphael
