In previous chapters we established that your acne and health are closely related to what and how you eat. By now you should an idea of the not-so-healthy food items that have contributed to your acne.
Each of us has somewhat different requirements when it comes to diet and food. Matters, such as, climate, level of physical activity, personal preferences and tastes and your health goals all have an impact on your dietary requirements.
This is not meant to be a complete day-to-day eating plan. Instead I'll give you some basic guidelines on how to make healthy adjustments to your diet.
First and perhaps the most important thing is to combine your food properly. It doesn't matter how healthy your diet is if that food merely putrefies inside you. I really suggest making some research on the subject and see what works for you.
At least avoid the biggest sinner: proteins and carbohydrates at the same meal. Not only your food digests better, but you also eat fewer calories. Cutting either protein or carbohydrates out and replacing it with a bowl of salad makes it so much easier to start eating more fresh vegetables.
It's really a double-whammy benefit, and not so difficult to do as you might think. For the first week or so you might feel like there's something missing from your meal, but after that you'll get used to it. After awhile you wouldn't go back because you feel so much better and actually feel more energised after a meal instead of tired and sleepy.
While you are having your salad why not make sure that you use only fresh and organic vegetables. Chemically grown vegetables are usually full of pesticides and other nasty poisons that'll just build up inside you. Another thing is that organic vegetables are nutritiously far superior to chemically grown.
As far as possible, use fresh fruits and vegetables. Frozen or canned vegetables have lost most of their micro-nutrients (enzymes, vitamins, etc) that are essential to digestion. Food that's alkalising when it's fresh can turn acidifying after too much processing and preserving. You never really know how much preservatives they have added to the canned stuff. Not to mention that fresh vegetables always taste much better than frozen or canned veggies.
All the processing that is done to your food generally makes it harder to digest and more acidifying (with few exceptions - of course). Water and heat destroy most of the digestive enzymes and vitamins fruits and vegetables have. Without digestive enzymes vegetables can do more harm than good to your body.
Try to eat at least 50% of your food raw. This is where the bowl of salad instead of carbohydrates or protein comes handy. The digestive enzymes that raw vegetables contain help your body to digest the other food components you eat at the same meal. Raw vegetables are also highly alkalising so they balance any acidic foods you eat. This places far less stress on your body to leach minerals from your bones to neutralise the acids.
If you don't want to go eat your vegetables 100%, raw you can slightly stir-fry or steam them. I'm a huge fan of stir-frying. Stirfrying plenty of vegetables with noodles or some chicken, fish or nuts makes it so easy to replace either carbohydrates or protein with almost raw vegetables.
Another excellent way to have your greens is to make a 'green shake'. My favourite one is mix of spinach, cucumber, apples and raw mangoes - it tastes very yummy. You can try with other combinations also. The basic idea is to use plenty of green vegetables and then some other ingredients to improve the taste.
Green shake makes for an excellent breakfast also. When you have it on an empty stomach you can really feel the energy surging through your body. It’s an excellent way to start your day on a positive and energetic way. Here's what happened to me one day when I did it http://www.natural-acne
solution.com/blog/2006/04/03/how-to-fight-acne-and-have-moreenergy-than-the-energizer-bunny-in-less-than-10-minutes.html
It takes a little time for the sense of hunger to seize after you have eaten enough. So one good 'rule' to have is to stop eating when you feel 70% full.
You'll quickly notice that by eating a little less you actually feel better and more energised. Eating too much food puts unnecessary stress on your digestive system. Larger quantities of food take longer to digest - giving more time for bacteria to putrefy it. Digestion is also a huge energy hog in your body. By eating a little less you don't have to spend so much energy digesting that food, and you can avoid feeling tired after a meal.
While you are sleeping your body is busy cleaning up the day's mess. Every night your body does regular repair and maintenance (including detoxification) work for vital organs. However you have to give your body a change to do this.
Eating heavy dinner late in the evening ensures that your body is busy digesting the food instead of resting and detoxifying your vital organs. You'll often notice this by waking up tired even though you may have slept adequately.
It's best to avoid eating heavy food after 7 pm. If you feel hungry later in the evening opt for fresh fruits or vegetables that are easy to digest and give your body essential nutrient to help detoxification. Same goes in the morning also. Try to delay breakfast as much as possible to give your body more time to detoxify.
This advice might fly on the face of what you have been told previously. In Western cultures fats are treated like gremlins. You shouldn't go overboard with this one, but initially (when you are working to replace harmful bacteria with beneficial ones) try to lean towards healthy fast for energy instead of carbohydrates.
There are two reasons for this. First healthy fats are a much cleaner source of energy than carbohydrates are. The process of burning carbohydrates for energy in your cells produces acidic waste. Burning fats doesn't do this. Another reason is that all
carbohydrates you eat are converted into sugars that the harmful bacteria will feast on. Fats are much more difficult for the harmful bacteria to use.
Now you shouldn't just go and eat any fats. I'm talking about the healthy kind of fats here. Go for unsaturated fats from vegetable sources. Good sources include coconut, avocado, unrefined nuts, olive oil, flaxseed oil and most seed oils. Avoid saturated fats and hydrogenated (or trans) fats.
I really don't know how big an influence this thing has, but if you are thinking whether to put coconut or pasta into your salad - go for the coconut.
Excessive protein . Proteins are not only highly acidifying but they also take a long time to digest (esp. animal protein), thus giving bacteria plenty of time to putrefy them. Eat organic meat if you want to eat meat. That way you can at least avoid the hormones and antibiotics that come loaded with 'normal' meat.
Sugars and sweeteners . The harmful bacteria in your stomach strive on sugar, which they convert into toxic waste. It's not only the refined sugar that's bad for you - it's practically all sweeteners (including naturals like honey). Fruit juices are full of easily accessible sugar. I would even go so far as to advice you to avoid fruits while you are fighting acne. After you have balanced the intestinal flora in your gut you can include fruits into your diet.
Replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners is even worse than sugar itself. Artificial sweeteners contain many chemicals that are toxic and convert to even more toxic chemicals (e.g. formaldehyde) in your gut. Click here for more info on aspartame and artificial sweeteners (http://curezone.com/foods/aspartame.asp )
The only healthy sweetener I know is the herb called stevia. It's much sweeter than sugar and doesn't degrade your health like all the other sweeteners do. It's so sweet that you only have to use few drops of it - so it works out to be dirt cheap also.
Dairy products . Cow's (or any other animal's) milk is not mean for humans. Dairy products slow down digestion of other food and give bacteria more time to putrefy them. Milk is also highly mucous forming and coats your small intestine linings. This mucous inhibits absorption of nutrients through the walls of small intestine.
Dairy cows are also constantly fed with hormones and antibiotics to maximise their milk production. Those hormones and antibiotics enter your body along with the milk you drink.
Commercial yoghurts tend to contain only small amounts of probiotic bacteria and are thus not a good source. It works out much cheaper and effective to take a good probiotic supplement.
Now you should have a general idea what a healthy diet for acnefree skin looks like. Now you just have to change your diet - easy… eh, not quite. To smooth things out for you, here are two tips that have helped me a lot.
Go easy . You are much more likely to succeed if you make gradual changes. I don't think I have ever succeeded in making a radical change. Because you will encounter difficulties (like cravings) during this change, and it's far easier to fight one or two cravings than a dozen at the same time. My principle is to drop one bad habit after every detox. It takes a little bit more time, but it's much easier to go through and results are almost miraculous.
Regular mini-fasts . Similarly as you do regular maintenance for your car you should do for your body also. It's a good idea to regularly give your body some 'time off'. You can do this by doing one 3-day mini detox each month or detox one day each week. For example, you can choose to do 3 day apple-fast for monthly maintenance. If you choose go with weekly maintenance you could eat nothing but fresh fruits and vegetables for one day per week.
These regular maintenance-detoxes will make lifestyle changes much easier. You'll notice that cravings fade away faster, and you gain confidence from positive experiences.
Super greens . I have noticed that taking Super green, spirulina or other ‘dense’ green food reduces food cravings significantly. Many of the food cravings are actually a result of nutritional deficiencies. A good quality super green supplement gives your body practically all the nutrients it requires.
DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT?Don’t know how to detox? Want more information on diet and food? Have questions about fasting? How to make sure your detox suits your lifestyle – not the other way around. Register to my FREE support program to get answers, tips and hints. In fact I’m sending some of my best material exclusively to my support program participants. To make sure you don’t miss it, register at http://www.natural-acne-solution.com/support/sign.htm
Also make sure you have the latest version of this book as I’m constantly updating it. You can download the latest version at: http://www.natural-acne-solution.com/book.htm
http://www.whfoods.com/index.html The Worlds Healthiest Foods. An excellent, free web site full of resources helping you to eat healthier (includes tons of awesome recipes).
http://www.honestfoodguide.org/ Free downloadable food pyramid that actually benefits you – not the big business. Must have in your kitchen!