Hi. This is Katherine Kyle here from greenthickies.com. And this is Day 5 of The Leaf System Challenge. And today, I lost another half a pound. So that brings my total to three and a half pounds in the last four days. So that's pretty good.
Usually, I do lose quite a bit of weight in the first week of beginning a new detox on a diet. And then after that, it does tail off a bit, but it's still consistent. So that's what we're looking for. So, it's been quite consistent with previous attempts. So, I'm very happy so far. And this morning, I went for a short run, did a short workout after that, so I'm feeling really, really good this morning.
And today, what we're going to talk about is, "Which is the best diet for weight loss?"
Now, I'm going to mention three popular diets that are deemed as healthy diets at the moment and I have done all three diets for significant lengths of time. So I feel like I'm qualified to talk about them. And these three diets are the Paleo diet, the vegan diet and the raw food diet.
So which one is best for weight loss?
And I would say all three. I have lost significant amounts of weight on all three of these diets and kept it off for a long time, and been sustainable with my lifestyle as well for long periods of time. So, I would say that all three are good for weight loss providing you eat, and this is what we talked about yesterday. So if you want to learn more about this, go back and watch yesterday's video, but providing you take in less calories than you burn.
So you can only successfully lose weight with these diets if you take in less calories than you burn. And I did two of them by accident and one of them on purpose. And I like to do things on purpose now.So, the real question that we need to ask ourselves is -- not just about weight loss, but we need to be concerned about our health because there's no point in doing a diet if it's going to make us sick. So we have to look at which is actually the healthiest diet for us in the long term.
Now I have feelings about all three of these diets and I think that all three are healthy and they do incorporate a lot of healthy principles that I love and I think they're -- all three are a very, very good basis for health especially if you're coming from a standard diet.You will probably feel so much better if you choose any one of these three options.
But saying that, there's a few things that -- there's a couple of things that all three diets are lacking in or could be lacking in depending on what -- how you follow the diet because they can be quite flexible.And this is the reason why I created the Leaf System because the Leaf System has these two principles.
The Leaf System, actually, you can follow a Paleo diet, a Vegan diet or a raw food diet within the Leaf System, but it's doing these three diets in the right way.So you can either choose only one option or you can do a combination of all three options. And it's totally up to you. But the two things that are completely missing or can be completely missing from these three diets are leafy greens and an abundance of fruit.
These are things that I'm passionate about and I have noticed, experimenting for long periods of time with these three diets, is that I only feel good on these particular diets when I'm eating an abundance of fruit and an abundance of leafy greens. And I'm keeping my fats not too high and not basing my meals just around protein and fat.
So, some of these diets, they can incorporate a lot of fruit and leafy greens, but they don't have to. For example, the raw food diet. When I began the raw food diet, thankfully, I began it in a good way. I began it in a way I ate mainly lots and lots of raw fruit and lots of leafy greens. And I felt amazing.But when I dug a bit deeper into the raw food lifestyle, there's a certain thing called gourmet raw and this is what I did a lot of last month as an experiment. And I ate a lot of meals that were -- they kind of -- they create meals that are quite like normal food. So they create desserts and pastas and things that they have a lot of nuts in them.
A lot nuts, a lot of fat. And yes, it's all raw, but there's -- where is the fruit? Where is the leafy greens? And it's so high in fat that if you eat that way a lot of the time, you still will feel better than you did feel on a standard diet, but in the long term, you're going to end up feeling sluggish.Your digestion is going to end up feeling sluggish and you're not going to have that vibrancy, that spark, that energy that the fruit and the leafy greens give you. And that's what could be missing from a raw food diet.So you have to be careful about what type of raw food diet you do.
And veganism, that's another thing. Some people do it for health; some people do it for ethical reasons. And if you do it for ethical reasons, then that kind of comes before health. So, that's your choice to do that.So I'm not going to argue with that.And I was a vegan for a very long time mainly for health reasons. Although I definitely believe in being as ethical as you possibly can. But I got to a stage where I was missing so much from my diet as a vegan that I wasn't doing it in the right way.
I started off having a lot of fruit. And then, for some reason -- I think it was during my pregnancy, I went off fruit and leafy greens. I couldn't seem to stomach them, but I was still a vegan and I became severely anaemic and I just had to stop at that point.And I didn't realise fully that it was the fruit and the leafy greens that I was missing. I thought it was the animal products. And it could've been a combination of both because there are things that you miss as a vegan, the raw things that you miss on just a raw food diet.
So, if you're doing this for health reasons, I do recommend looking into the nutrients that you might be missing if you just do 100% of those two diets because the raw things like B12, there's things like iron, selenium and things like that that you need to really look into what you might be missing, because I think, they're good for a detox, I think they can be good for even a few months.
I felt good on a raw food diet for six months.But if you do it for -- In fact I felt good on vegan diet for years, maybe about six years, I think I did a vegan diet for. And after a while, I just started noticing that my health was going downhill because I wasn't getting in everything that my body needed. And the same when I was eating a Paleo diet,I felt there were so many things that really improved like my digestion improved massively. I was getting -- before that on a vegan diet, I was getting loads of IBS because I was eating loads of beans, and pulses, and chickpeas that really don't agree with me whatsoever.
And as soon as I cut those out on Paleo diet, my digestion improved so much and -- but the thing -- I didn't just have that energy that vibrancy. I was still feeling quite listless and I think that was because I wasn't eating the fruit and the leafy greens in abundance.I was eating too much of the heavy proteins of the eggs. And even though I didn't like meat, I didn't really like eating it, I was still basing my diet too much around eggs and not enough raw food in my diet.
So, I have learned a lot from everything that I had done working with a nutritionist. And we have put together The Leaf System which is completely balanced especially if you take aspects from all three areas of The Leaf System if you eat raw a lot of the time, most of the time.If you eat vegan, raw food maybe, at least, half of the time, or even two thirds of the time, you will feel amazing, and maybe have say just your dinners that incorporate meat; or even just half of the week you have meat based dinners or fish based dinners, then that is going to give you a completely balanced diet and give you everything you need.
So that is the diet that I am going to do. After I've done this 28 Day Leaf System Challenge where I'm eating mainly raw food just because it's the time of year where I feel like my body really needs it and it's just a personal choice.I just feel like my body's speaking to me, its saying, "Go raw, do a detox and detox all the food that you ate when you were away and really get back to a nice, slim body." And at that stage, that is when I know that I'll have used up all my stores of the -- and all the food that was stored in my body -- all the nutrients.
And at that stage I'm going to have a more balanced diet and start incorporating some animal based products back into my diet and things that I know I need in the long term.So, that is my plan and you have to do what works for you, but I'm just letting you know what's happened for me in the past in the hope that it will help you to choose the right diet for you.
So that is the main reason why we created Leaf System. It's not just a calorie counting, lose weight, fatty diet. This is a diet for life. This is a diet that if you eat a variety of the foods in The Leaf System - some of the meat, some of the veggies, some of the raw -- lot of the raw food, because it is -- a lot of it's, based on raw food and lots of the meals have leafy greens in them, then you will get everything you need to sustain you in the long term for a vibrant, healthy, energy and good health and a slim body.
So, I can't wait to see what happens for you.So let me go -- let me know how you feel about those three types of diets.Which one are you following, which one works for you, are you doing a combination of all three and how is The Leaf System working out for you so far?So I wish you luck and I hope you do well and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye!