WEEK 1

Increase water to 60 – 80 oz daily. Do not drink a lot more than this unless you are working outside or getting really hot and sweating a lot. It will deplete your body of salt and other electrolytes to drink too much water. This makes our kidneys work harder to hold on to these important electrolytes.

One way to make sure you get enough water is to fill three or four insulated stainless steel water bottles each morning and put them where you will see them. Start drinking as soon as you get up, especially if you are doing intermittent fasting or exercising early. If you don’t have 3-4 bottles make sure to refill as soon as they are finished.

The next thing on this week’s list is to look at any processed foods you are eating and start to eliminate them. Look very hard at everything in your cupboards. Make sure you understand that all foods in a package are likely processed. This includes fruits in packages, all crackers, chips, boxed meals, frozen meals, pizza, condiments, and most items located in the middle aisles of the grocery store. Not everything on the grocery shelves needs to be eliminated but work on learning what real food is.

Begin to think about how food makes you feel. Why do you eat what you do? What foods taste the best? What healthy foods taste really good? Which vegetables you like the most?

If you smoke, please try to quit. Of course everyone knows this is hazardous to your health.

WEEK 2

Continue to drink 60 – 80 oz of water daily. Continue to eliminate processed foods from your pantry and refrigerator. Now is the time to begin to eliminate sugar of any kind out of drinks and other foods. All processed sugars, honey, high fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, etc. Sugar has 65 or more different names. You can find those on line if you need to know what they are.

Begin to increase vegetable intake since you are eliminating processed foods. You can eat fresh or frozen vegetables but avoid vegetables in cans. If you need to clean out your pantry of canned vegetables do so now. Raw, fresh vegetables are usually the highest in nutrition unless they have traveled long distances so frozen works well too. They have often been flash frozen straight out of the field for high quality. Growing your own and eating right away is always the best. Raw is often better than cooked but lightly steamed vegetables are an excellent source of nutrition. Always save the broth for soups when you can. Do not increase potatoes including sweet potatoes. Corn is NOT a vegetable!!

Make a list of all the healthiest foods that you like. Put down your favorite vegetables and meats that you like the most. Work on trying new things so you can increase your list. It takes 3-6 weeks to change your palate. I never was exposed to turnip greens or collards as a child but love these now. I did not like them at first. Try different ways to cook foods that you may not like at first. I also have never liked beets. Still don’t like them a lot but I have found ways to add them to food. Always try new foods in small quantities and if you don’t like one recipe try another.

WEEK 3

Continue to drink 60 – 80 oz of water daily. Increase vegetable intake each week. This week we talk about grains. To lose weight you will need to eliminate processed grains. This means all breads and cereal. We have been taught to eat a large portion of our meals with grains which are a cheap filler. Many grains, especially processed, help increase our risk of diabetes. Eliminate cooking with flour. Do not make gravies with flour or other grains. Do not substitute wheat for rice flour. Do not bread vegetables or meat for frying. This means no biscuits, toast, bagels, English muffins, crusts of any kind and other sources of bread. Many frozen foods have breading on them.

Types of grains to avoid are wheat, rye, oats, corn, rice, quinoa, and soy. There may be others not mentioned here. You will need to read all packages to make sure there are no grains in your food. Protein shakes are processed and may have corn products in them to make fats into powders. Avoid protein shakes. Many people think they are good meal replacements. They are processed.

Continue to increase vegetable intake in the form of raw vegetables and steamed vegetables. You may make soups that are cooked longer with vegetables in them. Continue to eat non-processed meats of any kind. This week we will learn to make a vegetable smoothie. I have not mentioned eliminating fruit so fruit is acceptable currently.

The recipe below makes a double batch. I make two quarts at a time and fill them completely. They will keep 3-4 days in the fridge. Do not put them in stainless steal water bottles! They will go bad! I learned the hard way. Use glass only. This recipe usually makes two 32 oz jars which lasts me 2-3 days. I will drink some with my lunch and then again with dinner. It helps me get a lot more nutrition in my diet and more vegetables.

VEGGIE SMOOTHIE
1 large cucumber
10 stalks of celery
1 avocado
2 large handfuls of spinach
2 cups of water

I will add, on occasion, some of the following ingredients: cilantro, lime, or substitute romaine lettuce or kale for the greens. When I was in a hurry and I had some store bought guacamole I used that in place of the avocado. It had other ingredients in it that changed the flavor. It needs to taste good to you. You don’t want to use the celery leaves as they are more bitter. Use the skin of the cucumber. It has a lot of nutrition. If you can’t handle the taste of the vegetables you may add 1-2 apples and then slowly reduce the amount of apple you put in over a couple of weeks. You will get more weight loss if you do not use apples. This smoothie was the key to help me lose weight quickly as I went along on this plan. Try hard to find a vegetable smoothie that you like.

Through each of these weeks we want you to also focus on how food is making you feel, how it tastes, how well you really like it, what it does to your body? Do you have stomach pain? Do you have hard or loose stools? Do you feel sluggish? Do you feel hungry often? Do you eat when you are hungry, sad, bored? Do you eat more with others? Do you have to clean your plate even though you are full? Notice what, when, why and how you are eating.

If you have been on low carb you may be able to skip several weeks on this plan. Start where you know you are.

WEEK 4

Drink 60-80 oz of water. Make your veggie smoothies every day or every three days if you make the double recipe. You can drink 12 – 16 oz or more per day. Now we are getting down to stricter and stricter keto. You may be eating three meals a day. You can try increasing the time between you last meal of the day and breakfast/brunch the next morning. You don’t have to but this may help some people lose more weight.

We will need to eliminate all fruit this week. Why fruit? Most think it is very healthy! But we did not have access to fruit 24/7 like we do now in our near distant past! Fruit is something that helps us add fat to our bodies at the end of the summer when we are about to go into winter where food was normally scarce. No fruit of any kind. Most people don’t realize that fruit should be eaten alone also. We will talk more about this later with maintenance dieting. But for now eliminate all fruit. If you have to use an apple in your smoothie do so but that will be the only fruit you may eat this week.

Your cupboards should be getting cleaned out. Weekly you will only need to buy unprocessed meats, vegetables and you can still eat dairy and nuts. Peanuts and cashews are not nuts. You should avoid these. You can eat Brazil nuts, pecans, walnuts, pistachios, macadamia nuts and filberts. However, only eat nuts in moderation. Try not to eat more than a handful a day. They do have healthy fats. They must be raw. They do not need to be roasted in oil. You can soak them over night in salt and dehydrate them which make them very good.

Sugary drinks should have already been eliminated due to eliminating sugar. But we need to talk about what to drink. Coffee needs to go as well, as we move toward the greatest weight loss part of the diet. The main reason is that most people drink coffee with a lot of additives. Most of what we add to coffee is processed. If you are able to drink coffee black then you may keep coffee in moderation (1-2 cups a day). If you struggle with sleep you must also eliminate coffee. And if you cannot drink it black then begin to wean yourself.

What else can we drink? There are many, many types of herbal teas out here from fruity varieties to spiced varieties to black tea to green tea. Try new teas. Get sample packs and try them. Try them with friends. Other drinks like Gatorade, Powerade and energy drinks are not good for us. Don’t drink them. Sodas as most of us know are not good for us. That includes diet sodas. These are all processed non-foods. Don’t drink them. Some people will need to wean off of caffeine if they are drinking highly caffeinated drinks. You can take a couple of weeks to do this now.

That brings us to sugar substitutes. Most of them are bad for us. Nutrasweet/aspartame, Splenda/sucralose, Sweet’N Low, Equal, and several others should be avoided. You may use for the time being, Stevia, Monk Fruit, or sugar alcohols such as erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, and others. But over time these sweeteners can cause weight gain, urinary leakage, loose stools and other side effects if used in large quantities.  As we are so accustomed to the sweet flavor of foods I recommend reducing even the better ones to a small amount per day. You can use lemon and lime in your water if you choose. But drink plain water most of the time.  For the next week’s changes, you want to completely eliminate any sugary taste to help with the most weight loss.

Continue to notice more and more about food, what you are eating, how it tastes after the first bite, if you crave certain items, and how it makes you feel afterwards. Do you feel guilty? Do you feel you have an eating disorder?

WEEK 5 

Continue to drink water 60 – 80 oz. If you are a large man you can drink more. Drink some herbal teas and a little black coffee if you sleep really well and don’t have urinary issues. Drink your smoothie every day. Hopefully you are feeling much better as each week goes by. Do not buy foods you cannot have and bring them home! You will eat them. One of the hardest issues with eating healthy can be our family. Everyone makes their own choices and it is hard to be around some of the good tasting foods we are used to and not eat them. You may want to see if your family can go on board with you or eat their unhealthy foods elsewhere. It is difficult. We will talk about ways to overcome this issue later.

This week is the last of the eliminations! Lastly, we will eliminate dairy (except butter). Many who do keto eat a lot of dairy and get stuck with their weight and dairy can often be the difficulty. We will also talk about healthy and unhealthy fats this week. There is still some question in the minds and bodies of many who dairy may not work well for them. It can depend on what part of the world your family came from. Another thing to consider when eating dairy is that our cows are not raised in a very stress free, healthy environment. Often the cows have severe infections called mastitis. The dairy industry has now been allowed to have a lot more white cells (pus) in the milk than in previous times. This is because cows have become resistant to antibiotics.

Our ancestors from prior to 10,000 or 15,000 years ago may have had larger brains than we currently do. That is when we started to bring domesticated animals into our lives and when farming likely began. Our dairy products are also processed to a degree that may not be as healthy for us than if we ate fresh dairy. That is impossible for most people currently!

The biggest problem we have in our country and now all over the world is that we are eating so many more unhealthy fats. This has been a huge controversy over the last 10 – 15 years. Over the last century the use of hydrogenated oils has grown significantly. A committee in the late 60s and early 70s decided it was healthier for us to eat these seed oils, also called vegetable oils. This has been devastating to our whole population all over the earth. It is thought that these oils are the main cause of heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. These oils, along with the increase in sugar, is the likely cause of most chronic diseases including cancer. It is imperative that people understand what these oils are and how to avoid them.

Make sure they are out of your house! Don’t give them to you dog! They will cause heart disease in them as well. Many doctors who don’t have time to study nutrition are unaware how bad these oils are. Many institutions still heavily promote these oils in our diets, including hospitals, nursing homes, schools and anywhere one eats institutionalized foods. We have a low inflammatory diet sheet that outlines these unhealthy fats and gives you a list of their alternatives.

Healthy fat does not raise your insulin nearly as much as the other two food macronutrients, carbohydrates and proteins. Everything we put in our mouth does raise insulin but to a much lesser degree.

As this week moves on and you get rid of the dairy, continue to notice how you body feels. You may be really surprised. Not everyone feels these changes but continue to work toward only eating vegetables and meat.

WEEK 6

This week we call full on Spring. This is your greatest weight loss week and you may continue this week’s dietary regimen for as many weeks as you need to lose the weight you want to lose. So, what does this week truly look like? I will put sample menus below so that you can get the full picture. We will also add a weekly synopsis of all that we have discussed so far.

Water – 60 oz or more if hot and sweating.

Any real proteins –
Any seafood from the coastal and deep water oceans, not local lakes, streams or ponds. This includes but is not limited to shrimp, oysters, tuna, mackerel, salmon, sardines, clams, crab, lobster, and other deep water ocean fishes. If you can afford to get wild caught fishes do so. You may want to avoid canned fishes that may not be wild caught or from countries over near and around China. Their waters may not be very clean.

Other proteins include all real meat such as chicken, turkey, pork (any cuts), beef, lamb, goat meat, deer meat as well as any other wild caught game. You do not have to worry about fat content as the fats in meat are healthy for you. Eggs are included in the protein list!

Avoid processed meats, especially those with nitrites and nitrates as they may contribute to colon cancer. Bacon and sausage are ok as long as you follow this rule. Also make sure there are not added sugars.

Jerky is a good food to be able to take with you as you go about your day away from home or on trips. There are grass fed varieties that have no sugar and they are really, really good! I often take them with me along with my veggie smoothie so I always have something good to eat. I take them in a lunch box. Be aware your smoothie may ferment if not kept cool enough. Add ice to your box if you will be out for many hours. You can also fly with the different types of jerky. I take it on long car trips also.

Most vegetables –
Avoid the beans (legumes), peas and root vegetables such as carrots, beets, rutabagas and turnips while in the weight loss phase (spring). These have a lot more carbohydrates than other vegetables. Avoid sweet potatoes and potatoes while in this phase as well or always avoid the potatoes if you are diabetic. Many may not want to eat any potatoes for months if you are insulin resistant. You also may want to limit winter squashes such as butternut, acorn, spaghetti squash and others while in the weight loss weeks.

All other vegetables are to be eaten in large abundance. We have a list of many that people eat here in the south on the low inflammatory diet sheet. It is always good too try new vegetables to have variety so you don’t get bored with the same ones all the time. You an add olives and pickles to your meals to help you get more salt and for variety. Make sure the pickles don’t have sugar.

The last thing you can have each day is nuts. It is much better not to eat in between meals so eat a few with your meal if you want to add them. The nuts include Brazil nuts, macadamias, pistachios, walnuts, pecans, filberts, but no peanuts as they are a legume or cashews as they are classified as a fruit. There may be some I did not list. Remember, nuts cannot be cooked in oil. They must be raw. You can soak them overnight in salty water and dehydrate them in a very low oven at 175 degrees and they are wonderful like this.

WHAT DOES EACH DAY LOOK LIKE?

10 – 20 oz of water right out of bed. If you intermittent fasting, no food or drink besides water until your fist meal.

Breakfast can be eggs in any form (more egg options below) such as omelets with veggies, mushrooms, bacon or ham. Put on a bed of lettuce if you want more greens in your day. Drizzle a little bacon grease on the lettuce. Drink 12 – 16 oz of green smoothie.

Other ways to have eggs is poached, hard boiled, scrambled or fried in butter. Eating eggs with hot sauce gives you some variety. Putting eggs on avocado in a bed of lettuce with a sugar free salsa on top is very tasty.

A second breakfast option:  Chia/flax/hemp pudding. Add Two tbsp of each, in any combination that you have on hand. Grind Flax seeds right when you use them. The others don’t need grinding. I usually eat 4 – 6 tbsp when I make this recipe. Add any spice such as cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, apple pie spice or chai spice. Add one – two packs of Whole Earth sweetener (only do this pudding on occasion when trying to lose weight as you don’t want sweet taste in your mouth very often). Mix dry ingredients to help spices mix in more easily. Then add 1/8 tsp vanilla (a slurp), 3/4 – 1c unsweetened coconut, almond or hemp milk to desired thickness. It takes 15 minutes or more to thicken. Put in fridge to thicken while doing morning chores or shower. Then eat and enjoy. You can drink your green smoothie with this breakfast as well.

Lunch can be any protein like a quick pork chop with a salad and homemade olive oil dressing, steamed asparagus, and some yellow squash with onions and lots of butter on both vegetables. Trying to get different colors of vegetables with each meal is a way to increase your vitamin intake and get variety. You can add a few nuts to your salad or eat a few at the end of the meal.

Dinner will be another protein such as ribs, baked chicken with the skin or a crock pot roast with two or three vegetables on the side. You can have broccoli, cauliflower mash potatoes, and another salad or slaw made with olive oil and vinegar instead of mayonnaise. You can make your own mayonnaise for the slaw or make ranch dressing. If you want to add deviled eggs to the meal that will be a nice topper.

Make sure you feel very satisfied after your meals but not over full. If you do this you will not need to eat another meal too soon or have to snack. Making sure you have enough fat in the meal helps ensure that you are satisfied. It is good to get hungry before the next meal though, as you are trying to lose weight. Try to wait to eat until you feel that hunger. Sometimes that is not practical due to time constraints and when meal time comes.

If you need a break from this strict dietary regimen you can add a little dairy back in, a cup of coffee some days and/or berries only, no other fruit. You can eat a potato or beans and root vegetables for a couple of weeks and then go back to the strict week 6 (spring) regimen to keep losing more weight. You do not want to go back to the way you were eating before you start this plan! You want to always keep processed foods out of your diet!!

The seasons listed below are really not our true seasons each year but are metaphors for seasons of eating. They do slightly represent real seasons though, as fruit is most available at the end of the summer and early fall. Greens and some vegetables are most available in the spring and definitely in the summer. Winter was a very low season for any food at all, especially in cold climates in our distant past. It was a forced time of fasting for people as they likely struggled to find enough food if there was none preserved.

You may swing into spring as often as you feel is necessary to keep your weight where you want it. Spring is not the actual spring season but a time to lose weight.

Think of the seasons as winter being the leanest with possible fasting and the least amount of fruits and vegetables. We may find in the future that people were more carnivore in the winter in our past history of mankind.

Spring will be greens and other vegetables with healthy protein as stated above.

Summer will include these healthy foods such as lots of vegetables with fruits of all kinds and some dairy, if you can tolerate dairy.

Fall will be a time to get ready for winter by tanking up and putting on weight to get us ready for the time when food would have been scarce. We know now food is never scarce. But fall was the time when people did prepare for scarcity.

There is a strong psychological component to weight loss.

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