The Center for Functional Medicine

I started the Mark Hyman detox diet on August 20, 2015. It’s 25 days later and I have already lost 17 pounds! That is huge!

You might ask what made me choose this diet. The answer is simple. I have multiple chronic pain issues and I just want to feel better! This diet is an anti inflammatory diet, which helps people, who suffer from any of a variety of auto-immune disorders.

I briefly made a go of this diet in the past and I know it works. You can drop weight quickly, without starving. The diet is restrictive, but that just might make things easier at the present time, when there is so much weight to be lost and work to be done. The upside of the restrictive diet is that it’s less confusing and actually easier to stay on the straight and narrow! There are just less choices. If you are interested to learn more about it, you can buy Mark Hyman’s book “The 10 Day Detox Diet” on Amazon. It even has an accompanying cookbook.

Okay, so I am just at the very beginning of building a better me, but the point is, I chose a plan of action and I am following it. Now I just need to execute the same thing over the course of many months, if not a year! Then there will be one beautiful me staring back at me in the mirror! And better yet, I should feel a whole heck of a lot better!

To aid my ability to stick with the plan, I have a variety of different people that I will interface with every step of the way. I have appointments with my functional medicine doctor, Mark Hyman, at the Cleveland Clinic every 4 months or so and appointments with my nutritionist, Tricia Howell, every 2 months or as needed and weekly half hour calls with my health coach, Anna Cortes. In addition, I have appointments with my endocrinologist every 3 – 4 months. By the way, I think the coaching with my health coach is an extremely important part of this whole picture.

The health coaching gives me a chance to check in with someone weekly and discuss any concerns or difficulties that I may have. It also helps me to focus in on the new goal for the next week. This helps me to tighten up my game plan and be more successful.

I strongly recommend that you hire a health coach to help you through your process too. Research shows coaches help you get to where you are going faster!

So what is your game plan? Do you have one? Would you like to do some research? There are about 100 different diets out there, according to Joshua Rosenthal, the Founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Likely, any one that you choose will improve the current state of your food intake. Simply avoiding processed food would do you a world of good.

Most Americans eat far too much sugar, fried foods, and protein – animal or plant varieties. Our food is filled with chemicals and man made stuff we simply don’t want to be consuming.

Trying a whole food approach, without any additives could be revolutionary for you! Eating foods that are produced locally and organic, without any GMOs is also a very popular route. But these approaches may not be for you! Everybody is different. You will have to choose what is right for you. I suspect you know right now a few of the things you should put in place immediately!

So are you up to the challenge? Do you too want to start building a better body? Do you want to incorporate a health coach, who you work with over the phone as part of your process? Choose three things you are willing to commit to today. Set a start date. Clean out your pantry and your fridge to get started and then make a go of it. Then we can slide down the scale together!

Ready, set, go!

Lisa J Lafave, PhD, MBA, ACC
The Wellness Coach at Building Better Bodies Rocks
CEO & Founder of Coaching Rocks, LLC
A Single Mom By Choice of Surrogacy Twin Boys
Written in My Little Brick in University Hts, Ohio

Leap Into Action!

So I’m six weeks post-op and still hobbling around. Looks like I might need that knee replacement.

In the meantime, I need a complete overhaul regarding I how I fuel this old battle wax. I am on a collision course for shear disaster and I need to stop dead in my tracks.

So how am I going to get that tune up? I am going to be smarter about what I put in my mouth to survive or should I say thrive? And guess what you get to watch and see how I do.

So here is the plan. I am going on Mark Hyman’s detox diet for a year. But I won’t start until I get back from my trip to the east coast with the boys to visit my brother and sister! Hey you need to know, I am not only going on the Detox Diet, I hired Mark and he is working with me directly! He also has some great people onboard to support me through my journey.

Trisha Howell is an amazing nutritionist at the Cleveland Clinic in the Center for Functional Medicine. She touts Mark Hyman’s detox diet. She laughs and jokes as she informs with a smile, while speaking a mile a minute. She wants me to make breakfast the biggest meal of the day and dinner the smallest. She says its best for your gut if you eat for 12 hours and train your body to not eat for twelve hours. If you are hungry at night she advises you drink water! She says, “Water, water, water!” She wants me to eat breakfast, then snack, then lunch, then snack, then dinner and maybe another snack.

During each eating episode she expects me to consume a protein, a carb and fat. But when she talks about carbs she is talking fruits and vegetables! She’s got rainbow charts to help you eat all the colors of the rainbow. She demands that I keep copious notes about what I eat! And she wants to read them!

She’s into eating cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and brussel sprouts and fermented foods like kimchi and saurkraut, and not into night shades like tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers and eggplant. She highly recommends watercress. She encourages modest portions of nuts, like a portion size of 4-6, not ounces, but nuts! Munching on unsweetened teaspoons of coconut flakes is okay too. Tempeh is a favorite of hers. She reminds me to eat only grass fed ghee or coconut oil or first cold press virgin olive oil. She reminds me to mix up the oils, olive and grape leave, while mixing up the nut milks, almond, soy and cashew. Variety is the spice of life, she says with a twinkle in her eye!

On this diet you are expected to refrain from consuming gluten or dairy. There is no sugar or sugar replacers on this diet either. No caffeine, or alcohol, but tea and bone broth are both encouraged. She specifically encourages bison bone broth! Eating sardines is also admired. Several supplements are recommended as well.

So this is my journey! You may ask what about my sons? They will be on the journey as well. Things won’t be quite as strict as they will eat cafeteria style with classmates at University School and have visits at other peoples’ homes, but at home we will all eat together and the pantry will be stocked accordingly!

So no sugar, flour, or grains. Little salt, no caffeine, no alcohol, no dairy. No carbonated beverages. What’s left? You guessed it, meat, vegetables, fruits and oils. It’s a kind of paleo diet.

Heck even my fruits are designed to be restricted. I can eat berries, cherries, kiwi and pomegranate. All high in antioxidants! Oh and I forgot to mention that apple cider vinegar combined with first cold press oil is recommended as salad dressing.

But if it’s so hard, why do it? So I feel better and don’t go off the deep end with diabetes, cancer stroke and heart disease. It’s an anti-inflammatory diet and benefits all auto-immune disorders. It even helps with leaky gut. I think I’ll try it. What do I have to loose but a bunch of weight and a lot of inflammation that I frankly do without!

In fact I already did! I tried it for 6 weeks and lost 17 pounds in January. I was not hungry and I did not get headaches as I have so many times in the past when dieting. In the past dieting has always been a punishing process. This was not! Refreshing.

Lisa J Lafave, PhD, MBA, ACC
CEO & Founder of Coaching Rocks, LLC
A Single Mom By Choice Raising Surrogacy Twin Boys
Written in My Little Brick in University Heights, Ohio

Seventeen Pounds Down!

This Old Body Needs a Tune-up!