Introduction to the 2-week eating experiment: Why you should do it and its process

The 2-week eating experiment series include the most important information you’ll ever need to know about how to eat healthy, excellent, and delicious food that will enable you to pursue your dream of feeling, looking, and performing better than ever before. Through other posts we have already addressed why we don’t know what to eat and why it’s so hard for us to change. This series will address these issues head on. By the time you’ve read these four posts you will know:

Which foods to eat and which to avoid
What good eating habits are
The many positive effects of eating differently and how to avoid initial hurdles
How to trick/motivate yourself into changing how you eat in a way that doesn’t have to been difficult or time-consuming (hint: that’s the whole point of the 2-week eating experiment)
How to evaluate your progress from eating like a champion
How to continue self-experimenting to identify what foods are optimal for you

Fasten your seatbelts; it’s self-experimentation time!

Here are the other posts in this series:

Why you should carry out the two-week eating experiment: Because the positive effects are more substantial than you can possibly imagine

The aim of this two-week eating experiment is to motivate you to eat better; not only from a logical point of view (who doesn’t want to feel, look and perform great now and also live a long life?) but from an emotional point of view as well. In order to start the journey towards improved health you have to motivate yourself into action. The 2-week eating experiment that will be outlined in a 4-step series is designed to do exactly that. The experiment is brief enough for everyone to be able to complete it, but long enough to have a substantial effect on how you feel, look and perform.

The experiment will teach you how to eat excellent food, however it’s important to note that the eating experiment is considerably stricter than your diet needs to be long-term in order to eat healthy. The reason for the experiment-strictness is that for you to feel considerable positive effects already in two weeks we need to give your body the foods that will fuel a quick adaptation to the new way of eating and avoid the foods that typically cause the opposite. This means that after the experiment is finished you can reintroduce several other delicious foods. Now, however, I need to convince you that the experiment is worth carrying out. It shouldn’t be too hard.

Firstly, 2 weeks is only 14 days. We are all capable of eating differently for 14 days to test if we can feel a lot better than we’re already feeling.

Secondly, the list of benefits I personally, and almost everyone I know, have experienced from eating differently is long and awesome. This list of positive effects from eating excellent food needs to be subdivided into two parts:

Short-term positive effects (two weeks)
Long-term positive effects (beyond two weeks and for the years to come)

The positive effects you’ll likely feel after just two weeks are impressive

When I first read the literature on how you’ll feel after your body has become adapted to this eating excellent food I found it hard to believe. To be honest, I didn’t believe it. There were just too many positives and being a management consultant by profession I’m always skeptical of “rosy gardens”. However, the research outlining the logic behind this different way of eating was, in my opinion, sound and I consequently decided to try changing the way I eat. Within two weeks I realized that the list of positive effects I’d read and been told about was true. I was astonished.

The following are effects that I personally experienced after doing the two-week eating experiment:

I reduced my body fat
I looked better, had fresher eyes, my skin felt softer, and I had less acne
My cravings for bad foods were significantly reduced
I generally felt way less hungry and I could go for five or six hours without eating without any problems (before I would feel like crap if I didn’t eat every three hours)
It was easier for me to fall asleep and the quality of my sleep was improved
I felt less tired & sleepy throughout the day
My energy levels changed to constant, high energy all throughout the day
My ability to think clearly was improved
I was able to stay focused for longer periods of time
My feelings of satisfaction and happiness increased
I felt like a more empathic person and I felt I had more respect and tolerance for others
My patience improved (that was needed!)
I reduced my general levels of frustration, annoyance, and irritability
I had less stomach pain, less gas, less bloating, and better toilet visits
My girlfriend told me I was less of a pain!

You don’t have to be a psychic to understand that I was absolutely delighted with these effects. Even though I had some adaptation issues (no-one taught me how to avoid potential adverse effects of changing what you eat, however don’t worry, I’ve got you covered), for me the experiment was very much “high gain, no pain”!

I certainly can’t promise that you’ll experience all these effects as every person is different. However, I would be surprised if you didn’t experience most of them. If you don’t feel you can relate to the list above the two most likely reasons are your body needs a little more time to adapt to the new way of eating (the main difference is using fat as the main source of energy instead of carbohydrates) or that you haven’t followed the advice from the 4-step series.

The positive long-term health effects you’ll likely experience are life changing

From my experience people are initially more interested in verifying whether the short-term effects of eating excellent foods are true than they are in what the research argues the long-term effects will be. This makes sense to me as it’s generally hard for us to believe in potential long-term effects if we don’t notice any short-term effects from what we’re doing. For this reason I’ll keep this section short for now so that you can focus on the abovementioned short-term positive effects.

In terms of how I view life in general, the most important long-term effects the research literature links to excellent eating are:

Increased life span
Reduced symptoms of aging (looks, physical & mental performance etc.)
Increased feelings of well-being
Less diseases and body issues

Pretty impressive in my opinion and I hope you agree. Now, let’s look at the process of the exciting 2-week eating experiment!

The process of the 2-week experiment has four steps

Step #1: Evaluate how you currently feel

Step 1 of the 4-step series describes how to evaluate how you currently feel. This evaluation is particularly important as it provides us with a baseline from which you’ll measure your progress.

Step #2: Prepare for the 2-week eating experiment

Step 2 of the 4-step series provides you with the information required to prepare for the experiment. This step of the series outlines five eating rules, important habits of good eating, and how to avoid possible adverse effects from changing how you eat.

Step #3: Carry out the 2-week eating experiment & re-evaluate how you feel

Step 3 of the 4-step series outlines practical advice for how to successfully carry out the experiment. Additionally, this step describes how to re-evaluate how you feel after completing the experiment.

Step #4: Optimize your diet (after successfully completing the experiment)

The fourth and final step of the 4-step series aims to assist you in how to go forward having successfully completed the experiment. This step recommends, and outlines how, to start optimizing your diet by identifying how you respond to different types of food.

What’s next?

Now that you know why you should do the experiment and the process of it you’re ready to prepare. In a few days I’ll publish Step #1 of the 2-week experiment: “Evaluate how you currently feel”. I’m excited!

Acknowledgements & recommended resources

As you know I like to acknowledge excellent people who have inspired me in my own quest for optimal health. This time I want to say “thank you” to Paul Jaminet for his exceptional work and I recommend that you read the book written by him and his wife Shou-Ching Shih Jaminet. The book is named “Perfect Health Diet” and you can buy the book here . Also, do visit their blog . I personally haven’t had the fortune of meeting these two inspiring individuals yet but hopefully I will sometime.

Enjoy!

I borrowed the pictures above from the following sources:

– cheese picture

– vegetables picture

– jump picture

– stepping stones picture