As a fitness professional, it’s my job to stay up to date on the latest diet trends. However, I usually take it one step further and actually try the diet out myself. I have been reading up on “The Makers Diet.” The name of the book gives you the notion that it’s a religious take on dieting. In all actuality you can do this diet even if you don’t believe in a higher power.
The basis of the diet is to omit all foods that can cause poison in your system. It works to cleanseyour body of excess toxins and restore the health of your digestive track. By cleansingyour digestive tract you also gain energy and lose weight by eating “clean,” low glycemic foods. The writer of the books also suggests that you supplement your diet with a potent form of probiotics. The basis of the book is that your gut is a reflection of your “true health.” Adding in probiotics you increases your health and adds healthy bacteria into your system. It changes your overall health and boosts energy and digestion .
Your body, mind, and spirit are inexorably linked and heavily interdependent in the pursuit of total health. The body serves as the “house” for both mind and spirit; therefore, properly maintaining the body is essential to overall health.
Unlike the endless fad diets and health programs littering the American landscape, The Maker’s Diet is designed to produce noticeable results — through balanced, whole-food nutrition, not dangerous, quick-weight-loss gimmicks.
The Maker’s Diet is anything but a fad. It is ancient yet revolutionary, timeless yet timely. The 40-day program is divided into three two-week phases. These three phases are easy to follow, and each features foods that are healthy and delicious. When you’ve finished the 40-day program, you’ll enter into the Wellness for Life program, the maintenance phase of the diet.
The Maker’s Diet is based on the following tenets:
Biblical Principles
Obeying the Father
Just as God handed down His moral law in the Ten Commandments, the dietary guidelines he set down were designed to preserve our health. God’s dietary guidelines are not some narrow-minded religious exercise meant to set apart certain people from their neighbors. They were given by a loving God to save His people.
Always observe God’s dietary laws. Eat any fish with fins and scales but avoid fish or water creatures without them (Lev. 11:9-10). Those to avoid include smooth-skinned species such as catfish or eel and hard-shelled crustaceans such as crab, lobster, or clams. The meat of animals with a cloven or split hoof that also chew the cud (Lev. 11:3) can be eaten. This includes cows, goats, sheep, oxen, deer, buffalo, and so forth. Do not eat swine (pigs). They have divided hooves, but they do not chew the cud. These are unclean animals (Lev. 11:7-8). To learn more about the kinds of foods you’ll eat on The Maker’s Diet, see Food and Recipes.
Scientific Principles
The Three I’s
The Maker’s Diet is designed to attack the three I’ s — insulin, infection, and inflammation. By balancing insulin, you can improve physical, mental, and emotional health; also, balancing your blood sugar will result in sharpening your concentration and enhancing your mood. By reducing infection, you can lessen the toxic burden placed on your body by your daily contact with germs. By lessening inflammation, you can reduce aches and pains and decrease risk factors for such diseases as heart disease and cancer. By attacking these three I’ s, you can improve your appearance and increase your energy and begin to reverse the process of accelerated aging — living life the way you were meant to live it.
There are 3 phases of this diet plan to help you to a healthier life.
Phase 1: Correcting Harmful Imbalances
The journey to wellness begins…
Phase 1 makes up the first 14 days of the 40-day health experience and sets the foundation for your success. Phase 1 focuses on…
• Knowing which foods to enjoy or avoid: Because Phase 1 targets cleansing the body and correcting imbalances, it is essential to begin by eliminating the foods or chemicals your body is addicted to. For many, these are junk foods that include sugars, artificial sweeteners, caffeine, and preservatives.
• Learning to choose healthier foods: Success on The Maker’s Diet will come from establishing and maintaining a higher standard of quality for the food choices you make.
• Understanding the value of advanced hygiene: As important to overall health as diet or exercise, proper hygiene is completely overlooked by most simple diet or health plans. The Maker’s Diet advanced hygiene system was inspired by the guidelines laid out in the Bible. It is a revolutionary approach to achieving greater health and is fundamental in supporting your immune system.
• Imbuing one’s life with prayer and purpose: For greater resolve, each day of the journey toward optimal health will begin and end with prayers of thanksgiving, healing, and petition.
The components of Phase 1 should greatly reduce your risk of incurring disease. Throughout the 14 days, the program outlined in Phase 1 effectively helps your body reduce insulin sensitivity and balance the omega-3/omega-6 ratio vital for decreasing inflammation and enhancing the health of your immune system; this, in turn, will reduce your chance of infection. But even more important, you’ll begin to achieve a greater sense of balance
Phase 2: Returning to Optimal Health
The journey to health continues…
Phase 2 of The Maker’s Diet continues the journey toward optimal, total-body health. Having completed the first (and most restrictive) portion of the program in Phase 1, you should start seeing positive changes in your appearance and mood and have a feeling of well-being. You may also notice your clothes are looser as the waistline starts to melt away.
Spanning days 15-28 of the 40-day health experience, Phase 2 continues the body’s trend toward healthy weight loss and includes a greater variety of foods, while helping you establish the healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime.
Of course, there are still foods to avoid, but now there are even more to enjoy! As one progresses from Phase 1 — the most restrictive portion of the diet — into Phase 2, the food options will expand considerably. Phase 3 will reintroduce some previously eliminated foods — for example, more varieties of fruits, dairy, and starches such as sweet potatoes.
Phase 3: Claiming Health for Life
Realizing your health goals
Phase 3 spans days 29-40 of the 40-day experience. Phase 3 adds even more food options, culminating in a healthy, balanced diet that can and will sustain your overall health for a lifetime.
A dieter will have noticed some significant improvements in his or her health and may be approaching an ideal weight, or may find that weight has already stabilized. During Phases 1 and 2, the body will have returned to optimal health levels by restoring the immune system and balancing blood sugar — all because of the work that has been done to create and maintain healthy eating habits.
Phase 3 of The Maker’s Diet allows and encourages healthful, balanced eating from each of the food groups. In other words, there are more foods to enjoy! Phase 3 reacquaints the dieter with healthy grains and foods higher in natural sugars and starches, including bananas, potatoes, breads, and popcorn, to name a few (source).
Even if you don’t follow all of the phases of this program; the book is full great information! Even after following this diet for one day I felt MUCH better. My energy was at an all time high. Keep in mind that when doing this diet you must eat enough calories. The natural tendency is to eat foods that are easy to make. However, sometimes they don’t add up to enough calories to keep you up and moving around (especially in phase 1). This might also be a great way to keep you on track with your eating during this holiday seasons.
Adria Ali
(CES, PES, CPT, BS)
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