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Why are people gaining weight faster than ever before? According to Alan Christianson, NMD, our bodies are under attack from all directions-an overabundance of processed food, a polluted world, and the pressures of daily life all take their toll. These attacks hit a little known but very important set of glands, the adrenals, particularly hard. One of the many jobs of the adrenals is to maintain a normal cortisol rhythm. When this rhythm is off, we can become overwhelmed more quickly, fatigued, and gain weight. So what can you expect from the Adrenal Reset Diet? � Learn whether your adrenals are Stressed, Wired and Tired, or Crashed, and which adrenal tonics, exercises, and foods are best for you. � Clinically proven shakes, juices, and other delicious recipes to use for your Reset. � New ways to turn off the triggers of weight gain with carbohydrate cycling, circadian repair, and simple breathing exercises. � An easy seven-day ARD eating plan to move your adrenals from Surviving to Thriving.
- Sales Rank: #1298963 in Books
- Published on: 2015-02-24
- Formats: Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.40" h x .60" w x 5.30" l,
- Running time: 5 Hours
- Binding: MP3 CD
Review
"In The Adrenal Reset Diet, Dr. Alan Christianson provides practical, easy-to-implement strategies to reset your adrenals, lose fat fast, and restore optimal health." ---JJ Virgin, author of The Virgin Diet
About the Author
Alan Christianson, NMD, is a naturopathic medical doctor who specializes in natural endocrinology with a focus on thyroid disorders. He has been named a Top Doctor in Phoenix Magazine. He has been featured numerous times in national media. Alan lives in Scottsdale with his wife and their two children.
An award-winning audio engineer for over forty years, Tom Perkins has expanded his skills to narrating and has more than sixty titles to his credit. He learned by working with the world's best voice talent during his career, and he continues to engineer a variety of projects.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
why are we gaining weight?
One of my favorite possessions is a copy of Time magazine from July 1969. The cover story is about the historic Apollo 11 moon launch. The main picture in the story shows hundreds of people standing in an observation field, looking to the sky as the rocket lifts off. Recently, I looked again at the photo with a vague sense that there was something odd about it. After looking several times, I suddenly realized what it was: everyone in the crowd was unusually thin. The observers were mostly men, and they looked to be mostly in their early 40s.
In the 1960s, the average American male between the ages of 40 and 45 weighed 169 pounds. By the year 2000, that average weight was 196 pounds, nearly 30 pounds heavier.1 A similar crowd today would look quite different yet again.
a global obesity crisis—the stats
By 2010, rates of obesity had increased yet more; over 69 percent of American adults had become overweight or obese. And the same changes had happened worldwide; the number of overweight and obese adults around the world began creeping up in the 1970s, and then it doubled between 1980 and 2008. It is estimated that there are now over 1.4 billion adults in the world who are overweight. For the first time in human history, deaths from obesity-related illnesses have surpassed deaths from all other causes, including malnutrition and infectious disease.
If these deaths were not bad enough, the costs of managing future decades of chronic diseases are projected to cripple the global economy. It is estimated that in the next twenty years, obesity-related diseases will cost the global economy in excess of $30 trillion. To put this into perspective, the 9/11 attacks on the United States, combined with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are estimated to have cost roughly $5 trillion.2
There is no doubt that people are gaining weight faster than ever before, but why is this happening? Cutting-edge medical research has some good answers, but unfortunately most of the public and the majority of policymakers base their beliefs about obesity on theories we now know are not true. The popular view blames obesity on too many calories, too little willpower, and bad genes. It’s not that simple.
the calorie theory: no longer in
Let’s start with the calorie model for weight gain. It certainly is appealing in its simplicity: people gain weight because they eat more calories than they burn. Although the calorie model does reflect what happens to healthy people in controlled settings, it does not explain what happens when bodies are stressed and move into survival mode. During most of our past, stress came from immediate danger, such as predators trying to eat us or us having too little of our own food. Our genes adapted to stress by causing us to store food as fat rather than to burn it as fuel.
Even if it were true that heavier people just ate more than others do, this does not explain why, in the last few decades, people are suddenly seeming to eat more than ever. At best, the calorie model describes the situation; it does not explain the root cause. It’s just like saying “People in the Third World earn less” describes the situation, but does not explain world poverty.
babies do not need willpower
Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology, evaluated thirty-one long-term studies to see how effective calorie-based weight-loss programs were over the long haul. She reported that even for the minority of people who did lose weight, four years later, 83 percent of them were heavier than before they had started the program. In fact, more than half of them gained 11 pounds or more over the weight they had lost.3 If the problem was simply one of discipline, why did those who had enough discipline to lose weight then regain so much weight?
When presented with failures in dieting, many if not most people assume that those who did not succeed simply lacked willpower and did not try hard enough. They have no problem assuming that an adult’s weight is a result of his or her conscious choices, yet few would hold this same idea if it were applied to infants or animals. When a baby cries for a bottle, is she acting out of hunger or because she is being indulgent? How about wild animals—does willpower govern their body weight? Yet the rate of obesity, and morbid obesity, in infants has multiplied several times over the last decade, and it continues to increase rapidly. For the first time ever, 6-month-old babies are becoming morbidly obese. This is happening despite there being no related changes to the types or amounts of food they are given.4
And this widespread obesity issue isn’t affecting just the human population. In 2010, David Allison and colleagues evaluated weight changes spanning the last several decades in 20,000 animals from eight different species, including macaques, chimpanzees, vervets, marmosets, lab rats and mice, feral rats, and domestic dogs and cats. Some of the animals gaining weight lived in the wild, some were pets, and some were even on carefully measured diets. Shockingly, mid-life obesity had increased in 100 percent of the species studied. One of our closest living relatives saw especially shocking changes. Despite living in zoos and having their diets and activity levels controlled, the weight of male and female chimpanzees had gone up by 33.2 and 37.2 percent per decade, respectively.5 After evidence like this, the claim that obesity is a disease of willpower is completely unsupportable.
genes vs. jeans
Another popular belief about obesity is that it is caused by faulty genes. Many scientists say that the human body has had little major change in 200,000 years. Historically, we’ve seen populations suffer from weight loss due to malnutrition and famine, but global weight gain across many species has never happened before. Even if in the distant past there had been individual cases of weight gain, it was often limited to royalty. So how valid could be this idea about the role of genes in weight gain?
Genes can influence why one person may gain more weight than another, but familial genes alone cannot explain why weight gain has occurred all around the globe and to so many different living things. But epigenetics, a science that shows how our environment and genes interact, may hold some answers. Research in this area suggests that genes themselves may not be the culprits; instead, there may be ways the modern world has been changing our genes that is behind this global problem. What’s most exciting is that there are steps in The Adrenal Reset Diet that can fight these negative modern influences and help you change your genes back.
surprising causes of weight gain
If the global weight explosion is not caused by too many calories, lack of personal responsibility, or bad genes, then what is the cause? To answer that question we need to think about what else has changed during this same time period. Many researchers have wrestled with these questions, and some common answers have emerged. To begin, within the last few decades our world has gotten more toxic, a lot noisier, and much faster paced. Our food has more sugar, less fiber, and many more chemicals. We spend less time in sunlight and we sleep less. We take more medications, feel less certain of our financial futures, and have fewer friends.
Although experts debate which of these culprits is the most important, they strongly agree that global weight gain is brought about by some combination of these changes. Because any one of these causes has such strong evidence linking it to obesity, researchers have become individually fixated on one cause or another.
When I dug into this problem, in my work as a doctor, I realized that the answer to the obesity epidemic would have to encompass all of the possible triggers. (To simplify, these triggers can be thought of as processed foods, pollutants, and the pressures of life.) There had to be one thing they all had in common. I also realized that, even though there may not be a single cause, there still could be a single way by which different causes trigger weight gain.
a unifying theory of obesity
What was the single thread running through all these factors? It started to become clear one day when I was studying how obesity is tied to adrenal hormones. It turns out that adrenal hormones control a switch that sends calories to your belly fat or to your muscles. In layperson’s terms, when the switch is set to “fat,” calories go to your fat cells, making them larger. This is not good. When the switch is set to “energy,” calories go to your muscles, where they make energy. This is good. But why would our adrenal glands signal to our bodies to make our bellies fat?
They do it to protect us. When we are in danger, our muscles need to be able to burn large amounts of energy quickly, so we can run away or fight. Our muscles are unable to burn energy when they are storing energy, so your calories are sent away from them. Since these calories have to go somewhere, and since in our past “danger” often meant food shortages, our visceral fat (what we call belly fat, but is actually fat deposition around our organs) takes in these calories and stores them. This is survival mode, and it causes weight gain because our calories are taken from our muscles and placed in our fat cells.
In survival mode, most of us prefer foods that are higher in sugar, salt, and fat. In addition to causing us to gain weight regardless of what we eat, survival mode can cause us to want to eat more and to prefer foods that cause weight gain to happen even faster.
You can imagine that there is a switch in your body like the switch you use to turn on your lights. I think of it as the “fat switch”; and in survival mode, it is turned on. The Adrenal Reset Diet teaches you how to use everyday foods to reset your adrenal glands and turn that fat switch off for good. But to learn how to do this, it is important you have a better understanding of the survival mode.
survival mode is more than “stress”
Though we’ve come to think of stress as something we feel when we’re under emotional pressure—a response to feeling too busy, overwhelmed with duties and the rush of modern life—the earliest definition of the word stress included anything that would trigger survival mode in an animal. This trigger, thus, includes physical and environmental stress, dietary stress, and mental stress. To understand how many different factors can add up and push our bodies to create fat, therefore, it is important to think of stress in this broader way.
All animals can maintain their body weights within a certain range, even when food intake goes up or down. This is regulated primarily by our adrenal glands. In response to stress, the adrenal glands release cortisol into the bloodstream. Whether we are surviving or thriving determines how the cortisol will act in our brain, liver, and belly fat. In survival mode, the cortisol causes us to slow down and store fat. When we are thriving, we eat for hunger and our bodies are able to adjust the metabolism to keep our weight healthy, even with minor amounts of stress. But when we get pushed into survival mode, this all changes and we become more apt to gain weight. Stress does not create weight gain until there is a disruption in this adrenal rhythm.
Why would being in survival mode lead to weight gain? The lesson our genes learned during the last 200,000 years was that bad things do not happen during times of plenty. Stress usually meant danger, famine, or both. Our ancestors who stored fat during times of crisis survived better than those who did not. This means they were able to live and have babies, and share their gene pool with their descendants, us.
When we are under a constant state of adrenal stress, our bodies prepare for famine by burning fewer calories and storing fat around our organs—that visceral fat that was mention a little earlier in this chapter. Think of visceral fat as cash under the mattress. It is the quickest, most accessible fuel resource your body can have for a crisis. The fat on the hips, thighs, and under the skin is subcutaneous fat. It’s more like savings bonds: a safe source of fuel, but we can’t get to it very easily.
When a person is in survival mode, he or she will gain more visceral fat than an unstressed person eating the same number of calories. However, stress does not cause us to store more of the harmless subcutaneous fat below our skin, just the dangerous visceral fat around our organs. This is because our bodies rely on visceral fat as fuel during times of crisis. Not only that, the extra stress hormones prevent the body’s organs from effectively using energy in the muscles or brain, leading to fatigue and depression.6
What about those people who lose their appetite when stressed? It is true that not everyone gains pounds when under major stress, but those who do not gain scale weight still typically experience a loss of muscle mass and an increase in body fat.
If being in survival mode leads to weight gain, what triggers this reaction and what can you do about it? The known triggers come in three main categories: dietary, mental, and physical. Table 1.1 shows the three factors that lead to weight gain.
trigger #1: processed food
Processed foods in the modern diet can increase inflammation and disrupt blood sugar levels. This inflammation causes the body to make more cortisol to reduce that inflammation and control the blood sugar level in the same way as when the body makes more cortisol when it senses fright.
The main culprits of inflammation include fructose and toxic proteins. Fructose is a type of sugar that directly turns our fat switch to storage mode. It does this by activating liver enzymes with exotic names like c-JNK and 11-HSD, which make us store fat. Toxic proteins are proteins in our foods that are hard to break down all the way in normal digestion, and their unbroken parts are then attacked by the body’s immune system. These proteins are found in dairy foods, eggs, and wheat, and they often can trigger inflammation. You know how you feel when you have the flu? That sick feeling is not from the virus but, rather, the inflammation caused by your immune system attacking that virus. That same inflammation is created when your immune system attacks the undigested parts of protein.
fructose
Most helpful customer reviews
569 of 591 people found the following review helpful.
Chemically Induced Menopause and Lost Weight!!!!
By PASSION FOOD
I wanted to write a review for people who are in the same situation as me. I had breast cancer at the age of 45 and did chemo, radiation and currently take tamoxifen. Tamoxifen is an estrogen blocker. As a result of my chemo I went into chemically induced menopause overnight. I am a chef who knows how to make sawdust taste good so I can follow a diet very strictly. I have been gluten free for 5 years. First I tried gluten free vegan. Gluten free vegan was the worst for me. No energy. I lost no weight in 3 months being extremely strict. I then went primal. I even tried Dr. Jack Kruse Leptin reset. I did lose weight but really it is almost impossible to keep up. I just ended up going back to primal. In the morning I ate eggs with greens, coffee with full fat cream, lunch was salmon, chicken or grass fed beef again with low carb vegetables and at night the same sort of combination and sometimes some cheese. Once in a while I would cheat and have a rice cracker or some gluten free bread as a treat. I workout with a trainer and don't overdo it. Not a pound lost. I even counted teaspoons of sugar I ate throughout the day. I can only have 10 and after that my body makes too much insulin and too much insulin is a carcinogen for me. Carbohydrates-Fiber divided by 5= teaspoons of sugar if you want the equation. Nope. No weight loss.
Then a friend told me about the adrenal reset. I thought she was crazy. There was no way I was going to eat beans or "good carbs" and lose weight. In the past the second I ate beans the scale went up up up. I started to listen to Dr. Christianson talk about his book in any interview I could find on the internet. My first thought was I bet the women who did his study were in their 20's but I was wrong! Turns out most of the women in his study had thyroid problems, were diabetic and the average age was 45 so I figured that there were some women in there who were in menopause or perimenopause. I really went out on a limb to try this reset. He was asking me to eat carbs! Beans! I went off the coffee cold turkey. I replaced that with tea and sometimes I have a yerba mate with raw cacao powder and cardamom with coconut milk. You can tell I am a foodie:) I have been on the reset for 3 weeks. The first week was a mess for me. Honestly I could not sleep. I even tried the lights out, no electronics TV before bed. The beans gave me gas as he said it would. But I stuck with it. I ordered his shake and his vitamins so I could do exactly as he would prescribe his patients. By the way, I love his shake! Tastes really yummy and actually keeps me full. I am so glad I have stuck to it. I have lost 5 pounds, and my waist has gone done, just this week I am starting to sleep like a baby. My husband says I am so much better to be around. I am not hungry all the time. (I hate that) I get to eat a more varied diet and I feel so much better. My skin looks good too! No more gas from the beans just this week so it takes time. I actually think I can stick with this eating plan. It is different because it is about the timing of your carbs (good carbs). I am wondering if the beans are starting to change my gut biome? I ordered beans from Rancho Gordo because I was so happy to have them again I wanted the best. I make pintos at night and put in a palm size of shredded white chicken, chopped onion, chopped tomato, cilantro and a drizzle of olive oil. Heaven. In the morning I have a shake or Dr. Christianson's breakfast chili that I make and eat throughout the week like he does. Except I top mine with a handful of baby kale and cilantro to add more dark leafy greens.
The Adrenal Rest book is easy to read. The print is large. I think he did this so those with low energy would not fall asleep reading his book. Very smart. I am a slow reader but I went through his book in 2 days. I think it is important to do as he says. Stick with it. Don't give up. Do the 3 months. That is what I am doing. I hope my review helps.
797 of 835 people found the following review helpful.
Nice Read - But Lacks Substance
By Seeker of Truth
Save $14 and skip this book.
There are alot of words in this book but ultimately nothing of true value that one can apply to seriously address adrenal disfunction issues. I have been battling adrenal fatigue for a number of years, have read several books and can draw from my own experience. I am not a doctor but someone who has an opinion. First, if you suspect adrenal fatigue, go see a professional for a consult and get a cortisol test to see the slop of your daily cortisol levels, this along with your symptoms can validate a claim of adrenal fatigue or not (i.e. if your cortisol levels are low in the AM and high in PM, you most likely have an adrenal issue). If you do have an adrenal fatigue issue, it is important to know what stage you are in as more severe stages of adrenal fatigue require different protocols/and or supplements.
In general here is what I can recommend for mild to moderate adrenal disfunction, which I suspect most people are in when they first realize that something is wrong with them. I implemented the below techniques/knowledge, got better, then after a few years, because of my crazy work schedule + life circumstances, find myself again revisiting this unpleasant situation. I got the book hoping to find some new insights but unfortunately did not.
My suggestions:
Stop all alcohol, sugar, chocolate and caffeine consumption period.
Goes without saying but ditch all processed, junk food - sodas,
chips, cookies etc. The occasional indulgence is fine but this is
a slippery slope - discipline is needed here. It will be painful but your
adrenals get whipped by these substances.
Eat breakfast as soon as you get up, I experimented with intermittent
fasting and this was the straw that broke the camels back - do not do
any type of fasting while you are trying to heal your adrenals!
Diet: Simple - eat the best, most natural, organic food you can
buy. Eat 3 meals a day, balanced small to moderate proportions
(yes takes discipline) and do not snack, except before bedtime.
Exercise, but gently at first, walk, yoga, easy bike ride for 20-30 min
a day, 2-3 times a week. Exercise in the sun, in the late afternoon if
possible, then within the hour have your dinner (with some carbs
as the good dr. suggests). Never exercise in the morning as
your cortisol is already elevated, you shouldn't spike it higher.
Walk barefoot on grass, dirt, connect to the earth - your body will
appreciate plugging into earth's battery.
Go to bed at 10pm every night at the same time, have a light
snack before bed to keep your blood sugar levels up during the
night. Soaked almonds or almond butter works nicely.
Make bone broth soups - feeds the adrenals with needed
nutrients - plenty of recipes online.
Focus on belly breathing or breathing from your
abdomen at night when laying in bed before sleep.
This will help you relax and fall asleep.
Ditch toxic relationships, friendships, negative people,
websites, books etc. These all unnecessarily cumulatively
stress out your adrenals.
Buy and take to heal your adrenals:
Vitamin C
Vitamin B6, Niacin and Pantothenic Acid
Magnesium Glycinate
Ashwagandha, Licorice - can help rebalance your daily cortisol levels
Adrenal Glandulars to help rebuild the adrenals
This can be overcome, it takes discipline and perseverance - but above all
the key is to be conscious of how you live life - to reduce stress and to give
your body a break and a chance to recover, to rebalance. I lost sight of this
and over did "it" - and I'm back having to deal with this issue, again.
Best to you all.
245 of 265 people found the following review helpful.
Mixed results but I'm not giving up yet!
By MCM
I bought this book because I’ve been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue but am not currently under the care of a doctor who is knowledgeable about this condition so I have been trying to educate myself. I also have low thryoid function. I found the concept of carbohydrate-cycling to be quite intriguing and wish the book had a section explaining the biochemistry of it.
According to the book’s quiz I’m in the “crashed” phase of adrenal fatigue although quizzes tend to be one-size-fits-all and I’m not sure how accurate this is. I’m probably between “tire & wired” and “crashed”. I had a severe knee injury 2 years ago followed by surgery 3 months later and I think the physical stress was very challenging. I practise martial arts and do a lot of walking and go to the gym but am still not where I want to be in my knee rehab which is also stressful. The way I feel most days is not so much tired the way you feel when you haven’t slept long enough, but rather, sluggish. Yet I am always on the go. So I was keen to start on this eating plan.
I’ve been following the diet for 3 weeks now. I lost weight right away. I’m 5’6” and was above the weight where I’m comfortable – not really heavy at almost 126 but I had belly fat that I really wanted to get rid of. This has been going on for years, since I had children. I would put on weight and when I reached 126 I would start dieting – primarily by avoiding sugar and snack food. It usually took me 4-6 weeks to drop the weight. After 3 weeks on the adrenal re-set diet I’m down to 118 and could probably lose a few more pounds to get rid of the remaining belly fat. I have not yet achieved the “abundant energy” to which Dr. Christianson refers, but am hopeful that will change.
This is a great way to eat. I really needed help cutting down on sugar consumption. I had sworn off cookies and cake about 4 years ago but there are plenty of other vehicles for sugar including ice cream and candy. So, this diet has been a drastic change in that there is no added sugar in it. I love that I’m finally getting plenty of vegetables.
The one difficulty I’m having is with the morning meal. As others have summarized, the meal plan is “modular”: each meal has a serving of protein (about 25-30 grams, or about the size of the palm of your hand), and a serving of fat, and unlimited amounts of vegetables from a long list of possibilities. Breakfast has ¼ cup of healthy carbohydrates, lunch has ½ cup and dinner has ¾ cup (it is not addressed whether this is the same whether you’re male or female, tall or short, &c). This carbohydrate cycling is designed to match the needs of the body for different amounts of cortisol at different times of day (higher in the morning and lower in the evening). When insufficient carbs are available your body makes more cortisol and stores fuel as visceral fat rather than providing you with energy, so you feel tired. The book suggests that the easiest way to get your protein in the morning is as a “milk” shake, using protein powder made from animal or vegetable sources but not whey or soy. It’s suggested that a non-dairy base be used such as almond milk or flax seed milk. I don’t like protein powder or dairy substitutes like these. My usual breakfast for years has been a smoothie made with plain homemade yogurt, blueberries, frozen mango and bananas, fruit juice, as well as psyllium husk, cinnamon, ginger and a probiotic. I have a hard time swallowing pills so this has been a convenient way for me to take the few supplements that I take. On this diet I have continued my smoothie but have left the banana out because of its high glycemic index, and the mango as well, and the fruit juice, but I still use the yogurt. I add hemp protein powder but if I put the full serving in, it’s rather unpalatable. I also used to have a slice of gluten-free toast with almond butter, and now I leave out the toast and just have the almond butter. It’s filling, just kind of a slog to get through it.
Lunch and dinner are a different story. It’s very easy to eat according to the plan. Although I don’t like cooked kale, it’s great as a salad base if you put it in a food processor (no stems!) and chop it fine. I chop up a bunch of kale this way and put it in the fridge for several days of salads. I also peel and cut up a kabocha squash and chop it fine in the food processor and then stir fry it for about 8 minutes and store that to use for my healthy carb servings along with quinoa or brown rice. A salad of chopped chicken, kale, carrots, chopped cooked beets, nuts, and a bit of quinoa is something I really look forward to. A dinner stir-fry is easy too. Apart from my difficulty with breakfast, the diet isn’t as restrictive as it seems at first. If you’re used to cheesey casseroles it is a big change, but meat and vegetables and starch is a pretty traditional meal. Take a look at Mastering the Art of French Cooking and you’ll find a lot of wonderful recipes that fit the plan just fine. It can take a while to figure out how to make this eating plan work for you, especially if you have children with different eating habits. But planning ahead gets a lot easier as you get more used to what kinds of foods you can cook ahead and combine to make good meals. The first week I was hungry a lot because I was still figuring out what amounts I was supposed to eat and didn’t always get it right.
It’s not an inexpensive way to eat, since you’re supposed to use organic ingredients to reduce your intake of toxins. Major supermarkets tend to have a line of organic foods or natural/no antibiotics/no hormones foods and I’ve gotten a lot of such meat on sale. Also, it is noted in the book that it’s better to eat non-organic healthy types of food than not eat any. If you’re a vegetarian you’re pretty much the poor cousin here because the only suggestions in the recipes are to substitute protein powder, tempeh or beans (which is going to change the carbohydrate ratios so I don’t know what to make of that) for the meat.
A few omissions that are disappointing: dairy and eggs are referred to as “toxic proteins” meaning they are not completely digested. It isn’t clear to me whether these foods are incompletely digested by everyone or just some people. This isn’t well discussed. Also peanuts are not even mentioned in the book and I would like to know why. Perhaps because they are vulnerable to the growth of moulds that produce aflotoxins. Some years ago I was tested for a bunch of food sensitivities. Eggs came up as a mild sensitivity and peanuts as a moderate sensitivity. I’ve never noticed a difficulty with peanuts – I adore peanut butter and have consumed mountains of it over the years (the natural kind, no hydrogenation or sugar). I’ve substituted almond butter of late but can’t see not eating it ever again. I also can’t see never eating chocolate – dark chocolate is supposed to be good for you. Where was I? Oh yeah, toxic proteins. I do not have a dairy sensitivity and although I’ve cut a lot of out I still eat my homemade yogurt. I feel there are a number of babies thrown out with the bathwater in this eating plan.
As I say I have not yet overcome my fatigue (who knows, it could be due to some other health issue). The one thing I have noticed: I have to spend a fair amount of time in an animal care facility as part of my job and my forearms would always break out in a rash. This hasn’t happened since I started this diet. Maybe it’s unrelated, but since the diet is designed to reduce inflammation-inducing foods it shouldn’t be surprising. And if it is related, it’s kind of cool. I also noticed that whereas I slept pretty well before, my sleep has not been so good on this diet. I tried increasing my carbohydrate intake by just a bit in the evening and then slept a lot better. So perhaps you should be open to tweaking things here and there to find what works best for you. But the best part so far is the weight loss and the knowledge that the changes I’ve made in the way I eat are very good ones. I would like to continue to eat this way and after a few months hope to see more positive changes. And at that point I fully intend to eat some of the things I like that are not part of the diet, but just occasionally.
Finally I should mention that I have yet to set my mind seriously to the other important part of the adrenal reset, namely to shift my sleeping habits so that I’m going to bed earlier and getting sufficient rest. The book has a lot of good suggestions about meditation and mindfulness, and about one’s attitude about the stressors in one’s life (I would recommend another book related to this subject: Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman). This is a hugely important component of Christianson’s book, which I’ve given short shrift since I haven’t really approached it yet.
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