Free The Virgin Diet by JJ Virgin Page A

will be amazed to realize how often peanuts lurk in our food—even in a “healthy” protein bar.
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    We were never meant to eat the same thing all day every day.
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    You will think, Oh my gosh. Who knew that I was eating this stuff all day every day? We were never meant to eat the same thing all day every day. We were also not meant to have soy and corn in everything we eat.
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
    One of the important things about the Virgin Diet is to help you avoid eating the same highly reactive foods all the time. So, you’re going to rotate your proteins and enjoy a variety of nonstarchy vegetables. However, too much variety and choice can create problems as well—just think buffet to understand why.
    To keep it simple and easy, you will have my Virgin Diet Plate to use as your guideline. You will always have clean, lean proteins, such as wild-caught fish or organic chicken. You will eat some high-fiber, slow-release carbs. You will eat healthy fats to reduce inflammation. You will eat loads of nonstarchy vegetables.
    Once you fall into the pattern, it will be easy for you to stick to the plan. That’s why in Chapter 11 , instead of a meal plan, which would tell you exactly what to eat each day, I give you The Ultimate Meal Assembly Guide for you to learn how to put together proteins, high-fiber carbs, fats and nonstarchy vegetables into satisfying and healthy combinations. I give you a few key options: the stoup (a cross between stew and soup), the bowl, the salad, the wrap and the plate. I give you lists of healthy foods and show you how to pick the right amounts from each list—and the rest is up to you.
    Once you learn how to assemble meals, you will find that eating according to the Virgin Diet is just as easy as the way you eat now. Maybe even easier. And it will almost certainly be less expensive because you won’t be wasting money on processed foods.
KEEPING A FOOD JOURNAL
    In addition to tracking your progress, I also want you to keep a food journal throughout Cycles 1 and 2: a record of what you eat and how you feel every single day. After Cycle 2, you can let it go—unless you feel yourself starting to slip. Tracking is one of the best ways to keep yourself on track. In fact, I think journaling is such an essential part of your success that I “fire” clients who won’t do it. Don’t make me fire you, too!
    Why do I want you to keep a food journal? Here are just some of the benefits:
You can identify what triggers a problem. Throughout this book, I’m going to tell you every place that high-FI foods hide, but something might sneak in that you didn’t even know you ate. All of a sudden—especially if this happens at the end of week 2 or during week 3—you feel rotten again. Then you will think, What the heck did I do that’s laying me out? Remember, food intolerance is sneaky; it might take a few days to show up. If you have tracked every bite in your food journal, then you’ll be much more likely to identify the culprit—and you will have learned something very important about which foods cause you problems.
What you measure, you can improve. That’s why I want you to write everything down. I have to laugh when people just write down the good days. No! You must write it all down.
You can easily forget how much progress you’ve made. I definitely want you to track your symptoms and then look back and say, “Wow.” Otherwise, you get through 3 weeks and say,
    “I wasn’t feeling that bad.” If you read back through your journal and remember it all—the headaches, the mood swings, the acne, the fatigue—you realize that your old normal and your new normal are miles apart. That gives you motivation to lose the rest of your weight, if you haven’t yet hit your ideal, and it keeps you inspired to make the most of your maintenance plan so this new terrific normal stays that way.
    And don’t just take my word for it! Jack Hollis, PhD, is one of the researchers at Kaiser Permanente’s