What concrete solutions?

Demonstrating that the human body is not adequately adapted to the demands of a conventional diet is not enough. It’s about taking concrete steps in daily life to avoid the harmful effects of our eating habits. Many options are available to health enthusiasts, starting with certain partial adjustments that reduce the harmful effects and imbalances caused by our culinary practices. Those who prefer to dive straight into a 100% natural diet can visit the page: “If you want to try it…” But here are a few examples of partial adjustments to get you started that will already do you a world of good:

Adjustments to daily habits

  1. Limit cooking temperatures to reduce the levels of New Chemical Species produced by heat denaturation. 1. Choose steamed potatoes over fried potatoes, cooked meats over grilled meats, and the soft part of bread over the crust. Avoid coffee, peanuts, potato chips, roasted hazelnuts, and other roasted products, etc.
  2. Avoid milk and dairy products: replace them with seafood, eggs, and unroasted nuts and seeds (walnuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and sprouted grains).
  3. Avoid wheat and limit other grains, consuming them in sprouted form rather than cooked.
  4. Eliminate or reduce alcoholic beverages, especially liqueurs and spirits.
  5. Avoid complex recipes and sauces, limit salt and spices, and choose simple ingredients, focusing more on quality than preparation: grated vegetables, fruits, and minimally processed plant and animal proteins (opt for steak tartare instead of shepherd’s pie, grated vegetables with vinaigrette instead of remoulade with mayonnaise, etc.).
  6. Avoid mixing foods: it’s best to eat foods one after the other rather than mixing them together, either during preparation or consumption.
  7. Include plenty of raw vegetables, salads, avocados, sprouted seeds, nuts, soft-boiled eggs, sushi, tartare, Bündnerfleisch (air-dried beef), and cured ham from Bayonne or Parma (instead of cooked meats, not in addition to them!).
  8. Avoid snacking between meals.
  9. Skip a meal occasionally.
  10. Leave the table still feeling hungry.

These few rules will be far more effective than the five-a-day rule, because they address the root of the problem by limiting harmful factors such as denatured molecules and overeating. But we can do even better without imposing the strict discipline required by instinctotherapy itself:

Applying the Principles of Instinctonutrition

  1. In the morning or at midday, review the available foods and identify by smell those that seem most appealing. Similarly, at the market, choose products based less on appearance and more on smell and taste (most vendors allow customers to try a small piece of fruit or vegetable; you usually just have to ask). Then prepare the products, respecting the principles of simplicity mentioned above if possible.
  2. Eat a meal of unprepared foods once a week, selecting them by smell and taste (also consider the salivation reflex triggered by the smell or touch of the food); stop eating as soon as the taste turns unpleasant.
  3. Spend one entire day a week without cooking, while ensuring you have enough choice to avoid feeling deprived. Select and portion the foods consumed as before.
  4. Another option is to eat a breakfast of raw foods every morning: fruits, seeds, nuts, and perhaps some vegetables. Drink water before eating. If possible, start with coconut water.
  5. It is also possible to skip breakfast (remembering to drink plenty of water), then have only fruit for dinner: ensure you have a sufficiently diverse selection of fruit and choose the most suitable ones by smell, then stop as soon as the taste becomes unpleasant or you feel a signal of satisfaction in your stomach. No changes are needed for the evening meal, although you can draw inspiration from the principles outlined in the first section.
  6. Occasionally, try a week or two of eating two meals of raw foods per day, applying the same principles of selection and portion control: observe how the pleasure increases as bodily functions normalize (this progress will be more or less rapid depending on the food, ranging from one day to three weeks). Stop if you experience any difficulties.
  7. After a number of successful trials, it is possible to extend these periods, taking advantage of a one- or two-week vacation or the warmer months to facilitate the availability of locally grown fruits and vegetables. However, the full effects of instinctotherapy should not be judged based on what can be achieved with a short-term regimen, as the strongest detoxification reactions usually occur at the beginning.

Further training is absolutely necessary to go further. If this is your intention, go to the page "If you want to try the experience…"

Important Note: If you intend to adopt a 100% natural diet, you should know that it is more difficult to proceed gradually than to make the leap overnight.

A gradual approach is certainly easier psychologically, since abruptly abandoning processed food presents roughly the same difficulty as weaning oneself off a hard drug.

However, it poses another problem: each time one consumes processed food, the resulting discomfort insidiously diminishes the appetite for whole foods, so that one fails to experience the intensity of pleasure that whole foods should provide. This leads to a feeling of craving that grows stronger day by day, until the attraction to processed foods eventually overcomes even the strongest resolve.

Success depends primarily on the quality of practice: one must learn to select the most appropriate foods by smell (instinct and menu), avoid bad food combinations (instinct and food combinations), adjust portions (nutritional balance) according to the body’s needs and digestive capacity, be aware of alliesthetic signals at different levels—olfactory, gustatory (the four phases of taste), and gastric (criteria for perfect digestion), free oneself from dietary prejudices (this is good for that) in order to allow instinct to express itself, etc.

Regarding social relationships and psychological difficulties:

Any change in eating habits provokes reactions from those around one, which can destabilize even the best intentions. Here are some rules to follow to avoid upsetting others and prevent unnecessary tension:

So, enjoyment and good health: two wishes that will soon become one…

Those who wish to delve deeper can visit the page “If you want to try the experience…” And to discover the “original table”: