Mmmmk, this should be fun

[Barefoot Instincto]

I tend to give into my impulses, and sometimes after mulling over what to do about something, I get a flash of inspiration! I tend to eat later than I should, and have more meals than I should. I also tend to eat lots of nuts and seeds. Like...Pounds per week. I love them, and they bring joy to me! But I know that they're only good in small amounts, or in a big amount infrequently. I also tend to pig out way too much on the weekend (although many of those cheat meals tend to be nuts and dark chocolate, in various forms). Other cheat meals tend to be a lot more junky.

It is thus that it dawned on me, I'm due for a period of healing. I didn't want to do any fasting (did some of that in the last few months) and I didn't want to suffer too much, so I thought of a novel idea. It should also provide me with adequete amounts of whatever I need in abundance.

For 2 weeks, I'm going to eat 3 meals a day (as opposed to my usual 5 or 6). Absolutely no snacking in between. One will be of vegetable (1 or 2 types, but separated by an hour perhaps if multiple types are involved). One will be of fruit, and the last meal will be of meat. After a stint of raw meat experimentation I stopped eating it for the most part raw, but I do cook it on very low heat and prefer it still pink (I don't buy into the whole "cooking meat slightly is worse than cooking meat well done" theory). No condiments are to be used. For 2 weeks it'll be the pure subtances of veg, fruit and meat and thats it (along with Himilayan crystal salt, coconut oil and my usual heavy vitamin D supplementation (10k-20k IU per day)).

This allows me to indulge in the joys of eating both fruit and meat everyday (I find very little enjoyment in any raw vegetable, but still eat plenty) while still keeping a rigid, absolutely strict mono-eating schedule. I really don't believe anything could be healthier than this, at least in the short term.

Has anyone else tried a similar approach? Experiences? Advice? Thoughts or opinions?

[HIT_it_RAW]

How did it go?

very interesting!
I adhere to strict food combining rules myself. a meal is either veg kingdom or animal. never together. works for me.

[eveheart]

Here's the approach I use:

I have eating rules that I have designed myself, with imput from this forum, my doctors, and books I have read. My design has to do with healing, and it is built around a very low carb raw paleo diet. Eating any other way brings me too much inflammation and other woes. I was on the brink of not being able to walk when I started RPD and I have recovered a tremendous amount of function since then.

It took me a lot of soul-searching and a few physical miseries to find comfort with the idea of no cheating. At first, I tried to build in some cheating to soothe my soul, but the cost was always severe irritation to my body. I really had to put myself into a paleo frame of mind, not just a paleo way of eating, to get over wanting to cheat.

I borrowed an idea from a highly-successful eating-disorder treatment program that teaches how to make a morals-based (right/wrong) decision to eat correctly, and also how to resist the impulse to contradict your decision. I mention this because you started out your post with a confession that it is your impulses that drive you to cheat. This doesn't work if you make the wrong plan of how to eat, but if your plan is sound and your reasons are true, this method takes the struggle out of resisting impulses.

I won't go into details here, but one would start by identifying the voice of the impulse, then switch between the impulse and the decision, and let the decision take control.

The psychology behind this method is that impulses come from the primitive mid-brain and decisions come from the logical neo-cortex, so you can separate the thoughts that come from each part of the brain and deliberately let the neo-cortex make your decisions (in the same way as a parent overrules the impulses of a child).

[HIT_it_RAW]

Interestingly that sounds like the exact opposite of the instincto theory. There one would want the impulse to be leading.

[van]

except that in Instincto,, you're using your senses to help find the right food, and not from non paleo sources, like junk food craving.

[eveheart]

Interestingly that sounds like the exact opposite of the instincto theory. There one would want the impulse to be leading.

You make it sound hard. What I do is effortless. In the first place, instinctotherapie severely limits the range of permissible foods (from a 21st Century perspective). Once within the range of unprocessed foods, once can still distinguish between the impulse to eat because of cravings and the impulse to eat because of normal hunger. IMO, if a person has a troublesome impulse to eat incorrectly, one can be guided by a decision to eat, and then use instinct to select foods and amounts.

[Barefoot Instincto]

How did it go?

very interesting!
I adhere to strict food combining rules myself. a meal is either veg kingdom or animal. never together. works for me.

Eh, not very well. I failed for the most part and just ate my usual diet. I do tend towards keeping veg and animal separate though, for sure. Almost always do (and tend to only eat a single food at a time).

I cheat way less now and have a more proper diet. Most of my "cheat" impulses were driving me to eat large quantities of nuts. Anytime I wanted a snack, and a lot of times also now, my mind turns towards various nut concoctions (I only eat a few hundred grams of them a week now though and don't binge like I used to). I believe this was maybe due to my magnesium deficiency, of which nuts have pretty much the highest amount.

My diet varies quite a lot now from day to day and the ratios of foods differ depending on how I feel, which I've become a lot more in tune with now. Before it was much more of a conscious decision making process.