FRANK'S STORY
I came up Italian, so for me, eating spaghetti with red sauce, Italian sausage and topping it off with a stout espresso coffee was normal. That is, until I just couldn’t stand the acid indigestion any more. On top of that, I was living what is referred to as a Type A personality, (high stress) trying to get rich in the u.s. starting out the day with a few cups of coffee and traveling out of town on business and eating biscuits and gravy for breakfast and hamburgers and fried chicken everyday at fast food restaurants.
Yes, I had acid indigestion all the time, and every afternoon (after lunch, ahem) I couldn’t help but notice that I had so little energy I almost fell into bed for a nap. And this, at age 28! I was dissatisfied and thought at this age I shouldn’t be tired, that’s for older folks in their fifties and sixties, I thought! ? If I was constipated, I thought it was good.
The Italians have a saying “mangia e bevi e cachi tust” which means: eat drink and…be constipated. It’s a salutation, meaning, you’re living a good life. At least, that’s what they thought in the old days.
Mentally I was living at a hundred miles an hour, planning my next business, traveling, studying, etc, but physically, I wasn’t keeping up; even though I was somewhat athletic, working out with weights, jogging, etc.
It’s not that I ate really badly, I thought, it’s just that I wasn’t functioning at peak performance, physically. And I demanded peak performance out of myself. I wanted my body to keep up with my mind every waking moment of my day. I wanted to feel alive and I didn’t like my body dragging down my mind.
Although I had always had an interest in health and nutrition starting from my teenage years, because of an early interest in body building, it was at this time that I started doing the in depth research and study that led me to the healthy energetic, life enhancing lifestyle we have embraced since then, and have done so ever since becoming aware of it.
What a shock! I found out that all of the Italian things I had been raised to love had to go…white flour? (constipating, energy sapping high calorie and non nutritious) Out! Cooked red sauce? (very acidic) Out! Espresso coffee? (very acidic, bad for kidneys, diuretic, blood sugar issues) Out you go! Nothing better than a nice spaghetti dinner with pork sausage or beef meatballs on traditional Italian Sunday family meal, right?
It’s not that any one of those things by themselves was a problem; it was the lifestyle, the unrestricted indulging. I deserved it, didn’t I? Yes, I bid farewell to, and mourned my culinary upbringing. But with the old out the window, the new rolls right in.
I started with proper food combining, which we’ll talk about later in this book, and I saw my energy level instantly improve. Once I knew what it was like to actually feel energetic, I started realizing how energy sapping and emotionally enhancing the sugary treat binges was. I also learned that white flour turns into sugar in your body. One day, after a big emotional conflict in the home, I started analyzing what I had eaten prior to it. I spoke to a naturopathic friend and realized that the German Chocolate Brownies we had purchased at the store that we so much loved were full of chemicals. I started putting two and two together.
All of this led me to cleansing. I started growing my own vegetables and I eat whole wheat bread several times a week; I don’t buy the processed wheat at the store. The rest is history. I haven’t looked back.
I had to remove all the inherently acidic foods from my diet in order to initially remove my daily acid indigestion. Coffee, red sauce, white vinegar foods, capers! This helped at first. I would sometimes have these all in one day! Later I realized that although I had vastly improved my acid condition, I would still get it under certain circumstances. Only after I incorporated all of the ideas in this book, am I able to live a completely acid free and highly energetic life. Thank God.
If I veer off the program, I still sometimes get acid if I eat solid cooked foods in the mornings instead of fresh fruit, which impedes the elimination process going on in the mornings, which invariably causes an acid condition. And the other time is when I eat only cooked foods without eating any vegetables; that’s acidic too. But I rarely do that, unless I’m traveling. I also occasionally eat red sauce but it’s usually with whole wheat pasta and vegetables on the side now. No problems! I still get to enjoy my favorite meals. I just have to do it with wisdom.
The thing is that the fruit in the mornings creates an alkaline condition which in itself eliminates acid, and the elimination clears up clogging which also eliminates acid condition. That is why I can eat all the (whole) wheat I want without any acid. When I first heard these ideas from a dear naturopathic friend of mine, they sounded revolutionary. But they work! And that’s my living testimony.
I also stopped drinking cow’s milk.
My testimony about coffee. After all this, I had not stopped drinking coffee. That is, I stopped drinking it in the mornings because I felt so energetic now after implementing the above strategies that I really felt didn’t need it. But having come up as a coffee connoisseur, I still couldn’t let go of the aromatic coffee altogether. Since I had learned that it takes one cup of coffee a whole 24-hours to pass through your kidneys, (imagine several cups) I rationalized that I would just have one cup of coffee per day, seeing it would cleanse out in 24-hours anyway. I did this for years, every day at 2pm I would have my one cup of coffee.
I didn’t realize I had a coffee habit. Until I was somewhere where I could not get my coffee. Then all misery broke loose. I would get a migraine headache that would hunt me down through the night and last till the next morning. It was a total shock! I mean, it was only one cup per day. The first few times I ignored it. But through the years, the irrefutable evidence was that coffee is so addicting, that it will cause problems even if the habit is only one cup. So I gave it up. Besides, I don’t like feeling like a slave to anything.
The easiest way to give up a habit is…to replace it with a good habit…what to replace it with? I tried roasted soybean coffee. That didn’t last long, too much work roasting soybeans, and then grinding them! Not to mention the taste. I came up with a replacement that I learned was full of minerals such as Calcium and B Vitamins. Excellent for those folks that do not eat much meat and don’t drink cow’s milk. And I much later learned of a side benefit that many men would be envious of. I give out later in a free report.
I also came up with a sweet tooth. To me, life is just not lived to the fullest if I can’t eat something sweet on a regular basis. But when I learned of the damaging effects of refined sugar, I had to make a change. The best thing I could replace it with is completely raw honey straight from the bee farmers, in moderation. Moderation is the key even with raw honey. I only have one or two teaspoons. Any more than that and it is still too much sugar in the blood.
I also eat a lot more fruits in season every morning. And they are sweet. Life is sweet!
And that is our (Frank's) health testimony story; we all have a story to tell. Hopefully your story has a happy ending too.
Preview the rest of the chapters and first 11 pages of Better Health, Better Life, click here.
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