Protective Diet

With all the success I have experienced over the course of 3 years since viewing the documentary, Forks Over Knives, learning about Dr. John McDougall and adopting a plant based lifestyle I have yet to follow Julie Marie’s 30 Day Detox and Taste Bud Reprogramming. This is an integral part of her Protective Diet (PD) program that allows individuals to get on “your path to optimal health.”

By the time I learned about Julie and everything her program had to offer I was already on my way to optimal health, so I thought. It wasn’t until I enrolled in her PD-ed and took advantage of her online program and support that I achieved a higher knowledge and better understanding about food.

First and most importantly PD isn’t a diet, although changing what and how you eat will usually result in weight loss. Following a plant based diet is a lifestyle! Second her program isn’t special, nor should I consider myself better than someone else who follows a traditional whole foods, plant based diet (WFPB), but it does differ in a few areas.

As stated under Why This Works on the Protective Diet website:

The differences between The Protective Diet and other low-fat plant based diet plans are:

• Physical cravings are eliminated by removing all forms of sugar (including dried fruit), food additives, coffee, juice, and all animal products.
• We reprogram our taste buds by eliminating added fats: oils,and creamy, saturated fat-filled whole foods such as all nuts, avocado,coconut, and seeds (except for chia seeds for thickening purposes).
• We eliminate the physical addiction in the first 30 days by removing addictive foods.  Our detox is then over and our taste bud receptors are not searching for the missing oils and fats any longer.  Then we can truly address eating to satisfy hunger vs.  emotional eating.
• After 30 days our major challenges of food addiction are behind us.  It becomes easy to stay on track.  Then we are eating to satisfy hunger rather than to satisfy cravings.

This past October I submitted my Protective Diet testimonial because it’s a program I truly believe in! The results have been nothing short of AMAZING! Yet with all the success I have tasted (literally!) I have never gone 30 days following the Protective Diet 100%.

I’ll be honest, I still included ingredients I shouldn’t have in my diet, knowing full well they weren’t good for my health. Many of those included additives in the plant-based foods I bought, something many other programs never stress. For example, Winco doesn’t carry a “clean” soy milk. The Pacific Ultra Soy Original contains

• Organic Soy Base (Water, Whole Organic Soybeans)
• Dried Cane Syrup
• Natural Flavors
• Tricalcium Phosphate
• Sea Salt
• Carrageenan

Compare this to the Organic Unsweetened Soy Original that contains only soy beans and water. Yet I could not find a better soy milk locally, until I ran into Trader Joe’s and found their store brand organic, unsweetened soy beverage. Aside from being a much healthier option it cost less than what I was paying at Winco!

There were other products I purchased that I thought were “clean” but only recently found out there were. The flour tortillas I purchased for a few years were oil free but contained calcium propionate, which is a preservative added to prevent bacterial and mold growth. Dave’s Killer Bread was another brand I used to favor, carrying a USDA organic label as well as a NON-GMO symbol. Yet the bread, while good contains “organic dried cane syrup (sugar).” Not sure if I just missed this the first time around, but the nuts alone are something I accepted in this bread when I was eating it.

Tea…ugh! This is an entire piece all by itself, check out “Do You Know What’s Really In Your Tea?” It’s a good starting point. Another offender, hot sauce. I had a shelf full of hot sauce, which one would think would be compliant. One by one I tossed them out because of additives, leaving me with just 3 hot sauces, Tabasco, Crystal and Frank’s. Take a few minutes and read the labels on some of the food you believe to be healthy.

While some will find this tedious and unnecessary, it feels great to be eating my way to health. It takes some work and there are many ingredients and additives that we should avoid. Check out these hidden sources of MSG. “Natural” doesn’t mean “safe.” In this respect I have been working hard to educate myself on selecting foods that contain ONLY natural ingredients.

So while I don’t consider myself 100% PD as 2014 ended and the celebrations rang in the new year, I am working very hard to further reduce those foods that shouldn’t be included in my diet and close in on being 100%. I refer to a saying used in ultra running, “relentless, forward progress.” That is what PD is all about!

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