I have been engaged in a dietary experiment for the last 6 weeks.  The last 2 ½ years I have been living a low carb lifestyle.  That basically means I have not been eating any kind of starch or sugar for the last 2 ½ years.  It has worked well for me as this matched up nicely with my discovery that I was gluten intolerant.  This meant I couldn't eat any grains or dairy products anyway.  So going low carb was a fairly simple next step.

Well 6 weeks ago I read a very good book called the "Perfect Health Diet" which covered a lot of science around just what foods the human animal was actually designed to eat.  The section on the digestion of fruit and vegetable fibers that explained how these are actually turned into short chain fats by the bacteria in the gut really caught my attention.  What this says is that even though we might think we are only eating complex carbohydrates as vegetables and fruits, it all ends up as fat by the time it gets across the gut wall into our blood stream.

This was a shocker.  As any of us who tend to put on weight easily know, simple carbs and sugars are readily turned into fat by the liver and immediately stored as fat cells everywhere.  I did not realize just how little sugar/carb our body could actually process - 22 calories per hour.  That is like nothing!  Everything above that amount we eat gets turned into fat and stored or burned as ketones (the form of fat that the body burns). 

Our brain and white blood cells prefer to burn sugar, but based on how much sugar we can actually burn as sugar, most of the body runs on fat burning.  So no matter what kind of diet you think you are on, the reality is most of your food is turned into fat and either used up right now for energy or stored.  Low fat diets are bunk - total lies.  It might look like low fat going in your mouth, but what is happening in the blood stream is what really counts.  On that level your low fat diet is really a high fat diet.

So based on the science, the authors of the book suggested that we really should only eat 400 to 600 calories of slow to break down carbohydrate per day.  This way we would not overwork the liver converting all the carbs into fat - or in my case converting fat and protein back into sugar for the brain and white blood cells.  Since the liver only has so much energy, it made sense to reduce the demands on my liver so it could spend the majority of its energy detoxifying my body.

So 6 weeks ago I started eating slow carbohydrates.  I started including sweet potato, rice, and fruit back in my diet.  I was keeping the calorie levels down to the 400 to 600 calories per day of these foods.  But last Tuesday I decided that the experiment was a failure.  Over the last 6 weeks I gained 25 pounds.  I could see my belly expanding daily.  I have had to let my belt out 2 notches.  This is seriously not working for my body.

Well that is what experiments are for - to find out our individual truths.  Despite all the well-researched science, my truth is different.  I have written about the basic flaw of all scientific research into humans previously.  It is all based on the illusion that average equals normal and right.  There are no average and normal people.  But science ignores this basic truth and pretends that there are.  To perform a scientific study you have to test large numbers of people and then take all their different and individual responses to your test and average them mathematically to compare the different study groups to each other.  When you read a study they tell you if the results are statistically significant.  That tells you absolutely nothing about how the study affected each individual.

So my experiment once again proved that individual biochemistry overrides all the fancy studies.  I have to do something different.  I have to find what works for me and me alone.  You have to do the same thing.  There are no right answers, only individual answers.

So Tuesday I decided to begin to reset my system back to what was working for me - the low carb lifestyle.  That means I cut my carbs down to 20 grams or less per day.  I will miss the fruit, but it just does not work for me right now.  But not being one to let an opportunity slip buy, I decided to try out a new way to get myself back into the fat burning metabolic state... a Chia fast.

The quickest way to get into a low carb metabolism is to fast for a few days.  Our bodies love this even if our emotions don't.  Most of us are built to miss a few days of eating every month to allow our system to clean out.  Not all of us are built this way.  Some people have low blood sugar issues because their metabolism has difficulty going into burning fats for energy in the brain.  Most of the body is burning fats already, but some parts are just stubborn in some people.  Fortunately I am not one of those people.  In fact I test up metabolically as just the opposite - my body has a hard time burning sugars for energy.  Unfortunately for me that means any time I eat even good quality sugars like those found in slow carbohydrates and fruits, it spikes up my insulin levels.  That dumps all the sugar into the cells where it either gets turned into fat or causes inflammatory damage as the cells try to figure out what to do with it.

This is how I could gain so much weight in so few days - inflammation.  I don't like inflammation.  It means I am being damaged which makes me feel bad.

To get into the fasting state you have to consume less than 500 calories a day and get the carb level down to less than 20 grams (80 calories.)  Usually this entails a fair amount of hunger and a lot of tough-it-out discipline.  But this time I thought "why not use something that will fill me up without many calories yet still tastes good?"  That is when I thought of using chia seeds.  They are a super food to begin with - high in good quality protein and even higher in fiber.  More importantly, the fiber forms a gel that is very filling yet still insoluble so it will be passed out through the body instead of being converted into fat in the gut by bacteria.  More importantly, it doesn't stick in your throat or feel gross to swallow.

Chia seed is pretty tasteless - kind of like tapioca.  That makes it easy to flavor.  First I take a quarter cup of chia seed and add it to a quart mason jar full of filtered water.  Close the jar and shake it up several times over a 15 minute time period.  This will produce the chia gel I use to fill up with.  To flavor it I use a couple cups of chocolate unsweetened almond milk and add this to the gel along with enough Dr. Dave Super Sweet Drops to sweeten it to my taste.  That's it.  A cup of this mixture every couple hours keeps my tummy happy, my mouth happy, my colon happy, and my liver happy.

It is all so simple and doesn't take the usual iron will power to get me back on track.  The carbs are low.  I am getting essential proteins and a little inflammation fighting omega 3 oils.  The fiber is cleaning out my colon and carrying away the toxins my liver is dumping due to being in a fasting state.  My system is used to a lot of fiber so I am good with this much chia.  If you have never used fiber, I would recommend you start out with chia slowly to let your gut get used to higher levels of fiber.

We will see how this newest experiment turns out.  It is Saturday morning and I have dropped 9 pounds of the inflammatory water weight since Tuesday morning. 

Take care,

David

P.S.  I just researched the price of chia seeds.  Apparently there is a shortage right now because the prices have jumped up about 30% in the last week.  I still have some in the office at the old price, but there are only a few bags left.

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
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