Cristian is a physiotherapist, osteopath and Pilates instructor at Fisico, the gym where I have been going since I moved to Spain in October 2006. We don’t spend much time together, but have a good connection. I attended his Monday lunchtime classes and did one-on-one sessions with him in the Pilates studio every second Wednesday for several years. I don’t attend either one anymore because I began giving lunchtime Pilates and body mindfulness classes myself to a small group of interested people at work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since I need the midday break on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to do my personal high-intensity, super-slow resistance training, this leaves no other gaps in the otherwise full weekly schedule. Nonetheless, we see each other and chat regularly.

Cristian reads my posts, tells me he finds them interesting and trusts that I know what I’m talking about, but often finds the stuff too technical or complicated. So, he asked me to just give him a simple eating plan to help him change his eating habits into healthier ones in exchange for a body therapy session. I readily accepted and here it is. (This is closely modelled on how I have been eating for the last several months, just that I have gradually shifted everything to later and later in the day, and you’ll understand why in a second).

The first thing is to stop thinking in terms breakfast, lunch and dinner, and instead start thinking in terms of hydrating and cleansing, and nourishing and rebuilding. This is a very important shift in focus and perspective that, in fact, leads to a rupture with the traditional understanding about food and eating cycles as they have been handed down and taught to us ever since we came into this world. (Fortunately, I know that Cristian appreciates the non-conventional and thus the non-traditional.)

Thinking in terms of these two cycles of cleansing and hydrating, followed by nourishing and rebuilding, is simply a reflection of the body’s own natural daily cycles. The cleansing starts sometime before we wake up in the morning, and can be extended well into the afternoon. Cleansing of accumulated acid in the blood and throughout the body from the food and activities of previous day that is excreted mostly through our urine. And cleansing of the toxins and more or less well digested remains of the food we ate in the previous 24 hours that we eliminate through the intestines. Since this is what the body must do to keep itself functional and healthy, it is most appropriate to help in this regard instead of making it harder.

This is therefore what we want to do: cleanse by supplying liberal amounts of water and drinks (green juice) that help the body both dilute stored acid and eliminate it from the blood (uric acid) and tissues (urate). And cleanse the colon by taking psyllium husks and or chia seeds sometime in the morning with our water and green drink. Eating cuts this cleansing cycle short and thus its benefits. Extending our overnight fast into the cleansing cycle even to 10 or 11 is a good start. And then eating less during the day while we are busy and active, just to keep us from feeling very hungry, is perfect. The longer we cleanse and wait before eating, the more effectively our body will excrete stored acid and clean and repair itself over time. The less we eat during the day, the more cleansing will continue throughout. The nourishing and rebuilding cycle starts in the late afternoon and extends throughout the night.

So, start by extending your overnight fast until 10:30, and throughout the morning drink plenty of pure water and dehydrated green juice powder diluted into it. You should drink a total of about 2 litres by 10:30. Keep a little container of unrefined sea salt with you and take a pinch every so often. This will help maintain sodium and chloride concentrations in the blood and also help in eliminate uric acid.

You will probably be hungry by 11h and so you can make yourself what I consider to be maybe the to best breakfast: a coconut milk smoothie. With one can of coconut milk (400 ml), a small handful of frozen berries or a heaping teaspoon of powdered ginger or cinnamon or powdered aniseed or pure cocoa powder (less often than the rest), and a tiny pinch of stevia with an added 100 ml of water, you will blend a delicious smoothie whose calories come almost entirely from the coconut oil in the milk whose health-promoting qualities are almost beyond belief (more on that on another occasion), and whose flavour will be a great, slightly sweet, with the rich and creamy texture but mild flavoured coconut milk.

Since one can of coconut milk contains typically about 65 g of fat (Dr Georg is the brand I like the best and recommend), this gives a total of about 600 Calories, (which is a lot!), almost from fat alone—and this is the key, because fat does not stimulate insulin secretion, it gives us plenty of readily useable energy to fuel all cellular activity—this is especially true for medium chained fatty acids like those found in coconut oil, and it makes us feel full and satisfied. Therefore, you should pour half of it in a glass, sipping it slowly over about 15 minutes or more to allow the stomach to send satiety hormones to the brain. Keep the other half in the fridge for later. You can have this single glass containing about 300 Calories with a handful of walnuts or almonds, (if you soak them in water overnight, it is much better), to give you something to chew and give you the sense that you are eating something solid. This will without a doubt keep you feeling full and not hungry easily until about 14h or 15h, at which time you can have the second glass with another handful of walnuts or almonds. And this will keep you satisfied into the late afternoon/early evening.

If at any other time you feel somewhat hungry and want to snack on something, then buy yourself a bunch of small crunchy cucumbers, some delicious red peppers and excellent avocados, and snack on those, with unrefined sea salt.

Now, that you have finished your daily activities, running around here and there, going up and down the stairs of the gym, talking to this person and then that, and that you are finally at home or at a friend’s house, you are ready to relax for the evening and start to prepare yourself a plentiful and nourishing dinner. Before you start though, drink another full litre of plain water, and allow at least 45 minutes before eating anything.

Your evening meal should always typically include a very large green salad made of fresh dark greens, with plenty of dressing made from olive oil and lemon juice from a freshly pressed lemon, and plenty of unrefined sea salt to taste. The salad can also have red peppers, cucumbers and an avocado cut in pieces on top, for example. You can also make gazpacho without bread and without vinegar: 3 tomatoes, 2 small red pepper, 1 cucumber, 2 cloves of garlic, plenty (1/2 cup) of olive oil, juice of 1 lemon and a teaspoon of salt. Put everything in food processor and that’s it. You can add water to make it more liquid.

If you want to make the salad your meal, then you need to add some protein for the tissue repair and rebuild that takes place during the night. This can be a couple of boiled eggs (“hard” boiled, but as soft as you can make them and still peel them without difficulty), walnuts, fresh goat’s cheese, or some meat. Otherwise, you can make yourself another protein/fat dish to go with your big salad. With that you should feel completely satisfied, and make sure that’s the case, but that’s it: no bread, no potatoes, no pasta, no rice, no sweet fruits and no desserts, at any time.

Summary

1. Wake up and drink 1 litre of water over the course of 30 or 45 minutes (optional: add 20 drops of concentrace, 15 ml of silicic acid and 15 ml of pure aloe vera juice). Take one dose of a methyl-cobalamin B12 supplement.
2. By 10:30  Finish drinking 1 litre of “green” water (water with 1 tsp of powdered green vegetable juice). If you can make yourself fresh green vegetable juice, this is amazingly better; always dilute the juice with as much water.
3. 11 – 11:30  Take 1 glass (1/2 can) of coconut milk smoothie with handful of (soaked) walnuts and/or almonds or an avocado with salt.
4. 13:30  Start drinking 1 litre of green water and finish in about one hour. Take another dose of a methyl-cobalamin B12 supplement.
5. 15 – 15:30  Take the other half of the coconut milk smoothie with handful of (soaked nuts) or an avocado with salt.
6. 18:30  Start drinking 1 litre of plain water with concentrace drops, finish by 19:30 or sooner.
7. 20:00  Have your dinner

Shopping list

There are a few uncommon things you need to get:

1. Plenty of fresh veggies for juicing or Dr Young’s Doc Broc’s Power Plants and purify drops (online here).
2. Coconut milk and oil for cooking (Dr. Georg brand)
3. Stevia extract powder (at Ecocentro)
4. Essential oil of orange to flavour the powdered greens.
5. Silicic Acid is optional but very good (3 months on, 3 months off)
6. Aloe Vera juice (pure) is optional but very good (no time limits of constraints).
7. B12 supplement (I recommend Mercola’s cherry spray).

Everything else is food.

Final words

The first few days might be a little difficult as your body starts to adjust to all these changes, and especially the fundamental metabolic shift from using glucose as the primary  cellular fuel to using fats instead. It is always important to drink lots and take salt, but particularly so in the first few days. It is also very important to sleep long and restful nights, which is also always the case, but particularly at the start when the metabolic shift and the most extreme detoxification is taking place.

In a matter of less than a week, however, you will feel like a million bucks: you will feel great! Not really hungry, never bloated, and light and energetic. The body will start excreting all the accumulated acid from your tissues, and in so doing find aches, pains, stiffness, discomfort and inflammation gradually fading. The body will start burning off excess fat reserves that have been accumulating throughout the body over the years, and in so doing start to heal the digestive system and detoxify the entire organism. You will find yourself feeling lighter, more prone to exercising and moving, and with higher energy levels. And you will start to feel stronger and younger as your body starts to produce more growth hormone, gradually a little more every day. And the longer you do that, the better you will feel, especially if you make it your default lifestyle.

It would also be cool if you got the few blood tests I recommend here at the start and then at semi-regular intervals in the months that follow.