As I have said more than
once, I don’t love diet books. I am
immune/mildly averse to the hyperbolic prose interspersed with amazing success
stories. Apparently, I am not the target
audience despite being both female and a fitness professional. My other disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist and so I do not make
professional recommendations about what anyone should be eating. (This does not prevent me from suggesting
common sense as a guide.)
Given all that, I didn’t
hate The Virgin Diet: Why Food
Intolerance is the Real Cause of Weight Gain by JJ Virgin. She recommends eating actual food, with an
emphasis on vegetables and clean protein.
Some people may benefit from her 21 day elimination diet, either by
discovering previously unknown food sensitivities or simply by eating non-junk
food for three weeks. Unlike some diets,
this one isn’t actually bad for anyone and there is no reliance on weird bars
or prepackaged meals.
The thrust of the book is
that there are seven foods that tend to cause problems for people: gluten, soy, dairy, eggs, corn, peanuts, and
sugar. Truly wiping them out of anyone’s
diet is challenging unless all processed food is avoided. After three weeks, there are four weeks of
testing whether an individual can tolerate gluten, soy, dairy, and eggs. (Corn, peanuts, and sugar get to live forever
in the Avoid If Possible realm.)
It may be worth a try.
