HOW TO MAKE THE CHANGE
When I originally began working with people to help them change their eating habits, the average person would fail miserably. The standard method of nutritional change is to take somebody’s existing diet, throw it in the trash, and then hand them a completely new way of eating.
This method of “out with the old, in with the new” caused the average person who came to me to lose weight to instead gain eight pounds after only one session. Even cancer and diabetes patients would not follow my diet. They would rather die. No one to whom I ever gave a totally new diet for any reason ever stuck to it for more than a few days or a few weeks.
Following and sticking to a brand-new way of eating is extremely hard. In some cases, it is impossible. That is why I created the “Rules for Better Fueling” to help people get better at eating over time. As a result of the Rules for Better Fueling, I have achieved results with literally thousands of people who thought they would never be thin or healthy again or who had failed on numerous occasions to eat better.
To reverse this process of poor eating habits and move closer toward the BBG Un-Diet, use the following Rules for Better Fueling. These will lighten the burden of change and, in time, you will find yourself making better and better decisions and finally discover the health and the body you seek.
The Addition Rule
Positive eating is a gradual process. To be effective and long-lasting, change must come slowly, so as not to shock the system or the brain. The Addition Rule states that instead of eliminating the bad, you will add the good. So those of you who drink diet soda and eat a candy bar for breakfast every morning, you do not just stop that behavior and start eating nothing but fruit. If you do, you will only quit—or your brain will explode—whichever comes first.
What the Addition Rule has you do is add an apple to your cola and candy bar breakfast. With the Addition Rule, you do not take away; you add.
Most people are overfed but undernourished. There is no nourishment in their diets. Many modern diets literally contain no real food at all. It is all just fast food, junk food, quick food, and refined food, all of which are full of calories but devoid of nutrition. By adding healthy foods, you become not only fed, but nourished as well.
When you are told to “eliminate” something, it gives you an instant attachment to it and you only want it more. Noticeably, there is no “Rule of Elimination” anywhere in this Un-Diet. The idea of elimination tends to create negative thought patterns in the brain. The feeding system responds better to positiveness than it does to negativity. Eliminating negative food items from an unhealthy diet is a much more challenging task than simply adding positive things to the diet a little at a time.
Therefore, begin thinking positively and not negatively. To do so, call on the first rule of nutrition, the Addition Rule. Adding an apple does not do much to eliminate the ill effects of consuming other unhealthy foods. However, it does add a significant level of nutritional value to an otherwise entirely nutritionless meal.
Over time, the BBG will react so positively to these additions that it will begin to crave the healthier items as opposed to the unhealthy ones. Gradually, those nutritional items that were once merely additions could become the entire focus of the meal.
The Replacement Rule
The world is full of tempting treats that create a large amount of craving and satisfaction, but offer little nutrition. Traditional favorites such as pizza, ice cream, cookies, sodas, sugared cereal, fast food, and other unhealthy choices are literally addictions and create a real dilemma when trying to make proper decisions. To help avoid caving in to these cravings and addictions, the Un-Diet suggests an effective nutritional theory known as the Replacement Rule.
Many of the junk foods listed above, in their original forms, contain ingredients harmful to the BBG, such as preservatives, additives, MSG, and hydrogenated oils. However, today’s modern health-food and grocery stores offer a variety of substitutes you can buy or make that are similar in form, satisfaction, and taste to these foods.
These substitutes come from Foods by God. They are all-natural and at least provide some actual nutrients.
Therefore, to phase out those unhealthy foods that leave BBG owners overfed but undernourished, follow the Food Replacement Rule and begin replacing them with more health-conscious substitutes. Replacing fat-, lethargy-, or disease-producing foods with healthful substitutes is an easy and effective way to start to slowly and less painfully change your habits.
Using this rule, you will soon find yourself more and more satisfied with the healthier substitutes to your cravings. Eventually, you may even be able to eliminate these cravings altogether. To help you, here is a handy list of common food cravings and their replacement foods.
REPLACEMENT FOODS
| Craving/Addiction | Replacement Food |
| Pizza: Store-bought or homemade | Whole-grain pizza with all-natural sauce and low-fat unrefined cheese |
| Ice cream | Nondairy, low-fat alternative (e.g., Rice Dream) |
| Sugary, refined cereal | One of the many health-food, wholegrain cereals with rice or almond milk |
| Craving/Addiction | Replacement Food |
| Sugar | Honey, fresh fruit juice, unrefined maple syrup, molasses, brown rice syrup |
| Salt, MSG | Healthy spices and condiments |
| Rich desserts | Whole-grain, nondairy, chemical- free, low-fat, or honey- or fruit-sweetened treats |
| Fast-food burger | Lean, homemade all-beef burger, lean turkey burger, or veggie burger |
| Cheese | Low fat, unrefined cheese and nondairy cheese-like rice cheese |
The 10-Point Reduction Rule
On a scale of 1 to 10, if a craving is a 10, it will be hard to resist. On the other hand, if you can get the same craving down to a 7 or 8, you can control cravings some or most of the time. If you can get them down even farther, you can almost totally control them.
Therefore, the 10-Point Reduction Rule states that if you can reduce a food craving down below a level 10, you will have more power over your decisions to consume.
To achieve this elementary rule, it is prudent to start addressing those foods that currently cause a level-10 craving in the first place. For instance, a cup of coffee. This Food by Man beverage, which is loaded with the stimulant caffeine and typically accompanied by unhealthy dairy and sugar products, is a morning addiction shared by millions.
When coffee achievers wake up in the morning, their craving for this legal stimulant is a full 10 and seemingly impossible to resist. They crave the warmth, the smell, the taste, the sweetness of the sugar and cream, as well as the stimulating effect of the caffeine.
However, if, instead of coffee, they drank a cup of herbal tea with soy milk and honey, for example, this would mimic the flavor and warmth of the coffee. While this cup of herbal tea may not be as satisfying to someone as coffee, the similarity between the coffee and the tea brings the craving down from a 10 to a 7. They may still want the coffee, but the reduction in craving intensity allows them to skip the coffee many or most days.
The same can be done with a rich dessert. When the desire for an unhealthy sweet reaches a 10, you can eat a piece of fruit or something fat free or naturally sweetened and reduce the craving low enough to “just say no.”
Everyone’s Favorite: The Vacation Food Rule (You Don’t Cave If You Crave)
Properly consuming healthy food as a way to keep the constant needs of the BBG feeding system satisfied is hard work. Beginning to eat people food is a slow process that often requires a significant life change to achieve success. In fact, it often takes years to undo poor eating habits. It stands to reason that if it took years to build poor eating habits, it will likewise take time to permanently change the wrong eating habits in favor of the right ones.
If eating well creates too much stress, it negates many of the positive benefits. The Vacation Food Rule was created as a way of making the process of change much less stressful.
Many people are either on a diet or off a diet. The Un-Diet, however, is not a diet at all. It is a way of eating that is something to work on for the rest of your life. No matter how satisfying your work, you need an occasional break. The Vacation Food Rule puts a food, a meal, or even a whole day of the less-than-ideal food choices in as a rule. The idea that “if you crave, you cave” is a myth. Rather than calling it “cheating” when you give in to a craving, occasionally eating poorly is actually part of the BBG Un-Diet plan.
While occasionally you will take a spontaneous vacation, the best vacations are planned. Therefore, suppose you are an ice cream lover. Well, if you eat ice cream every day, not only are you not on the healthy BBG Un-Diet, but you are going to get fat.
However, if you utilize the Vacation Food Rule, you set a short-term goal for when you will eat the ice cream. You may say, “I will eat ice cream only on Wednesdays and Sundays.” Then, on Tuesday, when you pass your favorite ice cream parlor or somebody asks if you want to try their cone, you can resist your craving and say, “No thanks, I eat ice cream only on Wednesdays and Sundays.”
Some cravings are so great, they are difficult to handle. By setting a short-term goal, you usually can push yourself over the hump and make it another day or two.
It is important to give yourself short vacations from always eating well. However, with the Vacation Food Rule, you may be able to drop some really bad habits entirely. What will eventually happen is that you will be able to put off some of your eating vices longer and longer until eventually you will be able to go completely without them.
Another positive side effect of this rule is that often when you isolate only certain days to eat some of your cravings, you will find that you do not feel well after eating them. You may discover that you have a food sensitivity to these vacation foods that you never knew about before when they were mixed in with other meals.
Eat bad once in a while, but do not quit the BBG Un-Diet. Crave, but don’t cave. Take a short vacation once in a while, but then get back to work. Eventually, this rule will help you enjoy life even without the vacations.
The Food Dress-Up Rule
Initially, many of the healthier food choices may not seem very appealing. God-made foods tend to appear less tasty and fulfilling because of all the additives, sugars, salts, and fats that give less-healthy, man-made foods their flavor. The reality is that natural foods do possess good taste, but our taste buds have been dulled due to all the flavorings and spices in man-made food.
In order to make healthy food more palatable to your abused and desensitized taste buds, use the Food Dress-up Rule.
For instance, oatmeal is a healthy breakfast choice generally free of all the toxic foodstuffs that dilute and debilitate many other breakfast foods, such as cereals and donuts. The challenge is that oatmeal by itself does not contain much flavor, and preparing it with Food by Man like cow’s milk, butter, and sugar will negate some of the positive benefits. Simply eating oatmeal and hot water every morning can become a real chore for most people. Even the most avid of oatmeal fans would become tired of just straight oatmeal and honey after a while. To make this nutritious breakfast more appetizing, simply prepare “cool oatmeal.”
Cool oatmeal is your standard oatmeal with different healthy items added to dress it up. Adding fruits; soy, almond, or rice milk; nuts, cinnamon, granola, Butter Buds, or healthy cereals will dress up the oats and make them more attractive and fun to eat without causing too much mischief inside your body. Dressing up your healthy breakfast with nutritious food items is one way to avoid falling back into the coffee-and-donut mornings of your past life.
With this long-range goal of dressing up meals with healthy alternatives, proper nutrition can be achieved more realistically than by simply eliminating or giving up unhealthy foods altogether.
After a period of using God-made foods, eventually the sensation will return to your taste buds, and foods will require less dressing up.
The Stay-Full Rule
Food choices are triggered by something called “hunger.” When hunger signals reach a high enough level, it will be almost impossible to make good decisions. That is why the Stay-Full Rule states that the way to achieve proper nutrition is not to get too hungry.
Consuming regular, healthy meals at appropriate times of the day achieves a proper balance of staying nourished while also staying satisfied. On the other hand, skipping meals and going hungry lead to a practice of becoming “starved” and create the need for eating anything within reach to satisfy the inevitable hunger pangs.
What is most satisfying and often most available are those heavily refined, fast, or fried foods that are full of fat. To avoid consuming such “junk” food, always stay full throughout the day with good, God food.
The Multiple-Feedings Rule
To achieve the Stay-Full Rule, it helps to also follow the Multiple-Feedings Rule. This last theory of proper nutrition states that smaller, lighter, more healthy meals should be eaten throughout the day to avoid the intense hunger associated with weight loss.
Most BBG owners have been taught to eat two or three relatively large meals a day. However, the body is better equipped to process small amounts of food every few hours. Large amounts of food cannot be handled well by the body and cause loss of energy, digestive dysfunction, and fat storage. Going long periods of time between meals also slows down the metabolism, making you even less likely to burn these large amounts of calories.
Multiple small- to medium-size feedings take less energy to digest, burn well, and speed up the metabolism. To achieve ultimate results with the Body by God Un-Diet and all the ways of better fueling, feed four to six times a day.
HOW I EAT
From Unhealthy to Un-Diet
My typical workday now starts with oatmeal. As a former sugar-cereal connoisseur, breakfast was one of the hardest things for me to change. I remember waking up and the first words out of my mouth were, “Oh, no, oatmeal!”
Now, I can honestly say that oatmeal and other hot grains are some of my favorite foods. I typically eat hot cereal one of three ways:
• Straight boiled oatmeal with a combination of ground and whole oats. For fat I use coconut oil, ground flaxseed organic butter, and/or almond butter. To sweeten, I use berries and/or raisins with raw honey or organic maple syrup.
• Some other hot cereal like a natural cream of wheat, (not the normal commercial brand which contains preservatives), or cream of brown rice with the same fats and sweeteners.
• If I am cutting back on grains, or if I just want it, I will eat a 3–4 egg omelet with some goat or raw dairy cheese, spinach, and broccoli.
• If I am cutting down on grains I also do raw dairy yogurt or goats milk yogurt with natural, unsweetened chocolate shavings, coconut flakes, flax seeds, berries, and sweetened with stevia (It’s delicious!)
If I go out to breakfast, I order a broccoli-and-spinach omelet with only 1 egg yolk with no other carbohydrates or perhaps a bagel or a muffin as a treat for a vacation food. (See “Vacation Food Rule,” page 113.)
Later in the morning when I am at the office, three or four hours after breakfast, I get hungry and will switch to protein.
At midday, I will eat a large amount of vegetables with jasmine (I love jasmine rice) or basmati rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, or couscous. To add protein I add beans or eggs, turkey, or chicken.
If I go out for lunch, I will eat a small amount of fish, steak, or chicken on a Caesar salad with steamed vegetables. If I’ve worked out hard or have some physical activity left to do, I add a sweet potato. Late afternoon, it’s nuts and seeds. That way, I’m not starving at dinner.
Dropping carbohydrate-rich foods in the afternoon and evening was almost as hard as switching from Fruity Pebbles to oatmeal. I was used to coming home starving at night and relying on the bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes to fill me up and add flavor and variety to my food. This bad habit took a long time to shake.
The key for me was the Stay-Full and Multiple-Feedings Rules (see page 115). Since nuts and vegetables do not have many carbohydrates, I began to take them with me in the afternoon. This helped me avoid eating high-carbohydrate meals late in the day and allowed me to “stay full.” When it came to dinner, since I was not that overly hungry, it was easier to pass on the carbohydrates and be satisfied with a piece of salmon, a salad, and some vegetables.
On a regular basis, I’ll get rid of grains and go with goats milk yogurt (w/stevia, unsweetened organic chocolate, almond butter, and berries), large salads, tons of vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, and grass-fed beef.
When going out for dinner, I order fish or chicken and ask for a salad and tell the server to keep the potato or rice and give me extra vegetables in order to avoid eating carbohydrate-dense foods at night and poor food combining. (See the Un-Diet Food Guide on page 84.)
To meet my fat needs in the afternoon, I cook with extra-virgin olive oil and use it for dressings on my salads. In the late afternoon and early evening I use a combination of raw almonds, walnuts, cashews, and pumpkin seeds. (Although after testing myself I came up allergic to almonds so have cut them back.)
Because cooking food can destroy Nutrient Communion and kill the enzymes needed for digestion, I try to eat some raw foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds every day. My method of eating keeps me symptom free and loaded with a ridiculous amount of power. When I go off the Un-Diet, I can immediately tell. I will sometimes sense it for days. I will feel a little ill, have trouble focusing, look worse, have digestive and bowel changes, and feel a definite dip in power.
I do have some favorite Vacation Foods, and I take a break from eating healthy at certain times. On the weekend I will usually eat several not-so-ideal meals. Although, after years of living the Un-Diet, a lot of my vacation meals are made up of what many of my good meals used to be.
Typical Vacation Foods for me are food replacements like low-fat yogurt, cereal, and whole grain cookies, bread, and pasta. Two to three times a month or on a family trip I will really go on vacation and have a rich dessert or a heavy carbohydrate dinner.
Over time, I have been eating less and less of certain Vacation Foods, as the pain of eating pizza and Fruity Pebbles is becoming no longer worth the “pleasure.” I also like to eat too much, and eating Food by God according to the Un-Diet Food Guide is the only way I can eat all I want and still look and feel like I want.