It’s not just what we eat, but how, when, where, and why we eat that makes all the difference in the world!  Imagine that.

Complementary or Insulting?

What are the habits I should practice and which ones should I avoid?

Understanding the difference between the complementary and insulting habits in your diet and lifestyle makes all the difference in your self-healing journey. If you fail to identify your most insulting habits (and then actively minimize or avoid them completely) you may not experience the success you desire and deserve. If you fail to avoid your most insulting habits during the Phase One recovery period, you may not recover your normal digestive system functions and/or your overall health.

However, if you take this step seriously and consistently practice the complementary habits while avoiding and/or minimizing the insulting ones, you will be astonished at how rapidly your intestinal (and whole body) regeneration will proceed. This step, this understanding, in my opinion, is what makes my program different and more effective than any other. This step customizes and personalizes your program making it unique and special.

Other books and programs and practitioners give lip service to some of these habits but generally overlook their primary significance. These habits aren’t just important, they are transformational. The many habits listed below provide the keys to your self-healing journey.  Separate the complementary habits from the insulting ones; practice the complementary habits and minimize or avoid completely the insulting ones and you will dramatically increase your recovery time. Please read this next section very carefully. Please read this next section as if your life and health in general and your digestive system health in particular depended on it.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."

     -  Aristotle                                           

Practice These Complementary Habits Consistently!

• Practice mindfulness. Remember that when it comes to the relationship between our diet and lifestyle and our health, nothing is neutral. Everything matters. Every-thing makes an impact. Everything is either complementary or insulting. So this means that we need to pay attention, be awake, alert, aware, conscious, mindful.
• Ask yourself before you eat or drink anything: “What nourishes me best?”
• Select the highest quality foods and beverages always. Organic quality is best.
• Learn how and why to select and prepare your foods and beverages according to the principles of balance and harmony in nature. Find the best whole foods cooking instructors in your area and take some cooking classes.
• Always say “grace” with any meal or snack. Grace is the pause that nourishes best. If you believe in God, saying “grace” is probably a no brainer, a given. Or it could be one of those major integrity gaps that need your attention. But whether or not you believe in God, or whether or not you belong to any religion, saying grace is still important and makes good common sense. Where did this food come from that I am about to consume? Where is it going? Why? You don’t have to call this habit grace. You can call it anything you want. Just make sure you stop before you begin to consume any meal, beverage or snack. Make sure you ask these three questions: Where did this (food, beverage, snack, supplement, etc) come from? Where is it going? Why?  If you do this consistently, this habit will change your life.
• Ultimately everything we put into our body affects our cells. You need to develop a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the cells in your body. Don’t just read but study the quotes about cells in my article called: The Care of the Cell which is found in Section Three of my new book: Principle Eating.
• Create an atmosphere of peace and quiet, relaxation and calmness around your mealtimes. Light a candle. Put on some quiet music. Turn off the TV. Turn off the radio news. Shut off the phone. Don’t answer the phone during mealtimes. Don’t eat when you are angry, upset, worried, stressed-out or tired. First you must relax. Go for a walk, clear you head, breathe. Don’t let mealtime be invaded by other time. Mealtimes are special. Mealtimes are sacred.
• Learn to breathe from your belly. This habit will not only help you relax, it will help you to digest everything better. Locate The Conscious Breathing Exercise in Section Three of my new book: Principle Eating.
• Always sit down when you eat. Eating standing up or on the run (or in the car) is one of the best and fastest ways I know to create indigestion. Prove this to yourself.
• Enjoy regular mealtimes. Create balance in your day. Seek harmony in your daily activities. Look to the rhythms in nature and discover how they relate to your life.
• Approach each meal with an attitude of gratitude. How lucky am I to have such abundance and variety in my meal options? How lucky am I to have farmers who know how to grow such wonderful food? How lucky am I to have a fully functioning digestive system that knows exactly what to do with all this wonderful food!
• Don’t dine without supplemental digestive enzymes. (Use as needed. Experiment)
• Eat one mouthful at a time. Put less food on your fork or spoon. Eat less, chew more. Put down your fork, spoon, knife or chopsticks between mouthfuls. Chew each mouthful until your food becomes baby food consistency in your mouth. Slow down. Eat less, chew more.
• This chewing habit is so extremely important I am going to repeat it.
• Chew each mouthful of food completely. Eat one mouthful at a time. Put your fork down between mouthfuls. Slow down. Drink your solids and chew your liquids. Do not swallow until each mouthful of food is baby food consistency. There may be no greater dietary integrity gap than this one.
• We all know that chewing is important but we rarely do it! The good news is this: Consistent proper chewing of every mouthful of food you consume produces extraordinary health benefits that you simply cannot imagine possible until you experience them yourself directly. So…experiment…and experience the benefits!  Chew, chew, chew! Eat less. Chew more.
• Do not eat to fullness. Your stomach can expand quite a bit to accommodate your overeating of large quantities of food. It doesn’t want to do this. This should be the exception not the rule. Unfortunately it is a very common practice these days. Traditional peoples taught themselves the habit of knowing when to stop eating, before fullness. Your normal stomach is about the size of your clenched fist (or two clenched fists). Not very big. You need to learn to eat slowly and only until your stomach is about 75–80% full. Learning the art of when to stop eating is as important as learning the art of when to start eating. This habit will teach you humility, kindness and generosity.
• Practice the habit of proper daily hydration according to The Watercure Recipe found in Section Two of my new book: Principle Eating. Health requires the habit of proper daily hydration. Proper daily hydration is a transformational health habit.
• Exercise. Exercise moderately and frequently. Walking every day for 20 to 30 minutes may be all that most people require. It’s a start and a very good one at that. Exercise increases oxygen levels in our blood and throughout the cells of our entire body. Oxygen is another one of those most fundamental internal regulators and bio-modulators. Almost every function in the human body requires water and oxygen.
• Moderate exercise is also the very best way to circulate our lymphatic fluid, bringing necessary nutrients to cells and removing undesirable toxic waste matter away from cells. Our blood supply has a pump called the heart but we have twice the amount of lymph fluid in our body and the only pump is moderate daily exercise.
• Learn how to give yourself a Therapeutic Abdominal Massage. This explanation is found in Section Three of my new book: Principle Eating.
• Get enough sleep at night and rest during the day if necessary. If you need a nap, take one. Napping is extremely therapeutic especially if you are healing. Most people require eight hours of sleep at night and the most important hours of sleep are those before midnight.
• If you stay up too late you will not get better. Go to bed earlier for a week and see what a difference it makes. Pay attention to the natural rhythms of the rising and setting of the sun. Go to sleep after sunset. Try to get up an hour before sunrise. See what a difference this habit makes.
• Conduct an effective 10-14 day colon cleanse at least once a year. Follow the guidelines in Section Three of my new book; Principle Eating.
• Be mindful of the need for seasonal cleansing and detoxification measures. Typically this includes colon, kidney and liver cleansing.
• Start and keep a daily journal of self-discovery. This journal can chronicle your ongoing process of distinguishing complementary habits from insulting ones. This journal can identify the people, places and things that nourish you best.

 Avoid These Insulting Habits as Much as Possible!

• Avoid mindlessness. Remember that when it comes to the relationship between our diet and lifestyle and our health, nothing is neutral. Everything matters. Every-thing makes an impact. Everything is either complementary or insulting. So this means that we need to pay attention, be awake, alert, aware, conscious, mindful.
• Avoid the temptation to believe your condition is incurable. It’s not. The body is constantly trying to heal itself. Your more conscious cooperation is the key.
• Avoid being lazy, passive and inconsistent. Duh. Healing ourselves is not simple, quick or easy! Healing ourselves is hard work. It’s good work. It’s the best work.
• Avoid the tempting delusion that the insulting habits being listed here are not real. They are all very real and come from many lifetimes of observation and experiences from many different dedicated practitioners, teachers and healers.
• Avoid wearing tight pants. Don’t laugh. It is absolutely amazing to me how many people fail to understand and observe this most basic, most sensible of habits. You may think this is silly and obvious but you would be amazed how many people make how they look more important than how they feel. Any restriction of your abdomen, especially after a meal is going to cause problems. Your belly must remain relaxed and not constricted at all times if you are going to heal yourself from any digestive system problem or any other health condition.
• All conditions are connected to the health of your digestive system. Wear loose fitting undergarments and loose fitting pants or skirts. Don’t wear your belt too tight. You will be rewarded greatly for paying attention to this very important little detail.
• Avoid eating anything too late in the day. Remember the story of the king, the prince and the pauper. Eat like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch, and a pauper at dinner!  How late is too late? It varies from person to person and condition to condition. Any time after sunset is risky. Simply keep in mind that the digestive system works best during the daylight hours. When you experiment with this habit you will see just how powerful it is. For so many people, the habit of eating late at night is their major insult and changing this habit is the key to their success.
• Avoid eating or drinking anything too cold. What’s too cold? Once again it varies from person to person and condition to condition. Simply keep in mind that the entire digestive system is functioning at 98.6 degrees (or warmer) and is moist and humid like a tropical rain-forest. No ice water, ice cream, frozen yogurt, iced drinks. Many symptoms associated with indigestion have their root cause right here. When your digestive health is really poor, this habit is absolutely critical to your improvement.
• Once you are well again, you will have to experiment and see how things affect you.
• Avoid excess meat and dairy consumption. Choose quality. Find the balance.
• Avoid alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine. Not for forever. Just one day at a time.
• Avoid processed and synthetic foods and beverages. Read labels. Avoid junk food.
• Avoid (or at least effectively minimize) all toxins in our food, air, water and clothing.
• Avoid (or at least effectively minimize) all toxins in our household cleaning products, synthetic carpets and furniture, suspect gardening products and building supplies.
• Avoid excess consumption of fruit juice from concentrates especially with children. Concentrated juices may concentrate nutrients but they concentrate sugars too.
• Avoid all carbonated beverages. CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a toxic byproduct of normal human metabolic activity. We breathe in oxygen and we breathe out carbon dioxide.
• This is one of those insane modern inventions that represent giant leaps backwards when it comes to the combination of nutrition and technology. The body works incredibly hard to get rid of carbon dioxide from our blood. Why on earth would we want to put carbon dioxide back into our body? We don’t really. We just never think about it correctly. Imagine that. All carbonated (bubbly, fizzy) beverages get that way by being pumped full with carbon dioxide. Crazy. Avoid carbonated beverages.
• Avoid aspartame and other synthetic sweeteners. It is far better and healthier to consume organic cane sugar or maple syrup or honey or grain malts (like barley malt or rice syrup) for baking and cooking purposes. Never use artificial sweeteners.
• Avoid artificial colors, additives, preservatives, stabilizers, fortifiers, fillers. We should be interested in consuming the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when it comes to whole organic foods compared to everything else.
• Avoid the use of artificial and synthetic placeware, cookware and utensils. Use wood, ceramic, glass, cast iron, stainless steel. No aluminum pots and pans.
• Avoid the use of artificial cooking techniques in general and microwave cooking in particular. Many people disagree on the point of microwave ovens. I have never owned one or used one. Never will. Some things just cross the line.
• Avoid the habit of consuming a mono diet as in monotonous. Variety is an important nutritional requirement, perhaps as important as any other. Too many people eat the same things day after day, breakfast, lunch and dinner; month after month, winter, spring, summer and fall; year after year, through childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age. Don’t do this to yourself.
• The more dynamic and flexible your food choices are the greater the variety of beneficial bacteria and vital foods enzymes will be in your system. Variety complements the proper functioning of your digestive system. Variety is the spice of life. During Phase One of your health and healing program your menu selections may be more be limited. So this habit is really an invitation to those who have successfully completed Phase One and possibly Phase Two as well.
• Review The Habits: Daily and Weekly Checklists at the end of Section Three in my new book: Principle Eating.

There is substantial and reliable documentation to support each of the habits outlined above (see the bibliography section in my new book: Principle Eating). However, nothing is more important and ultimately nothing is more convincing than the actual experiments you conduct yourself on yourself to determine the relevance of any of these habits. If you are not willing to carry out experiments with your diet and your habits, as explained below, you will only see limited improvement or none at all.

You must conduct reliable experiments to prove to yourself conclusively which habits in your diet and lifestyle are complementary and which ones are insulting. Your health depends on these experiments. Please use the following suggestions on the next page to guide your personal experiments. 

The Seven Day Experiment 

Seven days is the absolute minimum period of time to conduct a meaningful experiment. Remember that determining the difference between the complementary and insulting habits in your diet and lifestyle is not just helpful, it’s transformational.

1. Pick a habit that you want to experiment with from the lists above.
2. Make an unbreakable commitment to experiment with 100% enthusiasm and integrity. This means that no matter what comes up in your life in the form of any distraction whatsoever, you will not break your commitment to your experiment.
3. Let’s say you have decided to conduct a chewing experiment. You obviously cannot avoid chewing, so you simply decide to chew more diligently and more completely than ever before. Not just for one or two meals, but for every mouthful of every meal, beverage and snack during the next seven days. You will be amazed at your results. To be effective you must count your chews. Don’t swallow until each mouthful has turned to baby food consistency. Eat only one mouthful at a time. Put your fork down between mouthfuls. In other words, eat with total awareness, sensitivity, mindfulness and consciousness!
4. If you need to, write down your commitment to yourself and sign it. Put it on the wall of your bedroom or office or the bathroom mirror. Have your wife sign it or your husband or someone significant in your life. If you need to, get it witnessed and notarized. Do whatever you need to do to make and then keep, your unbreakable seven day commitment to yourself. This exercise is transformational!
5. Don’t try to do this seven day experiment. Just do it! Get serious. Be real. Follow through. I can’t tell you how many clients tell me: “Oh, I just couldn’t do it. This came up and that came up and blah, blah, blah." I say nonsense. I say, “balderdash!" Excuses are just excuses. Personal healing requires personal power. The power to choose and decide what nourishes us best and what doesn’t. No one ever healed themselves by not following through. No one ever healed themselves by just trying. No one ever grew a magnificent garden without weeding and composting. Insulting habits are weeds. Complementary habits are compost. If you are not willing to identify the weeds in your life and pull them out by the roots, they will eventually take over your garden. You cannot let the weeds in your life dictate what your garden is going to look and feel like. You must cultivate the habits that nourish you best. Become a master gardener. Separate the weeds from the things you most want to grow. You will be amazed at how successful you can become at this.

" I hear and I forget. I do and I understand."

   - Chinese proverb                                                      

Russell Mariani is a Health Educator and Digestive Wellness expert who has been in private practice since 1980. He is the co-director with his wife Megan Moore of The Center for Functional Nutrition in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He is the author of the book, Principle Eating and several other health-related books and ebooks.

Russell can be reached at 413-536-0275  and via email at: russellmariani@healingdigestiveillness.com   The website is: www.healingdigestiveillness.com