Fit For Life

So I'm re-reading a book called Fit For Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond which I read about 13 years ago. It was originally recommended to me by a room mate while I was living in Miami Beach, FL. I think at the time some of it made sense but I just wasn't willing to make the life-style changes needed to eat the way modeled in the book.

It feels really interesting to read this book now, after I've done so much research on raw foods and so much of that has really resonated with me. Now to throw food combining on top of that makes things feel a bit restrictive. Though there's certainly a toss-up here. Fit For Life allows eating cooked foods, just in the proper combinations.

And that's a hang up for me - this book claims I can detox while including cooked foods in my diet, which, if true sounds wonderful! I think I want to give it a shot. The book includes a 30 day menu plan to teach readers how to successfully combine food and eat the right stuff at the right time. I guess I've got 30 days to give it a try. Why not? I don't think I could make it 30 days 100% raw at this point so why not shoot for 70% and see if Harv and Mar are full of hooey or if they really do know their stuff! Here's a really condensed run down of what this will look like:

• Eat only fresh, raw fruits (and up to 14 oz fresh juice) every day until noon
• From noon to approx 8:00 p.m. eat correctly combined meals
• Exercise a minimum of 20 minutes daily (this will be the hard part for me!)

What does correctly combined mean? Essentially, there are two types of food: high-water content foods and concentrated foods. Fruits and veggies are high-water and everything else is concentrated. The claim is that the human stomach is not designed to eat more than one concentrated food at a time. Therefore, protein can not be combined with another type of protein, or carbohydrates (whole grain bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, etc.) Concentrated foods can be combined with veggies only as fruits should always be consumed alone and never following a meal. Here's a chart:

How long to wait after eating other food before you can again eat fruit

Food Time to Wait

Salad or raw veggies 2 hours

Properly combined meal, no flesh 3 hours

Prperly combined meal, with flesh 4 hours

Any improperly combined meal 8 hours

Energy Ladder

a.m.

Fresh fruit & fruit juices

Fresh vegetable juice & salads

Steamed vegetables, raw nuts & seeds

Grains, breads, potatoes, legumes

Meat, chicken, fish, dairy (if any;)

p.m.

Now that's a lot of info. If you want to give this a try I highly recommend getting this book and realding the details for yourself. There are additional concepts that I haven't even touched on here that are really important. I think the read is worth it even if you have no intention of trying it out. So I suppose I will keep all posted.