It's set up in three phases, with phase one being the most restrictive and with each new phase you can add back more foods. The first two weeks are phase one, the second two weeks are phase two and the remainder is phase three. And the author advocates staying on phase three forever. It starts out so restrictive for the purpose of detoxing your body.
Because it starts out so restrictive and I question our willpower, I'm strongly considering having us do phases one and two for just one week each. I guess we'll just see how this week goes and make a decision when the time comes. The author even says you can start at any phase you want, but he recommends everyone do phase one for at least a few days to detox, so I take that to mean doing only one week of phase one instead of two weeks would still be very beneficial.
So why are we doing this? Primarily because of Jeremy's lyme disease and my long history of having a not-so-good stomach. This diet is supposed to help inflammation, which Jeremy definitely has a lot of from his lyme disease. And it's also supposed to help with digestion and gut health, which I apparently need.
After we finish this 40-day (or less) cleanse, my current plan is to just move us into more of a whole-foods, traditional foods diet. We've always felt like we eat fairly healthy, but I know there's lots of room for improvement. I especially want to learn about lacto-fermentation of foods and how to incorporate them into our diet because they are so good for gut health, and therefore overall health. I'm currently working on making a sourdough starter to kick things off!
So that's that. I decided today that I want to blog about this Maker's Diet adventure, mostly so I will have a record of how it went, how we felt about it, the struggles, and hopefully the joys of it.
So what did we eat for our first day of our new diet?
Breakfast - eggs fried in coconut oil, peppered turkey bacon, organic strawberries
Lunch - large salad of mixed greens, baby spinach, green pepper, carrots, sugar snap peas, tomato, and grilled chicken... Jeremy ate some salad dressing that I mixed up, but I wasn't crazy about it so I broke the rules and had a bit of all natural ranch dressing... we also tried the coconut flour bread that I made today, with a bit of almond butter on it
Dinner - stuffed peppers (green peppers stuffed with free-range ground beef, zucchini, tomato, onion... really yummy), guacamole with carrot sticks and sugar snap peas
Dessert - smoothies that weren't very good (mixed frozen berries, coconut milk, vanilla, almond butter, water, Jeremy added goat's milk yogurt into the second batch), we ate them but they were kind of disappointing... I'll be searching out some better recipes
Snacks - fresh berries, almonds, coconut flour bread
For the most part it was all really yummy and healthy-feeling. I ate more veggies today than I do most days, by far. I definitely had some cravings though, for things like tortilla chips with the guacamole, a salty snack, a sweet treat after lunch. I'll be interested to know how long it takes for cravings like that to go away.
Oh and we're not putting the girls on this diet. They're obviously eating some of the same things as us, but I'm not yet making any drastic changes to their diet.
7 comments:
I'm curious about the coconut flour bread. What other things does it have in it? Does it still have gluten?
It has eggs, coconut oil, honey, sea salt and coconut flour. Here's the recipe - http://www.nourishingdays.com/2009/02/coconut-flour-bread/. It was pretty tasty fresh from the oven. Not quite as yummy later in the day, but maybe if I had warmed it a little it would have been better. And it's definitely more like a sweet bread than a sandwich bread.
We make smoothies every day for breakfast with just fruit (usually a banana for some sweetness, along with berries of some sort, and sometimes other things like nectarines or mangoes, ice, and a splash of almond milk. They are awesome!
Ah, yes, we can't do eggs. :(
But we LOVE smoothies. My favorite is 1c almond milk, 1-2T OJ concentrate, a couple of handfuls of spinach (or other mild tasting greens). I blend those up and then add in the frozen fruit - berries, mango, pineapple, etc. YUM!
Your smoothie suggestions are great ladies, but in this phase of the diet we can't have bananas, nectarines, mango, almond milk, pineapple or OJ. Jeremy has already commented on the lack of variety in this diet! I really, really don't think we'll do a full two weeks of this phase of the diet.
You can have almond butter but not almond milk? How about pomegranate juice? That would be good in a smoothie. We've done them with coconut milk before, too. Or maybe a little honey or agave? Or coconut sugar? It's expensive, but tastes yummy. :)
Tell him to think of it as a fast. Maybe that will help him to do it a little longer. You can do anything if you know it's just for 2 weeks!
I know, seems strange that we can have almond butter but not almond milk. I don't remember what his reason is for that. No pomegranate juice in this phase either, though we can have a very small amount of raw honey per day (1 T. max). We might try again tonight and see if we can come up with a better concoction.
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