Lifestyle Changes: The Virgin Diet

Lifestyle Changes: The Virgin Diet

One of the main reasons people start taking SAM-e for depression is because they are looking for an alternative to antidepressant medication. This was exactly why my wife and I started taking SAM-e. Along the way, we found that in addition to taking SAM-e there are many other lifestyle changes that can be incorporated into our daily lives that can also help alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, ADD and mood swings. As I mentioned in my intro blog post, for us these lifestyle changes include diet, exercise, mindfulness/meditation. In this post I will be discussing diet.

Let me start by saying that both of us are out of shape but not overweight. Over the years we have read articles and watched documentaries about how our food is produced and how what we eat is causing all kinds of health issues and diseases, which made us want to make some changes to the way we eat. For a few weeks at a time we would try separately cutting out gluten, dairy, soy, sugar, etc. but never stuck with it. Then about two and a half years ago, I was at my parents’ house and my Mom had the book The Virgin Diet by JJ Virgin on her kitchen table. The name caught my eye and I had a few laughs with my Mom about it. Once she started explaining it to me, something clicked.

In her book, JJ Virgin explains that:

“A negative reaction to certain foods like dairy or gluten can sabotage your health by triggering inflammation and causing a host of nasty symptoms like bloating, breakouts, headaches, achy joints and — worst of all — stubborn weight gain.

On The Virgin Diet, you’ll eat plenty of anti-inflammatory, healing foods to reclaim your health and reset your metabolism, while avoiding the 7 foods that are most likely to cause food intolerance.”

Those foods are:

  1. Gluten
  2. Dairy
  3. Sugar
  4. Soy
  5. Corn
  6. Peanuts
  7. Eggs

The basic idea is to eliminate those 7 foods from your diet for three weeks to “cleanse or detox” your body. Then introduce those foods back into your diet one at a time for one week each to see how it makes you feel, how your body reacts to them individually. What clicked with me was that I wasn’t interested in trying just another “diet”, what I needed was a lifestyle change. That is exactly what The Virgin Diet became for us.

Before I continue, I should add that we are vegetarians, well, pescetarians actually. In the book JJ Virgin highly recommends consuming meat. The catch is that you have to be conscious of where that meat comes from and how it was raised. She repeats throughout the book that “you are what you eat eats”. Meaning that if you eat meat that is stuffed with hormones, soy, corn, etc., that you are by default eating that too. Anyway, you can read more about that in The Virgin Diet.

The first two weeks were hard. We felt hungry and grumpy all day. But as soon as the third week came around we felt the shift. All of a sudden we felt lighter (literally, I lost about 8 lbs in 2 weeks) and had so much more energy and most importantly we felt like a “fog” or “cloud” had lifted from our heads. We could think more clearly, got up earlier, and just overall felt like different people. I’m a runner and I could immediately notice a difference in my endurance, speed, and distance (I will write more about running in another post). We felt so good that we actually did not want to start reintroducing the 7 foods after the third week. As long as I can remember I have felt the effects of ADD, anxiety and depression, but for the first time in my life I felt good. Between taking SAM-e, the Virgin Diet, exercise and mindfulness/meditation I finally found the mix that is right for me.

Note: Besides the Virgin Diet book, JJ Virgin has some other books, cookbooks, and supplements that may also be helpful in your quest to change your lifestyle.