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Starting
Your Journey to Better Health Today!
Today there
is much confusion about diet plans and diets. Dr. Page’s food plan is not a
diet but a food plan as the name implies. It was created at the famous Page
Clinic in Florida, blood chemistry panels were taken every three to four
days on all patients. He based his food plan from the early research of
Drs. Weston Price and Francis Pottenger, who showed the relationship of
quality of the foods you ate affected your health, both physical and
emotional. Dr. Page called it a food plan because he found certain foods to
upset the body chemistry. It made no difference what your genetic
disposition was, the same foods upset the body chemistry. Certain genetic
dispositions were able to handle those foods better than others, but after
thousands of blood chemistry panels his food plan proved true by normalizing
the patient’s blood chemistry without any other intervention.
Many of
today’s popular diets are based on Dr. Page’s work. Dr. Page emphasized
removing absolutely all refined carbohydrates (such as sugar and processed
flour) and pasteurized cow’s milk from the diet. On the food list sheet
attached, notice the percentage of carbohydrates is indicated. Dr. Page
felt that it was not only important to eat quality proteins and fats, but
quality carbohydrates as well. This food plan is designed to assist your
body in its ability to create and maintain “balanced body chemistry.” The
Phase 1 food plan is designed for one to two weeks; the Phase 2 food plan is
a maintenance plan. Both can be not only extremely helpful, but in many cases
essential in controlling blood sugar and hormone imbalances while balancing
many other types of biochemistry problems.
The longer
you are on this food plan and the more closely you follow it, the easier it
will be to stick to it. This will result in your feeling and looking so
much better than you did on your old way of eating. As you become healthier,
your cravings for those foods that are not the best choices for you will
diminish. Old habits are hard to break, so take your time to change your
dietary habits so you don’t slip into your old way of eating. If this
happens call for the appointment as soon as possible to determine what's
upsetting your biochemistry. Nutritional supplements may be needed to
assist you to get back on track by reducing cravings, etc.
Foods
to Eat and Not Eat
Proteins:
Eat
small amounts of proteins frequently. It
is best if you have some protein at each meal.
It need not be a large amount at any one time. In
fact, it is best if you stick to
smaller amounts (< 2–4 ounces of meat, fish, foul, or eggs at a time).
Both animal and vegetarian sources of protein are beneficial.
Choose a variety of meat products and try to find the healthiest
options available; i.e., free range, antibiotic free, and/or organic, whenever
possible. Eggs for most people are
an excellent source of protein. Eat
the whole egg, the lecithin in the yolk is essential to lower blood fat and
improve liver and brain function. With
any protein, the way in which you prepare it is critical.
The closer to raw or rare the better.
Remember, any time meats and vegetables are heated over 110°
Fahrenheit; crucial enzymes are damaged and lost. Avoid frying. Grilled,
boiled, steamed, soft boiled, or poached are best methods for preparing foods.
Vegetables:
Eat
more, more, more. This is the one area where most everyone can improve his/her
diet, and it is an especially important area for you.
Always look for a variety, although make the green leafy types your
preference. This includes spinach,
chard, beet greens, kale, broccoli, mustard greens, etc.
As
stated above for proteins, the quality of your produce (fresh and organic
preferred) and the method of preparation is critical.
Raw is preferred with lightly steamed or sautéed as your second choice
for all vegetables. Use only butter or olive oil to sauté. When eating
salads, try not to eat iceberg lettuce. Rather,
use lettuces with a rich green color, sprouts and raw nuts.
Don’t make salads your only choice for vegetables.
Fruits:
Most people wrongly try to drink their fruits.
Fruit juice is loaded with the simple sugar fructose, which is shunted
into forming triglycerides and ultimately stored as fat.
Without the fiber in the fruit, juice sends a rapid burst of fructose
into the blood stream. When you do
eat fruit, only eat one type of fruit at a time on an empty stomach; second,
avoid the sweetest fruits - tropical fruits, except papaya which is very rich in
digestive enzymes (fruits from colder climates are preferred); and third, eat
only the highest quality, fresh and organic when possible.
Carbohydrates:
This
is a very tricky area. Most people
have one classification for carbohydrates when in reality there are really
three different types — complex, simple, and processed.
Unfortunately, for most patients suffering with imbalance problems,
almost any carbohydrate is a no-no. It
is a physiological fact that the more carbohydrates you eat the more you will
want. Craving carbohydrates is a
symptom of an imbalance, so you can use this craving to monitor your progress.
Overall, eat vegetables as your carbohydrate choice and limit grains
(even the whole grains can be trouble). When
you do eat whole grains, take them in moderation, and only at dinner.
If you start the day with carbohydrates, you are more likely to crave
them throughout the day, and then you’ll eat more and it’s downhill from
there. Absolutely stay away from
white breads (100% rye bread is the least of the evils), muffins, cookies,
candies, crackers, pastas, white rice and most baked goods.
There’s
another dark side to processed carbohydrates that isn’t talked about much
— the connection to weight gain, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides,
heart disease, and cancer. You
don’t even need to know the details to get the idea how much trouble
carbohydrates can be.
Wheat
and Grains:
There has been a tremendous amount of debate regarding grains.
Whole unprocessed grains can be rich sources of vitamins and minerals,
but with soil depletion and the special strains of grain that modern
agriculture has developed, it isn’t clear what nutrients remain. The two
predominantly used grains in this country are genetically engineered and have
five times the gluten content and only 1/3 of the protein content of the
original wheat from which they were derived.
This high gluten content is to blame for many patients’ allergic
reactions. When scholars have
studied disease patterns and the decline of various civilizations, many of the
degenerative diseases developed when cultivation of grains became a major part
of their diet. Chemicals naturally
found in certain grains, lack of the appropriate enzymes, and the carbohydrate
content of grains make them a source of trouble for many individuals.
My opinion at this time is to minimize grains such as wheat and barley.
Unprocessed rye, rolled oats, and brown rice can be considered on
occasion to give you more variety. Some
of the Danish and German brown breads, like pumpernickel, seem to be
nutritious.
Sweeteners:
Use only a small amount of
raw
Tupelo
honey or Stevia as sweetener. Absolutely
NO Nutri-Sweet®, corn syrup, or table sugar.
Although Dr. Page did not allow raw cane sugar, it does provide the
nutrients to aid in its metabolism. If
you cheat, be smart and use only small amounts with a meal.
Fats:
The bad news is you probably do not get enough of the right fats in
your diet. So, please use olive
oil (cold pressed, extra virgin), walnut oil, flax seed and grape seed oils.
These are all actually beneficial, as long as they are cold-pressed.
When cooking, use only raw
butter and olive oil — they are the only two oils safe to cook with.
Avoid all hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats. They
are poisons to your system. Never
eat margarine again. Also, avoid
peanut butter. Eat all the
avocados and raw nuts you desire.
If
you think eating fat will make you fat, think again.
When you eat fat, a chemical signal is sent to your brain to slow down
the movement of food out of your stomach.
As a result, you feel full. It
is not surprising that recent research is showing that those who eat
“fat-free” products tend to actually consume more calories than those who
eat foods that have not had their fat content reduced (low fat usually means
high sugar/high calories). In
addition, fats are used not only for energy, but also for building the
membrane around every single cell in your body.
Fats also play a role in the formation of hormones, which of course
make you feel and function well. It
is far worse to be hormone-depleted from a low fat diet than it is to overeat
fat. The sickest patients we see
are the ones who have been on a fat-free diet for a long period of time.
Like carbohydrates, choose your fats wisely — this program is not
suggesting fried or processed foods.
Milk
Products:
Forget pasteurized cow milk
products (milk, certain cheeses, sour cream, half & half, ice cream,
cottage cheese and yogurt). If you
only knew all the potential problems from pasteurized milk, you’d swear it
off forever. Dr. Page found out that milk was actually more detrimental than
sugar for many people (man is the only mammal that continues to drink milk
after weaning). Avoiding dairy
products will make it much easier for you to attain your optimal level of
health and hormonal balance. Raw butter and Kefir (liquid yogurt), however, are excellent sources
of essential nutrients and vitamins. Raw goat and sheep cheeses and milk
products are great alternatives because their genetic code and fat content
appear to be more like those of humans. I’d
still be cautious with these, however.
There
has been a lot of hype about using soy milk and rice milk to replace dairy
products. They sound like healthy
alternatives, but in reality, they are highly processed foods that are
primarily simple carbohydrates. You’re
better off doing without these as well. And
of course, Vitamite®, Mocha Mix®, and the other dairy
substitutes are highly-processed nutrient-depleted products that honestly
should not be considered a food.
Liquids:
Water is best, minimum one gallon a day, and herbal tea.
Avoid all soda. No coffee
until you are fully recovered, if then. Fruit
juices are forbidden because of their high fructose content and dumping of
sugar into the blood stream. An
occasional small glass of vegetable juice with a meal is probably okay, but
water really is best.
If
you enjoy wine or beer and still insist, there are some guidelines.
First, drink only with meals. Red
wine has less sugar and more of the beneficial polyphenols than white wines.
Most of the good foreign beer is actually brewed and contains far more
nutrients than the pasteurized chemicals called beer made by the large
commercial breweries in the
United States
. Trader Joe’s usually has a
good selection. Less is better.
Occasional rather than regular. Because
coffee and alcohol force you to lose water, you’ll have to drink more water
to compensate.
The
most important life-giving substance in the body is water.
The daily routine of the body depends on a turnover of about 40,000
glasses of water per day. In the
process, your body loses a minimum of six glasses per day, even if you don’t
do anything. With movement,
exercise, and sugar intake, etc., you can require up to over 15 glasses of
water per day. Consider this: the
concentration of water in your brain has been estimated to be 85% and the
water content of your tissues like your liver, kidney, muscle, heart,
intestines, etc. is 75%. The
concentration of water outside of the cells is about 94%.
That means that water wants to move from the outside of the cell
(diluted) into the cell (more concentrated) to balance things.
The urge water has to move is called hydroelectric power.
That’s the same electrical power generated at hydroelectric dams
(like Hoover Dam). The energy
make-up in your body is in part hydroelectric.
I just know you wouldn’t mind a little boost in energy.
Eat
Smaller Amounts More Frequently
Eating
a smaller amount reduces the stress of digestion on your energy supply.
Eating small meals conserves energy.
Give your energy generator a chance to keep up with digestion by not
overwhelming it with a large meal. (The
average meal time in the
United States
is 15 minutes. In
Europe
, the average meal time is 1 to1½ hours.
Little wonder Americans suffer such a high rate of digestive
disorders.) When digestion is
impaired, yeast overgrowth, gas, inflammation, food reactions, etc., are the
results.
Another
reason for eating smaller meals is to prevent the ups and downs of your blood
sugar level, so you end up craving less sugar.
As mentioned earlier, you can overwhelm your digestive capacity.
You can also overwhelm your body’s ability to handle sugar in the
blood. Since the body will not (or
should not) allow the blood sugar level to get too high, insulin and other
hormones are secreted to lower the blood sugar.
Often times, the insulin response is too strong and, within a short
period of time, insulin has driven the blood sugar level down.
As a result of low blood sugar, you get a powerful craving for sugar or
other carbohydrates. You then
usually overeat, and the cycle of ups and downs continues, resulting in yo-yo
blood sugar results (depression and the lack of energy are all part of this
cycle). Eating a small meal again
will virtually stop this cycle.
Eating
smaller meals also has advantages for your immune response to ingested food.
It turns out that a small amount of food enters the blood without first
going through the normal digestive pathway through the liver.
As a result, this food is seen by the body not as nourishment, but as a
threat and you will stimulate an immune reaction.
Normally, a small immune reaction is not even noticed, but if a large
amount of food is eaten (or if a food is eaten over and over again) the immune
reaction can cause symptoms. Over
time, disease develops.
By
eating smaller amounts, the size of the reaction that occurs is small and
inconsequential. A large meal, and
thus a large assault of the immune system, could cause many symptoms of an
activated immune system including fatigue, joint aches, flu-like symptoms,
headaches, etc.. This reaction was
called the Metabolic Rejectivity Syndrome by the late nutritional pioneer
Arthur L. Kaslow, M.D. Through
thousands of his patients’ food diaries, he compiled a list of high risk
foods that is much the same as Dr. Page’s.
Important
Note:
When
in doubt, don’t eat it. If it
isn’t on the list, wait and ask your doctor or nutritionist on your next
visit. The Page Diet Plan is
designed to help you to optimal health just as it has for tens of thousands of
Dr. Page’s patients, many of whom are in their later years without signs of
degenerative diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, cancer, osteoporosis,
etc. It is not intended to make
you suffer or sacrifice, in fact quite the opposite, as you will be delighted
with the physical and emotional improvements you experience from the food on
which your body was designed to run optimally.
And what you eat or drink at the occasional party or evening out is not
going to be significantly harmful to your nutritional balance in the long run,
so you can enjoy it.
Lastly,
as with all things that are beneficial to your health, it’s hard to start,
but the longer you use this diet, the greater the benefits you will realize
from it. Relax,
and enjoy the benefits.
Each
of your meals must
include
some protein. The easiest sources
are meat, fish, poultry, or eggs. (Count
two eggs as equal to 3 oz). Vegetarians
must combine proteins carefully and consistently using a different
calculation. An easy way to
calculate the amount of protein you need is to divide your ideal body weight
by 15 to get the number of ounces of protein to be consumed per day.
This is not a “high protein diet.”
Like many people, you already eat this much protein during a day, but
you eat it mostly in one or two meals instead of spreading it out evenly over
three to five meals. If you are
more physically active, eat more protein. The following chart shows how much
protein you will be allowed if you eat from three to five meals a day
90 lb. IBW =
6 ounces a day or 1 ¾ - 2 ounces of protein per serving
105
lb. IBW = 7 ounces a day or
1 ¾ - 2 1/3 ounces of protein per serving
120
lb. IBW = 8 ounces a day or
2 - 2 ¾ ounces of protein per serving
135
lb. IBW = 9 ounces a day or
2 ½ - 3 ounces of protein per serving
150
lb. IBW = 10 ounces a day or 3 - 3 1/3 ounces of protein
per serving
165
lb. IBW = 11 ounces a day or 3 1/3
– 3 ¾
ounces of protein per serving
180
lb. IBW = 12 ounces a day or 3 ¾ - 4 ounces of protein per serving
195
lb. IBW = 13 ounces a day or 4 - 4 1/3 ounces of protein
per serving
For
the Page Phase 1 and Phase 2 diets download patient handout forms below. The phase
1 diet is designed for one to two weeks maximum, the phase 2 diet is your maintenance program. |
