Levels of Healing: The 5 No-Food Levels

Moving forward through the stages of healing by working on each no-food level

You take a real­ly big step in the stages of heal­ing when you eli­mi­na­te the foods from Level 1 from your diet. The­se foods are the most dama­ging to our health. So as soon as you are rea­dy to give up cer­tain foods, you should focus on the foods from Level 1. Once you have avo­ided all the food from Level 1, you can move on to Level 2. And you pro­ceed in exact­ly the same way with the other levels. If you are alre­a­dy avo­i­ding food from the first five levels and would like to achie­ve even fas­ter suc­cess, you can take a look at the bonus list. Howe­ver, be awa­re that it is more hel­pful to avo­id foods from lower levels com­ple­te­ly than to be too par­ti­cu­lar about foods from hig­her levels or the bonus level. The fol­lo­wing list of the dif­fe­rent levels of “no foods” comes from the book Heal yours­elf:

The different levels

Level 1

• Eggs
• Dairy pro­ducts
• glu­ten
• Soft drinks
• too much Salt

Level 2

• pork meat
• tuna
• Corn

Level 3

• indus­tri­al oils (vege­ta­ble oil, palm oil, rape­seed oil, corn oil, saf­f­lower oil, soy­be­an oil)
• soy
• lamb
• Fish and sea­food (exclu­ding wild sal­mon, trout and sardines)

Level 4

• Vin­egar (inclu­ding apple cider vinegar)
• fer­men­ted foods (inclu­ding kom­bu­cha, sau­er­kraut and coco­nut aminos)
• Caf­feine (cof­fee, matcha, cho­co­la­te and others) 

Level 5 

• Grain (except mil­let and oats)
• All oils (inclu­ding healt­hi­er oils such as oli­ve, wal­nut, sun­flower, coco­nut, sesa­me, avo­ca­do-, gra­pe seed, almond, maca­da­mia, pea­nut and lin­seed oil)

bonus

In order to achie­ve even fas­ter suc­cess, it is worth avoiding:

• Salt and arti­fi­ci­al spi­ces (pure spi­ces are fine)
• Fat (com­ple­te abs­ti­nence for a while)

Addi­tio­nal­ly, redu­ce or forego:

• alco­hol
• Natu­ral flavors/artificial flavors
• nut­ri­tio­nal yeast
• citric acid
• Asparta­me
• other arti­fi­ci­al sweeteners
• Glut­ama­te (MSG)
• form­alde­hyde
• pre­ser­va­ti­ves

You can find out more about the reasons why the foods men­tio­ned are harmful to your heal­ing in the book Heal yours­elf.

Every path is different

The pace you choo­se to pro­gress through the indi­vi­du­al stages of heal­ing is com­ple­te­ly indi­vi­du­al. May­be you have alre­a­dy per­so­nal­ly achie­ved your goal by avo­i­ding the foods from level 1. That’s com­ple­te­ly fine and alre­a­dy a gre­at success. 

Try not to compa­re yours­elf too much with others and put yours­elf under pres­su­re on your jour­ney. The­re are a varie­ty of reasons why some peo­p­le find it easier to com­mit to the new pro­to­cols than others. Some may recei­ve gre­at sup­port and encou­ra­ge­ment from fami­ly and tho­se around them, while others may encoun­ter a less enthu­si­a­stic envi­ron­ment. Typi­cal­ly, it’s the peo­p­le who are very sick who are fol­lo­wing the pro­to­cols very strict­ly. For them, the level of suf­fe­ring and the asso­cia­ted redu­ced qua­li­ty of life is so high that other fac­tors do not weigh so hea­vi­ly in rela­ti­on to them.

For all tho­se for whom the sys­te­ma­tic rem­oval of food trig­gers a very strong fee­ling of depri­va­ti­on and is accom­pa­nied by the ques­ti­on: “What should I eat now?”, the­re are of cour­se other ways to get star­ted with the new way of eating faci­li­ta­te. Ins­tead of cut­ting out cer­tain foods, you can ins­tead increase the amount of fruits, vege­ta­bles, herbs and wild foods in your dai­ly menu fat-free mor­ning inte­gra­te, recom­men­ded sup­ple­ments take, drink cele­ry juice and and and. The pos­si­bi­li­ties are diver­se and the­re is not just one way. The­re are so many mea­su­res that can take you ano­ther step in the right direc­tion. And every step in the right direc­tion counts! Start whe­re it is easie­st for you to imple­ment it. Find your own pace. You can find more tips for beg­in­ners in Artic­le for beg­in­ners.

Going from 0 to 100 can backfire

Sin­ce our food is lin­ked to so many aspects of our lives, a radi­cal chan­ge in our eating rou­ti­ne can turn our enti­re life upsi­de down. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, it is often the case that too many chan­ges at once are not real­ly sus­tainable. At first, we may be able to sus­tain all the radi­cal chan­ges for a while with the hope that the infor­ma­ti­on awa­kens and the rekind­led ener­gy and will­power that comes with it. But it can quick­ly hap­pen that we burn out and beco­me over­whel­med with the rapid chan­ge, throw ever­y­thing over­board and return to our old way of life, inclu­ding all the unpro­duc­ti­ve food. 

For this reason, it is more advi­sa­ble to break your big goal down into smal­ler stages of heal­ing. You then try to imple­ment one step at a time at your own pace so that you gain con­fi­dence and the chan­ges are tru­ly sus­tainable. Every step should be easy to com­ple­te. Approach new levels and if you feel over­whel­med by the new chan­ge, feel free to take a step back. 

Your body speaks to you at the stages of healing

If you are alre­a­dy fur­ther along in your heal­ing stages and, for exam­p­le, you want to com­ple­te­ly avo­id all radi­cal fats for the first time in your life, then don’t imme­dia­te­ly set yours­elf the goal of doing this strict­ly for the next six months. Rather, try to lis­ten to how you react phy­si­cal­ly and emo­tio­nal­ly to this chan­ge and always make your next decis­i­ons depen­dent on your cur­rent emo­tio­nal state. 

For some peo­p­le, giving up fat does­n’t seem like a big pro­blem, while others only mana­ge to live fat-free after years or may­be even never. Here too, the reasons for this are num­e­rous. For some, giving up comes with many emo­tio­nal aspects. Others suf­fer from deto­xi­fi­ca­ti­on sym­ptoms, while others don’t have a gre­at desi­re to live fat-free becau­se the mea­su­res they have alre­a­dy taken are com­ple­te­ly suf­fi­ci­ent for them.

Adrenaline makes you sick

Don’t hold on to unrea­li­stic goals that put you under pres­su­re. Pres­su­re crea­tes the oppo­si­te of what we want to achie­ve with this life­style. Pres­su­re crea­tes adre­na­line and adre­na­line has a nega­ti­ve impact on your phy­si­cal health. Adre­na­line is often the undis­co­ver­ed but cru­cial fac­tor blo­cking your heal­ing. That’s why it’s so cru­cial to deve­lop a sen­se of when you have an inner resis­tance to chan­ge or hold on to expec­ta­ti­ons that put you under pres­su­re. May­be you expec­ted to heal your ecze­ma or chro­nic fati­gue within a year. Now, if your expec­ta­ti­on does­n’t seem to be coming true, try to drop the expec­ta­ti­on ins­tead of bla­ming yours­elf for not achie­ving your goal. Your body pro­ba­b­ly just needs a litt­le lon­ger to go through the stages of heal­ing and get well becau­se it’s obvious­ly deal­ing with a hig­her toxic load than you initi­al­ly suspec­ted. Have com­pas­si­on for yours­elf, becau­se you are not respon­si­ble for your sym­ptoms and illness.