The Plan Diet

Yet another diet has enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame on the Dr. Oz Show. Holistic medicine advocate Lyn-Genet Recitas recently discussed her book, “The Plan” with Dr. Oz, explaining how we are eating the wrong foods and suffering health issues and weight gain as a result. By eliminating these “healthy” foods we can lose weight and live a happier life.

Nutritionist Recitas believes that some foods trigger an inflammation response in our body. This causes bloating, flatulence and weight gain. She labels these trigger foods “reactive” and has crafted a three step, three week diet plan for returning to a healthier life.

Step 1 of “The Plan” is a cleansing step. For three days you only eat low reactive foods. Low reactive foods include pitted fruits, spinach, lamb, chicken, broccoli, carrots, kale, zucchini, beets and winter squash. During the cleanse period you aren’t restricting calories. In fact the basic step 1 diet comes out to about 2,000 calories a day.  Three days on this diet will serve to bring your body to a non-inflammatory baseline so that other foods can be measured for their individual effects.

Step 2 of “The Plan” is the experimental phase. During this step, you cautiously add foods to determine if they are “friendly” or “reactive” to your individual diet. Recitas says that every person is unique, so there can be broad guidelines for identifying reactive foods, but each body is different, so experimentation is the only way to create your personal “friendly” food list.

The experimental process is not complicated. Essentially you add a food to your diet, then weight yourself the next day. Did you gain weight? Then that new food is reactive. Did you lose, or at least maintain weight? Hooray! This is a friendly food. This testing system does not require a PhD to decipher.

Lyn-Genet Recitas does provide an overview of foods and their relative reactive scale. Highly reactive foods include farm raised fish (she is particularly against low- and mid-range sushi since you are eating farm raised fish without any cooking to deactivate reactive chemicals), shrimp, turkey, oatmeal (gasp!), black beans, asparagus, cottage cheese and Greek yogurt.

Once you have determined your personal list of friendly and reactive foods, step 3 is lifetime maintenance. That is, you go on with your life, aware of your “do” and “do not” eat foods. It is fine to cheat with a reactive food, but you do so understanding the effect it will have on your body, your weight and your health.

Since Recitas believes that weight gain is merely your body’s reaction to inflammatory foods, by eliminating these foods from your diet you will naturally lose weight. You don’t need to track calories at all, just don’t eat foods that make you swell. Easy as pie (as long as the pie is a "friendly" food)!

Can The Plan lead you to better health and lower weight? It certainly takes an individual approach to eating. Have you tried it? Let us know!