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Outside of getting my mercury fillings out, this is one of the best things I have ever done for my health...

My wife was watching Dr. Oz(my Turkish brother!!---Turk abimin!!), and his guest was a lady named Lyn-Genet Recitas who was a holistic nutritionist that claims there is no such thing as a universally "healthy" food, rather only foods that are "healthy" for your body chemistry. This got my attention, so I started watching, and she explained how foods that most people think are healthy like cauliflower and salmon are foods that are highly reactive in many people, causing inflammation and making them sick...

Since I have psoriasis, which is basically a systemic inflammation, I was intrigued. I read some more about it and bought the ebook online, which was only $13. Some of the best money I have ever spent.

The premise is that your body tells you all you need to know if you listen to it. From an inflamed state, each day you weigh yourself. If you lose weight, the food is non-reactive to you. If you stabilize or worse gain weight, its a reactive food, the more you gain, the more reactive yo are to it, and one you need to stop eating temporarily. You may also have reactions such as headaches, upset stomach, etc that let you know after you eat it.

Starting out I was 192.8 lbs the morning I began, and 8 days later I am 184.0 lbs. My body basically was holding in 8.8 lbs of inflammation weight. Its not a low calorie diet or anything like that(about 2400 cals for men), you do eat a lot of vegetables, but its also relatively high in protein as well, but very well balanced. Starting on day 4, you begin testing foods for reactions and weight gain, adding in one every other day. Today I tested white bread.

Your body becomes much more sensitive to things on this because everything you eat for the first 3 days is to quell the inflammation your body already has...I have broken out in hives more times in the past week than I have in my entire life combined...I was picking red cabbage out of the bagged salad I had bought, and had a small handful...after throwing it out, I touched my opposite arm for some reason...a few minutes later it felt like it was on fire, and I looked down and 3 or 4 hives had popped out...red cabbage is not a friend of mine apparently...


Anyways, here are some common foods that are highly reactive to many people, based on her results with thousands of clients:

90% Reactive Foods:
Farm Raised Fish
Deli Meats
Most sushi
Hot Dogs
Bagels
Corn
Thick Crust Pizza Dough

85% Reactive Foods:
Shrimp
Turkey
Tomato Sauce
Eggplant
Oatmeal
Greek Yogurt(water drained out creates a higher concentration of dairy)
Black Beans
Cannellini Beans
Cauliflower
Cabbage
Hard Boiled Eggs(denatures protein at this high a temperature)
Non-Organic Spinach
Cottage Cheese
Grapefruit(interferes with liver function)
Salmon
Asparagus
Bagels(higher gluten flour)

70% Reactive Foods:
Regular Yogurt
Green Beans
Oranges
Pork
White or Whole Wheat Pasta

60% Reactive Foods:
Peppers
Mushrooms(excluding shiitake)
Tuna
Swordfish
Edamame
Pineapple
Cod(unless thyroid deficient, and then it lowers to 30%)
Whole Eggs(other than hard boiled)
Sweet Potatoes

50% Reactive Foods:
Veal
Cow's Milk
Couscous
White Rice
Almond Milk
Quinoa
Artichokes
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Bananas

40% Reactive Foods:
Wild White Fish
Lentils
Peas
Lactose-free Milk
Tahini

30% Reactive Foods:
Egg Whites
Nut Butters made with roasted nuts
Strawberries
Tofu

20% Reactive Foods:
Bread
Scallops
Steak
Roasted Nuts(can go up to 70% if you have autoimmune diseases)
Snow Peas
Bok Choy
Cow's Milk Cheese
Sesame Seeds
Tempeh

10% or less Reactive Foods:
Pit Fruits(Mango, Avocado, etc)
Garlic
Chickpeas
Raw Onions
Shiitake Mushrooms
Chard
Organic Spinach(much higher if you have thyroid issues)
Radicchio
Endive
Lamb
Chicken
Goat/Sheep Milk Cheese
Pears
Apples
Berries other than Strawberries or Raspberries
Broccoli
Carrots
Kale
Zucchini
Winter Squash
Beets
Mixed Greens(baby romaine, butter lettuce, red leaf, etc)
Arugula(much higher if you have thyroid issues)

They also list devil foods---ones that are wildly reactive for most people and ones that many people are eating a lot of daily because they think they are "healthy":

Oatmeal
Salmon
Asparagus
Tomato Sauce
Tofu
Black Beans
Turkey
Whey Protein<---about cried when I saw this, but it explains A LOT

Anyone that has an autoimmune condition, is "stuck" at their weight, feels "blah" all the time or cannot get rid of their fat, especially around the lower abs, this is something I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend...I can't state how high I recommend it...the older you get, the more foods become reactive to you as you lose digestive enzymes and continue becoming more and more inflamed, more foods become reactive...

Always wondered why my stomach felt like it was on fire after I drank my whey protein shakes...guess I know now...

Very interesting. Do you have a link to the e-book?

Also, what can you still eat? it seems you named every food on your list

bigpelo wrote:Very interesting. Do you have a link to the e-book?

Also, what can you still eat? it seems you named every food on your list

well, you start with the 10% or less reactive list for the first 3 days...whole flaxseed, kale, carrots, ginger, apples, blueberries, beets, pears, pumpkin seeds, etc to set a baseline that re-sensitizes you to foods and then you start testing foods individually...Its a 20 day plan and each day has a pre-set menu you follow. After that, there are guidelines to follow to continue for as long as you need to...

so far I have had no bad reactions, tested white bread today, so we will see what happens tomorrow...

I will PM you the link BigPelo...

What is the reactive percentage actually based on?

Isn't it just better to do a food sensitivity test?

falfa wrote:What is the reactive percentage actually based on?

Isn't it just better to do a food sensitivity test?

Based on her experience with thousands of clients and the percentage of them that are reactive to a food.

Not necessarily since your body chemistry changes as you age and based on what you eat and your current inflammation level...ie, the more inflamed your body is, the more foods and food combinations(ex, rice and chicken) will be reactive to you...

I started reading it, quite a good read so far. From my understanding, you need a 3 days off reactive foods to increase the sensitivity, so when you actually do the food sensitivity test, it is more relevant/intense reaction. (Was that clear?)

bigpelo wrote:I started reading it, quite a good read so far. From my understanding, you need a 3 days off reactive foods to increase the sensitivity, so when you actually do the food sensitivity test, it is more relevant/intense reaction. (Was that clear?)

Yes, and believe me you will...by the 3rd morning I broke out in hives getting out of the shower after using a body wash that my skin obviously didn't care for. Used it several times before and never had that reaction. I broke out 2 other times in the past week...kinda crazy, more times in one week than my other 37 years

Here is a lengthy facebook post she made today that probably explains it better than I could:

"We have said time and time again on the Lyn-Genet Plan that calories mean nothing!

Your weight (and your health) is just your chemical response to food. Seriously. As we age we lose digestive enzymes; aging itself is an inflammatory process! Your reactive foods are foods that are either food sensitivities or allergies. These foods will stop burning like a calorie in calorie out, for example a 100 calorie portion of asparagus can easily put on a pound! Because 70% of our immune system is located in our intestines these reactive foods start to degrade our health and hasten the aging process. Oh, and by the way, you’re fighting a weight gain battle too!

Harvard backed us up last year with a study by Dariush Mozaffarian’s illustrating that “All foods are not equal, and just eating in moderation is not enough.”

Robb Dunn published The Hidden Truths About Calories in Scientific American and explains how research now states that certain foods do not burn like a calorie in calorie out.

The Hidden Truths About Calories, Scientific American, 8/8/2012
Excerpts from the article by Robb Dunn

“A hundred years ago Wilbur Atwater developed a system for counting calories in different kinds of foods based only on the proportions of the fat, carbohydrates, protein. A hundred years later—we are still using the same system-- a system that doesn’t take into account the differences within a given type of food, how the foods are digested and processed in the human body, and how our own individual immune systems respond to them.”

Why a calorie is not a calorie
“Our bodies expend different quantities of energy to deal with different kinds of food ; some foods require us to do more work than others. “ A recent study found that when the average person eats almonds she receives just 128 calories per serving rather than the 170 calories on the label. Proteins can require ten to twenty times as much heat-energy to digest as fats (that’s why we love our protein on The Plan!), but the energy expenditure is not accounted for in your calorie count.

Why digestion matters
You will often hear us say on The Plan that any food that interferes with digestion is a reactive food—here’s why. Not only do foods differ drastically in how and where they are digested in our guts but the health of our digestive tract and it’s microflora plays a huge role in how we process calories.

“Foods have to travel to the colon where they meet up with the largest concentrations of our little friends, the microbes. Digestion continues with the help of our trillions of microbes but nutrients are shared between us and them. The microbes help to break down many compounds our own bodies cannot and in doing so go on to produce a mix of more microbes, gases (such as methane) and then fatty acids. The accounting associated with this process of sharing with the microbes is not considered in calorie counting but it is an extremely important part of it.
Metabolism differs dramatically depending on which microbes are present, something that varies based on your individual chemical make-up AND the foods you eat. Some microbes are found only in particular peoples where they appear to play a unique role--in some Japanese populations lives a gut microbe from a marine bacterium; those genes help the bacterium to break down seaweed .Ultimately, your microbes are different than mine, which, matters to digestion and therefore how your body processes the calories coming in.”

Histamine & Reactive Foods
“If two people were to somehow eat the same sweet potato cooked the same way would they not get the same number of calories? Carmody and colleagues at Harvard university (and all of us here at The Plan) say No. Humans vary in nearly all traits, whether height, skin color, or our guts. Back when it was the craze to measure such variety European scientists discovered that Russian intestines are about five feet longer than those of Italians. This means that those Russians eating the same amount of food as the Italians likely get more out of it. We also vary in terms of how much of particular enzymes we produce; the descendents of peoples who consumed lots of starchy food tend to produce more amylase, the enzyme that breaks down starch. Then there is the enzyme our bodies use to digest the lactose in milk, lactase. African American and Asians have a much higher incidence of lactose deficiency than Northern Europeans. The body is going to process the milk in vastly different ways depending on how much lactase your produce and the amount of calories will vary dramatically.”

There are other factors that can be involved- our team has found that both parents from other countries and their children have more incidence of seasonal and environmental allergies AND have more of a problem with maintaining a healthy weight. The enzymes needed to break down “foreign” foods may just not be part of your genetic makeup!

Histamine in Foods
When the body ingests a reactive food—a food that it is not well equipped to digest, it identifies it as a foreign invader. The result of this allergic response is the release of histamine, a chemical that is contained in almost all body tissues in almost all body tissues, especially the lungs, nose, sinuses, skin, intestinal mucosa and certain blood cells (mast cells, basophils). Histamine is able to cause a wide variety of symptoms including the release of pro-inflammatory chemicals that inhibit digestion, cause water retention (and you guessed it) the body to inefficiently process calories. If you eat oatmeal every day and your body is releasing histamine as a result that 100 calorie pack of oatmeal could react like you ingested 500-7,000 calories.

In Summary
“One in three Americans is now obese. Over the last thirty years the number of calories that come from highly processed foods has increased. In this light, we would do well to eat fewer processed foods and more foods that we know work well for our chemical make-up”. These insights have been the basis of The Plan, we have established time and time again that how much weight you lose depends on your unique biological response to food."

Oatmeal is definitely a devil food for me. Never had any problems with whey, althou casein plugs me up.

If you look at that list farm raised salmon seems very bad. Something I eat 3kg a week. How would you get a 1:1 omega3 and omega6 ratio without eating salmon?

Interesting they rank sweet potatoes lower then most other high carb sources. Which is base of most paleo diets.

Carrots, Broccoli, spinach, kale, lamb, chicken and avocados i eat a lot. But chicken and avocados are high in omega6. So without Salmon I think my eczema would go mad.

falfa wrote:So without Salmon I think my eczema would go mad.

She write a lot about eczema in "the plan" actually. It's seems to be a commun inflamation problem triggerred by reactive foods.

Found my first reactive food on day 10...

Averaged about a pound a day weight loss for first 9 days, going from 192.8 lbs to 183.0...ate a single egg last night as a test, everything else was the same, gained 1.4 lbs from it.

Amazing how something having 70 calories can act like something having 5300 calories...

matter2003 wrote:ate a single egg last night as a test, everything else was the same, gained 1.4 lbs from it.

Then you should eat dozens of them everyday and pack on the mass

Isn't it?

Found my second reactive food---potatoes...gained 1.0 lbs from eating a half of a potato...

But I should have already known that, since I have psoriasis and nightshade plants are a no-no for us...now I know why...they cause inflammation in our bodies...

After 12 days, I am down exactly 10.0 lbs from 192.8 to 182.8...feeling really good and looking forward to being in the 170's soon!!