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Getting Started

The antidote to your weight and health problems doesn’t lie in the pharmacy—it lies, as I have always said, in the “farmacy.” The foods in your farmers’ market and supermarket hold the cure, and the 10-Day Detox Diet is the way to break the cycle and reset, reboot, and restore your body to good health. This companion cookbook will support you in your mission. It will help you reconnect with your kitchen and prepare real, whole, delicious meals for yourself and those you love.

There are three phases of the 10-Day Detox Diet, all keys to your lifelong success. This cookbook will enhance your experience by providing you with more than 150 mouthwatering recipes to give your metabolism a boost. Let’s look at the three phases:

Phase 1, the Prep Phase: Here you’ll clean out your fridge and pantry in order to set yourself up for success. Spend about two days prior to beginning your detox setting up both mentally and physically. We’ll get to specific foods and ingredients in Chapter 4.

Phase 2, the 10-Day Detox: This is the actual “meat” of the program—the ten days that you’ll spend resetting your biochemistry and jumpstarting the healing process.

Phase 3, the Transition Phase: Now you’ll learn strategies for long-term health so you can continue to feel great after the first ten days.

I’ve organized the meals in this cookbook to help your body progress according to the same guidelines I outlined in The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet. My dream is for you to follow the comprehensive program in that book and give your body the best chance to reset itself to health. However, if you’ve picked up this cookbook and want to start with food as your medicine, then you will still experience profound changes in your weight, health, and well-being in just ten days.

WHY 10 DAYS?

Ten days is not a magic number or a gimmicky weight-loss scheme. Most people don’t realize that they are only a few days away from health and happiness. When you rapidly shift the way you eat, you can shift your hormones, brain chemistry, and biology very quickly. You can normalize your blood sugar, restore your liver and pancreas to a healthier state, and even improve your metabolism. Your body is capable of amazing things if you give it a chance. Just try it for ten days. You are capable of doing anything for that amount of time. And in exchange for a radical change in your lifestyle, I’m offering you a radical promise: that you will emerge within the first week feeling lighter, happier, more energetic, and more alive. You’ll also be released from the grip of food addiction, and your body will be less toxic than it has been in years. Within this cookbook, you’ll find the recipes and tools you need to free yourself from the cravings and health struggles that plague you.

WHAT TO TRACK

Throughout your ten-day journey and beyond, I encourage you to track your results. Research shows that people who track their results lose twice as much weight and do twice as well. Begin by getting a journal; it could be as simple as a notebook or a spreadsheet on your computer, whatever is convenient and works for you.

Now, what should you track? For starters, you’ll want to get a baseline of all measurements. Before you begin, talk with your healthcare provider about the program if you’re already on medication for high blood pressure or high blood sugar. If you are, the diet can work so quickly that your blood sugar or blood pressure may drop significantly—one patient had her sugar drop from 220 to normal in three days. So it is important to work with your doctor to adjust your medication and keep close track of these measurements. Using a home glucose monitor and blood pressure cuff can help you keep close tabs on how your body responds to this healing way of eating. Check out www.10daydetox.com/tools for my recommendations for self-tracking and monitoring devices that track weight, exercise, blood pressure, blood sugar, and more.

Here’s a list of what to record, how often to recheck, and what you need to get started:

YOUR WEIGHT

Weigh yourself, without clothes, first thing in the morning after going to the bathroom. Track your weight weekly in your journal.

YOUR HEIGHT

Measure yourself in feet and inches. Write it in your journal.

YOUR WAIST SIZE

Measure the widest point around your belly button. Track this measurement weekly in your journal. You can also track your hips at the widest point around your butt.

YOUR BODY MASS INDEX (BMI)

Your BMI is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared. You can use our online calculator at www.10daydetox.com/tools or use this calculation:

BMI = weight in pounds times 703, then divided by height in inches squared

So let’s use me for example: I weigh 185 pounds and am 75 inches tall. The calculation is: 185 × 703 ÷ (75 × 75). My BMI is 23.

This gives you a way to track whether you are normal weight, overweight, or obese. Normal BMI is less than 25, overweight is 26 to 29, and obese is over 30. However, you should take into account your waist size as well. If you weigh a lot but are a muscular bodybuilder with a small waist, you could be healthy and still have a high BMI. If you have skinny arms and legs and a skinny butt but a potbelly, you might have a normal BMI but be at risk for diabesity.

Furthermore, certain ethnic groups—such as Asians, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, Inuits, Indians, and Middle Easterners—have diabesity at much lower BMIs. Track your BMI weekly in your journal.

YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE (optional)

Get a home blood pressure cuff and measure your blood pressure first thing every morning and write it down.

WHAT TESTS SHOULD YOU DO?

Test Your Blood Sugar Yourself

While measuring your blood sugar is optional before, during, and after the 10-Day Detox Diet, I highly recommend it. Many people think they don’t have to check their blood sugar unless they are diabetic. Not so. In fact, I think it is a simple, great way for everyone to see how their body responds to what they eat.

Some of you may already have a glucose meter and know how to test your blood sugar. Others may want to get a meter at their local drugstore. The newer ones are easy to use and you can always ask your pharmacist to show you how. I like the ACCU-CHEK Aviva Blood Glucose Meter with Strips, which includes a few test strips (you may need extra).

Here is the protocol I recommend for testing:

image Measure your fasting blood sugar daily, first thing in the morning before breakfast. Ideally your fasting blood sugar should be between 70 and 80 mg/dL.

image Measure your blood sugar two hours after breakfast and two hours after dinner. Ideally your two-hour sugars should never go over 120 mg/dL. If they go over 140 mg/dL, you have pre-diabetes. If they go over 200 mg/dL, you have type 2 diabetes. Technically this is after a 75-gram glucose load, but if they go this high on the plan you definitely have a problem. Pay attention to how they change depending on what you eat over the ten days.

Get Tested with Your Doctor

Part of what you’re doing over these ten days is becoming an active partner in your health and weight loss plan, and that includes having a full understanding of your numbers and following them over time. I believe everyone should become empowered to learn about their bodies, interpret their test results, and use that information to track their progress. I strongly encourage you to consider getting basic lab tests done before and after the program. These would include the following:

image Insulin response test, which is like a two-hour glucose tolerance test, but it measures insulin as well as glucose three times: after fasting, and one and two hours after a 75-gram glucose drink.

image Hemoglobin A1c, which measures your average blood sugar over the last six weeks. Anything over 5.5 percent is considered elevated, and over 6.0 percent is diabetes.

The lab tests above can be done through your doctor and at most hospitals or laboratories, or ordered yourself through personal testing companies such as SaveOnLabs (www.saveonlabs.com). For more information and detailed explanations for each of these tests, go to www.10daydetox.com/tools.

image NMR lipid (cholesterol) profile, which measures LDL, HDL, and triglycerides, as well as the particle number and, importantly, the particle size of each type of cholesterol and triglycerides. Diabesity causes you to have many small dangerous LDL and HDL cholesterol particles. This is a newer test, but I would demand it from your doctor, because the typical cholesterol tests done by most labs and doctors are out of date. This test can be obtained only through LabCorp or LipoScience.

Keep a record of your initial results and then track your progress as I’ve outlined above. You can do this with a simple pen and paper, or you use the online tools at www.10daydetox.com/tools for tracking all your scores, measurements, and vital stats, as well as your daily experiences and feelings through the detox journal.