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With Phase 3 it seems there’s basically 3 different factors that are being addressed.

1. Weight Stabilization:
   Stabilizing your new weight so it stays in about the same place with relative ease.
2. Digestive System Adjustment:
   Gradually readjusting your digestive system to eating both larger amounts of foods and more fats
3. Discover Possible Food Sensitivities:
   Discovering if you have any food sensitivities that could be causing inflammation and make weight maintanence difficult

So let’s get into part 3!  Remember, this is discussing the PURPOSE of Phase 3, not the how-to.  For the how-to on Phase 3 check out either:

• Phase 3: the Do-Able Way  or
• Phase 3: the BEST Way

#3 Discovering Food Sensitivities

Why bother with this aspect?  Why care enough about discovering food sensitivities that you allocate time to that vs. something else you need to do (which I’m sure there’s plenty).

In short, discovering if you have any food sensitivities can mean the difference between maintaining weight easily, and not maintaining it.  Ahh!  Now I got your attention.  🙂

I have found that consuming foods you have an intolerance to- whether it’s mild or major, can cause inflammation and make weight maintenance difficult.

Getting In Tune With Your Body

Prior to hCG, we may have been in a place where we were totally not in tune with our bodies.

I remember my brother, who because he dealt with health issues from a young age, would tell me how sometimes he’d try a particular supplement and he could tell it threw him off or didn’t feel good in his body. I was kind of the opposite of him and experience pretty stellar health till my early twenties, so I remember thinking wow how can you feel that? I really wasn’t in tune at all with how the various things that went into my body made me feel – I felt like I just always felt the same regardless. Really that wasn’t true, it’s just I wasn’t trained to be aware of my body’s reaction to things.

Now I feel much more in tune with my body and how foods or supplements make me feel inside and I know exactly what my brother was talking about back then.

So you guys might be in that same situation where for the first time with hCG and post-hCG you have the chance to be more in tune with how the things you put in your body affect you because you are starting from a cleaner slate where you have been consuming a lot less food and lot less varieties of food during hCG.  This means it will be more apparent to your right away when you introduce new things how it feels inside.

Indicators Your Body Doesn’t Like Something

• Pain right after eating – stomach
• Pain several hours later – intestines
• Weight gain/Feeling swollen – inflammation
• Abnormal bowel movements – ie diahhrea or constipation

I can tell pretty much right away if a food doesn’t feel good inside me – I will either feel yucky immediately after, showing me something in my stomach isn’t happy about that food, OR I will feel yucky several hours later (maybe 3-5 hours or so later) in my intestines (once the food has digested a bit and reached that are, showing me something in my intestines is not tolerating that food well.

Re the abnormal bowel movement thing. I discovered, again simply through it happening over and over and realizing it was associated with the same food in all those situations, that cabbage in ANY form, whether it’s raw, cooked or even fermented, as well as radishes (same food family) make me EXTREMELY constipated.  Every single time.  Even a tiny amount of red cabbage in a salad (I used to love cabbage) will cause this phenomenom.  Strange but true.  No more raw fermented sauerkraut for me, as amazingly healthy as it is for other people.  🙁

If you experience something like this with a certain food, remember this doesn’t mean the problem will last forever, and the causes of these digestive issues can REALLY vary.   For instance, I have developed a major problem with most berries because of the seeds- I can no longer really eat blueberries, raspberries or blackberries, as well as even seeds in cucumbers, because the seeds will cause me some major pain in my intestines about 4 hours later – most likely it sounds like this condition called Diverticulitis or maybe just plain ‘ol irritable bowel syndrome.  Whatever the case, there’s plenty of foods I can eat that feel just fine (like my kale salads for intance!) but I know specifically which particular foods HURT, so naturally I avoid them.

The point is, start to take notice of any patterns.  I realized these things were a problem for me after I would hurt in a certain area of my body and realize what I had eaten earlier and that it was these certain types of foods – then I went online to research if others have this issue and if so, what’s causing it, which is how I came across the diverticulitis.

The problem may be permanent, or it may be fixable.

Ways some food intolerances may be fixable:

1.  Improve gut lining health by researching colon cleanses, additional fiber etc. – apparently for instance with leaky gut the membrane of your gut gets thin in places, allowing larger molecules of food to pass through into your bloodstream that normally should NOT do so and this can cause reactions in your body and inflammation as your body fights to deal with this.

2. Creating a better balance of gut bacteria by eating more fermented foods and/or probiotics.  This allows your body to digest foods better and can really make a difference in what you’re able to eat.

3. Eating foods on a rotational basis – research 4 day rotation diets – allows you to eat more foods without major reactions because they are rotated and preventing a build up of reaction.

4. Gradual introduction of foods – sometimes you’re not intolerant of a food at all, you simply need to gradually introduce the amounts of that food so that it adjusts to digesting that type of food – see my article discussing this on Phase 3 – Purpose #2 – Digestive System Adjustment.

5.  Removing sugar can go a long way to helping your gut heal – overgrowth of candida can cause issues with your gut and how you digest food.

But I FEEL Fine When I Eat A Loaf of Sourdough Bread – It Must Be Fine For Me

Our bodies seem to make the best of things, even in scenarios where it’s dealing with lots of things that really aren’t in it’s best interests. If you live on spaghettios and diet coke, you body will most likely keep surviving and operating for many years – but it’s obviously not going to be without detriment and consequences both now and later right? Surviving and living optimally are two very different things!

Before removing gluten from my diet, I had NO idea my body didn’t like it – I had no indigestion from it whatsoever, I ate it daily, most of the time in large quantities. I was actually very skeptical when I read that people with Hashimotos should remove gluten because I honestly didn’t feel it affected me at all.

Later, after removing it for 3 months, I discovered my body HATES gluten – enough to cause me a LOT of pain if I ingest even tiny amounts of it. Whereas I can go without rice for long periods of time, then eat some, and feel no reaction whatsoever.

Bringing this back around to Phase 3 – there may be some foods that we thought our body was okay with, but that perhaps WAS causing inflammation and fat gain and we didn’t realize it. Because most likely a lot of these foods were not in your diet during phase 2, now is the perfect chance to discover if you have any foods or food groups like this.

What Happens In Phase 3 May Not Happen in Phase 4

Having kind of shocking weight gains from certain foods doesn’t necessarily mean you are truly sensitive to them either – a lot of people report there are foods they couldn’t eat in Phase 3 that were then fine in Phase 4 and didn’t cause gains.

So Phase 3 (as well as phase 4) are really an experimental period of discovery.

Watch Lisa’s Full Interview here

Watch Stephanie’s Full Interview here

Watch Bridgette’s Full Interview here

Watch Kimberly’s Full Interview here

Watch Donna’s Full Interview here

Is there anything you’ve discovered in this regard about your own body?  Feel free to share in the comments below.

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