Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (7 page)

Do you have to be a raw foodist to eat this way? Nope—steamed veggies that are crisp and crunchy and lightly sautéed veggies count, too. How about a strict vegetarian or vegan? Nope and nope. The Crazy Sexy Diet is flexible. You’ll enjoy healthier cooked food in smaller amounts. The acidic portions
of your diet can include some animal products, but once you read how detrimental they can be to your health (and the planet), and how you don’t really miss them, you may reconsider. And remember: Not all vegans are healthy. Even the most ethically conscious people can suffer from eating too many processed or overly acidic foods. French fries, Fritos, white bread and pasta, Pop-Tarts, Kool-Aid, Crisco, and many sugary treats are vegan, but they aren’t exactly healthy. I call these misinformed veg-heads “muffin vegetarians.” When I eat like a muffin vegetarian, I develop what is known as a “muffin top”—a puffy tube of blubber that hangs over my jeans. These well-meaning souls junk up on crap and excessive amounts of soy, and wonder why they’re tired, fat, and sniffly. A vibrant and effective vegan or vegetarian diet means that the majority of your food is real and comes from … vegetables! (Duh.)

The Crazy Sexy Diet
has two levels: 60/40 and 80/20. I encourage you to aim for an 80/20 approach: 80 percent alkaline foods, 20 percent acidic. Though 80/20 is the goal, it’s not the rule. For many people, especially those of you who are transitioning from the Standard American Diet, a 60/40 ratio is enough—and very healthy. Amen! The 60/40 ratio is a maintenance level, and if you’re already in good health you will see amazing results by getting and hovering there. If you want to kick it up a notch or are recovering from an illness, an 80/20 (or more) ratio is your target. Touch it as often as you can. Start where you feel comfortable and stay where you feel the best.

Don’t freak out at the math. I use the 60/40 or 80/20 ratios solely as a visual reminder. Look at your plate and divide it like a pie. More than half of the space should be taken up by fresh and organic delights from the garden. Make sense? Before we get to the heart of the plan, my posse of dynamic experts and I will teach you the whys and hows so that you can grab the steering wheel and zoom off on your own.

Science and technology
are totally groovy. Unfortunately, their misuse tends to complicate just about everything. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we ate real food! Getting a good meal on the table wasn’t a multibillion-dollar industry driven by focus groups, slick advertisers, and government subsidies. Today chemical companies dominate the food business while their inbred cousins, the pharmaceuticals, are standing by ready to mop up the damage—and they’re laughing all the way to the bank.

As my nerd crush, Michael Pollan, says in his must-read book
In Defense of Food,
“The chronic diseases that now kill most of us can be traced directly to the industrialization of our food; the rise
in highly processed foods and refined grains; the use of chemicals to raise plants and animals in huge monocultures; the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat produced by modern agriculture; and the narrowing of the biological diversity of the human diet to a tiny handful of staple crops, notably wheat, corn, and soy. These changes have given us the western diet that we take for granted: lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything—except vegetables, fruits and whole grains.”