The Starch Solution by MD John McDougall Read Free Book Online

sheets was agony. My adult children were coming home to visit for Christmas, and I felt bad that I couldn’t prepare a clean house for them.
     
    Somehow, I was lucky enough to find a link to some testimonials about Dr. McDougall. During the first shopping trip for groceries for his plan, I was in an agony of pain. It was enough to begin, though. I have to say that the first bite of brown rice, after 5 years of eschewing carbs, brought tears to my eyes! It was like welcoming back an old friend! Thestarch-based diet has been satisfying and filling. It is also easy to shop for, and meal planning is so simple.
     
    There were two strategies that I found valuable. The first was to always be prepared. Every weekend, I would make a general food plan that I shopped and cooked for, making enough food for the week’s lunches and dinners. I did this to keep myself from “poor me syndrome”—the condition of feeling that I am hungry and it will be so long until I can get to food, I had better eat whatever is at hand. I instead developed “enough syndrome”—I have had enough and there is food already prepared for me at home. Second, I developed an attitude toward non-plan food that told me: “It is not food.” The chocolates in the jar in the office, the cheese in the drawer at home, the fried calamari on the table at the restaurant were no longer food to me—no more than the table linens or the candles were food. I knew what I was going to eat, and it would be available soon, and I was not about to start gnawing on “not-food” while I waited.
     
    Within a month, the pains had begun to recede from my hip and knee. I am now at about 130 pounds, and I have lost more than 92 pounds. It took me about 18 months to lose the weight, averaging about a pound and a quarter per week. I have gone from a size 26 in jeans to a size 4 (not Levi’s, I readily admit)! I have gone from a 3X to an XS. Buying new clothes has been the biggest expense on this journey! I went from being someone in denial about being obese, convincing myself that I was quite healthy simply because I didn’t have a lot of reasons to visit the doctor, to someone who is actually vibrant with health. I can crawl on the floor to get iPhone pictures of my baby granddaughter in action, and then get back up again; I have brought down my cholesterol and blood sugars; I can run without tiring for 20 minutes. I went from being old before my time to a woman who is looking forward to all the years to come.
     
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C HAPTER 3
     

Five Major Poisons Found in Animal Foods
     
    T he benefits of a starch-based diet go far beyond controlling weight and improving personal appearance. Choosing starch over animal foods to meet your energy and nutritional needs protects you from a wide range of illnesses and injuries that come bundled with a typical Western diet. If I sound dramatic when I talk about the dangers of what you are eating it’s because this is serious business, and I am by profession a medical doctor. The balanced diet most people take for granted as being healthy—and that is endorsed by medical experts and the USDA—is actually toxic to humans.
     
    When we think about food being harmful, our first concern is that it will make us feel sick immediately after we eat. You probably learned the painful lesson as a child that it’s not a great idea to go to a carnival and stuff yourself full of corn dogs and cotton candy, then take a ride on the Ferris wheel. If you travel, you may have taken along a pink bottle of Pepto-Bismol to ward off unfamiliar bacteria. Perhaps you follow the news and avoid foods that cause food poisoning from E. coli, Listeria, and salmonella that have been recalled due to contamination.
     
    What you might not realize is that many of the foods you consume without suddenly feeling ill can be equally risky, or even more so over the long haul. Meat, poultry, fish, seafood, milk, and eggs are a slower type of poison, but they are every bit as