Overt Fat
If overt fat is eaten, it’s best to do so at the end of the day so energy is not diverted from exercise or mental tasks to digestion.
—The 80/10/10 Diet
On cooking carbs
Carbohydrates
“We must heat starchy carbohydrates to them, thus facilitating their breakdown into glucose. Unfortunately, heating caramelises these complex carbohydrate foods, fusing their molecules into a sticky like goo. (Dextrin and starch are the two principal vegetable-based adhesives, commonly used as glue for corrugated packaging and wallpaper.) The body can realize only perhaps 70% of the energy potential of cooked starchy foods.
This melting of sugar molecules occurs in carbohydrate-based foods subjected to cooking temperatures whether or causes them to produce an extremely high glycemic response in the body. Blood-sugar levels predictably spike after we eat cooked carbohydrate foods, especially grains that have had their fiber refined out of them. Heat the carbohydrates further and they will char, or blacken, as happens to burnt toast. This blackened carbohydrate is toxic, a known carcinogen.
The digestion of cooked complex carbohydrates is typically impaired by the fatty and sugary foods with which they are consumed, leading to fermentation. The byproducts of fermentation are gas, alcohol, and acetic acid. Alcohol is a protoplasmic poison that kills every cell with which it comes into contact. Acetic acid in its pure form is a known poison. When diluted with parts water, it is called vinegar. The acetic acid in vinegar is still toxic, regardless of dilution. “
[80-10-10 by Douglas Graham]
6 lady finger bananas blended with water.
I had a really upset stomach this morning. I have a gut feeling (lol) it was the juice I had yesterday. Either because it was a juice (no fibre, therefore fast transit = diarrhoea), or because it had carrot in it (root vegetable) or because it had spinach in it (which I don’t handle eating whole as a leaf). Or maybe a combination of all three. I’m focusing on mono meals today and probably for the oncoming few weeks. I had the banana for lunch (after a small mono meal of grapes for breakfast) and this afternoon had a couple of tomatoes with avocado. Then I went to pick my son up from school and when I got home I was in a terrible mood. For no reason (like, nothing bad IRL had caused it). I sat there feeling really moody and low energy for ages thinking, gah! Dying! So depressed! I didn’t really FEEL hungry so didn’t initially think it was hunger/ blood sugar related.
But then I started to piece together bits I’d read from Doug Graham’s book. High fat foods (too much avocado in my case) can lead to blood sugar problems. It also robbed me of my energy. And maybe I hadn’t eaten enough for the day, considering I had two lots of exercise.
Weight loss isn’t a priority for me but years of disordered eating is wreaking havoc with my thought processes.
Interestingly, I decided to put some grapes in front of me. Thinking I wasn’t hungry, I put one to my mouth. As Doug Graham suggests in his book, this is all it takes. My body WAS hungry, it did want the grapes. Two or three cups worth later and my foggy, crappy, terribly low mood lifted. Like magic. Living such a basic, simplified lifestyle makes understanding my body SO much easier! I’m no longer wondering which of the hundreds of different foods have upset me or what on earth is going on with my complicated system. I do love it.
So reading Douglas Graham’s 80-10-10 book has been really, really helpful. While I’ve been transitioning I’ve been guilty of many errors that I’m glad I now know better about (spices, fats, food combining, all sorts of things). Whilst being interesting, it’s also been a little depressing. I’m 95% pumped about being HCRV but there’s still this tiny bit of me that is like, man, really, no more chilli or garlic or root vegetables?! What about my dehydrator?! And man, my really expensive juicer :/ And where I initially thought, well maybe in six months I can have a healthy cooked veggie meal as a treat, I’m starting to realise that it’s probably not going to happen. Either because I simply won’t want it or because the risk of it making me ill won’t be worth it. But as much as I love certain foods that I won’t be eating again, I am just so desperate to feel better that I am completely committed.
Everything Doug Graham says just makes sense. It’s the first thing I have read in my life where I’m like, dude, I don’t even doubt you for a second. Besides the fact that he’s living evidence of what he preaches.
Sorry if this was a bit long, I think it’s important to track progress. For the upcoming week, I’m going to apply more of what DG teaches. The main thing I need to focus on is reducing my fat even further, adding greens in to my diet (am yet to source good organic greens) and bumping up my exercise even more. Perhaps even get to bed even earlier (currently 10.30pm, could do 0.30/10) considering I wake at 6 and am pretty tired when I wake. I hope you’re all feeling good!?
on cooked food
In terms of human evolutionary history, years is an extremely short period of time, not nearly enough for our digestive physiology to have adapted to the kind of wholesale degradation that cooking causes to our food. Physiologists suggest that it generally takes 50,000 to 500,000 years or longer for evolutionary change to occur. Even then, however, we could not adapt in a healthful fashion to the nutritional losses or the toxins created by cooking food.
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Studies have shown that our immunes system often reacts to the introduction of cooked food to the bloodstream the same way it does to foreign pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi: The body literally attacks the food, sending an army of white blood cells to do the job. This phenomenon, which has been linked with the eventual development of AIDS, does not occur when we eat raw foods.
[80-10-10 by Douglas Graham]
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The American Diabetes Association says, “Therefore, the use of added fructose as a sweetening agent is not recommended; however, there is no reason to recommend that people with diabetes avoid naturally occurring fructose in fruits, vegetables, and other
Fat, Not Fruit, Causes Problems
The raw-food movement is renowned for its use of great quantities of nuts, seeds, avocados, olives, flax and olive oil, coconuts, and other high-fat foods. On a high-fat diet, whether cooked or raw, people experience nutritional defi- ciencies, plummeting energy, hormone imbalances, intense cravings, and mood swings  everything goes haywire, not the least of which is blood sugar.
Sugar’s  Journey Through the Body
To be used as fuel for our cells, the sugars we eat travel a three-stage journey through our
• Stage  Sugars start out in the digestive tract when we eat them.
• Stage  They pass through the intestinal wall, into the bloodstream.
• Stage 3: They then move smoothly and easily out of the bloodstream
and into our cells. This occurs rapidly, often in minutes.
When we eat a high-fat diet, the sugar gets trapped in stage 2, and the body works overtime, sometimes to the point of exhaustion and disease, in an effort to move the sugar out of the  Meanwhile, the sugar backs up in the blood, creating sustained, elevated blood sugar that wreaks havoc on the body in the form of Candida, fatigue, diabetes, etc.
80-10-10
Douglas Graham
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Unfortunately, our ability to digest nuts and raw, dehydrated, or  rather poor. Ranging from about to 90% fat, nuts and seeds are best eaten infrequently and in very small amounts. Even then, their breakdown into fatty acids, amino acids, and glucose requires a drawn-out process that takes hours. Fats may lie in the small intestine for several hours before the gallbladder secretes bile with which to emulsify (break down and liquefy) them.
In contrast, high-fat fruits like avocados,  akees, breadfruit, and olives are rich in easily digestible fats (when ripe). These fruits range in fat content from 30% of calories (durian) to 77% (avocado). Coconut meat, also high in fat (ranging perhaps 20 to 80%, depending on maturity), is easily digested in the jelly-like state but almost impossible to digest when matured and hardened.
Leafy greens and other vegetables, when eaten raw and fresh, contain a small amount of fatty acids in an easily usable state. However, some (primarily the cruciferous vegetables) contain unwanted toxic sulfur compounds. We derive our best predigested fats adequate to meet our fatty- acid needs from fruits and tender leaves.
80-10-10 by Douglas Graham
