Ok, so how did I lose 17 pounds? Well it waddn’t fun, I’ll tell you that.

I’ve had to sit through many a wedding, barbeque, and pizza party salivating while I forced a bare chicken breast in my mouth.

Why do functional doctors put you on a diet? 

Well most of us were raised on the standard American diet. Aka crap food (gluten, dairy, etc). We were tricked into thinking that Nutrigrain bars are healthy and that oils like Coconut Oil are bad for us because they are high in fat.Therefore, myself – along with most American’s have what’s called a “leaky gut”. What is a leaky gut, you ask? Essentially what it means is that you’ve been feeding your body crap so much for so long that your cell membranes in your intestines break down and release food into the bloodstream, which is a no no and can result in other more scary and serious issues.When you have foreign invaders in your bloodstream, back to the sympathetic “flight or flight” response and migraine city. This is a great explanation for how the gut can be related to other underlying issues internally as well: 9 Signs You Have a Leaky Gut

So the program I did was a 30 day RepairVite powder and restrictive diet to repair the Leaky Gut, followed immediately by a 21 day liver detox with ClearVite. (51 days of dieting, now you see why I wanted to crawl in a hole and die?) However, what kept me going was that, after week one – I didn’t have another migraine. I barely even ever had a headache, maybe 3-4 total, and minimal pain at best.

Here’s the 30 day Repairvite plan.

Let’s just say it. It feels like you basically can’t eat anything 🙂 So you really have to plan, shop for, and focus on what you can eat in order to stay sane.  I should say at least 12 times, that this isn’t for everyone. This is for people who are suffering from chronic headaches and migraines, have tried various treatments like chiropractors and otherwise and still cannot find a solution. Because it’s tougher than tough, and it will test your determination.

What can you eat? Meat. Grass fed, and lots of it. I probably have eaten 5 cows, 10 turkeys, and 20 chickens in the last 2 months myself. Vegetables, bring em on. Load em in Coconut oil and saute in salt and pepper. And some fruits (low glycemic ones like cherries, apples,peaches and pears)

Keep in mind that you are doing these diets to repair your gut – eating low inflammatory foods to give your body a “reset” of sorts. So cheating even with one small bite of tomato throws your entire system off for weeks

Your gut lining is similar to a snake’s skin, in that it sheds a cell every day and produces a new one. It takes days for that new cell produced to get to the end of the thread and shed off, so cheating once can affect your body for a long long time. This funky picture below shows the bad cells in green and how even when they reach the end and shed off, they can re-enter through any other previous leaky gut cells (INSANE!)

After you’ve “reset” your body, you can start slowly introducing some foods back in the 21 day Clearvite diet (some high glycemic fruits, nuts and seeds, legumes/beans, and gluten-free grains) giving yourself 72 in between each introduction to note how your body is reacting. And if you go to a functional medicine practitioner they will test your body specifically against all common types of food insensitivities to see if there are others on there that you should always avoid, regardless of the diet.  Pretty much just know that Gluten and Dairy are most likely going to show up as an intolerance, because most of us cannot digest these structures the way we need to, thus causing our fat and/or perpetually ill American society.

All people in my doctor’s program go through this “reset” regardless of their food insensitivity results, because it’s important to fix that leaky gut before you are able to heal anything else. They way they worded it to me is you can get some temporary relief, but without fixing the core issue (gut) you will never get a lifetime of health back.

I’m not a scientist. Not even close. But I’m learning a little more and more each week about the actual long-term dangers of food and it has awakened me to what goes in my body. If you are sick of being in constant pain, look up the closest Functional Medicine doctor to you and ask for similar lab work done!