The Virgin Diet (17 page)

This is why it is critical to keep that food journal that I insist you keep (and I mean insist—this is not optional!). If you notice that last night’s dinner didn’t make you feel stellar, you can do some research to figure out why.

For the better part of 3 decades, I’ve been working with people trying to lose weight. And here is what I’ve learned about how to help people lose weight and keep it off:

1. Lose fat fast.
   We’ve got this covered in Cycle 1. If you pull all 7 high-FI foods from your diet, you will lose up to 7 pounds in 7 days. That’s the fastest you can lose weight and still be healthy.
   
2. Weigh and measure yourself each week and write down whatever you want to track.
   What you measure, you can improve. Each week, note your weight; the measurements of your waist, hips and thighs; and whatever else you want to track or improve: your water intake, your supplement schedule, your bowel movements (seriously!). (You can find a tracking guide and journal pages at www.thevirgindiet.com/journal and www.thevirgindiet.com/weighttracker.
   
3. Get support and be accountable.
   There have been a ton of studies showing that support is crucial for weight loss, and my 2-plus decades in the business confirm that. I think support is so important that I’ve set up an online support forum on my website. Go to www.thevirgindiet.com/forum right now and check it out. Support forces you to be accountable, which is key. It’s too easy to slip when you’re the only one who knows what you have and haven’t done. Find a coach, friend, group or accountability buddy.
   
4. Rechallenge and customize.
   That’s what Cycle 2 is for. You’ll figure out exactly which foods you can tolerate and which ones are likely to start up the symptoms and put on the pounds. You can keep rechallenging and customizing every 3 months if you like because foods that you cannot tolerate now may work for you once your system has further healed.
   
5. Plan for maintenance.
   Maintenance is what Cycle 3 is all about. Once you’ve hit your ideal weight, you need to keep planning how to maintain it. Make it personal. If you hate going to the gym, buy some home equipment. If there’s no refrigerator at work for your healthy lunch choices, buy a thermos, bring in a cooler, locate a restaurant you can order from or choose some lunch items that don’t need to be refrigerated. You get the idea. Figure out what you need to do to maintain the great results you’ve created for yourself on the Virgin Diet.
   

I’m a wife and mom of three. While I’ve been on the Virgin Diet, I’ve been working full-time. I’ve got a lot on my plate, but I’m so glad that I did the Virgin Diet!

I think the biggest physical change is just more energy. I also feel more mentally alert and have the energy to both physically and mentally engage my husband and kids in the evenings after work. I definitely feel more confident, and my clothes fit better.

My biggest takeaway is that vegetables and salads are okay to eat and even good tasting. I’ve never been a huge veggie fan—green beans and carrots being the extent before, for the most part—but they are growing on me.

The Virgin Diet Shakes and the Virgin Diet Plate, I think, were huge factors in my success with the program. Before I didn’t usually even eat breakfast, so the Virgin Diet Shake for breakfast has been great. I really like that the exercise isn’t overwhelming, too. Fifteen minutes and done—even with a busy schedule, I can usually fit that in.

Thanks for such a great program!

I’m so excited for you! You’ve just finished Cycle 1 of the Virgin Diet, which means that you’ve dropped weight and look years younger! I’m betting that you have more energy, great skin and healthy hair and that you have discovered how great life can be when you drop the high-FI foods that have been disrupting your digestion and sapping your health.

Cycle 1 was all about taking foods out. We pulled the top 7 high-FI foods and gave your system a chance to heal. Cycle 2 is about putting foods in—slowly so we can truly figure out what foods work for you and which simply don’t.

This doesn’t mean that I want you to start eating all 7 high-FI foods again. That will land you right back where you started!

Corn, peanuts and sugar should stay out 95 percent of the time. You’ve read about how they wreak havoc in your body, and by this point, you’ve felt the positive benefits of eliminating them from your diet, so why go back now? If you end up eating a piece of organic corn at a barbecue
or having some organic peanut butter on a slice of apple every now and then—like once a month—that’s fine. But basically, let these foods go. There are healthier choices out there. Artificial sweeteners are so bad for you that I don’t want you consuming them at all. Ever. They have no place in a healthy diet. Sugar should always be kept to a minimum: 2 ounces of dark chocolate or three bites of something sweet when it is really, really worth it (and no more than 1 or 2 times per week). Remember, there are great natural sweetener options out there, including xylitol and stevia.

Cycle 2 gives you the chance to create your own individualized diet plan.

The foods we’re testing in Cycle 2 include two potentially healthy foods (eggs and dairy) and two potentially unhealthy foods (soy and gluten). Why are we testing soy and gluten if I don’t want you relying on them? Basically, we need to find out if you should be hypervigilant about keeping them out 100 percent of the time or just ordinarily vigilant and keeping them out 95 percent of the time.

So we’re taking four foods—gluten, soy, eggs and dairy—and we’re going to find out whether your system can tolerate them. Each week, you’ll eat one challenge food for 4 days and then stop eating it for the next 3. If you stay symptom-free and continue to feel terrific, you’re good to go. For the time being, you can have limited quantities of that food in your diet. (I will want you to challenge these foods out once a year to make sure you’re still tolerating them well, but we’ll get to that in Cycle 3.)

However, if you have symptoms, feel uncomfortable or just don’t enjoy these foods any more, you will continue to leave them out of your diet. You always have the option of checking in 3, 6 or 9 months later to give them another try.

Remember how I told you that your body wasn’t a bank account but a chemistry lab? I want you to think of Cycle 2 as a science experiment.
You’re going to find out exactly what your body can handle—and what it can’t. The result will be an individualized diet perfectly tailored to your own unique body chemistry.

What I love about Cycle 2 is that it gives you the chance to create your own individualized diet plan, the one that is perfectly attuned to where your body is at this point in your life. We are all so different, and we all change so much throughout the years. Why shouldn’t our diets be individualized and change along with us?

Don’t worry, I’m going to give you precise instructions for how to conduct Cycle 2, complete with recipes for each of the 4 days you challenge foods back in. You’ll know exactly what to do.

But before you get started, I want to be sure you understand what Cycle 2 is and what it isn’t. I’ve seen lots of clients who treat Cycle 2 as a chance to go wild and pig out on the forbidden foods they’ve been avoiding for 3 weeks. Sorry, folks, that just won’t work. The only way to be successful on Cycle 2 is to follow every detail of the program exactly as I lay it out, or you’re not going to get the results you want.

Whenever I think about getting in the right frame of mind for Cycle 2, I think of my client Taylor. She was so psyched to be starting this cycle! Although the first few days of Cycle 1 were tough for her, she ended the 3 weeks feeling absolutely terrific. She had successfully lost 10 pounds and was excited to keep going until she dropped the other 25 pounds that she wanted to get rid of. Her skin had cleared up, her hair was in great shape, and she felt more energized, focused and optimistic than she had in years.

Now we were up to Cycle 2, and Taylor was already planning all the great meals she expected to have. “It’s going to taste so good to have macaroni and cheese again,” she said excitedly. “And I’m going to make a big tofu stir-fry, and I can’t wait to have omelets for breakfast again, with rye toast…and maybe I can even have some ice cream, as a special treat?”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Taylor, how do you feel now?” I asked.

“Terrific!” she said promptly. “It’s not just the weight. I
feel
lighter. Clearer. Happier. For the first time in a long time, my body feels like
me
again.”

“Great,” I said. “And how do you think it got that way?”

We were on the phone, so I couldn’t see Taylor’s face, but when she took a few minutes to answer me, I could imagine her puzzled look.

“Well, obviously I dropped all these high-FI foods that were so bad for me,” she finally said. “But I thought this was the cycle where we put them all back in?”

Now I did laugh.

“Taylor,” I said, “we took them out because they were making you sick. What do you think is going to happen if we put them back in?”

“Ummm…they’ll make me sick again? But I thought I only had to take them out for 3 weeks?”

“Okay, Taylor, here’s the deal. First, we are never having you load up your diet with things that aren’t good for you. Maybe when we get to Cycle 3, you can have a few bites of something you wouldn’t normally eat, every few weeks or so, but we are not having you go back to eating junk that is just going to put on the pounds, sap your energy and start your symptoms back up again.”

Cycle 2, I told her, was not about indulging. Dairy on Cycle 2 does not mean ice cream, and gluten does not mean white flour. Instead, Cycle 2 is all about finding out which
healthy
foods you can tolerate and which ones you can’t.

“Think of Cycle 2 as a science experiment,” I told her. “We took out the foods that were making you sick. We got you healthy, and now we’re going to find out whether you can tolerate these foods in small amounts. But we are sticking to the
healthiest
versions of these foods, and we are still trying them in small amounts.”

Cycle 2 is about finding out which
healthy
foods you can tolerate and which ones you can’t.

Taylor was quiet for another minute or two. Then she laughed. “Okay,” she said. “I get it. There just aren’t any shortcuts. I guess if I want to keep feeling this way and looking this way, I should just keep eating this way. Because this is the way that works.”

WEEK 1: TEST THE SOY

• Monday to Thursday, add 1 meal that includes soy to your meal plan. (See recipes on pages 261–291.)
  
• Friday to Sunday, go back to your soy-free diet.
  
• Track your symptoms every day using the symptoms checklist from my website at www.thevirgindiet.com/symptomschecklist.
  
• Continue to have at least one Virgin Diet Shake each day, stay hydrated and follow the Golden Rules of Meal Timing.
  

WEEK 2: TEST THE GLUTEN

• Monday to Thursday, add 1 meal that includes gluten to your meal plan.
  
• Friday to Sunday, go back to your gluten-free diet.
  
• Track your symptoms every day using the symptoms checklist from my website at www.thevirgindiet.com/symptomschecklist.
  
• Continue to have at least one Virgin Diet Shake each day, stay hydrated and follow the Golden Rules of Meal Timing.
  

WEEK 3: TEST THE EGGS

• Monday to Thursday, add 1 meal that includes eggs to your meal plan.
  
• Friday to Sunday, go back to your egg-free diet.
  
• Track your symptoms every day using the symptoms checklist from my website at www.thevirgindiet.com/symptomschecklist.
  
• Continue to have at least one Virgin Diet Shake each day, stay hydrated and follow the Golden Rules of Meal Timing.
  

WEEK 4: TEST THE DAIRY

• Monday to Thursday, add 1 meal that includes dairy to your meal plan.
  
• Friday to Sunday, go back to your dairy-free diet.
  
• Track your symptoms every day using the symptoms checklist from my website at www.thevirgindiet.com/symptomschecklist.
  
• Continue to have at least one Virgin Diet Shake each day, stay hydrated and follow the Golden Rules of Meal Timing.
  

Even if you discover that you can tolerate gluten, soy or eggs,
do not
add them back into your diet during the other three challenge weeks. Your goal is to keep your diet free of high-FI foods
except
for the one you are testing. Each week you are testing only
one
high-FI food. If you don’t keep all of them out except for the one you’re testing, it will be very hard to evaluate your results. During Cycle 2, we want to give your body only small changes to react to. Adding in too many foods at the same time will confuse your body and make it harder for you to find out what you can and cannot tolerate.

Adding in too many foods at the same time will make it harder for you to find out what you can and cannot tolerate.

I’ve provided healthy soy, gluten, egg and dairy recipes for Cycle 2 in
Chapter 12
.

In
Chapter 2
, I told you to start keeping a food journal and record your symptoms. Now I want you to rate them again each day.

I can’t stress too strongly how important this is. Remember, food sensitivities are sneaky. We don’t know how intensely they’ll strike or how soon. If you eat a food 4 days in a row, you might feel something immediately, you might have symptoms 72 hours after the first bite or you might not notice anything for a whole 7 days. That’s why I have you reintroduce a food for 4 days and then take 3 days off before starting the next food. I don’t want you to get confused.

Food sensitivities are sneaky.

Basically, the only way to find out whether you can tolerate a food is to track your symptoms. If you don’t have any symptoms, you’re probably fine to keep eating eggs and/or dairy, at least in healthy versions and in small quantities. You’re probably also fine to allow a little gluten and soy to sneak in from time to time—but it shouldn’t make up more than 5 percent of your diet long term.

If you have symptoms, though, that’s your body telling you no, or at least not yet. And if you keep eating a food despite having symptoms, I can tell you what is almost certainly going to happen: your symptoms will get worse, and the lost pounds will come back.

Remember, eating a food to which you react badly is potentially creating an immune reaction. This produces immune complexes that spark inflammation, which in turn create symptoms and weight gain. If you keep eating a food that you can’t tolerate, your inflammation increases, your symptoms intensify, you start craving the very food that’s hurting you—and your weight continues to rise.

Now, let’s look at what happens once you stop eating a food that used to give you trouble. Before, your body was full of antibodies that your immune system created over time to protect you from those specific foods. But when you stop eating those foods, those antibodies gradually disappear. So even one small bite might be enough to give you a powerful reaction. Certainly, after eating the food for 4 days in a row, you’re going to see symptoms if you have any intolerance at all.

There’s another possibility. You might be fine with the food in small quantities, say, if you eat it for a day or two. But then, if you eat that food day after day, you might have gas, bloating and all the other symptoms. Then you start to create more of those antibodies, and that’s when your body starts to create an immune attack.

This is why I recommend that you rotate eggs and/or dairy into your diet only every fourth day, or at most every other day, depending on how you responded to the challenge. Not eating reactive foods every day prevents the buildup of the immune complexes and the antibodies that your body has so much trouble getting rid of.

Quite often you will have a far more pronounced response to your problem foods now that your body has had a chance to heal and you have significantly reduced the antibodies. If you notice a severe reaction right away, you have your answer and do not need to keep challenging the food. You can see that this food isn’t working for you right now, but if you give your body at least 3 to 6 months to heal, you might be able to tolerate it in the future.

This is what happened to me with eggs. The first time I rechallenged them, I was doubled over with stomach cramps. However, 6 months later, I found that I could tolerate them in small amounts rotated every 4 days or so into my diet.

If you notice mild symptoms over the next 24 to 72 hours, I would again pull the food out and rechallenge in another 3 to 6 months. I have found that when I eat gluten, my fingers are swollen the next day. Although this isn’t incapacitating, I know that it means that gluten is creating an inflammatory response that will not be good for my body on a regular basis.

If you notice mild symptoms on the fourth day, then you can rotate this food into your diet every 4 days. The reason I chose 4 days here is because that is typically how long it takes for the antibodies to start building up. So if you rotate a food that you are showing a reaction to only after consuming it for 4 days straight, you should be fine.

Finally, if you show no reaction, especially to eggs and/or dairy, then these are foods that you can work into your diet. But again, rotate them in so you are not eating them every single day. Every second or third day is fine. If you don’t react to gluten or soy, you can have some occasionally, but please don’t make either food a mainstay of your diet. Not reacting to these foods means that you don’t have to be hypervigilant about keeping them out. If you have the occasional piece of sourdough bread or miso soup, you will be fine.