This is the best no-nonsense advice about eating and using the 2 aisle grocery shopping approach. Our family switched to the 2 aisle approach slowly over the last couple of years and it has had a profound impact on us. This is so simple and just feels so right when you finally wake up and get the message. It is not rocket science.
Forget “Diets” by Michael Manville author of Fitter and Richer
It simply amazes me how much money is spent on diet pills, diet books, diet Coke, low fat, reduced fat, low calorie, sugar-free, and “light”. Yet more than a third of Americans are obese and more than 70% of Americans are obese or overweight! Obviously something isn’t working.
Quality vs. Quantity
The first thing I would like to explain is that being healthy and slim has nothing to do with how much you eat, it has everything to do with what type of food you eat.
Here is the “secret” to losing weight and staying healthy without going on a diet. By now it really shouldn’t be a secret anymore, but time and again I meet people who just don’t get it.
Grocery Shopping For Dummies
Here is my “secret” strategy that anyone can use to lose weight, feel healthier and save money! If you take anything away from this chapter, take these instructions to the grocery store instead of a grocery list!
- Get Shopping Cart/Basket
- Enter The Grocery Store or (preferably) The Farmer’s Market
- Go To The Produce Section
- Select Anything You Want From The Produce Section
- Skip All Other Aisles And Go Straight To The Meat Section
- Buy Anything You Want From The Meat Section*
- Ensure That Your Total Grocery Basket Is At Least 80% Produce And No More Than 20% Meat
- Pay For Groceries
- Leave The Store
* Avoid any meat that comes with a list of ingredients attached to it
The Two Aisle Shopper
If you only shop at those two aisles: Produce and Meat, you will stay lean forever, have more energy, and save money in the process. Eat as much as you want, you will not gain weight if you follow these instructions.
Of course there are a few exceptions… things you might really need from the other aisles like salt and pepper, dish soap, paper towels, etc. However, what I recommend is that if there are additional things you must have, make a separate trip for those, maybe once every few months. Try to keep your regular food shopping down to meat and produce only.
What About Vegetarian/Vegan Diets?
If you are already vegetarian I congratulate you, but for the majority of the population I think cutting out the bread and pasta is even more important than eliminating the meat.
Once you have weaned yourself off of all the harmful sugar and flour based processed food, you can start to reduce your meat intake even further, while adding in some whole grains.
How To Lose 10 Pounds Or More In 30 Days Or Less
If your goal is to lose 10 pounds or more during this 30 day course, you only need to avoid eating two main things:
1. Do not eat flour, or anything made with flour (that means no bread, no pasta, no pizza, no corn chips, etc.)
2. Do not eat sugar, or sugar derivatives like high fructose corn syrup. Do not eat sugar substitutes like aspartame or Splenda or any artificial sweeteners. Sugar substitutes are actually much worse for your health than real sugar, but if you want to lose weight, avoid both. I would rather eat pure sugar than Aspartame, or NutraSweet or whatever they are calling artificial cancer causing sweeteners these days.
That’s it. Weight loss is really and truly that simple. If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to try it for 30 days. If you are overweight and you have 10 pounds or more to lose, you will almost certainly lose those 10 pounds in 30 days following this strategy.
Much Better Than Weight Loss
When you eat the way that I suggest in this chapter, there is no doubt in my mind that you will lose weight. However, the biggest reason you should try this way of eating is to improve your overall health and longevity.
This type of diet is not about weight loss, it is about eating what is healthy for you. It just so happens, that weight loss typically follows from a low carb diet, because your body can finally digest the food you are feeding it. I am not suggesting that you try this for 30 days and then go back to your old way of eating. I firmly believe that everyone should eat this way all the time.
While small amounts of flour (bread, pasta, etc.) or sugar can be tolerated by the body, those amounts should be eliminated completely for at least 30 days (90 days is better) and then, if you wish, you can bring small amounts of those other foods back into your diet.
Keep It Simple
Many “experts” out there will present all kinds of variations on this diet. I’ve heard of the Atkins Diet, The Cave Man Diet, Gluten Free and Paleo to name a few. Experts might point out all of the minute differences between all of them and insist that THEIR way is the RIGHT way. Well, here is the SIMPLE way: No flour, no sugar. Eat veggies, meat, fruit, nuts, seeds.
I know this sounds hard, but you can eat really well without flour and sugar and the weight loss results will be immediate. If you are overweight and you follow this diet for one week and you do not lose weight, contact me and I will buy you a large pizza for free!!
There, that’s it. There is no more to this secret. It really is that simple. I’ll repeat it again: No bread (including wheat and/or corn flour products), no pasta, and no sugar.
Sugar and Grain Substitutes
If you must have sweetener, use a natural sweetener like honey or maple syrup. If you must have grains, eat Quinoa, which is a seed and is naturally gluten free. If you must have pasta (although I don’t really recommend buying “gluten free” products, I prefer just buying food that is naturally gluten free) then buy gluten free pasta.
What Can You Eat?
You might be asking, so what can I eat?? You can eat all kinds of meat and fish, all kinds of fruit and veggies, and all kinds of nuts and seeds. I eat a ton of veggies and I eat only a minimal amount of meat with a preference toward lightly cooked fish.
Good Grains And Bad Grains
Our grandparents were raised eating homemade bread, which was made with real, naturally grown grains, and eaten fresh without preservatives. Today bread is made with genetically modified grains, then stripped of its fiber and “enriched”, so that it can sit on a shelf for years without going bad. This might be a great invention for bread companies, but not great for your digestive tract.
Today’s bread is not the bread our grandparents ate; this stuff is bad for you folks. I don’t need to write a book on why gluten is bad for you because many people already have. I won’t bother presenting all of the scientific reasons why you should avoid flour and sugar, just try it and you’ll see!
I think the problem is that there is so much info out there people don’t know what to trust. So, trust me on this one: if you want to lose weight and feel healthier, stop eating bread, pasta, and sugar (no unnatural sugar substitutes either). If you stick to this strategy, you will lose weight faster than you ever dreamed. If you eat rice, I’d suggest eliminating it for 30 days and then bringing it back in smaller portions and make sure it is whole grain rice. The best substitute for any sort of grain is Quinoa which is not a grain but a seed and is gluten free by nature.
When I talk about eliminating bread from their diet, a lot of people dismiss my suggestion because they believe they eat “healthy types of bread”, like 9-grain, or “whole grain” or whatever. I am sorry to say that if it contains enriched wheat flour, which you will find as the number one ingredient on the label, I don’t care what type of bread it is, it is bad for you and you shouldn’t eat it. There may be forms of bread out there that do not contain enriched wheat flour and those might be OK.
How Strict Is Strict?
I am not ultra-strict with my diet, for example, I might have a sandwich or a pizza once in a while. I pay for it with indigestion and it sets my digestive patterns into a tailspin, but normally my body can recover after a day or two if I return back to a flour-free, sugar-free diet.
For best results I would recommend remaining VERY STRICT with yourself – no sugar, no flour – for at least the first 30 days so you can see the obvious results. Then, if you wish, you can start bringing back small amounts of bread, pasta and sugar into your diet on an occasional basis.
Good Meat And Bad Meat
I would caution you against eating any kind of “processed meat”. You can tell meat is processed if it comes in a plastic package with a list of ingredients on it (e.g. “sandwich meat”, “lunch meat”, many types of sausages, pre-made hamburger patties, etc. are all processed meat and should be avoided).
Almost all processed meat, if you read the ingredients, will contain some form of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or worse, stuff you can’t pronounce (fillers, preservatives, etc.). Avoid all processed meat. Just buy “real meat” – the kind that is labeled as a particular type of cut, rather than sold in a plastic package. If you can afford it, buy organic meat, free range meat, grass fed meat and/or meat that is free from antibiotics.
How To Cure Disease The Natural Way
If your goal is to heal a serious health condition, or reverse a disease, it may be advisable to go completely off meat and focus on a raw food diet. The type of diet you should follow for success of this nature is clearly outlined in
Conscious Health – The Complete Owner’s Natural Health and Healing Manual.
Salt
Salt has minerals in it that everybody needs to remain healthy. Salt is not bad for you if eaten in moderate quantities.
Dairy
I have a mixed perspective on dairy but mostly I avoid it. Most milk these days is extracted from cows that are on heavy antibiotics and other medications. These drugs end up in the milk and in other products made from milk like cheese, butter, yogurt, etc.
I think organic plain yogurt is probably good for you. It has a lot of friendly bacteria in it and you can flavor it with natural fruit juices (yes, you are better off pouring natural juice into your yogurt than buying “cherry flavored” or whatever “flavored” yogurt that most certainly has added sugar, among other bad-for-you ingredients).
No other mammal on Earth drinks any form of milk beyond early infancy, why should we? Should babies drink their own mother’s milk? Absolutely, because it seems about as natural as anything could possibly be. Should adult humans drink milk from another species? I don’t know, but this just doesn’t seem as natural to me.
Alcohol
This is a tricky one. I like my wine. I like my Scotch. And, I even like my beer. OK, I know it is bad, but the key to everything is moderation.
The thing is, while your body is not designed to digest gluten (which comes from grains), our bodies are designed to receive and process alcohol. Cave men and women would forage for berries and fruit and find it at various stages of fermentation. Since they didn’t die from it, and in fact felt somewhat of a pleasant buzz, they learned to consume it. Wine was revered in the Bible and is involved in traditions all over the world. The point here is that fermentation is a natural process, not an unnatural process like so many of the things we call food these days.
If you can eliminate alcohol from your life and find other, healthier means to releasing stress like meditation and exercise, by all means eliminate alcohol.
Exercise
Of course, exercise is highly beneficial, and it is a critical component to maintaining overall health. Certainly, if you are highly active, you may need to adjust your diet accordingly, which can include adding more complex carbohydrates.
How To Follow This Health Program Successfully
The easiest way to execute this type of health program is to prepare your own food. As mentioned above, the key to making this super easy to follow is to limit your grocery shopping to two aisles, the fresh produce aisle and the fresh meat aisle. Buy as much as you want from those aisles but don’t buy any processed meat.
The most important factor to consider if you want maximum results is to limit how much you cook your food, and to eat it in its raw form whenever possible. Lightly steaming or frying veggies is OK but they should still be crispy when you eat them, not soggy. Even meat should be lightly cooked and not over cooked. Cooked food effectively kills the enzymes your body needs to extract all of the nutrients from your food. Oh, and avoid microwaves at all costs!
While you can eat out at restaurants and still follow my suggested health program, you have to be choosy about what you order. Very few modern restaurants or convenient frozen dinners comply with my diet recommendations. For example, McD, Burger King and even supposedly “healthy” options like Subway do not offer very many “carb free” or “bread free” meals. The main reason bread has become such a staple in our diet is because it is cheap and filling. Bread is cheap because our government heavily subsidizes grain producers, and it is filling because your body has difficulty digesting it.
Again, to really follow this diet and lose weight like you know you should, your best bet is to prepare your own food. I am sure that a lot of you do not have time to prepare three meals per day, because you are out at work and you don’t have time, however, you can make a good raw meal with a juicer in less than 10 minutes. There are all kinds of books out there that explain how to approach a raw diet. The version I explain in this chapter is not very extreme, so it really depends on what you think is best for your body.
What If You Are Still Hungry After Eating A Flour-Free, Sugar-Free Meal?
Keep eating. The great thing about this diet is that I don’t restrict portion size. Eat as much fruit and veggies as you want. Ideally your plate contains closer to 75% veggies and 25% meat, and maybe a bit of quinoa or whole grain rice. A few of you might go overboard by eating too much, but most people will feel full enough to continue about their day before feeling hungry by next meal time. And if you want to snack, snack! Just make sure it is the right kind of snack. Granola bars and a lot of so-called healthy snacks contain both flour and sugar, so try to make your snacks real food, you know, the kind of food with no ingredients.
How To Apply This Chapter To Your Life
If you truly want to feel Fitter and Richer in 30 Days, try eliminating flour and sugar from your diet by limiting your grocery shopping to the produce and meat aisles. Try increasing your quantity of fresh vegetables and limiting your meat intake to only fresh, non-processed meat products. Weigh yourself at the beginning of the month and again at the end of the month. Consider how your energy levels have changed.
Healthy Blessings,
Sandy Scherschligt
http://www.empowernetwork.com/time4life
