Fit for Life - Harvey Diamond

Fit for life diet book by Harvey Diamond and Marilyn Diamond.

Update at the bottom!


My sister comes to visit once a year or there abouts. She lives a long way away so we don't get to see each other more often. Ever since I can remember we have had a competition about who weighs less, funnily enough she didn't realise that we had, but believe me, we have. Our weight has always been fairly close, although she is ...
...if she still had the Fit for Life diet book. Bless her little cotton socks, she put it straight in the post and it arrived the next day.

Here the adventure begins….


The basic principles of this diet are….
Food combining
Eat mainly fruit and veg.
Vegetarianism although you can eat it if you follow the plan and like it, I do.
Only eating certain foods at certain times of the day
... more

Fit for life diet book by Harvey Diamond and Marilyn Diamond.

Update at the bottom!

My sister comes to visit once a year or there abouts. She lives a long way away so we don't get to see each other more often. Ever since I can remember we have had a competition about who weighs less, funnily enough she didn't realise that we had, but believe me, we have. Our weight has always been fairly close, although she is a couple of inches taller than me.About four years ago my sister, getting ever closer to 50years old, found that she had the odd ache or pain, thought maybe it was a bit of arthritis, a bit of old age. She looked around and found this wonderful book. The next time she came down to visit, she was almost a stone lighter than me and had boundless energy. Oh I was so jealous!
Now, over these last few years I have gained the odd pound here and there. And suddenly this summer my shorts and tee shirts are no longer just tight, they don't fit. On top of that I suffer from indigestion quite frequently and don't eat much in the way of proper meals, just pick on and off all day. Oh I hear you cry, you should be eating properly otherwise you will never lose that weight and never feel completely well. But, and it is a big but, what is properly???

So.. I gave up sweets, no weight loss, so I stopped that as it made me feel miserable, I gave up cheese and crisps for a while… that was after I had written the Doritos review and realised how many calories were in those large packs. That didn't work either…..In the end I phoned my sister and asked her if she still had the Fit for Life diet book. Bless her little cotton socks, she put it straight in the post and it arrived the next day.

Here the adventure begins….

The basic principles of this diet are….
Food combining
Eat mainly fruit and veg.
Vegetarianism although you can eat it if you follow the plan and like it, I do.
Only eating certain foods at certain times of the day
Do some exercise - well they all say that.

Now remember that my sister got this book to get rid of some niggling aches and pains that she thought were connected to getting older. The fact that the weight just dropped off and she was full of energy was a bonus.
The first thing this book tells you to do is eat fruit and fruit juices only until noon. I thought this would be really difficult. I don't usually eat much fruit and when I do it doesn't always agree with me. But in for a penny in for a pound, I was determined to get my shorts on.
So the next day, armed with my bags and bags of fruit I started picking slowly through them, I ate cherries, because I like them, grapes for the same reason, apricots because they were going a bit soft and needed using up and apples because they are good for me and the English ones have just arrived in our shops. They are a bit sharp yet, but nothing I have eaten in the apple department can touch them.
I thought I would want something a bit more solid, but actually didn't. I enjoyed that first day and the subsequent five days, then I cheated, but more of that later.
Once noon arrived, I didn't really want a meal and because of my working different shifts on different days I don't have a proper pattern, so I took dried fruit and nuts with me to work and ate those. I made sandwiches for all at work but was able to resist because once your mouth is full of bits of nuts to chew then it isn't easy to fit anything else in anyway.
In the evening I could have a meal, but a food combined meal. This means, no potatoes with meat, no cheese with potatoes, and no eggs with anything at all it seems.
This guy is really against eggs, I grew up on a poultry farm and couldn't eat an egg if I was paid so this bit is easy for me.

I ate veg and meat, I am not a great meat eater but do like the taste every so often and would prefer a bit of meat to a few potatoes. I am not a great potato eater either, come to think of it I am mostly a great sweets and snacks eater, I love crisps.

The thing with food combining is that you can't mix starch with protein, which means you have to change your way of thinking about complete meals quite a bit.
The reason for only having fruit until noon and never after any other type of food is that fruit doesn't need to digest in the stomach, it shoots through in about 20 minutes (bananas longer) and the goodness is extracted in the intestines. Because fruit is a high water content food it actually cleanses your insides on the way through. If you eat something else first then that food stays in the stomach being digested and holds the fruit up which in turn starts to ferment causing gases to build up and cause discomfort.
I can vouch for this now because usually I eat fruit later in the day and then get what I call trapped wind. With eating nothing but fruit until noon I have had no trouble with this problem.
I have also felt much more energetic during the day.
I went to see my daughter after about five days of following these principles and she immediately said that I looked well and younger. I am not sure if this is the diet, the extra fruit and veg or the new glasses I have so I don't have to squint at everything to focus on it but I was pleased.

I am not brilliant at food combining, so later in the day tend to cheat a bit but have been doing my best to follow this diet. I lost four pounds and was feeling very pleased with myself.
Then I went to see my daughter, we went out for a light lunch, I didn't eat that much but it was not at all combined food, I thought that just for once it wouldn't really matter. Oh dear, how wrong was I??? That food sat around in my insides seemingly forever. I drove home full of discomfort, I didn't want anything else to eat, I went to bed feeling definitely full of wind, my insides gurgled while they tried to cope with this food mixture, I didn't get to sleep for hours. The next day my insides still weren't right and I suffered all day. Eventually the next evening I felt calm inside again. And to top the lot the next morning I had put a pound back on.
Now I can't say it was definitely not food combining, or if I just ate more than usual, but I will be more careful in future.

I am not sticking exactly to this diet, not that strong willed, but am keeping strictly to the fruit and nothing but fruit in the mornings, if I fancy something else I go and pop some fruit in my mouth, in the afternoons and evening if I feel like something sweet I eat some dried fruit.

I have checked out some websites with details of this book which was written in 1987, diets and related things have moved on since then, food combining was all the rage, there are some questions about complete nutrition on this diet, well there always are aren't there? Apparently there is a new updated version which includes some vitamin supplements, well this guy goes on and on about not needing them in this book, so maybe it would be better to read the newer version first to see why he has changed his mind.

If anyone is interested in it, there are some really cheap copies on Amazon, and also eBay.

I would recommend this book for anyone wanting to shed a few pounds, fairly quickly, it is a detox type diet, which means you can get the related problems with it, I just got a bit of a headache for a couple of days, but on the whole feel loads healthier and am eating better than I was.

I am not sure about the food combining aspect of it, there are loads of issues around this subject and I don't know enough to argue the case for it or against, but my sister has been combining for years and looks great and has loads more energy than me. I just feel you can't do everything that is healthy otherwise life would be miserable.

I am not sure if I have put enough detail in here, I thought it would be easy, but there is so much detail. The copy I have has a 28 day eating plan in the second half with recipes which I have looked through but don't have the time to follow properly. There are some good suggestions though.

And to end, well, my shorts nearly fit, just a few more pounds to go…….

Update!

I was looking through a few old reviews and read this, oh dear, those shorts are still in a drawer somewhere, I bought new ones which are bigger and they fit ok!

I had almost forgotten this diet, my sister is still stick thin and I am still gaining a pound a year, so maybe it is time I started on this again.

Thanks for reading.

Sue

 

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