1 - Two and a half cups of veges daily. This does not include the potato count. Preferably plant your own greens and herbs - and pick them a few leaves at a time - this is very possible, even on a small balcony. Remember colour selection - ensure that there is heaps of colour on your plate each meal. Wok and juicer invaluable here.

Celery, lettuce and capscium are useful as snack agents - these can be filled with the salad and fish/egg mixes that might normally go on breads.

Half raw red capsicums filled with avocado/cottage cheese/ tahini/ protein/ eggy/ babaganosh dips are amazing. Cooked stuffed (leftover rice and pinenuts/raisins) tomatoes and capsicum are stunning hot or as lunch box fillers. Use beetroot as a roasted veggie - step outside what food looked like when you were little.

2 - No more than three hours between snacks.

Divide food into five and reduce dramatically what is eaten at tea time. This will allow the body to actually heal itself. Eating the biggest amount when everything is about to shut down ensures that you don’t sleep well, don’t get the best out of your eating, and that you do not feel like breakfast which would help catapault you out of the fat/energy/health crisis that you are trying to remedy.

3 - Avoid all gluten. This is not to say that some won’t happen accidentally. Everything we have - even tomato sauce - has thickening agents. The more you prepare your own food, the more control you have over all aspects of your inner biochemistry.

WHEAT
RYE
OATS
BARLEY

Before you wonder what you will eat - stop and think how drastic this really is in your life. Try it out for just a month. the previous ‘hits’ you needed of bread/carbs will disappear with the three hour protein snacks and 2 1/2 cups of veggies daily. Getting the veggies in daily means looking more at carbohydrates from non grass (gluten and rice) sources. Eating every three hours you will not be hungry all the time.

What is the repeated invasion of these highly sensitizing products (breads etc being the pivot of your diet) doing to you? When you were yourself an infant, your Mum - if breastfeeding, and all through her pregnancy with you - would have also reached for these as they were easy and filling.

When you were weaned, it would have been onto these - and before your system had a chance to develop well, it was a constant round of toast, sandwiches and pastry casings(pies) pasta/cakes and biscuits.

Over time, as this is what everyone eats, this is what you have thought is ‘normal’. As are the health issues you aren’t happy about. Not ‘ageing’ but not knowing how to create wellness - and not paying attention to variation and seasonal availablity.

It may be that this simple change will correct the majority of the issues you thought were just your ‘lot’. I am not suggesting you have celiac disease - inability to process these and an actual allergy to them - just that giving yourself a break from them, you may discover the skin/gut and energy, migraines and chronic illhealth issues will recede.

By having a break from what is always consumed, you may find if you eat it accidentally you may feel very ill - bloated, foggy in the head and as though you have had a truck run over you. It may be that hayfever, or other allergic symptoms return.

What happens is that giving yourself a break from what was creating all problems, and going back to it, your body can now recognise these substances as the culprit - and give you the message to avoid them from now on.

Is this “fair?” Was it sensible to keep doing the same old, same old, (like clipping the fence post every time you drive in your gate, and blaming the car repairer for not doing a proper panel beating job - the dings are still in the body work). Stop hitting the fence post/eating what sets your allergic reactions off, and there will be no further trouble.

STOP DOING WHAT HAS NOT WORKED SO FAR

The midriff fat is just letting us all know that your system is stressed - look to the fuel you are choosing. The bloating and gas, the gastric discomfort and the wider eliminative (skin and bowel) stuff will possibly be magically resolved once the gluten ‘easy’ foods are removed.

What to eat instead? RICE is a very versatile food and highly tolerated by all. It can be cooked and left in the fridge as a start to the next sweet or savoury meal. It can be heaped on a plate, incorporated in dishes, used as a substitute for flours in thickening things, mixed with other flavourings and stuffed with in veggies, fish and poultry/meat, combined with milk and eggs as a pudding, or used in all sorts of Asian dishes, to really interest the tired old taste buds. It can be made into sushi, or eaten a mouthful at a time, chewed at least 50 times to alleviate ‘hunger’ when trying to ‘diet’. Always have it cooked, stored as a ‘left over’.

4 - Choose as natural as possible. Ideally, food grown in your local area and what is in season is how your body would naturally be nourished.

This is no longer the norm - very few people even grow their own food. This means we are eating anything, grown in any part of the globe, in any season. It also means that we are not in control of the additives - fertilisers, toxic residues in the soil to be taken up along with whatever nutrients are remaining, fungicides, pesticides, irradiation and whatever else has been done to what we are supposed to rebuild our bodies with.

Biodynamic choices, where food is grown in optimal conditions may not be possible. Thinking about starting to supplement your shopping bill with actual home produce is one answer. Starting an organic search is another. At least choosing to prepare and cook everything consumed yourself minimises the amount of additives (extra salt, flavour enhancers, colourings and preservatives) ingested.

Naturally grown food is far more tasty, although maybe more expensive. If you have children who are constantly ill, especially if the medical profession is not able to assist - it may be that the toxic harvest of your food and lifestyle choices earlier in your life, and in pregnancy, and early breastfeeding years is the cause. Toxins can act culminatively.

Reducing the load at any stage of life will be welcomed by your body. Looking at any website on hormonal disruption or natural living and the consequences of our polluted environment will show you more.

What to do? Look seriously at finding natural sources of produce. Start buying in season when a glut is on, and preserving and freezing so you have ‘fresher’ food in home storage than is available in shops.

Go back to buying ingredients and starting from ‘scratch’.

5 - Water. As a base line, drinking at least two litres a day of non chilled pure water will assist all aspects of your return to health. In cooler climates, it may be necessary to take the chill off (see earlier), as keeping the inner furnace stoked well will ensure that you do not create further problems, whilst trying to ‘do the right thing’.

Please see note re ‘sick heat’ earlier. Feeling like drinking cold water is a sign of inner imbalance. By desiring self medicating (cooling yourself down) - your body is alerting you to a problem - without relieving the reasons for the heat. If you give into it, there are consequences, although not often immediately obvious to those using the crisis management medical model.

If you keep forgetting to drink, put a glass by the hand basin - when washing your hands after eliminating body fluids, you may then think to refill. When at the computer, leave a glass by your mouse, and it will constantly be just there.

Putting water in a large glass, and leaving it where it as a visual trigger is a better idea than saying you carrying a bottle with you. The glass is a simple matter of raising it and drinking. The botttle is harder to scull down - and water should be always readily to hand.

We as a culture seem to take umbrage if a visitor wants ‘just water’ rather than taking tea or coffee. Water is how we cleanse ourselves - the liver in detoxifying every aspect of our modern life requires an endless supply - all throughout the day. In addition to any other beverage - always offer pure room temperature water.

Drinking when thirsty is too late - the dehydration has begun.

All, if trained early to drink water frequently, will have far less serious health problems - even just by pooing easier - but there are complexion clearing, body odour relieving and headache preventative spinoffs.

When drinking coffee, at least 4 extra glasses of water PER CUP of coffee drunk would help undo the very dehydrating and very heating effects (even if drunk chilled - we are talking of reactions inside the body here) it creates in our liver. Most ‘habituals’ we reach for when stressed rob our systems of their regenerative abilities. Drinking more water helps reduce these effects.

6 - Fish. Eaten at least twice as week. Preferably oily fish, as it contains a lot of helpful raw ingredients to keep your hormonal system in raw ingredients. If you have heard danger stories of MERCURY worries in the ocean going fish - remember that the larger the fish, the more it is absorbing from the food chain. The little creatures - sardines and smaller fish have less opportunity to absorb the toxic wastes we are pouring in waterways to be washed into the sea - where we grow our seafood.

The amalgums in your mouth - if you have regular (ostentibly safe) fillings - will be doing more damage, as minute amounts leach out when we grind our teeth (to chew) and are washed with our saliva into our stomachs, to be stored in our fatty tissues (brain, nervous system, eggs and sperm and fat in general - a time bomb for our unborn babies to inherit).

Two cans of fish weekly - esp eating the bones - to allow easy boney matrix regeneration - this is all you need to do to assist calcium if you have been thinking of supplementation. Calcium also needs Magnesium and Zinc to be useful - following the green leafy veggies and varied eating plan will provide heaps of these nutrients - thus the apparent medical worries can be relieved.

Eating every three hours means that there is always fuel, so you will be far more alert, happy and energised, Without gluten and sugar - and with plenty of protein - you will see yourself shedding excess fat, and finding that your hormones - especially your thyroid which controls your metabolism - magically normalising. This in itself will allow pooing, clarity in thinking, ability to cope, memory, temperature regulation, libido, self- image and mood; especially relief from depression - to normalise.

7 - Nuts, seeds, oils. Eating a selection of seeds and nuts will provide very necessary good oils on your diet. The highest food Calcium source is in sesame seeds, and including these at every opportunity is a great idea, especially for little kids - tahini and honey as a treat, rather than lollies and chocolate.

If small children are introduced to the less obvious when they are first being weaned, these will be their first choices - you as parents are the socialising agents (especially if you choose to ban all diverting media, leave the TV at relations’ house).

We need fat to have hormones that work.

Fats are the base for all hormones - especially those involved with metabolism that drive your body. Trying to lose weight and ‘eat healthy’ by following the ticks from the heart foundation alone is not sensible, and is a great way to damage yourself.

Fat is not your enemy - your life habits are.

I am not condoning fatty meat eating - meat consumption has not been mentioned so far. I am speaking of the vegetable and fish sourced fats - these are highly necessary in our diets. I imagine this is why we want to eat it - it is tasty and has ‘mouth feel’. We need it to stay warm and well. It is when fat consumption is not balanced with exercise, and all the other aspects of a good eating plan, that problems arise.

Losing weight is not a matter of stopping/reducing eating. It is not as easy as cutting all fat from the diet. These are the recipes to guarantee you wil feel awful, get depressed and binge on what you know you shouldn’t.

Butter is food. Margarine is a plasticised look alike. Look to cultures that have been around centuries and are well - all traditional societies had animal sources of fat - as the altitude and latitudes changed, food choices varied - but all had fat as a vital ingredient. Olive and other seed/nut oils are very versatile in cooking, and we need at least a tablespoon of these daily.

For any healing to occur, you MUST include oils and avocado/fish and olive oils in your diet.

8 - Cooking methods. Cooking allows the process of digestion to begin before we eat food. When young, old or ill/weakened, we really need this to help us get the most from our diet. In the past other cultures have also fermented as a form of assisting easy digestion. For everyone, cooking and eating warm foods assists our inner furnace to make the most of eating. A healthy digestion is our ticket to wellness.

If you are feeling the cold a lot; if you have problems with energy and thus digestion, you can choose to change this by not just the food you cook, but by how it is to be prepared and hence what it will do within you.

Heating with direct heat or fat/oil heats the energy of the food more than when using water methods which have a more cooling effect on the food.

Thus, if you want to warm yourself - it is not just the food’s temperature, when served, but also what the heat source used in the cooking has done to the food. Those people with major heartburn/reflux (inner fire) will already have discovered what makes this worse and would automatically be avoiding - anything heating in vibration - like roasted, fried and baked, plus chilli, curries and strong spices, alcohol and caffeine.

Microwaving destroys all life energy from the food you were going to use to rebuild and nourish yourself. If you are doing this sometimes to reheat - to ensure that here is warmth going in, rather than eating something cold on a cold day; microwaving occasionally is fine. Using it as a normal means of saving on washing up, and speed is a very short sighted saving.

We tend to choose food for how it looks - hence the pesticides, picking well before ripeness (hence before taste and vitamins have a chance to blossom) and for size as opposed to nutrition within.

9 - Avoiding artifical. What we choose to incorporate into our bodies has been skewed in the direction of marketing driven by advertising and often false information.

Taking soy milk as an example. Years ago, the only way to eat soya was to buy the beans from the health food shop (when they DID sell food), soak them and change the water many times over the next three days, wash them well, cook in a pressure cooker, and chew excessively.

A soy powdered ‘milk’ was available for diehards - it tasted disgusting unless mixed with lots of other substances to disguise it - and those of us who were strong believers of ‘natural’ foods persevered.

These days, in order to make soy palatable, at least malt (ex barley thus gluten) has been added, along with much sweetening. Soy milk is hardly ‘natural’, although the producers would argue it can not be eaten unless they make it taste better - a circular argument.

Fermenting soy is far better for all - small children do not need the phyto (plant based) estrogens soy milk contains. As our whole environment is a chemical soup - there is enough other surces of estrogen mimicry creating enough hormonal disruption without willingly choosing foods that will do the same thing.

If you wish to eat soy, tempeh and miso are fermented and thus have many other health benefits.

10 Substances - self medication. Most think COFFEE is a great beverage. Coffee beans - whether the caffeine has been extracted or not - have been dry roasted and as a result, their vibration is very toxic and heating in the body.

Any hormonal/ energy/ digestive/ nervous or other body issue will be alleviated by stopping drugging yourself with this.

No children, whose bodies are still developing, should have access to it.

CHOCOLATE and caffeine drinks have the same effect in the body - the sluggish energy gets a boost along. Temporarily you feel energised, more alive - more ‘human’. Unfortunately there is a down side - your adrenal glands are getting thumped; your liver is under more pressure, and there needs to be a lot more pure water drunk to undo what the coffee has done.

Most when thirsty go for another wet treat - often yet more caffeine.

Water would tend to taste very bland after all the hot exciting thrills your taste buds encounter - sugar and other enhancers are in all purchased goods to ensure customer loyalty.

What about TEA? Most if drinking a cup socially can continue to do so. Many however only drink tea. Often several cups at once. Tea is a mild diuretic, meaning it encourages fluid loss in the body. Drinking two glasses of water for every cup of tea would help correct this.

ALCOHOL is another substance that moves the stuck/sluggish energy along. It also has an anathestizing effect; very pleasant, and great as a temporary alteration to life perceptions. BUT there are the life consequences again. If there are any ‘health’/life problems that you are reading this book to try to resolve, alcohol plays NO part in their solution.

HAVING A HEALTHY LIVER MEANS HAVING A HEALTHY LIFE