Continued from Symptoms to expect when you change your diet.
As one continues on the improved diet and gradually raises the food quality, interesting symptoms being to appear. The body begins a process called retracing. It says to itself, “Now we have a chance to get rid of this old garbage and build a beautiful new house. Let’s get started immediately. Let’s get this excess bile out of the liver and gall bladder and send it to the intestines for elimination. Let’s get the sludge moving out of the arteries, veins, and capillaries. These smelly, gassy, brain-stupefying masses have been here too long–out with them! These arthritic deposits in the joints need cleaning up. Let’s get these irritating food preservatives, aspirins, sleeping pills, and drugs out of the way, along with these other masses of fat which have made life so burdensome for us for so long. Let’s get going till the job is down–till we have a beautiful house–and from there on we’ll keep it a beautiful ideal model house.”
Catabolism
During the first phase (called catabolism), the accent is on elimination, or breaking down of tissue. The body begins to clean house–in short, to remove the garbage deposited in all the tissues–everywhere. During this period, the body removes the ashes from the furnace preparatory to getting a better fire. Here the accentuation is on removal of the gross and immediate body obstructions. Wastes are discarded more rapidly than new tissue is made from the new food. This becomes evident as weight loss. This persists for a while and is then followed by the second phase–called stabilization.
Here, the weight remains more or less stable. During this phase, the amount of waste material being discarded daily is equal to the amount of tissue which is being formed and replaced by the newer, more vital food. This occurs after the excess of obstructing material in the tissues has been removed.
Anabolism
This state persists for a while and is then followed by a third phase — a build-up period called anabolism, wherein weight starts to go up, even though the diet is lower in calories than it was before. At this point, much or more of the interfering wastes have already been discarded — the tissues which have been formed since the diet was raised in quality are more durable and do not break down easily. Also, new tissues are now being formed faster. This is due to the improved assimilation made possible by the ceasing of wrong food combining. The body’s need for the usual amounts of food decreases, and we are able to maintain our weight and increased energies with less food.
Many are able to function very efficiently on two meals a day. As the body progressively increases in efficiency and decreases in tissue breakdown under exercise, so do we gradually need less and less food to maintain life. The higher the percentage of raw food one lives on, the slower the rate of tissue deterioration which one evolves into. A sick body requires a gradual, carefully worked-out entry into this stage, where one is able to live on a 100% unfired (raw) diet, if desired.
Elimination of Poisons
Returning to the symptoms which occur on a superior nutritional program, people who have had tendencies in the past to recurring skin rashes or eruptions will frequently tend to eliminate poisons and harmful drugs through the skin with new rashes or eruptions. If they go to a doctor now who is not familiar with this aspect of nutrition, he will diagnose it as an allergy.
They ask, “How come? I’m eating better now than I ever did before, and instead I’m getting worse.” They don’t understand that the body is retracing.
The skin is getting more alive and active. It’s throwing out more poisons more rapidly now that the body is building more power which is saved from those hard-to-ingest meals which have been discontinued. These toxins being discarded are saving you from more serious disease which will result if you keep them in your body too much longer–possibly hepatitis, kidney disorders, blood disease, heart disease, arthritis, nerve degenerations or even cancer–depending upon your hereditary or structural weaknesses. Be happy you’re paying your bills now in an easy-payment plan.
“I got a cold”
With some, colds which haven’t appeared for a long time may occur, or even fevers. This is nature’s way of housecleaning. Understand that these actions are constructive, even though unpleasant at the moment. Don’t, but don’t, try to stop these symptoms by the use of certain drugs, or even massive doses of vitamins which will act as drugs in huge concentrations. These symptoms are part of a curing process, and don’t try to cure a cure.
These are not deficiency conditions or allergic manifestations — not if you’re eating properly in quality, quantity, combination and sequence. Here is where experienced advice is a great value. Unfortunately, there are few good books present today which give full guidance to the average reader. Try to find guidance through a doctor or teacher who has the requisite experience in this most confusing of all subjects–nutrition in relation to health and disease.
You may be eating perfectly in regard to quantity, quality, and observing all the correct rules, and still symptoms will occur. Those who have lived better lives in the past–who have eaten better foods and who have abused their bodies less with over-eating will have reactions ranging from almost none at all or very mild symptoms which may be uncomfortable or acute. Those who have lived worse lives and poisoned themselves more will experience more severe symptoms if their liver, kidneys, or other important eliminating organs have been damaged. When they have been renovated to the point of fair working order, they will no longer produce symptoms.
Headaches may occur at the beginning; fever and/or colds may also appear; the skin may break out; there may be a short interval of bowel sluggishness, occasional diarrhea, feelings of tiredness and weakness, disinclination to exercise, nervousness, irritability, negativity or mental depression, frequent urination, etc. However, the great majority of people find their reactions tolerable and are encouraged to bear with them because of the many improvements which have already occurred and are becoming more evident with each day. This acts as an inspirational force to them.
The symptoms will vary according to the materials being discarded, the conditions of the organs involved in the elimination, and the amount of energy you have available. The more you rest and sleep when symptoms are present, the milder they are and the more quickly they are terminated.
Be happy you are having symptoms. Realize deeply that your body is becoming younger and healthier every day because you are throwing off more and more wastes which would eventually have brought pain, disease, and much suffering. Those who have the worst symptom-reactions and follow through to their successful termination are thus avoiding some of the worst diseases which would eventually have developed had they continued their careless eating habits.
Don’t expect to go on an ascending scale of quality, that improving your diet will make you feel better and better each day until you reach perfection. The body is cyclical in nature, and health returns in a series of gradually-diminishing cycles. For example, you start a better diet and for a while you feel much better. After some time, a symptom occurs–you feel nauseous for a day and have diarrhea with a foul-smelling stool. After a day, you feel even better than before and all goes fine for awhile. Then you suddenly develop a cold, feel chills and lose your appetite. After about two or three days (assuming you don’t take drugs or do anything else about it), you suddenly recover and feel better than you did for years.
Let us say this well-being continues for two months, when you suddenly develop an itch or rash. You don’t take anything special for it. This rash flares up, gets worse and continues for ten days, and suddenly subsides, immediately after this you find that your hepatitis is gone and your energy has increased more than ever before. The rash became an outlet for the poisons in the liver which produced the hepatitis.
Recovery
This is how recovery occurs–like the cycles in the Dow-Jones Average at the beginning of a bull market recovery. You feel better, a reaction occurs and you don’t feel as well for a short while. You recover and go even higher. Then another reaction occurs, milder than the last. You recover and go even higher. And so it goes, each reaction milder than the last as the body becomes pure–each becoming shorter in duration and being followed by a longer period of feeling better than ever before, until you reach a level plateau of vibrant health. Here you become relatively disease-free.
We must learn to obey the laws of Nature. We must learn to eat simple, pure, and natural foods, properly prepared and combined, and our bodies in return will cast off all the poisons we have taken in during our lives. The mysteries of the body, the operations of nature, the vital forces working in nature are far beyond what our minds are prepared to understand at present. Every great physician or scientist who ever lived marveled in awe and humility at the wonders of nature. Yes–we are “fearfully and wonderfully made!”