Your Healthy Diet PlanPhase IICongratulations! You've completed Phase I of your Free Healthy Diet Plan now it's time to move up to Phase II!Evaluate how you feel and felt during your Phase I process.... These are all questions to ask yourself. You're in charge of your healthy weight loss plan now! I've given you the tools to get to know your body and how whole foods might affect it. Now really dig in with those tools for the next phase of your healthy diet plan. This is your most important phase. This is the point in your plan in which you will be learning how to adjust and tweak your healthy diet plan to fit your biochemical individuality.
This is counter productive to your healthy diet plan and can cause feelings of failure leading to continued poor behavior and low self esteem. If you're comfortable at Phase I, it's a perfectly healthy diet plan. You may want to add an afternoon apple with a string cheese or scoop of almond butter but other than that if you're content, feeling lean and satisfied, working your plan, there's no mandatory reason for you to add additional foods. You might just find it liberating though, especially when faced with a social situation! Start slowly and do not confuse your signaling system! When you add these foods I want you to add them slowly, wait 2-3 days in between additions and analyze how the food made you feel. Write it down! To know yourself is to know your healthy diet plan. 
FruitIn all that I have studied in the last 10 years, I have realized that the sentence "Well, it's fruit, it must be ok" is no longer a nutritionally sound piece of advice. No, it is not ok. Sugar is sugar and fruit is comprised of a higher sugar content than vegetables. There are some who are so insulin resistant that a salad can cause horrendous cravings. Fruit will only exacerbate that. The following fruits in my opinion are fine to add to a healthy diet plan in moderation. 2 fruits daily are sufficient and to regulate blood sugar it is always recommended that you enjoy your fruit with a protein/fat. Nut Butters, cheeses and yogurts are a great choice! I will always encourage you to try to practice the "seasonal" rule for your healthy diet plan. Watermelons for example are not ripe in December in Northern California though we can purchase them. The exceptions I make are apples and berries, wonderful foods that provide such great health benefit, we hate to leave them out!Some of my favorite lower sugar fruits incorporated into a healthy weight loss plan are as follows:
Tropical fruits are much higher in sugars as are dried fruits. These should be consumed sparingly and infrequently and never alone. This will give you maximum results for your healthy diet plan by regulating your blood sugar. 
GrainsThe grain category is a tricky one. I frequently hear from so many people "You can't eliminate grains! They're good for us"This may have been what we thought previously but with the study of the "anti-nutrients" Phytates, Lectins and Sapponins in Grains and Legumes, we now know differently. These anti-nutrients are the built in defense mechanism and cause damage to the gut lining resulting in "leaky gut" leading to a variety of auto-immune diseases. We're learning much different and I'm a healthier person due to my choice to abstain from grains. I've always had some digestive issues as well, ADHD and my personal self discovery has been quite a revelation. Your mileage may vary and you live in your body so you make the decision based on how you feel. Grains are not necessary for long term health. It's more a matter of versatility for most. There are some non-glutenous grains that can be a nice addition to your healthy diet plan if you just can't live without them and they are as follows:
Breakfast cereals and most breads are de-vitalized. There is no healthy dry breakfast cereal no matter how high the "fiber claims". However, if your body can tolerate the higher carbohydrates, the following are allowed in 1/2 cup and 1 slice quantities. I have several grain gut damaged clients I'm consistently working with so again, heed the warning! Yes, this is where you will have to start regulating your macro nutrient intake. On Phase I, it was suggested that you need not count. Calories do count but I'm encouraging you to use your intuitive capabilities. Without the taste bud tantalizing influence of bad fats, chemicals and added sugars, your body should be grooving with signals now! I will warn you however that if you add carbohydrate you may have to back up on fat. There will be a fine line and you'll see it immediately in the form of bloating and potential weight gain. If you're not an exerciser, you really haven't earned the right so if you pick up the oatmeal spoon, be sure to pick up a weight also!
Again, I must repeat the dangers of grains that you might not be aware of. As mentioned above, I have several clients with gut damage who are having a difficult time accepting the damage that has been done.
With this, I will refer you to The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability 
Starch-LegumesRemember when I said no counting? Well, if you decide to add these foods in to your healthy diet plan daily, counting must begin with the addition of starchy and grain based foods. Also remember that starches are immediately converted to sugar. I'm not a huge corn fan and it's quite difficult to locate corn that has not been genetically altered. Should you choose to add starches it is wise to stick to a 1/2 cup 1/2 potato rule and of course, add a fat like butter for blood sugar regulation. I'm going to be totally honest here, in my humble opinion, corn and peas are a huge waste of carbohydrate and provide nothing to the health of the human body. Foods are in order of consumable preference.
Sweet Potatoes and Yams are great adds most particularly for the athlete if your blood sugar can handle them 
AlcoholAlcohol has become quite popular with the boost in the wine industry. I know, I live in the middle of wine country. It has become socially acceptable, even promoted as heart healthy with a compound called Resveratrol. I'm here to tell you that your liver is working harder filtering the toxins and alcohol than benefit received by the heart. It's an addiction and it's unhealthy. There are other ways you can relax to ease the stress from the day. This may sound cliche, but I've lived it. Popping open a cold beer after a long day was one of my bad habits. First of all, when you are losing weight, regulating blood sugar and gaining energy on your healthy diet plan, the stress is greatly minimized. The following might sound lame but don't discount the helpful techniques. If you open yourself up to the potential healing and acceptance of your addiction, you can live without it much easier. Regulate yourself! Have a glass of wine with dinner once in a while once you've hit your goal weight. Until then, challenge yourself! If you can't, you might evaluate your addiction to alcohol, a Vitamin B depleting substance. Deplete your Vitamin B, you deplete your central nervous system which in some cases is not reversable.
I make my own kombucha and generally have SCOBY's (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) available for the cost of shipping. Contact me if you would like me to ship one with brewing instructions. Availability depends upon my kombucha cycling time. The only alcohol I promote is 1-2 glasses of an organic red wine once weekly.
Have you ever seen the swollen red face of a drinker? Not a pretty sight no matter how teenie weenie your bikini! |
This is the point in which you set yourself up for a lifestyle change not the I'm feeling sexy and skinny so to heck with it! I deserve to splurge! This can go on for days, weeks, months and before you know it, 40 pounds have crept back on and you have a muffin top again! I've watched it happen too frequently. 
by Lierre Keith.
Nutrition Newsletter
