Alex Jamieson - The Great American Detox Diet: Feel Better, Look Better, and Lose Weight by Cleaning Up Your Diet

Notice

This book is intended as a reference volume only, not as a medical manual. The information given here is designed to help you make informed decisions about your health. It is not intended as a substitute for any treatment that may have been prescribed by your doctor. If you suspect that you have a medical problem, we urge you to seek competent medical help. Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book. Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

2005 by Alexandra Jamieson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

from Chapter 5 is excerpted from Breaking the Food Seduction by Neal Barnard, MD. Copyright 2003 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martins Press, LLC.

Cover photograph by Juliet Piddington

Cover concept and design by Simon Daley

Interior design by Patricia Field

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jamieson, Alex.

The great American detox diet : 8 weeks to weight loss and well-being / Alex Jamieson.

p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN-13 9781623362584 ebook

ISBN-13 9781594862311 hardcover

ISBN-10 1594862311 hardcover

ISBN-13 9781594864841 paperback

ISBN-10 1594864845 paperback

1. Detoxification (Health) 2. Food habitsUnited States. 3. Nutrition. 4. Weight loss. 5. Spurlock, Morgan, date. I. Title.

RA784.5.J35 2005

613.2'5dc22 2005005984

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To Mom, who taught me how to grow natures bounty and use it for good food and health.

To Dad, who taught me the value of humor and working hard to save even one starfish.

To my Valentine, who inspires me every day to work and go after my dreams.

Thank you all for believing in me. I love you all.

PROBLEMS CANNOT BE SOLVED AT THE SAME LEVEL OF AWARENESS THAT CREATED THEM.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

It was Thanksgiving 2002 when I got the brilliant idea to send my body into a fast-food frenzy by eating McDonalds food for 30 days straight and make a movie about it. I was watching the news, when a story came on about two overweight, sick girls who were suing the House of Ronald for misleading them with their marketing claim that their food was healthful. At first, I thought these girls were crazy, but the more I learned about how fast-food restaurants (and the Golden Arches in particular) target kids in their marketing, how they manufacture their food, and how they hide the true nutritional content of that food from their customers, I thought, Theres definitely the basis here for an argument.

But back to that Thanksgiving day. While I sat on the couch, a spokesman for Ronny boy came on the TV and said that you cant link their food to these girls being sick; you cant link their food to these girls being obese. Their food is healthy, its nutritious... its good for you!

Thats when the lightbulb went off and I got the idea for Super Size Me. I then turned to the person sitting next to me to share my epiphany. That person was my beautiful, longtime vegan girlfriend, Alex Jamieson. Needless to say, Alex did not share my enthusiasm for the project.

From the beginning, Alex was the one consistent voice warning me that this was a truly bad idea and would be profoundly bad for my health. I excel at being the stubborn boyfriend, so I didnt listen to her. Instead, I dove into this gastrointestinal form of hari-kari with the vigor and passion of a child who has been let loose in a candy storeor a McDonalds.

I did have to make one promise to Alex prior to filming. The deal was that she would agree to let me make this film, to eat this awful food that she knew to be exceptionally bad for me (even worse than I or my doctors imagined) on one condition: After the 30 days were over, my diet was hers. This was nonnegotiable.

The changes my body went through during the month were inconceivable. While eating all that fast food, I experienced three different health problems that, not coincidentally, we treat routinely in this country with massive amounts of prescription medication:

I was massively depressed. I would eat the food and feel great for about an hour, but then I would hit the wall and be angry and moody and sad and depressed. I was a roller coaster emotionally for the entire month and showed many of the signs of clinical depression and bipolarity that we medicate the masses for every day with drugs like Prozac.

I experienced sexual dysfunction, a problem that millions of men across America take Viagra to fix. (Alex, by the way, shared this tidbit about my health with millions of people worldwide in the film.)

And last, my mind was all over the place. I couldnt focus. I couldnt pay attention. I had all the telltale signs of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a mental condition that millions of kids in this country are diagnosed with and medicated for annually.

On top of this, my liver became filled with fat, my cholesterol skyrocketed, my blood pressure went through the roof, and I was now carrying around a gut with 24.5 additional pounds of McLove stuffed into it. And this, mind you, was after just 1 month.

When my 30-day commitment ended, I immediately began Alexs Detox Diet, a diet she specifically designed to help my body deal with the problems it was facing and overcome the punishment it had been put through. At first, I went through massive withdrawal, much like what a drug addict or alcoholic experiences when detoxifying. My body craved the fat, sugar, sodium, and caffeine it had been overdosing on for the past month. I had massive headaches, I experienced periods of sweating and the shakes, and my body ached as though someone had beaten me with a large club. But over the next few days and weeks, I began to feel my focus sharpening, my energy levels increasing, my libido returning, and my personality coming back to what it was before I became a hopped-up junk-food junkie.

Many tried to discredit Super Size Me by saying that it was no surprise I became ill, when you take into account the number of calories I was eating; others say that the film and my experiment are quite representative of what can happen to your body from years of eating a diet high in fat, sugar, and processed food. In fact, in January 2005, the highly respected medical journal The Lancet