RBTI Initial Consult and Impressions

So yesterday I met Matt and Pippa in the flesh. It's funny how many people knock Matt on his blog. Everybody's just following guru Matt to his next obsession. We all need to get over it and just live our lives. True that, but such criticisms don't understand Matt's real goal, which is exactly that. Like myself, Matt is an information nerd more concerned about understanding things at a deep level than being right or making money. Like me, he will continue to pursue and acquire health information until he has a deep and comprehensive view... far deeper than currently exists anywhere. Although he's far more dedicated to it than I ever will be. In person, he's much like he is in his videos: slightly dorky and a bit too enthusiastic about health stuff.

The notions that Matt is trying to make money or is in some kind of ego craze are laughable. There was nothing glamorous about him and Pippa spending their labor day weekend driving six hours to meet a bunch of health nuts and WAPF groupies and play with their urine samples (granted I am spinning that as negatively as possible). Matt didn't even collect any money. Pippa collected $25 for consultation. Such is my outlay so far, and it doesn't look like the costs of this program will be increasing much anytime soon. More on that later. I asked Matt about his income sources, which are apparently non-existant at the moment. I have to believe that considering how much content he must go through to churn out all the material and answer all the blog posts he does.

The Program
I have to say overall this appears to be much more easy to follow program than I anticipated, more akin to say incorporating Weil's guidelines in "Healthy Aging" or Guiliano's in "French Women Don't Get Fat". Both have excellent information but are overly verbose and perhaps cumbersome to implement in their entirety. Or maybe Matt and Pippa have just done a good job at breaking this program down to the essentials. So let's get to that.

The No Foods
This is the biggest potential hurdle. These foods are really more about avoidance than moderation. They cause immediate disturbance to body chemistry which can last for several days, during which body healing is compromised. First on the list is pork in all its forms (including as gelatin or additives in dietary supplements). Next up are nuts and seeds, chocolate (and cocoa), shell fish and skin fish, black and green tea (but not coffee in small amounts), and finally undercooked or raw meats, such as sushi. Sea salt is a food to minimize.

My thoughts on the no foods
I find the avoidance of pork interesting, not just because it's listed in the Bible as an unclean meat. That to me indicates ancient cultures avoided for it reasons unknown (I believe it was cultural wisdom that was later attributed to the word of God). They aren't the only culture. Certain Native American cultures will not touch pork, or at least it's more likely in the older generations. I know this anecdotally through firsthand accounts due to my time on health blogs. I had thought the Okinawans ate a fair amount of pork, so I looked up Dan Buetnner's research with the Blue Zones, and it appears they ate it only occasionaly for celebrations. This jibes with RBTI as a healthy, well-mineralized body would have only a small disturbance from the no foods and would remain healthy as long as the no foods aren't being consumed consistently. There may be healthy cultures eating a lot of pork, but I just don't know enough to qualify it.

Chocolate I am already suspicious of. It never seemed to fit normally along with other foods. When I was low-carb and unhealthy, I would regularly binge on dark chocolate. Now that I'm practicing more intuitive eating, I find myself cutting it out, along with alcohol. I don't doubt it's disruptive to body chemistry, along with caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. It appears to be more disruptive than I would have anticipated though.

The sea salt guideline is drawing a lot of flak on Matt's blog but I'm willing to go with the flow on this one. Apparently it shows up in the body chemistry. I'm trying to think how we've collectively come to the conclusion that sea salt is healthy. Any references are appreciated.

The other foods are not that big a deal to me, so I don't have much comment on them.

Meal Patterns
This is the other biggie of RBTI. Have a carb heavy breakfast (oatmeal or other porridgy breakfasts are recommended), a big lunch, and a light dinner. Actually, Guiliano seems to advocate a similar pattern, except that she asserts that the big meal can be lunch or dinner. RBTI does not assert that, but since RBTI isn't overly strict, I may end up stretching the rules here and there a la Guiliano. Meats and sweets are eating at lunch and avoided at dinner. Dinner is typically made up of non-starchy vegetables and is things like soup, salad, Spanakopita, low-fat yogurt, etc.

I've been adjusting to the meal pattern over the last few days (prior to the consultation) and I have to say I already agree with the avoidance of meats and sweets after 2pm. Some of my worst nights falling asleep in the past few months were meat heavy dinners. And sweets don't just don't feel right in the evening. Don't know why, but left to myself, I don't want any. The meal pattern was a rough adjustment, but it's already beginning to feel natural.

Dairy, butter, etc.
Yes, RBTI advocates use of skim-milk, low-fat yogurt, and minimal amounts of butter. This is directly against a lot of WAPF teachings. But let's take a critical step back here. I read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and Weston A. Price didn't restore health in kids using gobs of butter. He restored health using high-vitamin butter and freshly ground whole wheat in a single meal that was otherwise part of a very deficient diet. He acknowledged that healthy cultures recognized the importance of high-vitamin butter and organ meats, but there is nothing to say you need to go through pounds and pounds of butter, as some WAPF followers seem to believe. A couple things: fat is necessary for absorption of certain nutrients but contains no minerals itself, and high-solvency oils like those found in butter are more difficult to digest.

Weston A. Price wasn't the only researcher to study traditional diets. If we look at the research of others such as T. L. Cleave, we see healthy cultures that ate very high carbohydrate, some 80 to 90 percent. Sweet potatoes, yams, and grains are common.

Lemon Water
RBTI does require the use of distilled water if you are to truly follow it. Often this has lemon and a bit of sweetener dissolved in it, depending on where your body chemistry is at. My best understanding of this is that distilled water best matches the body's own natural pH and thus requires less work for the body to maintain it's own enviroment. Contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, RBTI does not always advocate drinking a lot of water. It depends on your chemistry. If your salts are too low or you tend towards hypoglycemia, drinking too much water can be a major stress.

Water is generally not drunk in the late afternoon or evening, another principle I agree with. Although I used to drink lots of unsweetened lemon water (prior to becoming a health nut) I would naturally stop in the evening, as I found my system was still trying to clear out the excess after I went to bed (annoying).

My Consultation
It doesn't amount to much. Apparently I've had too much sea salt (and chocolate) and not enough water recently. My prescription is a water flush (i.e. drink plenty of water the next few days). Other than that, Pippa said I would need to retest after the flush. That's going to be a couple of weeks or so until the test kit arrives that the group of us here in Mpls ordered. Yes, we're only ordering one kit for all of us so far. This program is going to be really cheap.

The other thing she said was that their was pressure on my heart and it may have been beating louder. I had noticed that my heartbeat felt louder the past few days but had been only mildly concerned about it.