Learn about European Naturopathic Healing Methods

Diets

Diets for weight control are as numerous as stars in the sky and they all have the same failure: first you loose weight and after the diet,  you add more weight than you lost.


I’m talking about the jo-jo-effect. The weight goes up after each attempt to loose weight. If we take a closer look on all these diets, we see, that they have one thing in common: They create an artificial lack of essential substances, that the body needs. But the body reacts  logically. The body learns that there are times of famine,  That is when it burns all stored fat, and that is when we loose weight. But, in order to be prepared for the next famine to come, the body stores everything that’s eaten after such a  shortage and the fat depots get more filled than ever....


Gaining weight seems to be pre-programmed when doing it this way.


The old wisdom “Cut it in half” is also only partially valid. As soon as the body lacks essential nutrients it gathers everything after the diet.


Protein drinks are promoted widely. Unless people who drink them have a very healthy metabolism (and who of the obese do?) there is a big chance that they over acidify. I treated several persons with extreme rheumatic like pain after they had tried to loose weight just with these drinks. The best solution is to eat the right things at the right time and move yourself properly. We have a saying in Germany that is valid all over the world:


"Eat breakfast like a king,

have lunch like a merchant

   and have dinner like a beggar.”



The right time is before 3.00 pm for your last food intake.  I have seen people loose as much as 25  pounds in 5 months only by just canceling dinner  and not touching  anything that contains calories after 3.oo pm. It’s simple but it takes a strong will to keep it up.

"The right things" means well balanced food. It does not really matter whether you eat vegetarian or are a fan of red meat. It’s about nutrients. You have to get a certain amount of carbohydrates, proteins, fat, trace elements, minerals and vitamins to make your body work. Aside from that your food should contain a good quantity of fiber and you should drink not less than 16 cups of water a day.


A very simple method to cut back in eating large quantities, is to drink 1 pint of an herb tea - women should prefer the Lady’s Mantle Tea or plain water. The trick is, that a good quantity of liquid  gives you the feeling of being already full. The other healthy side effect of drinking lots of water  is, it cleans out toxins.


But be aware of the fact that the fanciest diet is no help, if you start falling into the same eating-habits as  before dieting. The best thing is to start getting in motion. Walking, biking, swimming - everything that speeds up metabolism helps you stay trim and slim. By moving,  more  “pitfalls” like  ice-cream  or a birthday cake binges won't net pounds on your scales immediately.  because you are able to burn food faster.

There are some  diets or fasting cures, that have proven to help short term:


The Grape Diet.

All you take in is grape juice.

But caution:

It’s a no no  for diabetics as the fruit sugar count is pretty high.

The city of Meran in Northern Italy is famous for it’s grape cures. People, getting nothing but grape juice for 14 days, loose considerable weight in a short time. That’s why only  healthy people should try it.


Citrus Fruit Diet

It’s a proven way to burn  fat, but the price might be too high. If the buffer ability of the body is depleted, you might face unpleasant over acidity reactions, such as muscle pain or high  stomach acidity, A higher level in acidity makes you also more prone to inflammations.


The Potato Diet

is a good way to loose weight and  eliminate uric acid. Cook 500 gram (about 4 good size potatoes) potatoes in their peel and eat them during the day. Don’t add anything. Potatoes contain nearly everything the body needs and they have enough calories. So they are a good way to loose some weight and stay healthy.

Fasting

Fasting is nothing else but  an extreme diet, in which you drink only water.

All cultures and religions know about fasting . What does this tell us? The body needs a time out to get rid of old stuff. The easiest way to accomplish this is to fast. Thinking of the following symptoms, like feeling bad, cranky, irritable, lazy, nervous, having bad breath, headaches, joint aches, insomnia or sweating with a strong odor -  would you believe that they are all related to waste in your system? Fasting - also called the “surgery without a knife”  - can help in a short time!

The classic fasting means you eat nothing, drink a lot and clean out your bowels. The best time to start fasting is the waning moon. Some experts swear it is the best to do a one-day-fasting twice a month on the full and on the new moon. The best action  to start  a fasting period is to take milk of magnesia  or Epsom Salt (1 tablespoon on a glass of water) or something that liquefies the contents in the intestinal tract. That should be done the evening before you start fasting.  Once the bowels are cleared out it is much easier to refrain from eating. The first week every day and the second week every other day  you should apply an enema or go for a colonic treatment. On days where you don't have an enema you have to take the saline laxative again. This way  you get rid of the more stubborn toxins  much easier. After such enemas or colonics  the lymph flow is largely improved, too. The headaches, that come on after the first day will go away easier, because they only indicate, that the toxins are broken down from the tissue and are (until they are eliminated) in the blood now. During fasting it is very important that you drink enough. Herb teas are a fine way to help the body with it’s different needs. There are a lot of herbs out there, and which one suits best can be read under the section of healing herbs. I, personally, prefer the Stinging Nettle Tea. If herb teas don’t attract you, you may drink just water or a thin vegetable broth or some plain Miso soup. Water should by all means be filtered somehow, as during fasting your body doesn’t need the chemicals the drinking water is treated with. People with excess acidity should always drink  vegetable or Miso soup as it eliminates the acid,  or they should add 10 tablets of Schuesslers 8,9 and 10 each and dissolve them in a glass of water and drink this every day of the fasting.   For the vegetable broth you take fresh potato, carrot, celery and parsley and cook this well for 20 minutes. Add no spices or salt, strain and drink at least 6-8 pints a day.


People who do the fasting while working might want to take something “hearty” . They should have fresh pressed carrot juice with half a teaspoon full of sunflower oil at lunchtime and in the evening some fresh pressed apple juice spiced with a little bit of cinnamon. Same is valid for people who want to fast longer than one week. They should have the carrot juice at noon and the apple juice in the evening. Plus lots of water... of course.

 What can you expect while fasting? Well, if you happened to mess with your body, you will feel the effect dramatically. Smokers for instance get heavy headaches for some days, until the toxins are cleared out. Even sickness and vomiting can occur. So this can be a very drastic time,  where you don’t want to schedule other important things. After five days the worst reactions are through and then comes the time where you really enjoy fasting. You feel light, delighted, very energized, allergies stop bothering you and you sleep well at night. The only thing that still can happen is bad breath and body odors. Bad breath can be eliminated by washing the mouth with sunflower oil (don’t swallow) and by brushing the teeth with salt water more often or take 1 drop of pure peppermint oil into a glass of water, stir well and drink little sips of it. Gargling with sage tea or washing the mouth with lemon juice and water helps too.  You get rid of the body odor faster if you go to a sauna or better, an infrared sauna, where you sweat out the toxins easily.

After 7 or 14 or even 21 days of fasting  it is very important how to start over eating and  getting back to good eating habits again. Don’t overdo it!  In the first week after fasting you should eat only very small quantities to make your stomach get used to eating again. First comes a vegetable or potato soup. Let every little mouthful sit for a while in your mouth, mix it with saliva  and then swallow it. Chew it well. You feel satisfied much earlier and it’s much better to maintain this way to eat  in the future. The next day you may start with some oat or rice meal in the morning and at noon smashed potato and some steamed vegetable, keep that for some days. Then finally (ifyou think you have to) you may add animal products - milk products first and and at the very last eggs, fish, poultry or red meat. If your body lets you know, that one of the above mentionend did not suit you well, cut it out for another month. I know quite a number of people who turned their diet to vegetarian or vegan after a fasting cure, because they listenend to their bodies when they tried to eat animal products.

Except for the water and vegetable broth and vegetable juice fasting there are some other fasting cures:


The Mayr Cure

has become quite famous because the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl would go for such a cure every year. But he also is the best example how this cure sometimes fails in terms of keeping off weight....The more often he did the cure the fatter he got afterwards. But still the Mayr Cure is a very good detox program, that I recommend to do after the water and the vegetable broth fasting. If you go for the Mayr Cure only, you start the same as with  the regular fasting. You take Milk of Magnesia or Epsom Salt and clear out the intestinal tract. One thing is different and needs preparation: Two days before you start the Mayr Cure you get wheat rolls and slice them thin and let them sit and dry until they get really crunchy. Then, for every meal you take (tiny bites) some slices of the dried rolls, chew them until they liquefy and taste sweet in your mouth and swallow with a little bit of milk (or, if milk is not tolerated well, soy or rice or almond milk) It's best to use a teaspoon. Don’t rush, because eating that way takes time. Within this fasting period you should get colonics or enemas every day and  you should drink thin herb tea at least 4 pints a day. The wanted effect is to detox the body without putting the stress of the real fasting on it. The back-to-normal schedule is the same as with the fasting cure.


The Schroth Cure

 is something for wine lovers. Schroth was a naturopath who had developed that cure for all kinds of diseases. There is only one village in  Bavaria, Germany (Oberstaufen) where his cure is available. It consists of three parts. Part one, the pre-cure  gets you  prepared for the cure to come. Intestinal cleanses, liver poultices, kidney teas,etc.  clear the path. The main part consists of “dry”days where you hardly drink any liquid and then “drink” days where you are supposed to drink dry white wine. Besides that you get whole body wraps in the early morning. Build-up is the third stage of this cure, when the body will be led back to normal eating habits.  People who do this cure are loosing a lot of weight (when they do it for 3-4 weeks) and feel very energized.


 I guess there are a lot of other fasting cures and recipes out there and I don’t claim I know them all...