It’s time for another experiment and this time I’m doing something that I’ve wanted to do for quite a long time. For over 10 years I’ve owned the book, You CAN Prevent Breast Cancer!
Your lymph glands are the garbage collectors of your system. They collect the impurities and toxins in your system that your body takes in by eating processed and fast food, as well as through contact with pollution, cleaning products, pesticides, fertilizers, and depending on the source, your water. Another simplified breakdown of the purpose of mono dieting is to just give your digestive system a rest (digestion requires the largest amount of energy in your body) in order to free up that energy to be used to cleanse your lymph system and glands.
You see if you continue to have more toxins coming in than are leaving, you will have such a build up that diseases can occur. Mono dieting gives your body a chance to heal and cleanse itself of those toxins. Additionally, by eating raw food during the mono diet, you will gain the highest level of vitamins and nutrients from it.
Please note that mono dieting’s purpose is NOT weight loss, even though if you are overweight, you might lose weight while doing so. However, this is not a weight loss diet, and is not why I am conducting this experiment.
Since mono dieting isn’t on the topic of weight loss, you might be asking why I’m writing about it. Well, how can you be fit and fabulous if you are sick with disease? Additionally, this post is not only for women; whether you are male or female you have lymph glands in your body. Most of you (men and women 😉 ) stay on top of changing the oil in your vehicle every 3,000 miles, why wouldn’t you also change your internal oil periodically to keep your body running at top speed and optimum health?
We also cannot ignore that breast cancer is rising among men. It is estimated that in 2007, 2,030 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer; that number was 1,720 in 2006. Even though breast cancer is rare in men, the similarities between men and women are cited as lymph node involvement. This is why I am stressing that mono dieting is not only for women.
So what is mono dieting? It is periodically taking in “any combination of any raw, fresh food or juice for whatever length of time you wish”, within limits of course, meaning that this is not a regular lifestyle (you don’t eat like this all the time), but a supplement to a healthy lifestyle. Some examples are:
- Drinking only fresh fruit juice for one day.
- Drinking only fresh fruit and vegetable juice for one to three days.
- Drinking only fresh fruit and vegetable juices and eating only fresh fruits, vegetables, and salads for only one day to ten or fourteen days.
There isn’t a hard and fast rule for how long you mono diet; you can do it for one day, fourteen, or three days. You can plan for it, or you can just get up one morning and do it for the day. It’s supposed to be a very positive experience, which I will report back to you after I’ve completed doing it myself. 😉 My goal is to mono diet for at least 3 days. I’ll see how it’s going at that time and decide if I want to extend my experiment.
Here are a few more definitions for you, mainly because I want to impress upon you that this is not a weight loss diet even though you find the word “diet” in mono diet.
What mono dieting is not:
- A weight loss diet.
- Fasting.
- Starvation.
- A way to eat regularly and continuously.
What mono dieting is:
- A process for giving your body a break so that it can heal.
- A way to prevent breast cancer.
- A process for cleaning out your lymph glands.
- A way of life as far as something to do periodically in order to keep your system clean.
- An oil change for your body.
In case you’re wondering why I am doing another experiment, the reason is two-fold: 1 – I want to document my experience with mono dieting in case this is something that you would like to do and you can learn from my experience, and 2 – by turning this into an experiment, I’ll follow through and do it. Like I mentioned in the beginning of this post, I’ve wanted to do this in the past. I didn’t because I’m not a big fan of fruit juices, and I also thought I would “starve”, which I didn’t want to do! However, according to the author (Harvey Diamond), he experienced such a positive transformation in both body and mind that I am motivated to do this, and also because it makes sense to me.
There is an additional factor to my experiment: I won’t be having caffeine! Yes, I love my tea, and I won’t be having any during my experiment. I will document whether or not I have any caffeine withdrawals or not.
This post isn’t meant to be an all-inclusive rundown on mono dieting to prevent breast cancer or on breast cancer itsely, so I definitely recommend reading the book (and it’s always suggested you check with your doctor) before doing your own mono diet. There are actually 2 other components to the program: 1 – your thoughts, something that I have written about many times here at Fearless Fat Loss, and 2 – the gradual reduction of animal products.
Your thoughts must be focused on the positive in order to create and attractive more of the same into your life, and Harvey Diamond recommends gradually reducing the amount of animal products you consume. From my end, I don’t see myself ever becoming a vegetarian, but he does make some points about animal products and cancer, which would have to be the topic of another post if I end up writing about it.
You can learn more about mono dieting, breast cancer, the lymph system, as well as read true accounts of women who have mono dieted and their results in the book:
You will need a juicer if you choose to mono diet, so if you don’t own one yet you can search for one and check out prices in the eMiniMall below:
I will be giving you an update this week on my progress. I started this yesterday so I have made it through one day so far, and am still alive (not starved). 🙂
Read my Update: Mono Dieting To Prevent Breast Cancer – Experiment Update
(side benefit – I lost weight!)
This is a very interesting post. I would like to try this as well. I can’t imagine a 14 day mono diet, but the 3 day sounds reasonable. I don;t know if you mentioned this but how often is mono dieting recommended?
Good luck! It”ll be interested to read the conclusions of your experiment. How many days will you be doing this?
This is a fascinating idea… I’ve heard some people talk about it lately, so I guess there must be some substance to the idea of mono dieting. Is there any kind of scientific experiment that has been done that backs up these ideas?
Interesting post JoLynn. I did not even realise that men could also get breast cancer.
Thanks for each of your comments! 🙂
@SJM, there aren’t any hard rules about when to mono diet, but one suggestion is you might want to 4 times a year when the seasons change. It’s supposed to be something that isn’t a strict thing, like one day if you want to have only fruit juice, then you just go ahead and do it. The author stressed that it shouldn’t be a “chore” for you to complete, but a positive experience for you.
I hope that helps!
@Dee, I committed to 3 days but I thought I’d go longer…I ended up completing 3 days. I would definitely do it again, but probably not longer than 3 days.
@Aaron, I don’t know of any scientific experiments that have been done, and I’m not surprised because this is such a simple thing to do (and it’s not coming from the mainstream medical community). I also believe that your thoughts have an extremely large impact on your body and your health, however you don’t hear about the mainstream medical community doing research on this, either. I realize that western medicine definitely has it’s place, but you are usually just going to find treatments there, not prevention, or the fact that the mind has so much power over the body.
@Catherine, thanks! Right, there’s been an increase in breast cancer in men….my opinion is that it’s related to the rise in obesity and the processed food that many people eat today….the study I linked to didn’t cite those topics as issues, but it’s my opinion.
JoLynn, thanks for your comment over on my post Fruit and Veggie Days… about the Mono Diet you’re doing.
I did respond over there, but I wanted to say here that I too, at first, thought that the weight loss was water weight, until I kept doing it and barely over three months later I’d lost nearly 40 pounds, when the other four days a week I was eating whatever I wanted.
Now, I’m not saying it was the healthiest thing to do, because I was counteracting against the health benefits of eating only fruits and veggies by eating things that were bad for my body the rest of the week – and that was just not good – but rather than counting calories and restricting myself for 7 days a week, 3 days of eating as much fruit and veggies as I wanted (I didn’t restrict amounts on that either, like you) and the remaining 4 days of “conscious eating” I think will be the best thing for me. 🙂
I’m so interested in this experiment you’re doing though – when I was 15, I had to have 3 lymph nodes removed from my neck because they’d gotten infected. I’ve always worried that it would come back, even 16 years later, and now I too am hoping that this really works, because I’ll be killing several birds with one stone!
Lara’s last blog post..Wine is good for you – and it can make for pretty room decor!
Hi Lara,
Wow, I’ve never been through that, having lymph nodes removed. Do you have any nodes left in your neck or does that mean they took them all out?
I’d suggest you read the whole book – it’s very very interesting and Harvey even wrote about Jackie Kennedy’s experience with cancer and how he thought it would have been different if she’d taken different actions.
I’ve done the mono dieting twice now – I just finished 4 days of eating only fresh fruits and veggies. I did lose 4 lbs but that wasn’t my purpose, I wanted to do a detox.
I personally wouldn’t want to be a vegetarian, I do much better with regular protein, but Harvey Diamond continued eating like this for a few months solid and lost a lot of weight.
I’m going to write an update post about my experience tomorrow – something else happened during my mono diet the last 4 days that was very very cool. 🙂