The Helo­fuud Thirty Day Plan

Intro­duc­tion

This plan is based on a Pale­olithic diet. There are many sources for fur­ther infor­ma­tion on this topic such as The Paleo Diet by Loren Cor­dain, Ph.D., and other var­i­ous experts in the field of nutri­tion. This plan is con­densed and it is part of what I believe to be a prac­ti­cal way to make dra­matic improve­ments in health and weight rapidly if desired. As I often say, don’t take my word for it. Do your own research. That is the best way to fully grasp the points and ideas you will find here.

This is the sec­ond incar­na­tion of a 30 plan I have posted. I did so because a very close friend recently told me his wife was inter­ested in the diet my fam­ily and I fol­low for med­ical rea­sons.  I get pas­sion­ate about this because it is how I came to find the answers to my chronic med­ical prob­lems. Many peo­ple never real­ize that the sys­temic answer to their health prob­lems can fre­quently be found in their diet. This lifestyle and diet can often be the dif­fer­ence between whether you will need to take med­ica­tion for a chronic med­ical prob­lem or not. I real­ize that sounds too fan­tas­tic but I speak from per­sonal expe­ri­ence. It took some time for me to wrap my head around these con­cepts as they defied every­thing I knew and under­stood about what foods were both good and bad for me. Through that process I also learned that I had a lot of emo­tional attach­ments to food that I never real­ized. After just two major changes in the foods I ate my health improve­ments were so swift that if forced me to ana­lyze those attach­ments for what they really were and deal with them. Do I miss sand­wiches or cream and sugar in my cof­fee? Nope. Just a lit­tle over a year ago, I would have laughed at the idea of giv­ing them up. Baby steps…

Now I enjoy, and I mean really enjoy, foods that I used to turn my nose up at. This was made pos­si­ble through a learned under­stand­ing that we humans have reg­u­larly botched up what nature or God has put in place with rea­son. Food is no excep­tion to this. It is dif­fi­cult to see this because we have been going about it all wrong for gen­er­a­tions now. It has been so long in fact that it hard for us to even con­sider any alter­na­tive. We are taught and raised to believe things about food by peo­ple we trust and this is how the cycle con­tin­ues for more generations.

Most peo­ple can read­ily see the poor shifts in our food sup­plies over the last 20 or even 50 years through the avail­abil­ity of junk food and its like. Most can­not so read­ily see that shift in big­ger terms. The truth is that we have had it wrong for a very long time now. It goes way beyond sim­ply not eat­ing the mod­ern mar­vels of junk food. Junk food is a broad term in my view now. For my fam­ily and I it now includes foods that most hold to be every­day sta­ples in their diet. Pri­mar­ily these are grains and dairy based foods among other things.

Con­ve­nience Food

One of our attrib­utes as a species that sets us apart from other ani­mals is our inge­nu­ity and prob­lem solv­ing skills. These skills afford us the oppor­tu­nity to improve things in our world, which more often than not means mak­ing them more con­ve­nient. This is why we now have “fast food” and it is also how we came to eat things we weren’t designed to eat many thou­sands of years ago. Until the point in time that we fig­ured out how to manip­u­late nature to our advan­tage and grow things with inten­tion, we had been a pre­dom­i­nantly nomadic race. Grow­ing grains pro­vided us the abil­ity to remain in one place with­out roam­ing for our food. This allowed for the for­ma­tion of civ­i­liza­tions.  Grains also gave us the abil­ity to travel and carry food that would not read­ily spoil. This fur­ther helped us to advance  civ­i­liza­tion mak­ing travel across greater dis­tances pos­si­ble. The key point to rec­og­nize here is that we did so out of a need to make some­thing more con­ve­nient.  While these steps were good for the ben­e­fit of our species, it wasn’t nec­es­sar­ily good for us at a bio­log­i­cal level.

Think of it in terms of ani­mals and species. All of the other ani­mals we share the planet with instinc­tively eat their nat­ural food sources pro­vided by God or nature in their nat­ural unal­tered form. They never once give thought to improv­ing or chang­ing their food. They don’t cook or process their food in the same ways we do. They also don’t har­vest or grow their food in the same man­ner we do either.  Yes squir­rels do har­vest and store but you get my point. Now for a moment step away from your reli­gious or emo­tional views and think of our species as just that, a species. If we weren’t so darn clever, what would we be eat­ing in the wild? Another way to look at this is to ask your­self what you would eat if you sud­denly found your­self in the wilder­ness. One that was abun­dant with food from nature rather than gro­cery stores. This is the basic fil­ter to con­sider every time you eat some­thing. Is it part of the orig­i­nal plan by nature? To make a point, cre­at­ing bread is an ardu­ous process and one that would be a lux­ury for us in the wild and not a means to read­ily sur­vive by.

Before we were smart enough to grow and herd our food we wan­dered about in search of it. We grazed for food and three meals a day was unheard of. You ate when the oppor­tu­nity pre­sented itself. This was often in small amounts through­out the day. Some­times it was not at all. Most impor­tantly we ate what was nat­u­rally abun­dant at the time and place and most of it was con­sumed raw. It may have received a light shak­ing to get the dirt off or maybe even a quick rinse when the water was avail­able. I am not sug­gest­ing you eat every­thing raw, espe­cially not meat but it is sim­ply how we ate for most of our exis­tence on the planet. As a point of ref­er­ence, the last 10,000 years has been the small­est por­tion of our total exis­tence. That is also the same period of time in which we began to mod­ify what nature and God pro­vided for us. Coin­ci­den­tally, it is also when many mod­ern dis­eases began to emerge more read­ily in our species. There is evi­dence of this to be found in the fos­sils and research of humans that existed before this time. The humans that lived dur­ing the pale­olithic era.

Grains & Dairy Foods

You can’t eat grains in their raw nat­ural form nor would you nuz­zle up under a cow for a drink in the wild. The only rea­son these foods are avail­able to us now is because some­one else pack­ages and processes them for us. They aren’t read­ily edi­ble or avail­able in the wild. Foods that are read­ily edi­ble in the wild are fruits, nuts, root plants, veg­eta­bles, berries, and other animals..

The Biol­ogy of Our Diges­tive System

It all comes down to your diges­tive sys­tem. Even though our bod­ies are well adapted to eat­ing all sorts of things, it doesn’t mean we should. We are omni­vores which means we are built to eat both plant and ani­mal. Beyond this you have to look at specifics such as what plants were and are read­ily con­sum­able in nature with­out human intervention.

Rumi­nants such as cows are built for grasses and grains. Our diges­tive sys­tems are vastly dif­fer­ent from that of a cow. Humans are not rumi­nants and when we eat grasses and grains it takes a toll on our bod­ies. We are only able to eat them because we process them to make them digestible. Raw flour would make you sick to be more pointed.

Dairy prod­ucts would also not be read­ily avail­able for us in the wild. This is another prod­uct of con­ve­nience that was devel­oped through the herd­ing and ani­mal hus­bandry. Humans are the only species that har­vests the milk from another species for their own con­sump­tion. We are also the only species that con­sumes milk beyond infancy. Lac­tose intol­er­ance is not an acci­dent in adults. Dairy is a con­ve­nience food that once served a pur­pose in our fur­ther advance­ment and civ­i­liza­tions. It was not intended to be part of the nat­ural order of our food sup­ply. Do we need dairy for the cal­cium and strong bones? If you con­sume a typ­i­cal high salt west­ern type diet you do. If you cut out the salt, you get all the cal­cium you need from the stuff nature pro­vides with­out going to Bessie the milk cow for it. Salt robs our bod­ies of our exist­ing stores of cal­cium. This is how we have come to believe and have been taught that we need dairy to be healthy. We now jus­tify the need for it by over­look­ing the sys­temic issue that cre­ates the need for it the first place.

There are many things in our diets we eat like grains and dairy that our diges­tive sys­tems weren’t meant to con­sume reg­u­larly. Ulti­mately these alter­na­tive foods take a toll on our bod­ies. For some it is dra­matic, like me. It brings clear and evi­dent signs as a warn­ing. For oth­ers the effects are sub­tle and often com­pletely over­looked as a cause because we never think to ques­tion their use. If you were raised with­out grains or milk you would not have an issue NOT eat­ing them. This is where the emo­tional and social attach­ments to food enters in. With­out a les­son on psy­chol­ogy, you get the basic idea. It is a belief sys­tem issue and not one based on any good sci­ence or data to back it up.

Eat­ing the wrong foods leads to health prob­lems, period. It may not be obvi­ous now, but it does become far more obvi­ous when we age. A sin­gle wave does not erode the stone away from a cliff. Many waves over a long period of time do. This is how the wrong foods affect our bod­ies. They erode and break it down slowly.

As hard as all of this may be to grasp think of it this way. This diet and lifestyle is often the choice of can­cer patients who seek to max­i­mize their body’s abil­ity to fight the dis­ease. While they may not always under­stand why it is a bet­ter choice, they know it is through research and learn­ing form oth­ers before them. This is not coin­ci­dence. It is the nat­ural plan for which we were designed to exist and it allows our bod­ies to func­tion at opti­mum potential.

I sin­cerely and deeply hope that as peo­ple gain aware­ness about food through movies like “Food Inc” and “King Corn” that we see a par­a­digm shift in the way we view food and health. If the whole world learned these con­cepts there would be far less pain and suf­fer­ing in the world. There is a lot if infor­ma­tion out there on this if you look for it. There are sound doc­u­mented stud­ies that show dra­matic improve­ments in patients with MS, can­cer, dia­betes, upper res­pi­ra­tory prob­lems, thy­roid issues, and even eczema. Will the world con­tinue to seek pills first or will they be will­ing to change their view of food. There is a rea­son my doc­tor imme­di­ately wrote a pre­scrip­tion for me when my blood work showed high lev­els of bad cho­les­terol sev­eral years ago. When I asked him if chang­ing my diet would help he told me that most peo­ple can­not do this so the pill was the only alter­na­tive. I chose not to be one of those peo­ple. I hope you do too.

The Plan

If you put diesel fuel in your car built for reg­u­lar unleaded gas it will run. Suf­ficed to say it will not run well and even­tu­ally you will do some dam­age. Your body is no dif­fer­ent. Once you learn what the cor­rect foods are, your body can do some amaz­ing things.

While the way my fam­ily and I eat seems nat­ural and easy to me now I have to stop and remem­ber what a daunt­ing task it seemed in the begin­ning. Mostly because so much of the food we bought was com­mer­cially pro­duced. That is part of the learn­ing curve. This lifestyle is about “slow food”, the kind you have to pre­pare. It is all about learn­ing to make your food and that is more of a time man­age­ment issues than any­thing else. The bot­tom line is that if it is impor­tant enough to you, you will find a way and the needed time. Any­thing else is just an excuse.

I am going to make this as sim­ple as I can for those who are ready to try it. It is a bit of a rab­bit hole. Once you start and begin to see the results in a very short period of time you won’t want to stop where this 30 day plan will leave you. That is a deci­sion you can make for your­self then. How deep do you want to go?

Week One

Wipe Out Any­thing White…

Elim­i­nate all grain foods, sug­ars, and starches from your exist­ing diet. You know what these are because I am sure you have tried South Beach and prob­a­bly even Atkins before. You may have to stop and take pause more than you real­ize by read­ing g labels. No wheat, rice, bar­ley, rye, any­thing made with grains, sugar, honey, arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, pota­toes, etc. Change noth­ing else. Carb with­drawal lasts about 3–5 days on aver­age. Any attempt to go beyond this first step is a setup for fail­ure. Baby steps..

Eat all the meat, fish, chicken, raw unsalted nuts, fruits & veg­eta­bles you want until you are sat­is­fied. Do not go hun­gry. No need to fight with willpower on two fronts. Chang­ing your eat­ing habits is hard enough with­out fight­ing hunger at the same time. Hunger will lead you astray every time.

Drink at least half your body weight in oz per day. Ide­ally this should be water but we won’t be picky for now. If you weigh 160lbs. drink approx­i­mately 80 oz of water.

Weight your­self once at the start and then stay away from the scale until the end of your 30 days. The weight will go but your body is going to make some funky changes and it is not uncom­mon to gain a lit­tle before you lose. Ide­ally, a scale that mea­sures BMI in addi­tion to weight is best. Record it and then for­get about it.

This first week and its steps are one of the most impor­tant com­po­nents to get­ting healthy. Insulin does a lot of really bad things to your body when it is spiked reg­u­larly. You are basi­cally giv­ing your pan­creas a long over­due break. Once the sugar and carb crav­ings sub­side (and they will) you will start to see some changes.

I had already cut out refined sugar for almost a year when I started this lifestyle so that made it eas­ier I think. That said you can take these steps in what­ever phases or time-frames you like. To max­i­mize the improve­ments in your health and weight this plan has been writ­ten into a time-frame for those moti­vated to make sweep­ing and rapid changes to their health.

Most impor­tant of all again, eat when­ever you are hun­gry but make it meat, fish, chicken, fruits, veg­eta­bles, or nuts. Eat the other foods you reg­u­larly do in the same way you nor­mally would. If they don’t fall into the above cat­e­gory of accept­able foods don’t over indulge in them just eat them as you nor­mally would. Baby steps. Some indul­gent foods can be eaten infre­quently such as honey but save that for later. Right now it is all about lev­el­ing out your insulin pro­duc­tion and this takes time.

For­get about calo­ries they mean noth­ing, lit­er­ally. I eat more now than I did before and my caloric intake is often over  3000 calo­ries per day. The dif­fer­ence is that it is good stuff and my body adjusts its energy level accord­ingly rather than stor­ing it as fat. My weight remains con­stant with­out try­ing. Again, natures design and why ani­mals aren’t obese.

Week Two

Bye-bye dairy…

In addi­tion to the grains, starches, and sug­ars, elim­i­nate all dairy prod­ucts. This includes yogurt, cheeses, and of course milk. Again read labels as dairy prod­ucts are in many unsus­pect­ing places. Dairy is often the cul­prit behind upper res­pi­ra­tory prob­lems too. If this is your issue of con­cern you can swap the order of week one with two. Just don’t try to do them both at the same time. Baby steps.

Con­tinue with every­thing else as out­lined in week one. Coconut milk can be a good crutch for those who need a dairy fix through the process. It works in cof­fee and a num­ber of other things remark­ably well.

Week Three

Corn & Soy Be Gone…

Elim­i­nate all corn and soy prod­ucts from your diet in addi­tion to the grains, dairy, and sugar. You are look­ing for corn in any form includ­ing high fruc­tose corn syrup (which should have been elim­i­nated with grains and sug­ars). Soy is another sneaky food to look for and it is bad for you despite every­thing you have been led to believe. In short corn was great 500 years ago but that kind of corn doesn’t exist any­more. More over it is a grain food made for rumi­nants. Soy has also been dras­ti­cally altered and it is a legume which falls into the same cat­e­gory of foods we are not built to digest like grains.

Con­tinue with every­thing else as out­lined in weeks one and two.

Week Four

Be free of chemicals…

Elim­i­nate all preser­v­a­tives, dyes, and things you can’t pro­nounce from your diet. By now there shouldn’t be too many things you are eat­ing that still come in a box, car­ton, can, or bag but if you are fol­low this one rule. If you can’t pro­nounce it, or you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it. Any type of arti­fi­cial sweet­ener falls into this cat­e­gory. None of them are nat­ural despite what the mar­ket­ing depart­ments of the com­pa­nies that make them say.

LIFE IS A JOURNEY.….

If you stick to this plan very close, allow­ing for a few missed ingre­di­ents here and there, you will undoubt­edly be see­ing major improve­ments in your energy and health at this point. Some things hap­pen quickly while oth­ers take a lit­tle time. I saw the most dra­matic changes in the first two weeks. Then lit­tle by lit­tle my body shape and my immune sys­tem con­tin­ued to improve. Ask me how many times I have been sick in the last two years. It is no coin­ci­dence that I have lit­er­ally not taken one sick day from work in two years.

You are detox­ifying now and the­ory has it that fat cells store a lot of the bad stuff we eat. As you con­tinue to shed pounds, improve­ments will con­tinue. How does the scale look now? How does your BMI look? There were times I didn’t lose any weight but my BMI dropped and my clothes fit bet­ter. It is not all about weight either.

Accom­mo­date when you need to. If giv­ing up one thing is going to keep you from doing the rest of the plan, sub­sti­tute or keep it. Don’t avoid start­ing because of that one thing. You have to be com­fort­able in the choices you make and all of them may not come overnight. Remem­ber, this was cre­ated for mak­ing sweep­ing changes for fast results. Not every­one is ready for that. It is rel­e­vant to how badly you need to see change.

If you are ready to go deeper into the rab­bit hole to see how much bet­ter you can make the fuel you are putting in, read on through the web­site for more infor­ma­tion. We now eat organic pro­duce, pre­dom­i­nantly grass fed beef or buf­falo, and free roam­ing antibi­otic free chicken. We also use organic health and beauty prod­ucts when­ever pos­si­ble and we have stopped using the microwave alto­gether. Baby steps..

As with any eat­ing plan, always check with your physi­cian before start­ing. — I really hate that I have to put that in there. I am just saying…