The Rebuilding Stage

[shelley]

Rebuilding Stage

This is a diet/stage that should follow any intense cleansing, and
should be undertaken when there are nutritional deficiencies, wounds,
post-surgery, severe weight loss, winter, anemia, or when bodybuilding is your goal.

The objective of this stage is to feed the blood, bones,
skin/tissues. Bathe them in nutrient-rich, tonifying foods and herbs.
To put on muscle mass and adequate fat without congesting yourself all over again.

A rebuilding diet is higher in protein and overall calories than a
maintenence diet. It should not last longer than 3 months without a break.

It's best to alternate a rebuilding diet with periods of a very alkaline, vegetarian diet or days of fasting. It can include all dairy IF you can handle it all. It should include plenty of good oils, organ meats, bone broths, fish, eggs, sweet potatoes, nuts, hot whole grain cereal, vegetable juices and sprouts.

It should include blueberries for better fat utilization, fresh or dried apricots, papayas, pineapples, mango, green apples, for their digestive enzymes that keep proteins properly utilized. It should also include a super-green supplement like Perfect Food or E3live as an alkaline aid. Raisins, dates and prunes ensure minerals and bulk fiber so things keep moving smoothly, which is essential when you're overdosing on calories.

The rebuilding stage is the one stage that allows, even encourages, you to eat more calories than your basal metabolic need if you lost too much weight during cleansing or fasting. In order to not overwhelm your digestive power, you should prepare high-fat foods with carminitive and pungent herbs and spices and introduce them back into your diet gradually.

It is allowed to have rich creams such as creme fraiche (fermented cream that isn't sour like sour cream) and cream cheese; fermented dairy such as kefir is encouraged.

But like weight loss, weight gain is best done slowly through exercise. Let your activity level set your caloric needs. In other words, lead with the body and not with the mind, in this case. If you're not hungry, don't eat. Reduced appetite is a sign that that agni, digestive fire, needs to be stoked, and it's stoked best through abstinence coupled with digestive teas. You don't want to get ahead of your liver, bowels or stomach acid, or you will have fermentation and ama, which gets you right backto chronic symptoms such as arthritis and premature aging.

The rebuilding stage should include a period of diet rotation at the outset. This is when you eat the safest diet imaginable - the one that never bothers you - and add one questionable rebuilding food that you haven't eaten for awhile to your diet for the day and see how you feel. For instance, if you had given up milk for awhile, now's the time to see if you truly are intolerant and whether it promotes mucous. Drink one small glass and watch your tongue. Do that with the other rebuilding foods , one per day.

The Blood Type Diet for Type O blood types is a rebuilding diet. It's not one that would do well for you as you age and need less protein. The Atkins, South Beach, all those high-protein diets are versions of a rebuilding diet even though they propose to help you lose weight. The only way they help you to lose weight consistently is if you eat 500 calories less than your basal metabolic needs and get adquate cardiovascular and strength training exercise. As soon as the liver is overwhelmed by high-protein bars etc., your metabolism will crash and the excess fat will start piling on around your middle. Eat this way for years and you risk osteoperosis, arthritis, gout, kidney stones, kidney failure.

[robertin75]

Shelley:

What are your thoughts about weight gain supplements like whey protein powders, creatine, etc. ?

Thanks,
Roberto

[shelley]

Protein powder shakes are one of my pet peeves!!! I'm still researching creatine, so far it seems okay, but protein powders are not good in large amounts. Whey is sometimes okay if it's dehydrated, that can preserve the shape of the protein. But real, actual curds and whey is the bomb, really great stuff. Too bad it went out of fashion.

Here's the low-down on Protein Powders in general:

It's important to understand that proteins are very delicate shapes that are easily denatured, or misshapen. When this happens, the body is no longer entirely sure that they are food. See, proteins are not only food, they are also the building blocks for viruses, hormones, things like that. When the body is not sure what type of protein it is faced with or the enzymes cannot break it down because the shape is wrong, the protein stays in a large molecule shape that is eventually destroyed by microbes, causing fermentation, or is attacked by the immune system, causing allergic responses such as shortness of breath, acne, phlegm, pus and mucous.

When we eat protein naturally we get it in balance. It's always combined with fats or carbs. And we take time to CHEW it.

When we take a protein powder this isn't always the case. The fats it comes with are often rancid, the carbs are often simple carbs, such as pouring the powder into a sports drink or fruit juice. What this does is transport the proteins like a bomb very quickly to the liver without much digestion happening in the stomach or from saliva first.

This changes the chemistry of the body very quickly to an acid state, clogs the liver and kidneys, strips the body of water, oxygen, calcium and other essential base minerals. It's terrible, but many weight lifters have suffered with cirrhosis and kidney stones in their golden years because of the "great health" they had when they were working out.

One of the people I help was so weakened by his bodybuilding routine he came down with candida, parasites from contaminated sushi, adrenal fatigue, and lost 60 pounds. It's because of him and others like him that I wanted to include bodybuilding in this site and clear up some of the myths out there.

Because we know now that eggs do not contribute to serum cholesterol, the best protein shake is raw eggs. My protein shake recipe combines raw eggs, granulated lecithin, rice milk and a good oil, because protein + oil = lasting, powerful energy.

Even if you have to eat 4,000+ calories a day, try not to resort to shortcuts like meal replacement shakes or power bars (full of high fructose corn syrup, which is hard on the liver) very often. They really aren't doing you all that much good. Instead, eat fruit and nut bars, make your own sesame seed and raisin cookies in a food dehydrator, eat liver once a week, and get good at making real potroast with the bone left in. The gelatin from the bone is fantastic for increasing protein absorption and feeding cartilage.

Olympic atheletes in Aristotle's age would eat copious amounts of cream one week before the trials, and this is actually a great plan if you can handle dairy. Creme fraiche is a high-fat cream that's been fermented so it's easier to digest. A fruit smoothie with yogurt/kefir, an ounce or two of heavy cream or creme fraiche and raw eggs is a fantastic energy source. Jet fuel! Just try it out sometime, I guarantee your workout will feel better overall. Good fats like dairy fats carry more oxygen with them and make oxygen easier to utilize by the muscles and the liver, which is where the all-important Krebs Cycle takes place.

Hope that makes sense!

[h0ppy]

[shelley]

Ah, good questions.

Eggs may be scrambled but not hard-boiled. Try to scramble them 'soft.' To keep them totally bio-available, eat them raw in my Protein Shake or poached.

Meat products are muscles, and these proteins are shaped for muscle strength and flexibility and stand up to cooking much better. Braising (low temp, slow cooking in fluids) is best, but really so long as you eat your meats with veggies to counter-act the effect of heat on animal fats you're fine.

[h0ppy]

Does it really matter if we denature the proteins we eat due to heat, since the HCL and pepsin denatures them in the stomach anyway?

[shelley]

there's a huge difference between denature and digest. Denature means the proteins are still together but misshapen, which makes them hard to digest - which means that they are split up. In order for proteins to be split up into usable amino acids, their receptor sites for the enzymes have to be accessible. A denatured protein has collapsed in on itself and so the enzymes don't have a chance to get to the active site. It's like trying to park a car in a garage iwth the garage door closed.

[beachbuminthecountry]

This may be a dumb question but during the rebuilding stage can the liver be cleansed too with eating these foods. I need to put weight and muscle on but keep cleansing the liver.