152 Diet Wise
allergy and maladaptation – is that sequential reintroduction of foods is
never advocated.
If you feel great after a week on a fast, that’s wonderful. But why?
The foolish and ignorant answer is that the deprivation somehow did it.
That starving yourself is good for the mind and soul. That’s nonsense.
Avoiding foods brought the benefits, and the obvious question to anyone
quick-witted is: which foods were to blame?
I have heard people say, over and over, they felt outstandingly well
on a fast and yet could not tell me one single food they had pinpointed
as the reason for the improvement. Most had not even thought of food
intolerance or even tried to test individual items. When the fast was deemed
over, all normal foods were brought back in, all at once. The zealot or
writer who introduced them to the idea of fasting had no concept of the
elementary science or logic I am sharing with you now. He or she could not
see that feeling good on a fast was a clear indicator of one or more foods
that made the person ill.
Sometimes the outcome was even sillier: the individual could
remember feeling awful quite soon after abandoning the fast – yet had still
not made the connection with food allergy and intolerance. He or she was
eating those exact foods which had caused the rapid return to everyday
unwellness!
Diarrhea and vomiting
You may have never fasted and even consider the idea
ridiculous. Yet you may at some time have had a bout of
severe gastroenteritis and over the space of a few days
had so much diarrhea and vomiting that you emptied
your bowel of foods. You may have noticed feeling
outstandingly well, despite the preceding days of illness.
Many people have reported this kind of event to
me and, again, no one has ever thought of it as a clue to
food allergy and intolerance reactions. This is somewhat
understandable but nevertheless a wasted opportunity. It
is broadcasting exactly the same information as feeling
better on a deliberate fast.