by Dana James
Coconut and Other Oils
Coconut oil has become the new darling of the health-conscious because it is rich in lauric acid, a medium-chain triglyceride (MCT). MCTs are smaller, more soluble saturated fats, which are preferentially used by the cells for energy, making them less susceptible to body fat storage than regular fats, known as long-chain triglycerides. MCTs have also been shown to improve cognition and stabilize synaptic connections in the brain.1
Coconut oil also helps to decrease constipation. Add 1 tablespoon to a smoothie in the morning and you’ll literally be ready to go! The serving size for coconut oil, as for olive oil, is 1 tablespoon.
Other nut oils like walnut oil, macadamia oil, and hazelnut oil are great alternatives to coconut oil and olive oil. Use these based on your taste preference, knowing that their nutrient profiles are excellent. A serving is 1 tablespoon. Canola, safflower, sunflower, soybean, grapeseed, and peanut oil are often processed with harsh solvents, which damage their omega-3s and omega-6s. If you are going to eat foods that contain these oils, make sure you use organic, unrefined varieties; otherwise skip them.
Grass-fed Butter and Ghee
After your four-week dairy hiatus, you can consider adding grass-fed butter and ghee to your diet, assuming you are not continuing on the dairy hiatus for a full nine months. Ghee is clarified butter and does not contain lactose, casein, or whey, making it safer for people who have a sensitivity to dairy or who are lactose intolerant. Grass-fed butter and ghee contain more butyric acid and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than butter from grain-fed cows.2 Butyric acid supports the proliferation of good gut bacteria and CLA helps to decrease hunger.3 As with the oils, consider 1 tablespoon a serving.
CHAPTER 10
The Carbohydrate Question
Carbs aren’t anything to be scared of, but how much you can eat will depend on your metabolism, your level of body fat, and how intensely you exercise. If you have a sluggish metabolism (typical for the Nurturer), high levels of body fat, and you don’t exercise often, then you need very few carbs in your diet, particularly if you want to lose weight. However, if you have a relatively fast metabolism, a low level of body fat, and you exercise six or more times a week, then you will absolutely need more carbs. Without them, you’ll feel depleted, and those last few pounds you want to get rid of will not come off unless you eat some carbs. Each archetype has an inherent carbohydrate sensitivity, meaning how easily they convert carbs to body fat. The Nurturer is the most sensitive, while the Ethereal is the least sensitive. If this sounds crazy, keep reading—there’s science behind all of this.
Carbohydrates are composed of sugars, starches, and cellulose, and unlike protein and fat, they don’t have a structural function in the body. With the exception of fiber, all carbohydrates are metabolized into the sugar molecule, glucose. How quickly these carbohydrates are converted to sugar depends on the amount of fiber, protein, or fat the food (or meal) contains. The more fiber, protein, or fat you consume along with your carbs, the more slowly glucose will be released into the blood. This is why legumes, which are rich in fiber and protein, have a slower glucose response than white bread.
Once converted, these glucose molecules need to go somewhere in the body. The three options are blood sugar, glycogen (stored energy), and body fat. The hormone insulin directs the storage of glucose to glycogen or body fat. It tells the muscle and liver cells to open up and store glucose as glycogen or the fat cells to store glucose as triglycerides. When insulin is elevated due to excess glucose in the body, it’s physically impossible for the body to burn body fat because insulin tells the body to store fat and not burn it.
If the body is functioning properly, the glucose storage process is relatively linear, with body fat being stored only after the glycogen stores are full. This is not the case if you have chronically elevated insulin levels. This is known as insulin resistance and is a precursor to type 2 diabetes. When this happens, the cells become overwhelmed by insulin and stop responding—much in the way you shut down when someone starts screaming at you. Under these conditions, the body preferentially stores glucose as body fat, not glycogen. The muscle and liver cells don’t absorb the level of glucose they once did, which means you have less glucose available for energy but more available for fat storage. This is why you can eat carbs, not feel energized, and gain weight. The energy stores have closed their doors, but the fat cells are wide open for business. Overweight Nurturers tend to be insulin resistant, which is why they should consume fewer carbohydrates than the other archetypes.
Fortunately, Nurturers can reverse insulin resistance by dramatically decreasing the starchy carbohydrates in their diets and adding in the healing nutrients discussed in Step 3 of their program. When the cells have resensitized to insulin, the amount of insulin needed to manage glucose properly is reduced significantly and fat storage decreases dramatically.
WHAT CARBS TO EAT
This category encompasses legumes, grains, and starchy vegetables. For the purpose of menu planning, I am distinguishing starchy vegetables from the fruits and vegetables covered in Chapter 7. Although those items also contain carbohydrates, they contain relatively few carbohydrate molecules and so do not need to be counted as part of your carbohydrate allowance. Carb-heavy foods like cakes, cookies, cereals, breads, and pastries contain few nutrients and should be an occasional treat, not part of your day-to-day meals. The only “bad” carbs I want you to avoid entirely are those that have been highly processed and damaged by our industrial food system; these include prepackaged cookies, crackers, and cakes, potato chips and pretzels, sugary cereals, and white bread.
Because different body types process carbohydrates in different ways, the amount you should consume will depend on your archetype, but, ultimately, only you will be able to determine the amount that is right for you. The amount of starchy carbs you eat will depend on your body-shaping goals, how sensitive you are to carbs, and the duration and intensity of your exercise. If you are trying to lose weight, you should eat fewer carbs than if you are eating for maintenance. If you exercise intensely for more than five hours a week, you may add an extra ½ cup of starchy carbs to your archetype’s lunch and dinner base serving for every hour in excess of the five that you work out. These extra carbs will help you store much-needed energy so you don’t feel tapped out from your workouts.
The recommended serving size is the same no matter which carbohydrate you choose; ½ cup of beans is the same as ½ cup of rice. There are, however, some subtle differences I want you to be aware of that might influence your choice. Legumes such as lentils, chickpeas, black beans, cannellini beans, and red kidney beans contain the highest levels of protein and fiber. They are approximately one-third protein, one-third fiber, and one-third net carbs. (Net carbs are carbs that will be converted to glucose for energy or fat storage. Fiber is a carb that isn’t converted to glucose, so it does not count as a net carb. Instead, it’s used as fuel by the gut bacteria.)
If you’ve ever tried the Paleo diet, you’ll know there’s concern in that community that legumes and grains contain naturally occurring proteins called lectins and phytates that can damage the lining of the GI tract and act as anti-nutrients. However, lectins are mostly deactivated by soaking and cooking, and since the vast majority of legumes and grains are cooked (who eats raw lentils?) or soaked if you’re following a raw diet (sprouted hummus, yes please!), this is an ill-conceived argument.
It’s true that phytates can bind to minerals and inhibit the absorption of zinc and iron in foods, but your gut bacteria break down phytates. Phytates have also been shown to clear heavy metals from the body as well as decrease free radicals. Rather than being an anti-nutrient, they can be a protective compound. I hold a very simple view: Plants are beneficial. If they contain components that are reputedly not good for you, other components will offset them. You want to look at the synergy of the entire plant, not individual nutrients or anti-nutrients.
If you get bloated or gassy when you eat legumes, it’s not the legumes’ fault. Humans don’t have the enzymes to break down the fiber in legumes, but the microflora in our guts do! If bloat is a problem, it’s possible that the good bacteria in your gut have been depleted or damaged, so get to work on restoring your gut microbiome (see Chapter 5 on the Ethereal for more on this) and you’ll be able to eat these highly beneficial legumes without discomfort.
A sampling of my favorite meals containing legumes are a black lentil and beet salad; chickpeas and vegetable soup; cannellini beans with avocado and carrots wrapped in lettuce leaves; and black beans with micro greens and roasted carrots.
Grains, such as rice, wheat, oats, millet, and maize, and pseudograins, like quinoa, buckwheat, teff, and amaranth, have less protein than legumes, but they are still an excellent source of amino acids as well as vitamin B6, which helps regulate the sex hormones and create neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that influence our mood. They are also rich in fiber, magnesium, and manganese—three nutrients that help stabilize blood-sugar levels. The grains also contain anti-inflammatory phytonutrients such as quercetin, rutin, and flavonoids. You can add a sprinkling of purple wild rice over your green salad, add quinoa to an organic chicken and vegetable soup, or use soba noodles as a base for wild salmon and wok-tossed greens. If you have an autoimmune disease, I recommend avoiding all grains (gluten-free or otherwise) because grains can damage your fragile digestive tract.
The final type of carb I recommend are starchy vegetables, including sweet potatoes, new potatoes, purple potatoes, winter squash, turnips, yams, and parsnips. These contain very few amino acids, but they are, like all vegetables, rich in phytonutrients. Some of my personal favorites are a warm vegetable salad of purple potatoes, sweet potato frittata, roasted butternut squash on a green salad, or sliced yam with coconut oil. Choose your starchy vegetables based on your taste preference and its color, which reflects the phytonutrients and the chakra-rebalancing properties discussed in Chapter 7.
THE DIGEST ON GLUTEN
Given the hysteria surrounding gluten, it’s easy to question whether this is just the latest health fad or a real issue affecting our bodies. The earliest documentation of what we now call celiac disease was recorded in the first century by a Greek physician, though it wasn’t until the twentieth century that scientists identified gluten as the culprit.1 However, in the past fifty years, thanks to the rapid industrialization of our food system, gluten intolerance has been on the rise.
In the late 1960s, wheat was crossbred, hybridized, and reengineered to increase its yield. This alteration deliberately increased the molecular size of gluten so that bread would rise and become more elastic and chewy. However, gluten is a protein and changing the size of a protein molecule leads to its own set of health ramifications, just like changing the serving size of soda from 8 ounces to 32 ounces does.
In addition to those changes, in 1974 Monsanto patented its herbicide Roundup, a weed killer, for use on crops including wheat, oats, corn, and soy. Roundup contains glyphosate, which Dr. Stephanie Seneff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has linked to “leaky gut,” an altered microbiome, and increases in autism.2 In 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer group, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen. Add to this eating on the run, eating quickly, and high stress levels (all of which decrease the enzymes needed to digest gluten), as well as an altered gut microbiome from processed food and antibiotics, and the stage has been set for a hyperimmune reaction to gluten.
As recommended in the Food Fundamentals, during the first four weeks on your archetype plan, exclude wheat, barley, oats, and rye, which all contain gluten, from your diet. Don’t eat anything made with flour, including a bite of your friend’s avocado toast, gourmet pizza, homemade pasta, or freshly baked cookies. Watch out for wheat hidden in soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, and teriyaki sauce. Remember, it’s just four weeks.
If you have any of the symptoms listed below and they return when you reintroduce gluten after four weeks, consider committing to a nine-month gluten hiatus to help rebalance the body.
Your weight fluctuates by five pounds over several days.3
You have insulin resistance.4
You feel fatigued and spacey.5
Your stomach is perpetually bloated.6
You get hangry (angry when hungry).
You have eczema or psoriasis.7
You have unexplained diarrhea.8
You feel depressed, anxious or manic.9
Your joints ache.10
When you reintroduce gluten, choose heirloom grains like organic spelt, farro, einkorn, and kamut because their gluten molecule is smaller and less reactive than those of other gluten-containing grains. Organic sourdough is traditionally fermented and made with only organic wheat, sea salt, water, and naturally occurring yeast. The fermentation helps break down the gluten molecule to a smaller molecule so that it is less reactive. Research is now emerging that even some celiacs can tolerate bread that has been made using traditional fermentation methods.11 Aim to keep your consumption of wheat, rye, oats, or barley to no more than once a week after the hiatus.
A note about gluten-free substitutes: Since gluten is a protein, it slows the glycemic response. When processed foods replace gluten sources with pulverized corn, rice, and potato starch, these packaged goods will spike your blood sugar far more dramatically than gluten-containing carbs. In a nutshell: they are junky substitutes. You’re better off eating the whole starchy carb these substitutes are made from instead. For example, a salad with whole chickpeas is a better choice than a slice of gluten-free bread made with chickpea flour. Similarly, roasted potatoes are better than a slice of gluten-free bread made with potato starch.
However, there are times when all you want is avocado toast, and if you’re following a gluten-free plan, gluten-free bread is your “I’m not missing out” option. Look for gluten-free options that are made with more protein-dense grains like quinoa, millet, and brown rice. You can consider these part of your starchy carb allowance on your archetype eating plan.
CHAPTER 11
The Seduction of Sugar
In my experience, there are five types of sugar eaters: 1) the reward eater who eats dark chocolate as a treat for making it through the day; 2) the comfort eater who soothes herself with ice cream or a blueberry muffin; 3) the mindless eater who grabs handfuls of M&M’s from the office candy bowl without thinking twice about it; 4) the habitual eater who needs dessert every night because she hasn’t gone without it for years; and 5) the final type, the addicted eater, who goes into a tailspin of anxiety at the thought of giving up sweets.
Wonder Women tend to be reward eaters, while Nurturers tend to comfort-eat, but these sugar-eating patterns transcend the archetypes, and, depending on your mood or situation, you can be any of the above. The first four are psychological behaviors, while the addicted eater is biochemically and psychologically wired to crave sugar. This chapter discusses the biochemical reasons for sugar cravings, though in Part III I will explore the psychological reasons behind why you can’t seem to quit sugar.
Sugar, when eaten in excess, not only slows weight loss but can also trigger hormonal imbalances, promote the proliferation of pathogenic microbes in the gut, create wrinkles, exacerbate inflammation, make you crave even more sugar, make you hungry, and increase your risk for diabetes, obesity, and cancer. It can also affect your mood by destabilizing the brain chemistry, making you feel depressed or anxious. In essence, sugar can steal your beauty, brains, and brilliance, but it all depends on how much you consume. A couple of teaspoons of sugar a day are not going to turn you into a moody bitch with wrinkles, inflammation, and fat thighs. If you need a hint of sugar to satisfy a craving that would otherwise have you reaching for cakes, cookies, and ice cream, y
ou’re permitted.
My three favorite sugars are coconut sugar, raw honey, and maple syrup because they give you a hint of sweetness while providing minerals such as magnesium and potassium (and in the case of raw honey, prebiotics for your gut microflora). Use these sugars based on taste preference, not on glycemic response. You should be using them in such small amounts that you won’t need to worry about the effect on your blood-sugar levels.
The caveat: if you find yourself drinking from the maple syrup bottle or going through a jar of raw honey in three days, keep them out of your diet until you’ve changed the biochemical imbalance that is causing this obsessive behavior. Don’t worry, you’re not a glutton. There is something going on biochemically, and we’ll get to that.
NOT ALL SUGARS ARE CREATED EQUAL
Sugar, as in table sugar, is approximately 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose. While fructose gets a bad rap, it’s not necessarily the devil it’s made out to be. The body is designed to tolerate a small amount of fructose. In fact, we have specific fructose receptors on the lining of the small intestine that transport fructose into the cells. However, there’s a limit to how much fructose the cells can absorb. When they are full, the excess fructose goes straight to the liver, where it can cause fatty liver, or to your belly, where it is converted into visceral fat1 (i.e., the hard belly fat that produces inflammatory substances). This is why you want to avoid large doses of fructose but you don’t need to be frightened of fruit. The amount of sugar in a moderate portion of fruit (about 1 cup) isn’t enough to saturate the cells with fructose; just don’t sit down to a large fruit platter reminiscent of those popularized in the late 1980s spa diets! Excess fructose is not good, no matter the source.