Eating Plan

I never put my eating plan down here. Woops. Hey, what can I say. I do have a life to live outside of the computer. And, only one person reads this anyway, so there you have it. I could pretty much post a picture of my underwear and it wouldn't matter. Dude, they'd be clean. Jeesh.

Anyway, here's the plan. After much soul searching on exactly what I wanted out of weight loss I realized that, yes I indeed did want weight loss, but what I wanted was a healthy lifestyle. The best way I can find that is through the Eat to Live diet by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Okay, this has not been a realistic diet for me by any means, and it's not a diet it's a lifestyle. The diet consists of 2 pounds of green vegetables a day, at least 5 fruits, no dairy, no meat, no salt, and no sugar. Grains and starches are in limitation.

I joined his website which costs 39.95 to joint and then a monthly fee thereafter. Already you can see a problem. After spending over $250 a week on groceries alone, this is utterly cost prohibitive. It turns out only rich people can be healthy.

I also found him, Dr. Fuhrman, who my husband calls 'Da Furor' to be rather unapproachable. He actively participates in the website insofar as people who ask him for help because they are not losing weight or seeing the health benefits he claims, he tells them they are doing something wrong or to set up a phone consultation for $200. When people claim they are doing everything right and by the book he tells them to 'eat less.'

The thing is, I did this diet for about 6 months. I lost about 20-ish pounds. That sounds great, except I had over 60 to lose at the time so you can already see my problem.

The first problem was all I wanted was weight loss. But this is what I experienced otherwise:

• Body aches and pains gone.
• Relatively free from colds and flu.
• Tons of energy.
• Some weight loss.
• Lower blood pressure.
• Healthier skin (I have psoriasis, and Dr. Fuhrman claims that this can be cured through his diet. One of the people he uses on his website as an example was a member who said she experienced some relief but not a total cure - but I did notice some relief so that's a good thing.)
• Quicker recovery time from workouts.

All in all, I genuinely enjoyed the health benefits I received but cannot be as militant as the diet suggests. It's just not for me. It might be fore you and there is a ton of info out there on this diet without having to join the website. You can check out his books from the library and get everything you need.

So, I'm going to enjoy modified veganism. I will eat 1 pound of green veggies a day. I will have 1 grace day like my friend Karen has. I will have at least 4 fruits a day, 1 grain a day, 1 starch a day, and I will allow myself 3 eggs a week.

I have found that I can easily follow this plan. My grace days will involve meats and dairy, but salt is something I'm going to work on eliminating as much as possible. I'm going to shoot for less than 2000 gm of sodium a day, with a goal of 1500 mg. No more caffeine, either.

So far I stuck with it perfectly on Monday and used Tuesday as a grace day. Today I'm right on target. Let's see how the week goes. I might have to add another grain for each day. It's really hard to only eat one.