Everything that we eat or drink is foreign to our internal system, until it has been chemically altered and labelled. Put very simply, the mouth and stomach mechanically and chemically break down food into components small enough to be absorbed from the small intestine into the blood. From there those components are taken to the body’s chemical factory, the liver, where they are broken down even further and boxed up as ‘friend’ or ‘foe’. Friends are sent off round the body as nutrients, and foes are expelled!
Just imagine that each food poses a different challenge to the body, and the more severe the challenge the more dehydrated and stressed the cells become in processing that food. If the body is constantly challenged over a long period it may become very ‘dry’ and then the stomach won’t be able to digest properly everyday foods such as cheese sandwiches or chocolate, and the liver won’t be able to do its job efficiently. ‘Challenging’ foods take an enormous amount of the digestive system’s energy to be broken down and used or thrown out. The more complex the meal the more energy is needed to deal with it, and the more lethargic we feel as our blood is shunted away from places like the brain to go to work in the digestive process.
If the digestion is over-taxed, the gastro-intestinal tract (your gut) becomes clogged with stagnating food, and the thousands of little finger-like projections in your small intestines (villi) will no longer absorb the food correctly, and dis-ease will set in.
Dis-ease, in this context, is acidity in the cells. If the cells are too acidic, they can’t get rid of toxins or excess acids easily and won’t absorb essential minerals and nutrients. I won’t go into minute detail about specific pH levels, but the body produces both acidic and alkaline fluids. The stomach juices should be acidic while bile and pancreatic juice should be alkaline. Together these last two neutralize the stomach’s contents as they come through the small intestine. But because of our diet, most of us are acidic in places where we should be alkaline, and alkaline where we should be acidic! Overall, a healthy body should be about 70 per cent alkaline and only 30 per cent acidic. All too often, it’s the reverse. And this excess acidity increases the likelihood of our developing illnesses and accelerates ageing. So it’s vital to try to redress the balance.
All this is why, for just three days, the exclusion list of no-go foods is pretty strict. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of tasty and less challenging alternatives, which will give the body as little to do as possible. So it can concentrate on resting and repairing important organs such as the bowel and liver, and allow its internal environment to become a perfect acidic-alkaline mix – a sort of spring clean of your intestines.
say no to these acidic and challenging foods
The 3 ‘S’s: Sugar, Salt and Stimulants
Dairy Products: Cheese, Milk & Cream
Wheat
Animal Products, including Meat, Fish and Eggs
Potatoes (and Aubergines, Tomatoes, Courgettes and Peppers if you suffer from arthritis)
I bet you’re looking at this list in blind panic, thinking, What is there left to eat? Don’t panic: in the next chapter we’ll look at all the alternatives. And do remember: it is only for three days! Once you’ve read the reasons for excluding them, you might even agree (and do it for longer) !
the 3 ‘s’s: sugar
Contrary to what we’re led to believe by the manufacturers of soda pop, sweets, chocolates and cakes, sugar has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. Yes, it’s lovely and it’s moreish. But the fix that can only be satisfied by a mid-afternoon chocolate bar is simply a drop in our blood-sugar levels.
Blood sugar is glucose – our main source of energy without which we couldn’t be active. But refined sugar, in the form of a biscuit or a sugary drink, makes the blood-sugar levels peak too quickly and, unless you’re running a marathon, the glucose produced has nowhere to go. It gets transported to the cells, is dumped there and the body starts laying down fat.
Every time sugar is eaten, the pancreas releases the hormone insulin to cope with the sudden rise in blood-sugar levels. Just half an hour after eating something sugary, we’ll want more to repeat that blood-sugar high. And so the roller-coaster ride of extreme blood-sugar highs followed by blood-sugar lows begins. This can lead to headaches, irritability, mood swings, low energy, feeling cold and, eventually, if you’re unlucky, insulin resistance. The pancreas is being asked to produce insulin so often it just runs out. And the result could be obesity, diabetes and, in the end, heart disease.
And if that doesn’t convince you, this certainly will! Sugar weakens our immune system – big time! In one study, youngsters were given a soft drink that contained 66 grams of sugar. Within just 45 minutestheir immune cells’ ability to engulf bacteria had dropped by half.
artificial sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners are the most common and most consumed food additives today. They are cheaper than sugar and some are up to 300 times sweeter. They are also hidden in a great many things other than diet drinks and low-cal foods: crisps and other savoury snacks, ready-made meals and even so-called ‘healthy’ orange juice. Children are consuming huge amounts of them and no one yet knows the long-term effects on the body. ‘We use artificial sweeteners regularly for our patients’ weight-loss programmes,’ explains Dr Stephen Waring, a specialist in Cardiovascular Risk at the University of Edinburgh. But he adds, ‘They haven’t been properly researched in a clinical setting and this gives me cause for great concern.’
Obesity has tripled in the last 15 years, yet we’re actually eating fewer calories and less fat, and consuming more diet colas and drinks than ever before. So they’re not working, are they? Most health professionals think there is a link and that low-cal drinks may actually encourage weight gain because the taste buds are being conned. They taste ‘sugar’, the pancreas produces insulin, and off we go again on that roller coaster of wanting more and more sugar which, if it isn’t burned off, results in more fat being stashed away.
And most fizzy soft drinks, whether diet or ‘full-fat’, are loaded with phosphorus. Although this mineral is essential for healthy bones, the amount contained in a bottle of pop is so high that it literally drags calcium out of the bones (as the minerals compete for absorption). Add a poor diet to the equation, and you won’t be surprised to hear that osteoporosis bone-scan clinics are seeing a huge rise in brittle bones amongst twenty-somethings – because of the amounts of soda pop they’re drinking. So if you want brittle bones, just carry on drinking a litre of low-cal fizzy a day!
Remember how we’ve looked at cutting down gradually on an unhealthy food you habitually consume or crave:
targets for cutting down on sugar and sweeteners
|
WEEK 1 |
Halve intake. |
|
WEEK 2 |
Halve intake again. |
|
WEEK 3 |
Have the smallest amounts possible once a day. |
|
WEEK 4 |
Replace sugar with honey or blackstrap molasses or organic raw cane sugar if you must have it! |
I can’t think of anything further from nature than artificial sweeteners, so obviously these don’t play a part in my healthy-eating plan. However, if you find it really difficult to give up sugar or sweeteners you can buy pure, organic, raw cane sugar in most stores now – if you must! I would rather see you eating a little of that than chemical-ridden artificial sweeteners.
the 3 ‘s’s: salt
Salt was so prized and valued for hundreds of years that wars were fought over it, people were paid in salt and we even named our monthly wage after it: ‘salary’. It’s vital for our metabolism and electrolyte balance and without it we would certainly die.
But we only need about 5–6 grams (about 1/6–1/5 ounce, around a teaspoon) a day, and most of us are consuming double that amount every day. Excess sodium (salt is sodium chloride) increases blood pressure, is linked to coronary heart disease and strokes, and even to osteoporosis and stomach cancer.
The pressure group Consensus Action on Salt and Health, a collection of doctors and chefs, recently called for food manufacturers to drastically reduce the amount of ‘hidden’ salt in our foods, particularly in low-calorie processed foods, which can contain twice as much salt as the so-called ‘unhealthy’ full-fat version. The trouble is, every time fat is taken out of a meal, something has to be put in to make it tasty – and that something is usually salt!
Adding salt to our food accounts for 15–20 per cent of the salt we consume on a daily basis. Professor Graham MacGregor of St George’s Hospital, Tooting, a leading expert on the relationship between salt and disease, says that just reducing salt intake to 6 grams a day could improve the health of 20,000–30,000 people a year and greatly reduce the number of deaths caused by heart disease. ‘Many processed meat products, for example cheap sausages, are made from large amounts of fat, which on its own is completely inedible. To make them tasty, very large amounts of salt are added,’ he says. He also warns that salt is hidden in many of the convenience foods we buy, in tins of baked beans, sweets and biscuits, bacon, even bread and cereals: ‘Cornflakes contain the same amount of salt as seawater and even biscuits and manufactured cakes and puddings have the same amount of salt as potato crisps.’
Too much sodium in a diet encourages the cells to hang on to water for dear life: hence bloating and water retention. Just tick the foods on the list below that you eat regularly. Give them up for a couple of weeks, and look out for an improvement. Symptoms like bloating and water retention usually disappear quite quickly if you reduce salt intake and drink more water.
salt: worst offenders list
· Bacon (1 gram a rasher!)
· Smoked or Cured Meat like Ham
· Baked Beans (2.5 grams of salt per serving of 210 grams!)
· Margarine
· Hard Cheese like Cheddar
· Breakfast Cereals
· Biscuits
· Pizza
· Potato Crisps
· Ready Meals
· Sausages
· Smoked Fish (Just 50 grams of smoked salmon contain more than 3.75 grams of salt!)
· Tinned Soups
· Tomato Ketchup
· White Bread (One sandwich contains half the recommended daily intake in just the bread, without the filling!)
The Weekend Plan will automatically reduce your sodium intake by as much as 80–85 per cent, because the diet consists of natural fruits, vegetables and grains. You will still consume the RDA for sodium, but in an organic, absorbable form. Remember, green vegetables are full of organic sodium.
! TOP TIPS FOR REDUCING SALT INTAKE
Stop adding salt to your cooking.
Stop adding salt to your food without tasting it first!
Use other herbs and spices to add flavour, such as sea vegetables.
Cut right down on tinned, pickled or smoked foods.
Cut right down on ready-made meals, especially low-fat ones.
Read the labels very carefully and look for the sodium content.
Remember that the recommended intake is just 5–6 grams a day, which equals one teaspoon only.
Within 2–6 weeks you won’t want it any more.
the 3 ‘s’s: stimulants
alcohol
Alcohol is not, strictly speaking, a stimulant as it depresses the nervous system. But it does stimulate the liver and, as you will read later, the liver needs a good rest for 48 hours so an alcohol ban is essential during the Weekend, I’m afraid.
Alcohol is very dehydrating – remember, it’s a diuretic. Just think of that thumping headache the morning after the night before. That’s dehydration caused by water pouring away from important organs, such as your brain, to go and deal with your overworked kidneys.
Finally, bear in mind that alcohol turns to sugar and is stored by the body as fat. It has no other nutritional use at all, apart from making us feel relaxed and happy. Red wine is my poison, and I justify it by acknowledging that it’s rich in antioxidants and has been linked to the low figures for heart disease in France! But, because I have such a clean body 80–90 per cent of the time, more than one glass an evening affects me quite badly. As with everything, moderation has become the name of the game, even when it comes to my favourite drink.
If you’re an ‘every-single-night’ drinker, than cut down gradually before the Weekend, or you’ll feel miserable for the whole time. Have a glass of wine or beer once or twice a week leading up to the Plan – it won’t hurt. But if you can go for an extended alcohol-free period, so much the better.
! TOP TIP TO AVOID ALCOHOL-INDUCED DEHYDRATION
Drink water! The average body needs approximately 4–5 molecules of water for every molecule of alcohol drunk to help remove it from the body. So drinking one glass of water for every glass of booze you drink should help your dehydration levels.
coffee
Caffeine is the most active stimulant for the nervous system. In excess it can cause insomnia, digestive problems, bowel problems, and can even harm the heart. It’s a very strong diuretic, is dehydrating and, in large quantities, really dries those cells out. A gynaecologist recently told me that for a patient suffering from an unstable bladder drinking coffee (or alcohol) is so irritating that it has the same effect on the bladder as raking it with cactus spikes!
Coffee also stimulates the adrenals (little hat-shaped glands that sit on the tip of the kidneys) to produce more adrenaline, which gives the body a surge in energy for ‘fight or flight’. The trouble is, if you constantly put your body into fight-or-flight mechanism, it’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf too many times. The glands can’t respond when needed – they’ve become too exhausted to produce any more adrenaline. Interestingly, the more toxins, pollutants and poor nutrition you put into your body, the more lethargic and ratty you feel, and the more you need caffeine and other stimulants to help you feel normal again. And so the cycle goes on: fluctuating blood-sugar levels followed by exhausted adrenals.
But, in moderation, coffee is a wonderful pick-me-up and my favourite stimulant. At least once a year, I give it up for three weeks and drink green tea instead, and then I definitely feel more alert in the morning and more chilled throughout the day. I do, however, usually go back to my one cup a day because I just love the whole café lifestyle that has sprung up on every high street all over the world. If at all possible, try doing without coffee completely for the Weekend and for two–three weeks after that, just to see how you feel. Organic green tea is a good alternative as it contains a tiny amount of caffeine but also an abundance of antioxidants, so the good outweighs the bad. And if you really can’t function without coffee, make it just one cup of organic a day.
tea
Tea, on the other hand, has been getting some good press recently. It’s been discovered that Britain’s favourite beverage is full of antioxidants – powerful substances that help protect us from disease. Antioxidants, such as vitamins A (as beta-carotene), C and E and the mineral selenium, also neutralize any damaging free-radical molecules that may invade us, such as pollutants and toxins. So a cuppa may have some health benefits. Tea also contains theanine, which increases levels of dopamine, a ‘feel-good’ brain chemical, which relaxes us and makes us feel happy.
But despite those merits tea is still a diuretic, still dehydrating and still challenging to the body, especially if it’s full of milk and sugar. You can get those precious antioxidants from a healthier source. So if you can’t live without tea, for the sake of your soon-to-be-spring-cleaned cells reduce the number of cups you drink to a minimum and buy the purest, best leaf variety you can find. Better still, try one of the many herbal teas around. There are many choices ranging from peppermint, which calms the digestion, to camomile, which calms the mind and induces a good night’s rest!
dairy products
A dairy product is anything that comes from a cow, and cow’s milk is one of the most common causes of food intolerance. In fact, dairy intolerance is now one of the main food intolerances in the UK. If you suffered as a child from chronic ear infections, tonsillitis, eczema or asthma you could well be sensitive to the proteins and sugars contained in milk. Lactose and milk casein are the two usual offenders. Cow’s milk is also very mucus-forming and has long been associated with chronic catarrh, sinusitis, and hay fever.
Professor Anthony Frew is an acknowledged expert in allergy and respiratory medicine at Southampton Hospital. He says that many people see considerable improvements in common conditions such as asthma, eczema, catarrh and digestive problems when they give up cow’s milk and replace it with an alternative such as goat’s milk. With my own clients, I’d say that figure is as high as three-quarters. Although goat’s milk and cheese may well play a part in your regime after the Weekend, they’re still animal products, so won’t be included in the suggestions for the 48-Hour Plan.
dairy facts
Milk and cheese are hard to digest. Many nutritionists believe that cow’s milk is meant for calves, and that human babies lose the enzyme to digest milk once breastfeeding is over, or by the age of two.
Milk and cheese can cause excessive amounts of mucus in the intestines so nutrients can’t be properly absorbed.
Chronic catarrh usually clears up when dairy produce is avoided. Cows are fed hormones and antibiotics and these are passed on to you in the milk.
The UK and the US drink more milk than probably any other country, yet we have the highest rates of osteoporosis!
Alternatives such as green vegetables and goat’s milk can provide as much calcium, if not more!
Again, if you feel well on dairy produce and don’t suffer from any ear, nose, chest or skin problems, then just eliminate it for the duration of the 48-Hour Plan. It doesn’t need to be for life. But see how you feel when you’ve taken it out of your daily diet for a few days, before making any long-term decision. The following must be avoided over the Weekend:
dairy products
Milk
Butter
Margarine
Buttermilk
Cheese
Cottage Cheese
Evaporated or Condensed Milk
Ice Cream
Milk Chocolate
YOGURT
Yogurt from cow’s milk is the one dairy product that’s an exception. It’s a fermented product, and the B-vitamins that the yogurt bacteria manufacture in your gut will help you absorb calcium from all the other healthy sources you’ll find in the next chapter. But make sure it’s organic, plain and ‘live’. (If you’re going to cut out all dairy produce, then consider goat’s or sheep’s milk yogurt.)
wheat
It’s one of the largest crops grown by humans, with evidence for its cultivation going back as far as 10,000 years. So why are we giving up wheat for the Weekend? Undoubtedly, if it’s wholegrain wheat, it’s a good source of complex carbohydrate (better for those sugar levels) and gives the body a healthy amount of vitamins B and E, and important minerals.
But wheat is very ‘challenging’ to the digestion and acid-forming, and is blamed for more digestive and bowel problems than any other food. Most of the bread and pasta on supermarket shelves nowadays tends to be poor quality, full of sugar, salt and additives. If you need proof of how many additives a cheap loaf contains, just see how many days a pre-packed loaf of sliced bread bought in the UK or the US lasts compared to a freshly baked baguette that goes stale in a matter of hours!
gluten
The other reason why so many people suffer from wheat intolerance, in the form of digestive problems such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and the lesser bloating, is because of the gluten. Two insoluble proteins in glutenous grains, called gliadins and glutenins, produce gluten when the flour is kneaded with water. Gluten’s elastic properties make the production of bread possible. But it’s the gliadin part of the mixture that appears to cause gluten intolerance – irritating the lining of the colon in a great many people. Protein in wheat is made up of as much as 55 per cent gliadin, in rye 40 per cent, and in oats just 15 per cent. Rice and maize contain none at all.
Wheat flour mixed with water turns into a spongy, chewing-gum-like material that literally sticks to anything. So you can imagine what it does to the inside of your intestines if the bread or pasta has not been digested properly or the intestines are dehydrated. The gluten will coat the wall of the colon, upset the beneficial bowel bacteria flora, and prevent proper absorption. Even if you are not gluten intolerant, this could, and often does, lead to constipation, discomfort, putrid bacteria, bloating and lethargy.
A healthy digestion can cope with wheaten foods such as bread, but when the system has been weakened by a long-term diet of challenging foods, difficult-to-digest substances such as gluten can build up even more problems in the gut. My personal take on this is that a truly hydrated body will not have a problem with bread, if it’s of good quality and is chewed very, very well. But if the body is already stressed and ‘dry’ after a lifetime of poor nutrition, and bread is eaten every single day then there is a significant likelihood that, eventually, wheat intolerance will develop. According to Allergy UK, a medical charity that helps allergy-sufferers, only around 2 per cent of the UK population suffer from genuine food allergies; but, when it comes to wheat intolerance, that figure is considerably higher. ‘Judging by the number of people contacting us on a daily basis,’ says Chief Executive Muriel Simmonds, ‘I believe 20–25 per cent of the UK is intolerant to wheat.’ And if my own clients are anything to go by, I think Muriel is spot on!
For the duration of the Plan, whether you think you are wheat tolerant or intolerant, anything containing wheat (even pasta) is being taken off the menu to give your digestion a rest. And if you wake up in the night dreaming of and lusting after hot, buttered toast then you will know you probably are harbouring an intolerance and your body really needs this break!
animal products: meat, fish and eggs
Animal protein is full of nutrients that are absolutely essential for cell and tissue health, for body growth and repair. But animal protein takes considerable effort for the body to digest and break it down. If it’s not properly broken down, the digestion can become sluggish and toxic. Meat products (sausages, pies and so on) in particular are very acid-forming and encourage the growth of unfriendly bacteria, especially if not digested properly.
animal produce facts
1. It can take the body literally days – instead of just 24 hours with less challenging foods – to get a thick juicy steak digested and through the system from mouth to anus. As the putrid waste makes its way slowly through the intestines, it can put a heavy burden on the body’s cleansing ability.
2. As we’re constantly being told, a diet high in saturated fat from foods such as bacon, sausages and other processed meats can lead to higher cholesterol levels.
3. As with milk, unless they’ve been organically raised, the animals may have been fed hormones and antibiotics and may have eaten grass contaminated by pesticides, and these will be passed on to you in the meat.
4. But, although acid-forming, chicken is less challenging and fish and eggs are extremely good for you. Especially if the fish is oily (full of EFAs) and the eggs haven’t been fried.
Before and after the Weekend, you can have a juicy red steak or one of the more ‘challenging’ meats very occasionally (such as once a month!) if you simply can’t do without them. But concentrate on fish, chicken and eggs for the animal products in your diet. As oily fish is the most beneficial, you can have this three to four times a week, and chicken and eggs two or three times a week.
All animal proteins are being taken off the menu for the three days of the Plan because we want to give the digestion a weekend off. You’ll get all the protein you need from nuts and seeds and other tasty snacks. In the meantime, try and:
cut down on meat, fish and animal products in this order of priority (The worst offenders are at the top of the list.)
Meat Products such as Pies, Sausages and Bacon
Offal
Pork
Beef
Lamb
Poultry
Game
Eggs
White Fish
Oily Fish
potatoes (and aubergines, tomatoes, courgettes and peppers if you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis)
Potatoes are on the eliminate list. Much like wheat, they require an enormous amount of water for the intestines to break them down and assimilate them, because they’re so high in starch. Although they’re a very nutritious carbohydrate, which will be back on the menu after the Weekend, for the duration of the Plan they’re just too challenging.
For anyone who suffers from blood-sugar problems, potatoes should only be an occasional treat. Foods such as potatoes release their sugar and starch contents very fast, which can push up glucose levels in the blood too high and too quickly, triggering fatigue and sometimes inflammation.
Which brings us on to the final reason to avoid potatoes and some of their relatives, for at least the duration of the Plan. Potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and peppers all contain a substance called solanine (the words comes from the Latin for nightshade). It’s well known that people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis or other joint inflammation often have a dramatic reduction in pain when they avoid any foods from the nightshade family. Whether it’s the solanine or the acidity of these foods that’s the trigger remains to be seen. But, for anyone in pain, it’s certainly worth excluding the nightshade family for just three days. For the rest of us, it’s the humble potato that finishes the list of foods we should be eliminating during the 48-Hour Plan.
If you’re thinking, What on earth does she expect me to eat then, please don’t worry. There are plenty of alternatives in the next chapter. And it’s only for 48 hours, so keep reading – it’ll be worth it, I promise!