The 80/10/10 Diet
by Douglas N. Graham
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Book Reviews of The 80/10/10 Diet
Book Review: absolutely brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
This explains a lot for me, honestly. I have been in and out of a raw foods lifestyle for years now and never understood why it wasn't working for me and now it makes perfect sense - the high fat content was ALL WRONG!
Years ago I was "diagnosed" with a candida imbalance, which was true, and i did the Body Ecology Diet, which was phenomenally helpful because it was leaps and bounds above what I'd been doing, which was lots of soy and dairy and wheat...blech. So I improved but never for long and not to the level I really desired.
When I first heard about the raw foods movement it resonated and I tried it. The complex recreations of cooked foods like lasagna and pizza are certainly tasty, but I could never digest them, and now it seems preposterous to have even tried. They are almost entirely FAT! Way too heavy and just sends a candida imbalance off the charts, which Dr. Graham does a fabulous job of explaining. Not to mention the fact (though I AM mentioning it) that substituting cooked foods that aren't healthy with raw versions seems to be missing the point of walking away from those foods in the first place. Let's let our bodies enjoy the simplicity of the most delicious, sustainable and ecologically sound foods on this planet rather than substitute something that tastes like a cheesburger.
I think it's obvious that this man has lived this lifestyle for a loooong time and he's done extensive research to back up his own experiences. I myself feel 1000 times better immediately upon making this shift, even factoring in some detox effects. I'm easing into it by doing all fruit until dinner time so I can slowly replace the cooked foods that I still crave. This is a lifelong process of healing and revealing radiant health and I see and feel the differences already.
I have also wrestled with asthma since high school and I know the usual culprits (dairy, wheat, soy, miscombined foods) were pretty much all of my old "diet" foods and all of my cravings. The difference in how relaxed, open and clear my lungs are when eating this way is astounding. So simple, so logical and so powerful.
If ever there was a supplement junkie, that would have been me, but now I'm dedicated to being a living foods goddess instead. ;) Yes, it's a trip to buy THIS much fruit, and I'm not even eating the amounts he has in his menu (which is fine since I'm not as active yet either, but I will be!) but I'm spending less than I did on coffee drinks and take out food, even the healthy kind. Besides, I love the produce manager at my local store!
One of my favorite recipes so far, surprisingly enough, is the green smoothie made with (simply) bananas and romaine lettuce with a little water...I LOVE that! It's so refreshing, filling but not heavy and loaded with energy.
I used to think my morning smoothie made with coconut water, Miracle Greens powder, raw cacao and other superfoods was the bomb, but now I get why that wasn't moving me closer to my goals of ultimate health and fitness; too much fat, too complex, not what my body really wants and needs!
Do I see the general public doing this? No. I think it's something you need to be ready for on many levels or have been working up to for a while, or just something you are called to do. For the person on the Standard American Diet, this will seem ridiculous and unhealthy. To anyone who is free of the marketing hypnosis machine and/or has a deep connection to their own body, this will resonate as the best road to radiant health inside and out.
I'm so grateful to Dr. Graham for being a nutritional iconoclast! This is what has been calling to me for years but I needed a framework and some validation to do it properly, with enough food intake and variation. Now, there's nothing standing between me and the best health of my life. How empowering is that?!
If you are ready to do something special, different and totally natural to claim your right to perfect health, this is WELL worth the money and the read. It's nothing short of life changing for me.
Book Review: I can't measure the praise I have for Dr. Doug Graham
Summary: 5 Stars
Dr. Graham's 80/10/10 program is the most intelligent and healthy approach to the vegan lifestyle I have ever practiced. I wish I had discovered this marvelous and very important book sooner than I had. I have been recommending it to so many for over a year now and can't believe I have failed to review it until now. I realize this is more a testimony than a book review but I feel it is important to share the positive impact the 80/10/10 Diet has had on my life.
I have been a vegan for almost 30 years now and for 10 of those years I followed the lowfat vegan diet of Dr. John McDougal. The McDougal diet served me well until the Spring of 2000 when I became aware of the raw vegan diet some of my friends were following. After a few of their raw food potlucks and a lot of their enthusiasm and encouragement, I was sold. I started out with a few of the Boutenko Family books, then some others, and when I was ready to commit to the raw life style, went out and bought a dehydrator, a high speed blender, a new food processor and I was on my way.
After being a disciplined vegan for so many years, I didn't have any difficulty "going" raw except for one and that was making the adjustment to the tremendous amount of fats I then began consuming. Up until going raw, my diet was squeaky clean. I ate very little avocado, nuts, coconut, seeds. My use of oils was very judicious. Shortly after going raw however, it seemed like my digestive system went into shock. I was already suffering from a debilitating chronic illness; my new digestive problems only exacerbated it. Even though I had an intuition about the high fats, the poor food combining, the dehydrated foods, I wouldn't let myself believe that the raw diet was failing me until my health grew so poor I became disabled and my doctor advised me (among other things of course) to modify my diet. I ate nothing but steamed brown rice and veggies for a year. I was very sick; my diet depressing.
I really believe in the raw philosophy though and wanted badly to return to a raw diet, providing I could make it lowfat. I needed help and wanted science and sound nutrition to back me up. I did a Google search for lowfat raw vegan and came across Dr. Graham's 80/10/10 program. I was thrilled. His book was everything I was looking for and it made so much sense to me ~ all those light bulbs went on in my brain again!
As it turned out, Dr. Graham's 80/10/10 diet saved me! After three months of following the diet I saw a dramatic improvement in my fragile health. I felt stronger and my spirits were lifting. Eventually I gained the weight I desparately needed (doctor's orders that I get to at least 100 lbs and I did), my osteoporosis improved by 2 points, I no longer suffered with candidiasis, and my stomach and intestines were healing! Even my doctor noticed how I was thriving on my new 80/10/10 diet and blessed me for it. (That's quite something coming from a traditional MD!)
I am still chronically ill but somehow know I would be much worse off if I did not eat as well as I do now following the 80/10/10 guidelines. That thought is a huge comfort to me. My diet is one thing I can do for myself while trying to live with a debilitating illness.
So now at long last I must give The 80/10/10 Diet the 5 stars from me that it so richly deserves. I can't measure the praise I have for Dr. Doug Graham.
Book Review: This diet ruined my health!
Summary: 1 Stars
I read the 80/10/10 book cover to cover and joined many forums online based on this diet/lifestyle. I lived it for 2 years and followed it 100% as I am an all or nothing kind of person. Before starting this diet I was an avid hiker and a very fit, extremely healthy young adult who only ate whole organic foods and never any refined/processed foods. Fast forward to today and I am recovering from Osteoporosis(I am only 29 years old) and 12 spinal fractures due to malnourishment because of this diet. I kept losing weight to the point that I was down to 71 pounds and I am a 5'3" female. No matter how much fruit and pounds of greens I ate with that fruit my weight kept dropping. I spent most of the time with excessive amounts of hyperness(after a large fruit meal) to major downs were I was anxious, paranoid and crying. I figured all this was normal and was just detox as the 80/10/10 community like to call it. Yes I had those benefits that they all talk about getting from this diet like the "no body odor" and the "glowing skin"(due to getting out in the sun and getting a sunkissed glow not the actual diet),but what I realize now is that I had no body odor because my body was basicaly shutting down to the point that I was no longer having menstrual cycles so of course I didn't even have the hormones to produce such odor. I did this diet because I was brainwashed into thinking all other food other than fruit, tender greens and a small amount of whole food fat was toxic to my body. I am still trying to get over the fear of putting protien and fat in my mouth, but since I have started to eat raw dairy and grass-fed humanely raised animal protiens I am finally healing the damage that the 80/10/10 diet left me with and was not fixing. After two years of tearing the cartilage in my chest over and over again just by shutting a door or lifting a bowl this diet left so much inflammation in my body to the point were it could never heal itself. Please do not make the same mistake I made. I had looked for a diet to rid me of my depression as I refuse to use drugs and this book makes this diet seem like the holy grail and all our illnesses will be cured if we follow such diet. I now know better. The only thing this book was good for was it made me get my vitamin D levels checked. After reading 80/10/10 I got my vitamin D level checked and I was at a level 6 where ideally we should at least be at a level 50 or higher. My depression was due to the lack of the vitamin D yet I continued the diet for the next two years and now I am even more depressed because I am trying to heal my very painful back fractures. If you are looking to this diet to fix your current health problems please make small changes first that may be the biggets culprits to your problems such as refined/processed foods and sugars along with things that we may think are healthy but could be causing intolerences that you weren't aware of such as gluten. Also, get your vitamin D levels check as the medical community is finally linking so many illnesses and symptoms due to deficiencies of this oh so important vitamin. I wish you all good health as this it what we are all striving for when we embark on these diets just please be cautious!Book Review: A True Must Read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very interesting book, and I am extremely glad it has been written. The strange sounding title refers to the name of an eating plan that derives 80% of total calories from carbs as found in fruit, and 10% each from fat and protein, and does so within a raw vegan framework. Graham's opinion is that this is the optimum and natural diet for human beings and therein lies the premise of this book, and he spends the next 300+ pages convincing the reader why this is so.
To accomplish this, Graham uses mostly common sense arguments and scientific analyses. The former are more effective here, and he peppers the text liberally with them. The combination is a very convincing mix, and I felt ready to dive into a pit of bananas before I had read too far. By the time Graham describes how eating a high-fat diet stresses the adrenals I was both fascinated and reflecting in horror on my past dietary sins.
There are 348 pages here; 170 of them are essay in chapters, and the balance goes to sample menus, nutrient breakdowns, portion equivalents, testimonials, faqs, and so on. These miscellaneous parts do not come across as filler, even the perhaps overly lengthy testimonial section. Graham's writing style is clear and though he engages in repetition at times (for instance when talking about fat and blood sugar) the flow is mainly undisturbed. The end feeling I had was that it was very intelligently laid out and well done. I also appreciate that he doesn't try to sell you anything. (see "The PH Miracle" for an example of that!)
I really don't have much to criticize here, I did wonder what stripe of doctor "Dr." Graham is, and some of the menu plans (dinners) seemed a bit complex to coexist with a "mono is best" philosophy. He cites some vague and trivial sources ("a 1999 journal article says..." and "according to a brochure from the Colorado Vegetarian Society..."), and I was left wondering why Dr. Graham recommends eating any "overt" fat at all (given that sweet fruits and greens naturally contain 5% fat). He never gave a reason. Also, he says to eat juicy fruit for breakfast, sweeter fruit for lunch, and I remember something about acid fruits at dinner. Again, he never gave a reason for this. Very minor things in the broader context. I would overlook a great deal more to get to the profoundly worthwhile message of this book.
I guess the most compelling thing about this book is that by the end, the diet proposed within seems like a no big deal, normal, almost. It's like a secret hiding in plain sight. That's amazing considering how truly rare it is to eat in such a way. Go out into the world and you will see it is borderline revolutionary. I have applied these principles and experienced nothing but positive results for myself- If it were not so I would never write such a review. I must say thanks to Dr. Graham for putting this out there for everyone to benefit from.
Note: I don't know what the deal is with the 4-6 weeks Amazon takes to ship it, I bought mine from [...] because of that.
Book Review: Grandma Always Said "Eat Your Fruits And Vegetables!"
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book on the recommendation of an alternative health doctor, and it was like an epiphany! I started to apply its principles and in just one month I lost 20 stubborn pounds, my bad cholesterol dropped 25 points, my blood pressure went from a whopping 180 over 120 to 135 over 80, my chest palpitations have stopped, my tumor markers (for previous breast cancer) went down to normal levels, I am 2 dress sizes lower, I have more energy, my mood is always happy, I LOVE eating this way! I don't miss meat or cheese or grains at all! They make me gag now because I know they previously brought me to the brink of death! Literally!
Now I live on fresh fruits and veggies from the farm stand and make all kinds of neat salads, my own fresh dressings, I add a few nuts daily (but without any added salt or oil) like pine nuts in my salads, or crushed almonds on celery sticks, etc. My only "cheat" so far is once or twice a week I add one cooked baked Yukon Gold potato, which is the best tasting potato in the world, but add no butter, sour cream, or salt to it, and don't even miss the spices; it tastes best plain. Most plant based foods do, only we've been so used to ruining their tastes with unnatural fats, salts, sugars, condiments, and other additives.
So my advice is 1) get this book, 2) be creative with it, the sample diet plans are not etched in stone, just eat fruits and veggies in their natural state as much as possible, 3) plan ahead for mealtimes so you always have fresh produce on hand, 4) try some new fruits and veggies you've never tried before just to have some variety, 5) don't listen to naysayers - who will all eventually have Diabetes, Obesity, Heart disease, High Blood Pressure, ALS, Alzheimers, or Cancer if they continue eating the processed and fatty foods the world is getting sick on. I know - I used to be one of them. Never, ever again! I have found the formula to superior health, at last.
Dr. Graham is very wise and to him I say, "God bless you, sir!"
There was a reason God said to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that they could eat of any fruit in the garden (except for one unspecified fruit) and He said man should have dominion over the animals, but He doesn't say to them in the Garden of Eden to EAT the animals!
So whether you believe we came from monkeys and should eat bananas fresh off a tree, or whether you believe we originated from God and He said to eat as much as we wished of the fruit of the garden, this 80/10/10 Diet is just what the doctor ordered. Dr. Graham, that is. ;)
Good luck everyone on your journey back to health. This is the way to go, believe me!
Besides, the FOOD TASTES WONDERFUL!!!