My gradual transition to the diet and fantastic results

[jay]

I've been lurking around the boards for a while so I figured that I should tell my own experience with the diet, it's just taken me a little while to write it up. Sorry if it's kind of long, but I think the details might be valuable.

I found the diet about 5 years ago when I was dealing with acne. I read through all of it. I couldn't put it down. It made so much sense. However, when I tried implementing it, I had a lot of trouble. I couldn't stay on it for very long without reverting back to my old eating habits. I did see results, but it was just too hard for me to stick with. After a while, I gave up, but just exposure to the diet greatly improved my eating habits. Eventually, I grew out of (I think) most of my acne. It went from being pretty severe to just a spot or two every week, something I figured was okay to live with.

The few spots that I did keep getting always seemed to be in the spots where I had the most irritation while shaving. I solved this problem by switching to shaving with olive oil and everything was good. Just the occasional spot every few weeks.

Fast forward to about 6 months ago. I'm in graduate school now and my work load is intense. I had felt tired all the time, and the only way I could keep going was by drinking lots of tea and coffee. Even when I tried getting 8 or more hours of sleep a night, I was still tired, and couldn't figure out why. That's when I remembered Wai's diet and decided to try an experiment.

I followed Wai's suggestions strictly for breakfast only. I cut out all caffeinated beverages completely. My breakfast was always a handful of raw nuts, dried fruit, a banana, and orange juice with olive oil. It worked amazingly. My energy level was through the roof, and I was unstoppable....until lunch.

At lunch I would always have potato chips, some carrots, and a sandwich which consisted of a big wheat roll, highly processed deli meats, and cheese. After lunch, I was pretty much worthless compared to the morning and couldn't get much done and would fall asleep at my desk. I would always exercise in the evenings before dinner to try to get my energy level up, but after I ate dinner I was immediately tired again.

I decided to gradually switch my diet to the Wai way. Breakfast was already what it should be, so next I decided to cut out dairy completely after reading extensively about casein and opioid peptides. Within about 10 days, I had results. I have always had a lot of problems with mucus in my throat and nose, and that went away nearly completely. No more congestion or runny nose. I also dropped a couple pounds and lost this little pad of fat at the bottom of my stomach. I thought this was amazing because I do triathlons and had thought myself to be pretty fit and at about the lowest weight I could be, but no. In general, my entire digestive system started working a whole lot better. How could I stop now? I dropped all cooked meats immediately without a second thought or any difficulty and decided to also cut out wheat products, all the time replacing what I had given up with raw fruits and nuts. I felt less and less tired all the time.

Wheat was a little harder for me to cut, but once I did I felt even better. I dropped another couple pounds (to my great surprise) while also cutting down my triathlon training since I decided it was beating my body up. Now I just do a lot of walking and go for the occasional run or swim. Again, my digestive system function improved even more. Now I eat lots of raw fruits and nuts, some sashimi here and there, and egg yokes. I feel very alert all day and don't feel tired until right around bedtime, or sometimes sooner if I"ve done a lot of physical work.

There were also some other things I noticed while gradually cutting out dairy and wheat and moving to the raw diet that I thought I should mention. As you might imagine from someone who always felt tired, that I was usually in a "down" mood and and perhaps mildly depressed. I began feeling happy and optimistic, especially after adding the egg yolks (as predicted in the section on cholesterol). Even when troubles come my way, I can always take an optimistic view of the situation and just get right to taking care of whatever the trouble is. Before I just tried to ignore it.

Also, I apparently lost the puffy and red look in my face. I honestly didn't know that my face was puffy until I was on the diet, though I did notice the reddish tint in my cheeks. People began to comment about how my face looked thinner. I looked at some old pictures vs. some newer ones, and it's true, my face has this kind of puffy look around the cheeks and jaw line in the old ones. My skin tone has also evened out.

I guess it's hard to describe just how great I feel on this diet and how much my tastes have changed without writing a novel. I get sooooo much work done now because I feel mentally sharp nearly all the time and sleep 6 hours a night and feel just fine. Now all the bad foods I used to eat just don't look appealing to me anymore and the smell of bread doesn't affect me now. I love munching on fruit and have really developed a love of sashimi. It seems strange that I couldn't do this five years ago, but now I wouldn't have it any other way. I guess a gradual transition is what worked best for me.

I'm a bit confused as to who wrote the Wai diet book, whether it was one person or multiple people, but whoever it was: THANK YOU!!! The amount of research and information compiled on the site and in the book is absolutely spectacular! I've never seen anything like it. It really has changed my life and I think I would have already dropped out of grad school if I hadn't found it. Cheers!

[Oscar]

Great! Thanks for sharing your experience.

[RRM]

Thank you Jay.
Thank you, because you are inspiring!
Its striking how the results for virtually everybody are so similar (energy, alertness, lean, happiness etc). I guess that because basically, we are all the same; its just our sensitivity to stuff that varies.