Introducing my super-healthy leaky-gut diet (plus: I lost 10lbs in a week with it!)

Yay! I’ve lost 10lbs in a week with my super healthy diet!

This diet was not supposed to help losing weight but it did work on that area too!

This is a healthy diet mostly for people who have:

•  Liver and bowel problems such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Leaky Gut Syndrome etc.
•  Auto-immune diseases like celiac or crohn, bowel related psychological disorders such as depression, migraines etc
•  Excessive Candida Albicans in digestive system.
•  Under-working immune system (mine was almost dead 🙂
•  High blood sugar and constant sugar cravings 

I had all of the above 🙂 Luckily I developed The Alex – Diet to cope. As it worked quite well for me in the very first week, I will share it with you as a New Year present 🙂

Plus gain: My goal was to lose 30lbs by the end of January 2015. First part of the goal is achieved: To lose 10lbs before 2015 🙂

Beware that I am not a nutrician but a psychologist. I made this diet up by hours of research about leaky-gut diets, GAPS diets etc from academic studies to nutritionists (who sell their ultimate diet plans 0_o) and personal experience blogs. They are too restrictive for me in many ways and there are too many recipes to follow. That is, you feel coerced to buy the damn cookbook. I said no to that crap and start working on my own diet which I will share with everyone for free 🙂

During this diet, I also took L-Glutamine, Vitamin C, Milk thistle, Beta Carotene and probiotic dietary supplements.

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I believe, a diet for health should not contain many recipes, but the principles to apply to your tastes.

So, I developed 10 principles to follow:

1. Drink water as water (0.5 gallons a day). Not as tea, coffee etc. Just water.

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2. Eat nothing with a “light/diet/low fat” written on it. 

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3. Every morning when you get up, drink 1 big glass of water. You can add 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, carbonate or apple cider vinegar in it. This is to detox your liver. After that, drink 1 tablespoon of black cumin oil and 1 tablespoon of propolis. Drink another glass of water. These are to boost your immune system.

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4. Wait for 2 hours till breakfast. You can drink water. No coffee or black tea allowed. Give your digestive system and liver a nice detox time every day. Oil and propolis have lots of calories and you won’t be craving I promise.

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5. For breakfast

This is when you start fighting with Candida in your system. You send the good guys (probiotics) to fight them.

a)  Eat 1 bowl of probiotic yoghurt. You can add extra probiotic supplements in it.

b) Drink 200ml kefir.

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6. After breakfast:

a) if you want, you can have 1 cup of very smooth blend coffee or tea. 1 cup, no more…

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b) If you crave, wash your mouth with some Apple Cider Vinegar and you will feel better. If you get very hungry, you can eat 1 tablespoon of coconut oil every day. You can use this option if you have night cravings. No carbs, eat oil It will make you feel full.

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7. Never cook the oil. You can put the oil to your meal when you are on the table. I do not use oil for cooking, I drink it. Better for the bowel.

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8. Lunch & Dinner: You can eat the same things in lunch and dinner as long as they are healthy 🙂 You can be creative but keep it simple. No sauces, no extra fat and no breads.

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a) SOUPS

I mostly eat my meals as soups with home made bone broth.

I wrote about bone broth earlier. Click to see how to do it at home. Avoid buying meat/chicken stock ready. It will cause harm to you rather than good.

Bone broth is necessary to mend your leaky gut and fight auto-immune diseases.

Home made soup with bone broth by Alex

Links to recipes of home-made bone broth and the veggie soup in the picture above

You can be creative and use the soup recipe to make your favorite soups with different ingredients. Here is an example with the same cooking tactic. Same recipe, diffrerent soup. Easy, isn’t it?

Note: No extra oil in the soup as it has fat in itself. Avoid too much salt. Use turmeric and rosemary for taste and aroma. Also, no flour is used. No exceptions on that. 

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b) MEALS

You can use any meat/poultry or fish + cooked/steamed veggies in your meals. I recommend cooking veggies with steam. So, you should buy yourself a steamer 🙂 You will use it almost every day… If you do not have a steamer, boil them in water in low heat. But they will lose some nutrients to water while boiling. So drink that boiling water too.

I recommend free range especially for poultry. Organic will be a plus.

You can eat boiled eggs too as a meal. 2 boiled eggs + yoghurt as dressing + veggies can be a nice dinner plate.

Yesterday I treated myself a really nice dinner. I wrote the names of the veggies I used. OMG salmon is sooo tasty I did not even put salt in it! I steamed vegetables first and then the salmon in steamer. It was ready in 30 minutes in total. (I did not steam the soy sprouts though, I ate them raw 🙂

Salmon is very oily and you should not use any extra oil.

Another option:

Bring it all together and make a salmon-veggie soup with the same ingredients.

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9. Manage your guilty pleasures.

a) If you want to eat desert, eat dark chocolate, eat 1 piece (up to 20gr) per day at the most. The next day you can eat again. So you are not giving up for life. You don’t have to eat the whole bar when you open it. 

xxx

b) Tiny guilt treats: If you want to eat cake, cook it with gluten-free flour and eat very very little.

Small-size dark chocolate cupcake with 1 cooked cherry on top is my favorite (no cream of course)

Also, you can make tiny treats for yourself such as pumpkin desert or ginger desert. Boil them like you are making a marmelade. Do not overcook but boil them slowly with little sugar.

Another example with yoghurt sauce, not so guilty 🙂

c) No-guilt treats: Eat all you can eat treats. Beware, until your stomach stops creating gas, you should avoid fresh veggies. I started to eat them on the 6th day.

Try not to take sugar if you have excessive Candida growth. They love sugar. Let’s starve them 🙂

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10. What not to eat and NO EXCUSES!

– Cheese, milk, dairy products except for yoghurt and kefir.

– Wheat, wheat products, rice, corn, starch and starchy veggies like potatoes.

– Fruits as they are very high on fructose sugar. Candida loves fructose.

– Deserts including milk such as pudding etc.

– Raw veggies or salads until your stomach does not produce gas.

– All fastfood or junk food like chips etc.

– Any kind of smoked meat and fish.

– Alcoholic drinks, fruit juice (fresh or not), coke, energy drink etc.

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There it comes: The Principle Zero. Start with a decision.

Today is a good day as it is time to make New Year Resolutions. When you decide to live healthy, then clean up your freezer, kitchen, cellar etc. If they stay, you eat them. As the principle zero, get rid of them first. Tomorrow, go buy/order fresh veggies, meat and bones. Start cooking. It is very easy.  Believe me, because I am very lazy 🙂

If a very depressed woman could do it, (I mean avoiding sugar and comfort food was not easy in the first days) anyone can.

Have a very healthy year and thanks for following

Alex