The Beauty Detox Solution (12 page)

The typical breakfast foods, such as plain granola or toast with butter, even when properly combined, are concentrated starch foods that stay in the stomach for at least a few hours. But most of us are not even eating properly combined breakfasts! For example, a breakfast of an egg white omelet with whole-wheat toast or a bagel with low-fat cream cheese is an improperly combined, beauty-busting meal and can stay in the stomach for hours and hours, sucking our precious Beauty Energy.

Here's the irony: w
e cannot get energy from food until nutrients from that food have been absorbed in the small intestine.
With all these typical breakfast foods, at least a few hours must pass before we even get energy at all out of them. During those first few hours, they are still being digested in our stomach! Instead of gaining energy you will be
using
energy to break down and digest them, and a lot of energy at that, since the most common breakfasts incorporate bad food combining. Heavy breakfasts are a major cause of the notorious mid-morning slump. We've all had
those
days when we check the time on our computer or on our cell phone every two minutes and wonder with dread how the heck we will be able to stay awake the whole day!

If we don't eat a heavy breakfast, we won't get bogged down with any heavy digesting processes. As a result, we will be more alert and have way more energy through our morning. We will also extend our body's cleansing time for more hours every day—more time to cleanse out the sludge! You'll also be far more likely to make better food choices for the rest of the day.

When you first start eating Light to Heavy, you may be used to eating heavier breakfast foods, and you may feel hungry at breakfast and want something that feels substantial. That is normal, because we have developed certain breakfast habits and our body is “used” to getting heavier at that time. As long as we put fibrous and water-containing veggies, like celery sticks or green drinks (discussed in the next chapter), in the body first, we can eat heavier foods afterward, like toast or whole-grain cereal with almond milk, while we are transitioning our system. There are more detailed steps on transitioning for breakfast in Part 2.

Over time we will feel so great from eating light earlier in the day that our cravings will greatly subside
. Trust me.
I used to really be a breakfast girl and would wake up starving in the morning and have big morning feasts. It was not unusual for me to have a banana, an
orange, tea with almond milk, and a few pieces of sprouted bread or a big bowl of granola or, back in the day, two eggs. I was able to overcome that habit, the way we all can, over time. By sticking to light mornings, I feel infinitely better throughout my entire day. It is not an exaggeration to say that light mornings have improved my entire life! I am very grateful for the freed-up energy I enjoy from not having to obsess over my food choices—and I can
see
the differences it's made in my body and beauty, from my skin to my hair and nails, not to mention how easy it is to maintain my perfect weight!

Of course, some of us like to enjoy the occasional hearty brunch on vacation or on the weekend with friends or family. Don't worry. You won't have to ban brunch forever, as our bodies can deal with the occasional off-wagon event. What we want to focus on are everyday habits and patterns that we repeat over and over again.

Try it out for yourself! See how you feel shifting to lighter breakfasts for three weeks; then try to go back to the heavier way of eating breakfast. You won't want to, because you will feel
so
much better. You'll realize the heavy breakfasts really were making you tired. There is no stronger proof than personal experience.

LUNCH

We should eat lunch later on in our day, depending on when we get up in the morning. We eat lunch after we have set up our morning with a light breakfast, and when we start to feel truly hungry.

After breakfast, lunch is the most important meal to tackle, because we can extend cleansing and increase our Beauty Energy, or we can cause a traffic jam right in the middle of the day. When this happens, we slow everything down, so we can say goodbye to facilitating our weight-loss and beauty goals. For these reasons, we avoid eating concentrated protein at lunchtime, whether it's an animal source (chicken, fish, etc.) or a vegetarian one (nuts, seeds, etc.).

Proteins are the most difficult of all foods to digest, so we should save protein-based meals for the evening. The chances of causing a traffic jam go way up if we stick concentrated protein in the middle of the day. That would be that sixteen-wheel truck stuck right in the middle! And if we do not practice proper Beauty Food Pairing at lunch, forget about dinner! Even a superlight dinner would be sitting on top of food that is still digesting, as improper food combinations can take many hours to get through the stomach.

When we eat a dense, heavy lunch, we sacrifice our afternoons to sluggishness and low energy. We will get taken down like a rock before we ever saw it coming! Much of our body's energy will be directed to our belly to work to digest our heavy meal. Our mental abilities will deteriorate, and it will be a struggle to make it through the afternoon, let alone be motivated to go to the gym or a yoga class, or to spend an evening out with friends. This is usually when the second round of skinny lattes and Diet Cokes start to creep onto our desks and into our hands. Our bodies simply don't have enough energy during the day to digest major heavy foods
and
allow us to function at our peak.

Concerned about not getting enough protein in your diet if you cut out the concentrated protein from lunch? Remember our gorilla friends, who are the strongest and most muscular animals and eat greens for lunch and for pretty much every meal. We already discussed our true protein needs in Chapter 1, and we will also cover the topic of
protein
.

What about all that hype we hear that lunch should be heavier than dinner so we can “work of the calories”? Remember that we are not just looking at the caloric content of food. We are chiefly concerned with how efficiently and quickly our meals digest, and how little they contribute to sludge and use up our Beauty Energy, our real secret for burning of fat and keeping it off.

Two independent studies conducted in America and Germany used lab rats to display how eating
less
can often have positive effects. The experimental group was fed once a day for a two-hour period, while the control group was permitted to eat at will throughout the day. Both research teams found that the rats in the experimental group, which did not eat small amounts all day long, had higher enzyme activities in the fat cells and pancreas, and lower body weight. The American research team also found that the rats in the experimental group had a 17 percent longer lifespan.
²²

DINNER

We've kept ourselves light and the path clear for proper digestion all the way until the evening. Excellent! Now we can enjoy a nice dinner with some heavier foods, depending on what our body needs and is calling for. Generally, we want to wait at least four hours after lunch to eat dinner, to give us enough time to properly digest the midday meal. We must be sure that we eat a lunch that satiates us for that period.

Excessive
snacking between lunch and dinner can throw our digestive system into more turmoil and cause a traffic jam. It gives our digestive tract something new it suddenly has to deal with. Sure, it may perk up our metabolism temporarily, but it will also take more of our Beauty Energy and tax our digestive tract. However, the reality is that many of us are used to snacking and may want something to nosh on before dinner. If we do need a snack, the ideal snack would be something neutral, like vegetable sticks dipped in salsa or veggie dip, vegetable soup, or more of our lunch salad.

Dinner should always start with a green salad. Then, depending on our Beauty Detox phase and our motivation, it should be followed by a wide variety of foods. This is where animal protein fits into the Beauty Detox, if you choose to eat it. Why is this appropriate for dinner and not lunch? By dinnertime, our busy daytime activities and demands, both physical and mental, are now finished. We can relax and enjoy some social bonding time
with our family and friends. We know we don't have to rush back to work. Because we have avoided a traffic jam during the entire day, thereby optimizing digestion and facilitating cleansing, we can now feel free to have some denser foods that we enjoy.