21 Pounds in 21 Days (11 page)
Read 21 Pounds in 21 Days Online
Authors: Roni DeLuz
Detoxing Differs from Dieting
When we consistently provide the body with good nutrition, the brain no longer believes the body is dieting, so it chills out and stops telling the body to hold on to fat. This is the difference between diets of good nutrition like South Beach and Perricone, which work, and starvation diets like Atkins and Pritikin, where
you're destined to gain weight back. When we nourish our bodies well, the excess fat the body has stored is released and a boatload of toxins along with it, helping you to feel better and actually become healthier. Provided with enough nutrition, it even uses the nutrients to repair damaged cells. All of this happens very quickly, effortlessly, and naturally. You don't have to eat a lot of grapefruit, drink yet another weight-loss shake, or even join a gym.
Detoxing differs from dieting in that its goal is to cleanse and rest the body. However, one of the natural consequences of detoxing is that excess weight falls off. Yet, the approaches to the two processes are different. My grandmother knew that flushing harmful substances out of the body keeps it from getting sick. This type of indigenous knowledge has been practiced in every culture, as humans naturally understood the importance of cleansing from the inside out. If you go back just a couple of generations, you'll find that many of our forbears employed some method of cleansing their vital organs. These practices are still common in less industrialized countries, where you'll find people using herbs like
aloe vera
or
cascara sagrada
or bush (also called Zulu) or senna tea to regularly cleanse their bodies. Today, many kinds of detoxification programs are used in the industrialized world. Of course, we're all familiar with detoxes that cleanse people of the negative effects of drugs and alcohol. Yet you can also help your body expel toxins that have gotten trapped in the cells and organs from being exposed to noxious elements in our environment and food. There are many types of nutritional detoxification programs. While their goals vary, they generally aim to stop the digestive process to allow the body to purge poisons and revitalize itself.
Fasting
Popular during the 1960s and 1970s, the practice is now outdated and the term often used very looselyâsome people say they're “fasting” from shopping or lifestyle excesses. The goals of fasting vary from depriving yourself for spiritual reasons to resting the digestive tract and cleansing the body. People may fast by consum
ing only water, or water with lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. The “Master Cleanse” fast, consisting of water, lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper, goes in and out of vogue.
But while fasting may have been healthy during a simpler time, fasting today can make us very sick. For example, we all have DDTâa very virulent pesticide that is now illegal in the United States, although it is used many places overseasâstored in our fat. Fastsâand particularly water fastsâdump deadly chemicals like DDT out of our fat and into our bloodstream more quickly than our liver may be able to endure. Fasting also provides little to no nutrition, putting most Americans at risk of serious illness, since so many of us are either already or borderline malnourished.
Detoxification or Cleansing Detox
Detoxes help the body move closer to equilibrium by helping it purge mental, emotional, environmental, water, and food toxins while simultaneously resting the digestive system. I believe that, unfortunately, every American needs to detoxâthat's what terrible shape we're all in these days. People detox themselves in many ways, including by reducing or eliminating red meat or fast or junk foods from their diet, eating as a vegetarian, consuming only fresh fruit or vegetable juices. Many people detox for as little as one day. The most effective detox programs include nutritional supplements that nourish the cells as they release excess waste. Fresh juice detoxes are an example of this. When we detox, we release pent-up emotions as well; for as the body releases waste, it also releases emotions whose biochemistry was stored alongside the toxins because, say, we ate a box of donuts because we're sad rather than just crying, journaling, or making a structural change that would relieve our sadness.
Cleansing Diet Detox
A cleansing diet detox cleans out the body by providing it with maximum nutrition in small doses. This approach allows the body to release toxins and, along with it, excess weight. Because the
body receives sufficient nutrition, it does not experience a “yo-yo” back up to its previous weight once the detox has been completed. The Martha's Vineyard Detox is a cleansing detox. It provides maximum nutrition in forms that help it rapidly heal visible and invisible damage to body organs and tissues.
FAQ: Is Detoxing Dangerous?
Q:
My doctor claims that we don't need to detox because the body is equipped to detoxify itself. He says it isn't safe. Is he right?
A:
Actually, your doctor is partially rightâbut he's lacking some vital information. It is true that detoxing can be dangerous. As I noted above, fastingâespecially water fastsâcan be very harmful, because they cause massive amounts of dangerous toxins to be dumped into the bloodstream very, very quickly. Depending on a host of factors ranging from how healthy you are to how nutritionally you eat to what kinds of toxins your body contains, someone who participates in a fast could become very, very sick.
It's important to detoxify at a rate your body can healthily withstand, and to nourish the body to help it repair the parts of it that the toxins have injured. Detox programs that include a rebuilding component such as fresh vegetable juices are much healthier than those involving water or some variation of water and lemon juice. Every detox program and person is different, so I agree with your doctor in that I cannot vouch that these kinds of programs will be absolutely safe given your specific health conditions.
But here's where your doctor's explanation comes up short: the body is equipped with eliminatory organs that work perfectly in an unpolluted environment where people eat nutrient-dense whole (unprocessed) foods. Americans don't do that. To stay healthy or even to manage or heal from our illnesses, we have to cleanse our systems. We can do this in a variety of ways, ranging from nutritional detoxes to colon hydrotherapy (colonics) to coffee enemas to lymph drainage massages. These types of interventions are necessary if we are to experience optimal health. When we detoxify in a way that not only cleanses but also rebuilds damaged tissues and cells, detoxifying is not only very safe, but it's also a quick-healing strategy that can be used by even the sickest human being.
Age:
50
Occupation:
minister
Location:
Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
I have known Dr. Roni for a number of years; I pastor her church, Martha's Vineyard Apostolic House of Prayer. During the time we've been acquainted, I have gained a lot of weight. At my heaviest I was at least 100 pounds overweight. I tried to get my weight down for a long, long time. At one point I lost as much as 65 or 70 pounds. But each time I lost weight, I would put more back on. The more diets I tried, the bigger I got. Dr. Roni witnessed some of my struggles. At one point she invited me to the Inn to try her program. To tell you the truth, I wasn't keen on detoxing or those kinds of thingsâin fact, I wasn't really aware of what it meantâso I brushed her off.
In the meantime I started having health problems. I kept experiencing different aches and pains. I started getting sick a lot. I couldn't go up the stairs or even work without becoming winded. A couple of years earlier, I had become a grandmother and was so weighed down by all this weight I was dragging around that I had begun wondering, “How am I going to keep up with this little girl?” My daughter was really worried about me. My blood pressure was high, so I had to go on medication. At one point I felt like I was having heart problems. Fortunately, they couldn't find anything wrong with it, but every time I went to the hospital for a checkup, they told me I needed to lose weight. Needless to say, all these changes were very frightening to me. But I also started asking myself, “What kind of example am I as a pastor?” I knew I wasn't a very good witness to those I was speaking to about taking care of their bodies and health.
At some point during my struggles, James Hester had started coming to the church. I knew that he had completed the detox and had done really well, as had several of the friends he had brought to the island. One day James told me, “Next week, I'm going to do the detox again. Why don't you do it with me?” I thought, “Well, that gives me
a week to prepare myself.” So I just made up my mind, “That's it; I'm going to do it.” Even though I had avoided the program for years, when I went into it I was very positive. I don't like to do anything that I don't believe in wholeheartedly. My goals were to lose weight and improve my health. I expected everything to happen just like James saidâthat I'd lose 21 pounds in 21 days.
I had a good time doing the detox. I really enjoyed it, to be honest. Knowing that I was accomplishing something that I should have been doing for myself all along felt really good. Dr. Roni had warned me that I was going to get tired and would have to rest, but that never really happened. Between eating all those vegetables and taking the supplements, I might have gotten a little tired one day, but I mainly became a lot more energetic. One thing that I noticed right away was that my face turned several shades lighter. It was like all the toxins and things that weren't supposed to be in my body were causing all this darkness in my skin. I have “before” and “after” pictures of myself, and while the fact that I lost weight is really obvious, the other thing you notice is the brightness in my skin. And I was getting so many compliments from everybody, I knew I had to stick with it.
Several weeks into the detox, I noticed that my blood pressure had gone way down and the medication I had been taking was starting to make me feel strange. I talked to my sister, who's a nurse, and she suggested that I cut my dose a little bit every other day. I did that, but the medication still made me feel lightheaded. So I thought, “Let me see how I do without taking it at all.” I didn't take my medication for a couple of days; yet, I felt better and my pressure stayed down. Dr. Roni warned me to be very careful, but I decided to step out on faith and stop taking my medicine. To this day, my blood pressure is normal. Also while I was detoxing my thinking became clearer and I drew closer to the Lord. More parishioners suddenly started complimenting my sermons. I'm still not certain what happened, but you know the saying “healthy, wealthy and wise”? Well, I think that as I became healthier I also gained more wisdom.
The only difficult thing that happened was that I began to experience pain in my knee. I broke my ankle a few years ago, and the knee on that leg has stayed weak. When I was going through the process and the toxins started coming out, my knee became very painful and
I had to go back on crutches for about a week. I was very upset until Dr. Roni explained that I was experiencing a healing crisis and that the toxins were coming out through the weak point in my body.
“If you can stand the pain, just go through it,” she said. “It's going to be all right.”
And she was right. After about a week the pain subsided. But that was the worst part because it felt like I was going backwards, though I learned that I really wasn't. I also felt chilled a couple of times, which, I guess, is part of the process. But those were things I'd expected. That was the extent of my healing crisis.
Things went so well that I ended up detoxing twice. The first time, I lost about 22 to 23 pounds. I was so excited! Because it was healthy, this approach seemed to answer to a lot of the problems I'd had in the past with other diets! It wasn't just going on a diet and stopping this and stopping that, then eating again and putting it back on. This program offered a way that I could eat healthily for the rest of my life. I wanted to keep going past the 21 days, but Dr. Roni told me I needed protein. So I stopped and ate some protein and healthy foods for a few weeks. When it was safe, I went right back on the program again. Between the two detoxes, I lost almost 50 pounds!
When my daughter saw how good I looked, she tried the program herself. So did my sister and son-in-law. It was like a chain reaction happenedâit was kind of contagious! Everyone saw me and thought, “Wow! You look good. I've got to do this.” Several of my church members went on the program, and a few more just got colonics. I loved it! My success was affecting everybody. I even put the church on a 21-day Daniel fast, where they would eat fruits and vegetables, brown rice, nuts, and beans. No preservatives, no sugar, no sweetened juices. Everyone was reading labels. They were very good about it. We all looked and felt better and had a great time.
Even though I gained back some of the weight, I still felt youngerâI feel thirty-five years old. I'm able to be more active and keep up with my granddaughter. I joined a gym, so I actually work out now. I also ride my stationary bike at home. And even though my weight is slightly up from where it was, I'm still off the blood pressure medication.
I
n August 2003, I went on a vacation in Mexico to give myself a summer break, something I rarely do because it's peak season on the Vineyard. I had been burning the candles at both ends helping other people to heal and needed to take some time to take care of myself. I booked myself into a private home where I planned to do a detox. I also intended to travel around the country to obtain a number of cleansing and healing treatments under Dr. Martinez's care. One day while he was treating me, Dr. Martinez told me he wanted to examine my stool to determine if I had parasites. Parasites?! I knew the statisticsâone in three Americans' bodies harbors them. But being a healer, I didn't want it to be me.
“But I've been eating healthy,” I protested when the test came back positive. “I've only been eating vegetables.”
“Those must have been some very good vegetables,” he answered.
I have to tell the truth: I was upset. No one likes to consider the thought that their body might be a home to parasitesâespecially not a healer. And who wants to think too much about their colon, never mind what's in it?
“Fortunately, you have a parasite that's easy to get rid of,” Dr.
Martinez told me. He gave me a very common allopathic medication called lodiquinol. Unbeknownst to him, I did not take it. I waited until I returned to Martha's Vineyard and ordered a parasite cleanse, containing herbal-based products such as black walnut, wormwood, mugwort, and cloves, that I use at my retreat. I also took an herbal tea whose ingredients clean and repair the lining of the digestive tract and remove parasites and debris from the body. I took the parasite cleanse for 45 days; some protocols are longer, others are shorter. Either way, parasites are difficult to get rid of. I still drink a special Indian tea that tastes really good and keeps me from getting parasites again (see recipe on page 183).
Although we often associate parasites with unsanitary conditions, dirty drinking water, and undeveloped nations, they're alive and well all over the world. We get them when we globetrot; they can jet over to our supermarket atop imported food and float in by way of our drinking water. When I have a client who constantly feels bloated; is always hungry; experiences chronic nausea, forgetfulness, fatigue, slow reflexes, or sexual dysfunction; or can't lose weight, I test them for parasites right away. Sadly, most American doctors are not knowledgeable about parasites. If you have any of the above symptoms, tell your doctor you are concerned that you have them or order a parasite test kit to be delivered to your home (www.mvdietdetox.com).
What Is the Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox?
Parasites are one of many toxins and foreign substances that can interfere with our metabolism and cause us to gain weight and have a hard time taking it off. I have scientifically formulated the Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox to cleanse the body of many of the poisons posing the greatest risk to our health, including toxins in these six categories:
- Food toxins, including artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, excess sodium, antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides
- Toxins already in our body, including those from mercury dental fillings as well as the mercury found in some childhood
vaccines, and residue that remains in our cells after taking over-the-counter and prescription drugs - Household toxins, such as chemicals found in cleaning products
- Water toxins: the chlorine and fluoride in our drinking water, as well as the residue from other people's prescription drugs
- Environmental toxins, such as air pollution and lawn pesticides
- Toxins in personal-care products like makeup, cosmetics, shampoos, and deodorants
As your body conducts this housekeeping, you will naturally lose weight. There are also ways to tweak the Diet Detox to help you kill parasites and help improve, perhaps even heal, some chronic health conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension.
The Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox causes the body to conduct two activities. First, it stimulates the cells to cleanse themselves and flush toxins out of the body. It also creates conditions in the body that cause it to repair damaged cells quickly. We spur the body to engage in these activities by doing three things:
- Eating maximum nutrition in small doses.
By maximum nutrition, I mean that you will receive a minimum of twenty-two servings of fruits and vegetables daily in modest servings of soups, fresh live juices, and supplements. Compare this to the five to nine servings per day the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends. According to the USDA, the average American gets 1.4 servings of fruit and 3.7 servings of veggies, for a total of 5.1 servings daily (www.mvdietdetox.com). - Nourishing yourself about every two hoursâsooner if you get hungry.
Rather than starving your body, being hungry, and later experiencing the yo-yo effectâor, conversely, eating large meals containing excess calories that the body converts to fatâyou'll eat only what your body can burn off in a two-hour period of time. Then you'll eat again. - Consuming your nutrients in liquid form.
When we don't chew, our digestive system can rest. When the digestive system is asleep, the energy that the body would normally spend metabolizing food is freed up and available to engage in some R&R: repair and rebuilding! (www.mvdietdetox.com)
Because your body will download toxins into your organs very quickly, you will need to act aggressively to get them out of your body. This means you'll need to drink plenty of water to rinse out the cells, go walking, and engage in specific activities to get the poisons out of your colon, liver, kidneys, lymph system, gallbladder, and skin. I'll explain these processes in greater detail in
Chapter 6. Cleansing these organs also helps protect us against our genetic weak links that get triggered when toxins injure us, causing us to suffer from diseases like breast cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Water, Water EverywhereâBut Which One Should I Drink?
Similar to our planet Earth, over two-thirds of the human body is composed of water. The role of water is to clean and flush the body. Sadly, most of the water we drink is no longer very pure. If it hasn't been treated with fluoride or other toxins at the local water treatment plant, it often contains hard mineralsâmainly calcium and magnesiumâthat have seeped into the water while it was still underground. This is particularly true of tap water, which is one reason why so many people buy bottled. Hard minerals deposit harmful residue in the body that corrodes our smooth tissues, a type of cells found in walls of organs, arteries, and veins. No wonder bottled water sales are booming! But bottled water is usually packaged in plastic, and we now know that chemicals from plastic bottles “out-gas”âdisperse in gaseous formâinto the environment, which is one reason we shouldn't microwave Styrofoam or plastic wrap.
For detoxing, I prefer distilled water. Distilled water has been boiled and its steam recondensed back into water in a clean container, leaving contaminants and impurities like hard minerals behind. Of course, distilled water isn't really that pure if it's been bottled in plastic, which is why for detoxing I suggest you distill your water at home. In reality, I know most people aren't going to do that. A distilling machine costs between $99 and $299 or more but only cleans the water one drop at a time, yielding about one gallon of water overnight. Many people drink a lot more water than that, especially if they have a family. So there are really no great options. Still, during the detox I'd like you to drink distilled water of one type or anotherâideally that you treat yourself, but not in plastic jugs. After your detox is over, unless you continue taking supplements and juicing, return to spring water in jugs to make sure you get your minerals.
Stage One: The Cleanup
The cleansing phase of the Detox stimulates the body to download toxins that have been stored in its fat cells and organs into your bloodstream. The blood then carries these toxins to the eliminatory organsâthe colon, liver, and kidneysâso that those organs can expel them. We stimulate the body to engage in this type of spring cleaning by consuming large amounts of fresh vegetables, particularly green ones. Most of the food groupsâfruits, starches, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and fatsâbuild our cells. Vegetables contain nutrients that cleanse them. Green vegetables are particularly purifying. Nature provides us with countless examples of this green-cleaning phenomenon. Trees help cleanse the air, which is why scientists around the world are worried about deforestation. Our pets vomit after eating grass. While we often look at vomiting as a bad thing and believe our pet ate the grass because he doesn't know better, we couldn't be more mistaken. Our pet knew that he needed to expel a “bug” or other toxin from his body and that eating grass would help him throw up. Before companies started marketing aromatherapy household cleansers, many cleaners were pine scented. Tea-tree oil is another popular cleaning product, particularly if you shop in health-food stores. Green things are the equivalent of nature's mop. That's why they're vital to the Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox.
We'll supplement our fresh vegetables by taking nutrient-dense, food-based nutritional supplements. I'm not talking about the vitamins comprised of synthetic chemicals that are sold in most supermarkets and drug and health-food stores. When you take vitamins comprised of man-made substances, you need only look at your fluorescent urine to see the evidence that your body cannot process some of the chemicals. Instead, you'll consume nutritional supplements derived from food sources since the body
can more effectively metabolize their nutrients. We will use supplements whose nutrient load is especially dense (www.mvdietdetox.com).
Because the Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox exceeds your daily nutritional needs, the brain stops obsessing about whether your body has adequate nutrients and not only sheds harmful toxins but also the fat that houses them. And since the body isn't being starved, there's no rebound effect!
Stage Two: Repair and Rebuild
The second objective of the Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox is healing whatever's wrong with your body. There are two aspects of the Detox that support this physical “makeover.” First, everything you ingest will be in liquid formânutritional drinks, liquid supplements, vegetable soups, broths, and fresh juices. During the Diet Detox you will avoid food that you chew. While not chewing may seem counterintuitiveâeven unnaturalâit is a particularly important part of the process. Digesting food requires more energy than any other bodily function. You already know this intuitively. Who doesn't get drowsy after gorging themselves on a big Thanksgiving dinner? When we eat too much, we go to sleep. This is one reason why people who overeat almost always have low energy. When we consume food in liquid form, the body doesn't have to work as hard to break it down, so feeding the cells becomes much more efficient.
Because the body doesn't have to work as hard, when you don't chew, your energy shoots through the roof! Many of my clients tell me they've gained so much energy it feels like they've turned back the clock. Folks who normally lean on the snooze button start popping out of bed or begin facing their day without their usual morning latte. Others no longer feel like they need an afternoon nap or want to fall out when they get home. Even if you are very sedentary or heavy, you may suddenly feel up to working out. Rather than winding down in the evening, you may well feel wide awake until your head hits the pillow, at which point you'll probably rest well.
Not chewing also speeds up healing. The body's innate intelligence directs all the extra nutrients you're consuming all around your body and uses some of that extra energy to help heal your organs and tissues. And here's a really amazing fact: it heals damaged areas in priority order. Some changesâlike your skinâwill be visible to the naked eye; others will take place in parts of your body you don't even know exist. No wonder sick people that are fed a diet of fresh, raw juices often heal very quickly.
The second way you'll help your body repair itself is by drinking a nutritional supplement that's high in antioxidants. From beta-carotene to lycopene to vitamin E, antioxidants repair cellular damage, make us look younger, and help prevent chronic illnesses like heart disease and cancer. Antioxidants act as the body's housekeepers, sweeping up dangerous free radicals, very unstable molecules that can interfere with cellular function. The body creates some antioxidants naturally; others it gets from food.
Though we usually hear about free radicals being dangerous, the body benefits by having some. For instance, the immune system sometimes creates them to help “mop up” viruses and bacteria. And our body is always sloughing off old cells and replacing them with new ones. Free radicals are created during that process. But stress, pollution, cigarette smoke, herbicides, pesticides, and other toxins create more free radicals than our body is supposed to carry. Once altered by free radicals, good cells mutate and interfere with the function of others, setting off a chain reaction of cells running amok. Instead of carrying out their normal function, these cells corrode the body and cause it to “rust.” Unchecked, they attack and damage our delicate membranes. The damage free radicals cause is visible in the form of wrinkles, age spots, dry skin, and tired-looking eyes, for example. Inside the body, the injuries range from the body simply breaking down to experiencing a heart attack or stroke. Free radicals can also assault our DNA, causing it to create cancer cells.
Antioxidants help put free radicals in check and keep them from damaging other cells. When we see someone aging “gracefully,” it is generally because they have higher levels of antioxidants than other people in their age groupânot that you're supposed to
look bad as you age, as we've been led to believe. If you take good care of yourself and detoxify regularly, your age will not correlate to the state of physical, mental, and emotional decline common among your same-aged peers.