The Virgin Diet Read Free

unlikely to trigger food intolerance. If you can cut out the top 7 high-FI foods for just 3 weeks,you’ll see weight loss and beauty results that will have you looking and feeling terrific.
    Hey, if those old low-fat, low-carb or high-protein diets had worked for you in the past, you’d already be at your ideal weight and peak vitality, right? There’s a reason that approach to food doesn’t work—and there’s a reason that the Virgin Diet does.
YOUR FAT IS NOT YOUR FAULT
    I often joke that most of my clients are allergic to diets. And in a way, they are, because most of the foods that people eat when they diet—egg whites, nonfat yogurt, tofu—can set off food intolerance that keeps the weight on, even when you cut the calories.
    The “allergic” part is my joke, because food intolerance and food allergies are not actually the same thing. However, they are very closely related. They’re both responses to an apparently harmless or maybe even a healthy food that can involve one or more of your body’s systems, including your digestive system and your immune system. High-FI foods not only make you feel tired, unfocused and moody, but they’re also the hidden cause of weight gain, weight-loss resistance and premature aging.
    The good news here is that your fat is not your fault. It’s your body’s way of responding to the foods it can’t handle—foods you may have been eating precisely because you thought they were good for you!
    Luckily, there is a solution: the three-week Virgin Diet solution. For just 21 days:
Stop eating the 7 major high-FI foods.
Focus on low-FI foods that will give your digestive system a break.
Load up with healing foods and healing supplements to repair the damage.
    Right away, you’ll lose the bloat, finally start losing weight and look years younger. You’ll look and feel so terrific that you might even make some lifelong changes in your diet.
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    THE TOP 7 HIGH-FI FOODS
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    Gluten
    Soy
    Dairy
    Eggs
    Corn
    Peanuts
    Sugar and Artificial Sweeteners
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HOW ELIMINATING HIGH-FI FOODS FIGHTS THE POUNDS—AND THE YEARS
    Food intolerance isn’t a fixed condition; it’s more like a dynamic response. Foods that you were able to tolerate a few years ago might be problematic for you now. If you clean high-FI foods out of your system and take some other healing steps—all of which I’ll walk you through—then you may eventually be able to eat foods that are causing problems for you now.
    The first step, though, is to get those high-FI foods out of your system and give your body a chance to chill out. After a 21-day break, I’ll have you add some of the healthier high-FI foods back into your diet, and we’llfind out if you can tolerate them. If you can’t handle them right away, you may be able to in 3 months, or 6 months or perhaps a year. But before we can add them back in, we have to take them out.
    A lot of my clients are skeptical about this elimination process, at least at first. They just can’t believe that such apparently healthy foods as yogurt, whole grains and edamame are causing such severe problems, especially when they don’t cause any noticeable ill effects after eating them. That’s because food intolerance is such a subtle reaction. Allergies are swifter and more dramatic. A peanut allergy can strike after one tiny bite of peanut. Your throat closes up, you can hardly breathe and the conclusion is pretty clear: stay away from peanuts.
    Food intolerance is sneakier. If you enjoy a delicious bowl of nonfat yogurt and berries today and break out in acne 2 days later, you’re unlikely to make the connection—but I’m betting that it’s there. (See Chapter 5 for more information on the strong link between dairy and acne.) Likewise, if you have some whole-grain cereal this morning, you might not even realize that it’s the cause of your fitful sleep tonight. You probably won’t realize it until you eliminate gluten for a few weeks and start sleeping like a