56 Diet Wise
Back to the caveman diet
By now you may be wondering if you are someone who could benefit from
the diet plan in this book. If you feel less than vibrant and anticipate each
new day with less than enthusiasm, not to mention if you have symptoms
that no doctor has been, to date, able to cure, then I urge you to keep
reading.
Of course, you won’t know for sure if this diet plan is for you
until and unless you try it. However, in my quarter of a century of clinical
experience, I learned that these diet principles work for everybody.
Later we’ll be using a trial diet – a diet much like what cavemen and
women would have eaten, to test for the possibilities of food allergy and
intolerance. The so-called Stone Age diet consists of meat, fish, fruit and
vegetables, with water to drink (herb teas are allowed). It’s quite enjoyable,
since you are allowed fries, fish, steak, smoothies and other familiar foods.
It’s not a slimming diet and you are free to eat as much as you like; there is
no reason to be hungry on this plan.
It is important to understand this is a trial diet – a test. You do
not need to stay on such a strict diet. As soon as symptoms clear, we then
begin challenge testing, to find out the real culprits. These few foods will
be the only ones that you need to avoid long-term. In other words your
maintenance diet is different from the trial diet. I do not encourage anyone
to try to remain on the strict Stone Age diet. Moreover, it isn’t logical. If you
give up a score of foods and feel better, that doesn’t mean that all were to
blame. It may be just one or two foods that are the real culprits.
What happens if I’m allergic to the allowed foods?
I’m sure you will be aware that some people are allergic to meat, some to
fruit and so on. This is not a zero-allergy diet. It’s simply playing the odds.
Because these are our natural foods, the ones we should be eating, they are
better tolerated and therefore less likely to provoke symptoms, as I have
explained. I’m asking you to give up the most likely foods for a few days.
If it emerges that you are allergic to meat or other allowed foods,
we will still get a result and you will be shown how to test for this. Chapter
12 has all the details.
But before we get to the how-to, let’s look at a little more why.