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Welcome to the condensed version of my nutrition plan. My program comes from decades of experience -- decades spent learning from extensive research, conferring with my professional colleagues, and most of all, successfully treating many thousands of patients. Whether you are struggling with weight issues, facing some disease or condition, or you consider yourself reasonably healthy, I am certain that if you adhere to the recommendations summarized below and presented in full in my new book linked above, they will help you achieve the happy and healthy life you so richly deserve.

So what makes this nutrition program different from all the other diets you've tried? It's based on fact. There are no miracle cures here, just tools to help you understand your body and achieve optimum health.

Many of the world's leading dietary experts adopted one-size-fits-all dietary solutions that they believe can be universally applied. While there are indeed certain universal truths, such as the danger of sugar and toxins, if one adopts this principle, my experience has taught me that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work.

Many diets will reverse one condition in one person but have no effect, or even worsen the condition, in another person due to differences in metabolic biochemistry. Just as we all differ tremendously with respect to our outward physical appearance, we are also unique on an internal (biochemical and physiological) level -- we all process foods and utilize nutrients differently. When you adopt a diet based on your specific "metabolic type," you will resolve most health disorders and achieve optimum health.

When your health problems are addressed in a symptom-oriented or piecemeal fashion, you will often experience temporary relief. However, your problems never really go away. They frequently shift to other parts of your body or recur in a short period of time. In contrast, when you address your metabolic type -- the unique biochemical needs that are based on your specific genetics -- your health problems will be treated at the causative foundational level, and you will have a permanent solution for regaining your health.

You need not worry about being hungry on this plan. When you address your specific nutritional requirements you will not have any hunger pains. When you finally balance your diet needs, your food cravings will disappear, and you will wake up each day with more than enough energy. If this isn't happening, then this is your giant clue that you are not giving your body something it needs, and you will have to modify your program.

Fact: You can do it! With my three-level approach, I've made this program manageable.

The main difference in these levels is a progressively more rigid adoption of healthy eating principles. These are most often counter-cultural recommendations, but they are designed to bring you to optimal levels of wellness and health. All three levels have the same requirements for carbohydrates, proteins, and high-quality fats. Normalizing your insulin level will be a major key to improving your health and is essential for success in all three levels. One of the major differences will be the type of proteins that are allowed in each phase. Higher-quality proteins are gradually implemented as one chooses progressively healthier levels.

Important: When you change levels, you need to apply any restrictions from your previous level, as they are not repeated in the higher levels.

As you progress through the various levels, each one becomes more difficult, yet more freeing. Soon you will be enjoying a level of health you never dreamed possible!

Achieve Independent Health With Your Optimized Nutrition Plan: Getting Started

I have broken my nutrition plan down into three phases: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. Success comes in steps, and this program has been designed to allow you to make your journey to optimal health in a step-by-step manner.

Almost everyone should begin at the "Beginner" level. The exceptions are those who are already implementing the advice found there, and those with serious diseases or other conditions that may want to - or have been advised to - take the more extensive measure of implementing the advice found in several or all of the stages to promote healing and health.

While making every change within phase is ultimately recommended to help you reach your optimal health, to determine which areas you may want to put the most initial focus on, you should assess your "Four Factors" -- insulin, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol -- as defined below. You should also periodically update your knowledge of your four factors to determine the progress you are making.

Each of the steps in these three phases has been placed there based on my clinical experience: while most people will benefit from taking the plan stage by stage, if you are just beginning but there are steps in the Intermediate or Advanced plan that you are eager (or have been advised) to implement now, by all means do so. Likewise, if you have achieved many, but not all, of the steps in the Beginner plan and would like to move on to some steps in the Intermediate plan while continuing to work on the unfinished ones in the Beginner, go for it.

If some changes present more challenge than others, just keep working at them. Remember, health is the greatest commodity you can ever have, so every step you succeed at taking throughout these three phases, whether it feels large or small, is a great leap forward in this most important journey. If you get discouraged at any point, keep this in mind: It is your one and only body and mind, and, more than anything else, it is worth it.

If any food or supplement that is recommended by me, or anyone else, makes you nauseous or sick in any way, listen to your body and stop it immediately! Your body will always provide you with a better indication of what is good for you. Most people notice a remarkable improvement in the way they feel in anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. If you are not doing better, this may be your body's clue that you will need a knowledgeable health care professional that understands insulin and fat biochemistry that can help fine-tune your individual program.

There are four time-tested, clinically proven gauges of health that you can use to determine your own level of health. They are:

These four factors are your signs on the highway to optimal wellness. You can use these proven health indicators to monitor your success on the beginner's nutrition plan. Additionally, you can use these indicators to figure out when to move to the intermediate level of this nutritional plan. You'll feel comfortable, confident and psychologically ready to move on to the next level, and your indicators of health will be in their optimal ranges

Factor #1: Your Insulin Level

So what's the deal with insulin levels? Well, you need insulin to live, but you probably have far too much insulin floating around in your body. Most adults have about one gallon of blood in their bodies and are quite surprised to learn that in that gallon, there is only one teaspoon of sugar! You only need one teaspoon of sugar at all times -- if that. If your blood sugar level were to rise to one tablespoon of sugar you would quickly go into a hyperglycemic coma and die.

You body works very hard to prevent this by producing insulin to keep your blood sugar at the appropriate level. This reaction keeps you from dying when you eat sugar. Unfortunately, it turns out that high levels of insulin are quite toxic for your body. Anytime you eat grains and sugars, you are increasing your insulin levels. If you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, or are overweight, it is highly likely that you are eating far too many grains. When I reference diabetes I am referring to the most common type, type-2 diabetes, which typically occurs in adulthood and is associated with increased weight. Type-1 diabetes is actually a problem with not enough insulin, as the pancreas loses the ability to manufacture it.

To find out your insulin levels, you need to get tested by your doctor. The test you need to ask for is a fasting blood sugar test, which can also be called an FBS, glucose test or blood sugar levels test. It consists of a small withdrawal of blood after a fasting period of six hours.

Another helpful test would be to actually measure your fasting insulin level. You can safely ignore the reference ranges from the lab as they are based on "normals" of a population that has highly-disturbed insulin levels.

I do these tests regularly in my office. Your fasting insulin level should be 5 or below -- the lower the better. A fasting insulin level above 10 suggests profound insulin disturbances; the higher the number, the worse off you are. It's unusual to have levels above 20 in someone who is not already diabetic. When you get tested, if your insulin level is below 5, you can use this as an indication that it might be safe to progress to the intermediate level nutrition plan.

Once you normalize your weight and exercise, you can reintroduce grains into your diet at a lower level to optimize your health.

This second factor is something we struggle with more and more; millions and millions of people are overweight in the U.S. and the percentage just keeps going up. To read about the epidemic of obesity in America and around the world, please type any relevant keyword into my search engine and click "search." You'll find lots of information to help you understand this truly troubling problem.

One effective and simple method to figure out if you have a weight problem is as follows: With a tape measure, comfortably measure the distance around the smallest area below the rib cage and above the umbilicus (belly button). Waist circumference, perhaps surprisingly, is the best simple anthropometric measure of total body fat, is better than BMI (body mass index), and is also the best simple indicator of intra-abdominal fat mass. So if you measure your waist, men would be classified as obese if their waste size was above 40 and women if it were above 37.

BMI is a good tool, however, to find out what your ideal weight should be. The National Institutes of Health has a good BMI calculator.

Your ideal weight is important for this nutrition plan. This is not only because I am committed to helping your body heal and become healthier, but also because extra body weight and obesity can have major negative psychological effects that impair your ability to be optimally healthy. If you are not at your ideal weight -- overweight or underweight -- you should start with the Beginning nutrition plan and stay there until you have achieved your ideal body weight; then I advise you move into the Intermediate plan, to further optimize your body to fight disease and live a longer, more energetic life.

Your blood pressure ideally should be about 120/80 without medication. If you are on medication you will be delighted to know that this nutrition plan tends to normalize elevated blood pressures in the vast majority of people.

Although elevated insulin levels are one of the most potent contributors to elevated blood pressure, it's also common for stress, tension or anxiety to contribute to this problem. After you begin my nutrition plan and follow it for several months, if you don't see an improvement in your blood pressure you need to seek out a health care professional who is well-versed in using stress-relief methods, such as my personal favorite: EFT.

In my clinical experience, over 95 percent of patients with elevated cholesterol or triglyceride levels respond to a reduced carbohydrate and insulin level correction approach. This is especially true for triglycerides. In over 20 years of practicing medicine I have never seen an elevated triglyceride level fail to drop in response to a low carbohydrate program.

Most people are seriously confused about their cholesterol levels. This is because too much emphasis is placed on the importance of the total cholesterol. A far more important predictor of cardiovascular risk is actually the ratio of good cholesterol (HDL) to total cholesterol.

I use the percentage of HDL and obtain this number by simply dividing the HDL by the total cholesterol (HDL/Total Cholesterol). Ideally this number should be above 24%. Levels below 10 are very dangerous and usually indicate an imminent cardiovascular problem. Ideally this level should be 30 or higher. It rarely gets above 50, but to the best of my knowledge, the higher the number the better. Normally this is not true for a lab value, but because this is a ratio, I believe we can make this assumption.

It is important to note that some clinicians actually obtain this ratio by dividing the total cholesterol by the HDL (Total Cholesterol/HDL). In this case, the numbers should be lower. The cut-off point for a poor ratio would be any number greater than 4 with greater than 10 having serious problems. This number rarely drops below 2.

It's important to note that there are a small subset of individuals born with a genetic condition called familiar hypercholesterolemia (about one in 500 people) in which their cholesterols are typically around 350 or higher. While this program will help to moderate their cholesterol levels, they usually do not normalize with a low insulin program such as this. Learn more about hypercholesterolemia.

If you're using your HDL percentage to figure out when to transition to the intermediate nutrition plan, you must use caution and consult a trained natural health care clinician if your cholesterol is above 350.

You can also use the triglyceride to HDL ratio (Triglyceride/HDL) as another indicator of insulin disturbance. This ratio should be below 2. The higher this number is the worse your insulin control may be.

There does not appear to be a similar genetic condition for triglycerides so you could use the Triglyceride/HDL ratio below 2 as one indication that you are ready to move on to the adaptation phase.

Welcome to the Beginner Nutrition Plan

I feel it's best for most people to start at the beginner level of this nutrition program. However, if you're healthy and highly committed to improving your health, you can go straight to the intermediate or advanced section. I do recommend reading through each plan, though, as recommendations that are mentioned in each plan aren't repeated when you go to the next level. The reasons I recommend most people starting at the basic level are twofold:

There are several basic requirements in this beginning level plan that will take time and patience to integrate into your daily life, and these requirements are essential to move on to my intermediate and advanced nutrition plans.

There is, however, a general principle that is useful for everyone, no matter what level you choose:

As I mentioned in the introduction, this is one of the most important principles in this series of recommendations. If any food or supplement makes you sick in any way, stop it immediately! You have the tools to tell if something is good for your body or not -- please use them!

There are valuable and sensitive micronutrients that are damaged when you heat foods. Cooking and processing food can destroy these micronutrients by altering their shape and chemical composition. Regular vegetable juicing will easily help you reach this goal of 1/3 raw food in your diet.

Let us first start out by describing what you can and should definitely eat more of: vegetables. ALL vegetables promote health, unless you are allergic to them or they cause gas or intestinal problems; consult my "Recommended Vegetables" list for the healthiest choices.

It would be best to consume your vegetables uncooked, but you may have to lightly steam them initially.

Vegetables contain phytochemicals, which are powerful natural agents to promote health. They will also help to alkalinize your system, as most of us are far to acidic. Most people benefit more from increased vegetables than from extra vitamins. You will normally need a large amount of vegetables to optimize your body's pH acid/alkaline balance.

Nearly everyone would benefit from eating as many vegetables as possible within the allowances of their metabolic type design limits, or their unique biochemical individuality. Please remember that you are unique, and your body knows best and will tell you, what is an optimal amount for you. An Eskimo simply can't eat as much vegetables as a Peruvian Indian can. Not only would they feel poorly but they'd likely develop a ravenous appetite matched only by their sweet cravings, as well as who knows what degenerative process and emotional imbalances.

The best way to determine the amount of vegetables your body requires is by finding out your metabolic type. While we all need vegetables to stay healthy, the type and amount should be determined by what metabolic type you are. There is a basic test you can take to find out your metabolic type, which is detailed in my new book, Total Health Program. Carbohydrate metabolic types need far more vegetables in their diet than protein metabolic types. One of the easiest ways to fulfill your vegetable intake is through regularly consuming vegetable juice.

In other words, let your body report back to you how accurate your appetite/taste buds are at gauging what is right for you.

If you are unable to obtain organic vegetables, you can rinse non-organic vegetables in a sink full of water with 4-8 ounces of distilled vinegar for 30 minutes, or use the solution described at the end of this article.

Please be sure and squeeze as much air as you can out of the bag that holds the vegetables and then seal it. The bag should look like it is vacuum-packed.

I do this by holding the bag against my chest and running my arm over the bottom of the bag to the top, which bleeds the air out of the bag. This will double or triple the normal storage life of the vegetables.

Eating refined sugar weakens your immune system and promotes yeast overgrowth. All non-diet pops have 8 teaspoons in each can. Most packaged cereals have sugar as their major ingredient. Avoid most natural sweeteners (including corn syrup, fructose, honey, sucrose, maltodextrin, dextrose, molasses, rice milk, almond milk, white grape juice, fruit juice sweetened, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, date sugar, cane sugar, corn sugar, beet sugar, succanat and lactose).

When in doubt about the sugar content of a food you can always look at the list of ingredients and see how many grams of carbohydrates are listed. Unless the carbohydrates are from aboveground vegetables you should be concerned that they represent sugars that could alter your insulin levels.

Most of us eat large amounts of grains and sugars that cause us to have large amounts of insulin circulating in our blood. When you stop eating grains your body will take several days to lower your insulin levels. In the meantime the high insulin levels will cause you to have many symptoms such as dizziness, confusion, headaches, and generally feeling miserable.

If you eat every two hours for the first few days of your transition you will be able to avoid this temporary side effect. You will need to eat some protein, such as an egg, piece of chicken, turkey, fish or some seeds along with a vegetable such as a piece of celery, cucumber or red pepper. This will help to prevent hypoglycemia and stabilize your blood sugar.

Even after your system has adjusted, it will be wise to eat 4-6 meals a day. Eating more frequently has been shown to normalize cholesterol levels. It will also help your adrenal glands better regulate cortisol levels.

Many people ask about Equal or NutraSweet (Aspartame). These artificial sweeteners need to be eliminated. There are more adverse reactions to NutraSweet reported to the FDA than all other foods and additives combined. In certain individuals, it can have devastating consequences. If you are healthy you can use a few teaspoons of succanat intermittently. One should also avoid artificial chemicals like MSG.

Most people have great difficulty implementing these suggestions unless they sit down once a week (at a time when you are well rested, fresh and relaxed) and plan every meal for the week ahead.

A good rule for working people is to prepare your meals ahead of time. For example, make your lunch for the next day before you go to bed. Also, to know what you will be eating for dinner before you leave the house in the morning. This way you can go to the store or take the appropriate items out of the freezer. This is strongly advised. Those who don't do this will more easily slip back into their old, more comfortable, and less healthy eating habits.

All you need to do is find at least ten recipes that you like. That is all that most families use. You might have to try ten recipes to find one that you and your family enjoy, but that is ok as it is all part of the process. It is vitally important to have a variety. Do NOT rotate between two or three meals or you will burn out and stop the program. Variety is the key.

Step 6: Learn to distinguish physical food cravings from emotional food cravings.

If you are seeking sweets or grains because of an emotional challenge, you will want to consider using the simple and rapidly effective psychological acupressure technique, EFT, to rapidly help you control your emotional food cravings.

Many people don’t understand that emotional well-being is essential to physical health. In fact, in terms of dieting for weight loss, not addressing emotional issues -- whether small or serious traumas from the past -- is the primary reason that most people who lose weight often fail at keeping the weight off.

If you are maintaining negative thoughts and feelings about yourself while trying to take physical steps to improve your body, you will not succeed. It will be like repeatedly washing your car in an effort to keep it clean during a dust storm. Fine-tuning your brain to "positive" mode is absolutely imperative to achieve optimal physical health.

Many people shun this notion, not because it doesn’t make sense, but because the medical establishment has conned them into believing that it means they’ll be shelling out many thousands of dollars over the coming months or years to traditional psychological care.

Well, some of the traditional psychological approaches may sometimes work, but there is a better solution. It’s psychological acupressure, an inexpensive, simpler and proven way to eliminate the negative emotions barring you from a full and healthy life. And the Emotional Freedom Technique -- or EFT -- is the most powerful form of this technique available.

If you feel that your own emotions, or your own self-image, may be your own worse enemy with this (or any) nutrition plan, I highly recommend you read my free EFT manual and consider trying EFT on your own. You may also want to consider my EFT series on DVD or VHS, which provides in-depth discussions and lessons on EFT, and also provides an in-depth discussion of this nutrition plan. EFT is an easy technique to learn, and because of its incredibly high success rate at helping people instill positive emotions, it is also gaining widespread popularity quickly.

Beginner Plan: Protein

Proteins are nutrients that are essential to the building, maintenance and repair of body tissues such as skin, internal organs and muscle. They are also the major components of our immune system and hormones. Proteins are made up of substances called amino acids -- 22 of which are considered vital for health. The adult body can make 14 of these amino acids, but the other eight, known as essential amino acids, must be obtained from what we eat. Proteins are found in all types of food, but only meat, eggs, cheese and other foods from animal sources contain complete proteins, meaning they provide the eight essential amino acids.

According to my experience, most people don't eat enough protein. A person's protein intake varies and depends on your sex, height, weight and exercise levels. Normal protein intake ranges from 20 to 50 grams at each meal.

If you are eating packaged foods, the number of grams of protein per serving is listed on the package. For whole foods, 3 ounces of most meats will provide about 20 to 25 grams of protein. A 4-ounce hamburger, which is processed, only has about 20 grams of protein while typical lunchmeats have about 5 grams per slice. One egg has about six grams of protein and a cup of milk (not typically recommended) has 8 grams.

Go organic. Omega-3 eggs contain a 1:1 omega 6 to 3 ratio, while commercial eggs contain a 19:1 omega 6 to 3 ratio.

Don't be afraid to eat eggs. You can easily eat one dozen eggs per week, as they will not cause your cholesterol to increase. Scientists have shown that infants who eat the adult equivalent of 40 eggs per week don't have problems.

The best way to prepare eggs is to not cook them at all, but this is an advanced technique.

Milk, yogurt and cheese are allowed in this phase but are drastically reduced in the intermediate phase. If you have allergies, consider avoiding all dairy, or at the very least, milk. When eating yogurt, please pay special attention to the carbohydrate content as many contain added sweetener, which dramatically increases the carbohydrate content. Also, low-fat dairy products are densely packed with carbohydrates and should be avoided.

All meats, including lunchmeats, are allowed in this phase. It would be wise to purchase lunchmeats that are preservative-free. You will move toward higher-quality protein sources in the intermediate phase of the program; however, if you want to try two types of meat that come with my highest recommendation and taste as good as, if not better than, prime beef, consider ostrich and bison. Because both ostrich and bison taste great and are very versatile, this is not a difficult switch to make, and yet these are two of the healthiest meats on earth. Both ostrich and bison are now available in my "Recommended Products" section, or you can sometimes find them in select health food and grocery stores.

All soy products are allowed in this phase, though soy is not, despite a lot of popular belief, really that good for you - amongst other issues, it can weaken your immune system (input the term "soy" in our search engine to find dozens of articles on soy's health drawbacks). Soy products will be excluded in subsequent phases, with the exception of fermented soy products like tempeh, miso and natto.

All fish and seafood products are allowed in this phase but are progressively eliminated in subsequent phases due to fish and seafood contamination with mercury and other toxins; sadly, seafood and fish, whether from the ocean, lakes and streams, or farm-raised, is all showing signs of such contamination, and so even otherwise healthy fish are now advised against and will be phased out in subsequent phases.

Nuts and seeds are allowed in this phase but are progressively eliminated in subsequent phases. However, consider lowering your nut intake now if you have:

The only exceptions will be flaxseeds and walnuts, which can be consumed in moderation in future phases as they help you balance your omega-6 and omega-3 fats. (Most Americans consume dangerously low levels of omega-3. Fish oil, which is purified of any contaminants found in fish meat, is the best source of omega-3, as it also contains the essential fatty acids DHA and EPA. Flax seeds and walnuts are amongst the next best choices, though they don't contain DHA and EPA.)

While seeds and nuts are relatively low in carbohydrate, nuts are dense sources of calories and should be used in moderation. Even in this first phase, you can try to phase out other nuts and just consume walnuts and flaxseeds moderately:

Lesson 8: Watch your bean and legume intake.

If you do not have a problem with insulin, these foods are acceptable in this level. If you have high insulin levels, you will want to avoid beans until you have normal insulin levels. If you have achieved your ideal weight, you can introduce beans. Symptoms of high insulin levels include:

Remember that beans have carbohydrates and are sources of good, but not complete, proteins. Add some additional proteins to your meal if beans are your primary protein source at any meal.

Beginner Plan: Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates provide fuel for the body in the form of glucose, which is a sugar. There are two types of carbohydrates -- simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates are sugars, such as the ones found in candy, fruits and baked goods. Complex carbohydrates are starches found in beans, nuts, vegetables and whole grains.

In October, the government released a report that told us that two-thirds of us are either obese or overweight. Folks, we have an epidemic on our hands! This is the result of eating far too many processed foods and believing the low-fat diet myth.

If this is new information for you, it will be very important to read one of the most important articles on the site, Reduce Grains and Sugar to Lose Weight and Improve Health, which discusses the reasons you need to radically reduce the amount of grains in your diet.

What most people don't know is that you don't actually need carbohydrates -- they aren't essential for survival. If you ate no carbohydrates, like many traditional Eskimos do, you would be fine as long as you had enough high-quality protein, fat, water and minerals. While both grains and vegetables are carbohydrates, most grains should be avoided and most vegetables are acceptable. I don't advocate a zero carbohydrate diet, as I believe we all need vegetables to achieve optimal health.

Your body prefers the carbohydrates in vegetables rather than grains because it slows the conversion to simple sugars like glucose and decreases your insulin level. On the other hand grain carbohydrates will increase your insulin levels and interfere with your ability to burn fat.

This step necessitates a trip to your doctor. The test you need to ask for is a fasting blood sugar test, which can also be called an FBS, glucose test or blood sugar levels test. It consists of a small withdrawal of blood after a fasting period of six hours.

A fasting blood glucose level test is very powerful, yet it's one of the least expensive tests in traditional medicine. A normal fasting blood sugar should be around 87 mg/dL.

Diabetes is not usually diagnosed until the blood sugar rises above 126 mg/dL. However, it is my contention that this is far too late in the process. A blood sugar over 100 can usually predict future diabetes that is even 10 or more years down the road.

Lesson 2: Scale back, or completely eliminate, all grains, beans and legumes in this phase; the higher your insulin levels, the more ambitious your grain-elimination should be.

Wheat
Spelt
Barley
Amaranth
Millet
Oats
Rice

Rye
Quinoa
Teff
Potatoes (This is actually a vegetable, but it digests more like a grain)
Corn (This is considered a vegetable, but it is technically a grain)

Highly processed food products are not recommended, regardless of insulin level. These include:

Avoiding grains frequently causes weight loss. If you don't want to lose weight you can increase grains in your diet, but I strongly recommend that you contact a knowledgeable health care professional that understands insulin and fat biochemistry to help fine-tune your individual program.

If you want to eat beans, soak them for 48-72 hours, rinsing every 12 hours prior to cooking them. You can then cook them for 8-12 hours in a crock-pot. These steps ensure that the protein will be more easily digested. Additionally, selecting beans for your blood type may make some sense.

Remember this important principle: vegetables are generally good, but not all vegetables are created equal. For example, increasing your vegetable intake with salads is a good start, but I would advise avoiding iceberg lettuce. Why? It has minimal nutritional value. Red and green leaf lettuce, along with romaine lettuce and spinach, provide much more nutritious options. Also, finding organic vegetables is important. However, if you can't obtain organics, any vegetable is better than no vegetable! Take care with non-organic vegetables by washing them and removing peels and cores when possible.

My Recommended Vegetables List provides a guide to the most nutritious vegetables, and those to limit for their high carbohydrate content. Remember: the greener the vegetable, the more nutritious it will be.

Finally, at least 1/3 of your diet should be raw foods, and vegetables are an obvious choice to help achieve this. While vegetable juicing is an important step later in this nutrition plan, I encourage you to try it now, as it is an easy and enjoyable way to consume all the vegetables your body requires.

It's best to avoid sweeteners whenever possible, but for the beginning level the following sweeteners are acceptable:

You may use artificial sweeteners at this level, but please avoid NutraSweet (aspartame). There are more adverse reactions to NutraSweet reported to the FDA than all other foods and additives combined. In certain individuals, it can have devastating consequences. If you are healthy you can use a few teaspoons of succanat intermittently.

It is helpful to avoid artificial chemicals like MSG. You can use sucralose, acesulfame K and saccharine in moderation. Using a sweetener will likely increase sugar cravings in the majority of people using them so use them with extreme caution. Please be sensitive to changes in your body, especially if you notice an increase in your sugar or grain cravings and consider stopping them if you notice those changes.

Beginner Plan: Fats

Did you know that your brain is about 60 percent fat? The fats you eat strongly influence your level of brain function. Some nutritional anthropologists believe the human brain would not have developed as it did without access to high levels of DHA (a type of fat) found in fish and wild game. Just two generations of high omega-6 and low omega-3 fats can lead to profound changes in brain size and function.

Fat is made of fatty acids attached to a substance called glycerol. Fats play an important role in the body; they are essential to build cell membranes, clot blood, absorb vitamins, cushion vital organs and protect us from extreme temperatures.

Learning about fats can be confusing. When you go to the grocery store, you're confronted with advertisements telling you that a product is low in fat, or a product is made with partially hydrogenated oil. To make sense of all the labels, I've compiled the following list of definitions for you:

Omega-3 fats, DHA and EPA, are essential for brain and nerve function. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in the U.S. diet is typically about 15:1, but it can be as high as 25 or 50:1. The ideal ratio is about 1:1, as this is what our ancestors consumed. To state it simply: for every omega-6 fat they ate, they ate one omega-3 fat. But most Americans are consuming 15 omega-6 fats for every one omega-3 fat.

In cell membranes, omega-3 fats improve your cell's response to insulin, neurotransmitters and other messengers. They also help the repair process when your cells are damaged. On the other hand, omega-6 fats contribute to insulin and membrane resistance, altering your mood, and impairing learning and cell repair. To avoid high levels of omega-6, it is important to avoid all vegetable seed oils.

Please understand that it's not only necessary to consciously consume omega-3 fats, but it is just as important to lower your omega-6 fat intake. If you don't lower your omega-6 fats to acceptable levels, your omega 6:3 ratio will not be low enough, and you will not receive many of the wonderful benefits of omega-3 fats such as reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's, arthritis and many other degenerative illnesses.

I am often asked what addition to the diet, outside of increasing the intake of water and fresh green vegetables, I most recommend to fight and prevent disease and live longer. My answer is easy: fish oil.

Americans consume a dangerously insufficient amount of omega-3, a fat essential to good health but only found in fish oil and a few other foods. Meanwhile, our intake of omega-6, another fat found in corn, soy, sunflower and other oils, is far too high. The ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should be 1:1, but the typical American's ratio ranges from 15:1 to 50:1!

I am convinced that this lack of omega-3 in our diets is a primary reason behind many of the diseases Americans face, and our shorter lifespan in relation to many other "first world" countries such as Japan or Greece.

While a helpful form of omega-3 can be found in flaxseed, walnuts and a few other foods, the most beneficial form of omega-3 -- containing two fatty acids, DHA and EPA, which are essential to fighting and preventing both physical and mental disease -- can only be found in fish.

I advise against eating any fish meat from any source, as mercury and other toxins are becoming too prevalent in all varieties, but I do highly advocate routinely consuming fish oil/cod liver oil, which has been purified of all contaminants. On this site, I offer the highest quality and purest fish oil/cod liver I know of - you can find proper dosage information for fish oil and cod liver oil, and the difference between the two, on the fish oil page.

Basically, though, because cod liver oil is high in vitamin D, and your vitamin D levels are often too low in cool months but okay in warm months (because the sun is a primary source of vitamin D) remember this: Take fish oil in the warmer months and cod liver oil in the fall, winter and early spring months. If you live near or close to the equator, you will most likely only need to take fish oil, not cod liver oil, as your vitamin D intake from the sun will be sufficient.

Most of us can safely take up to one teaspoon of cod liver oil for every 25 to 40 pounds of body weight during the winter, early spring and late fall months.

Mental sharpness on awakening
Depression/well-being
Weight gain
Brittle fingernails
Allergies
Arthritis

Quality of sleep
Memory problems
Dry hair
Dry skin
Concentration
Fatigue

If you are sick the normal dose of fish oil is one 1,000 mg capsule with 300 mg of EPA/DHA for every ten pounds of body weight.

One teaspoon of cod liver oil is equal to about 3 and one half capsules and there are three teaspoons in one tablespoon so one tablespoon would equal about 10 capsules.

This dose can be reduced if you are healthy and if you are in a summer climate with warmth and sun exposure.

If you start the fish oil and notice that one or more of the above symptoms improve that is a very good sign.

If after a time on the fish oil your symptoms return for no apparent reason, that is a good clue that you are taking too much fish oil and should stop for a short while to help your body eliminate the oil and then resume at a lower dose.

Unlike vitamins and minerals whose intake is usually relatively constant, the amounts of essential fatty intake is quite variable so following the above will help fine tune your dose so you can fully benefit from the true miracle health benefits that fish oils provide.

Beginner Plan: Beverages

Let's start with the most important element of your diet: Water! Water makes up more than 70 percent of your body's tissues and plays a role in nearly every body function from regulating temperature and cushioning joints to bringing oxygen to the cells and removing waste from the body. Therefore, it's vital to pay attention to what you drink.

Lesson 1: Drink 1 quart of water for every 50 pounds of body weight per day.

Drinking enough water is one of the most simple, basic, and important health steps you can take.

Your body needs 1 quart of water per 50 pounds of body weight to function at an optimal level. If you normally don't drink enough water, you'll have to build up your water intake gradually to prevent running to the bathroom every few minutes.

Your bladder will adjust to this level after a short period of time, and you can keep increasing your water intake until you reach optimal levels. Try increasing your intake on this schedule:

If you drink the recommended amount of water, you can easily avoid dehydration, which can have profound effects on your health. Dehydration can cause:

It's important to sip water all day long. Depending on your size, your body can only process a bit more than a glass of water per hour. If you drink much more than this at one sitting, the extra water will not be used, but merely flushed down the toilet bowl. So keep your water bottle with you all day long. This way you can confirm precisely how much water you are drinking.

Healthy water? I bet you thought all water was healthy! Don't be tricked! Healthy water is only water that has been treated to avoid contamination. Nearly all municipal water supplies have chlorine and fluoride added. Europeans have known for many years that fluoride is toxic and have long since removed it from their water supplies. Be sure and obtain a filter to avoid chlorine and fluoride. Unhealthy arsenic levels are in about 5 percent of the water supplies and can cause you health problems.

Take Control of Your Health With

Dr. Mercola’s Nutrition Plan

Achieve Independent Health With Your Optimized Nutrition Plan: Getting Started

Welcome to the Beginner Nutrition Plan

Beginner Plan: Protein

Beginner Plan: Carbohydrates

Beginner Plan: Fats

Beginner Plan: Beverages