Note: this was an ongoing blog entry I started some time ago. 

I’m starting a new color diet on Monday, January 29th, 2007.  Some of you who know me may be thinking “what the heck?” when you read more about what this color diet is, but hear me out.  I’m writing an entry about it because it’s pretty substantial, and we’ll find out if it’s any good or not.  Therefore, this blog entry started long before it was published.  I may start publishing somewhat into the project, or I may wait until the end.

The general idea is from Linda Goodman’s book “Linda Goodman’s Star Signs“.  Linda Goodman is an interesting astrologer who wrote many good books some time ago.  Some of her theories are a little out there (fairies, etc) but who knows; time may tell that she’s right on with those too.  She’s considered one of the top astrologers of all time by those who agree with her.

According to Goodman, the “color diet” consists of getting one’s aura back in balance.  She states that people who are underweght (the ’skinnies’) have too much red/yellow in their aura and the overweight people (the ‘plumpies’, me in this case) have too much blue/green in their aura.  The plumpies are to work on re-balancing their aura to have less of a blue/green saturation and get more red/yellow/orange spectrum into their aura. 

On the face of it, it does make some logical sense. Red/yellow indicates more activity, maybe a higher blood pressure, and a better metabolism by using more energy to convert the food we eat into usable energy.  Blue and green, on the other hand, indicate to me a more sedentary style, or to just lay back and relax.  Think about it - what do the fattest things on earth eat?  Cows, whales, rhinos, elephants, etc… all eat greens, blues, and darkish foods.  Bees, on the other hand, eat honey.  Monkeys eat bananas.

So there are three primary concepts in changing your aura to have more red/yellow/gold in it - 1) daily color light therapy, 2) drinking solarized water, and 3) eating foods from the red/yellow/gold/orange spectrum and staying away from green/blue-based food.  If you want more info about the specifics, I’d recommend buying the book.  But this blog entry here is about my personal experience with the color diet.  Read the massively extended entry for all the details.

Day one: Monday, 1/29/07

We have a couple of red glasses to solarize the water in, so we did that yesterday afternoon and let the water come to room temperature over night.  I’m mostly a fan of cold or ice water, so the concept of drinking room temperature water is a little alien.  I always drink my cokes (oh no, I can’t drink them for a while!), milk, water, or juice as cold as I can get them.  I poured the solarized water into another container while I put two new glasses outside.

The text says to use bottled water, but we’re using our conditioned water.  We’re on a well out here, and we have an extremely snazzy water filter for the entire house, so I don’t think you can get more fresh than that.  We’re getting our water from the earth, from an underground spring, and not from “the tap” in the general sense.

I did the color light therapy as instructed - 15 minutes on solar plexus and 15 minutes on the soles of my feet, while listening to Blue Man Group.  It was nice and relaxing enough, for what it is, as it’s not suppsoed to be too relaxing, as the drum-based energetic music is supposed to infuse into your aura while the light penetrates your body and adds red.  I’ll need to get some more of this type of music.  I think Linda called it “MARS Music”.

I think the hardest part will be the foods.  I look forward to some of the foods that are clearly allowed - red apples, bananas, ketchup :).  I’m going to miss my friend the burger, and of course pickles, meats of all kinds, but I’m going to like the chicken, as I frequently do.  I can basically have any food that’s white, yellow, gold, red or orange.  Some notable exceptions are french fries, but you can have potatoes in general.  Butter is supposed to be ok.  Fish is not considered ok, but I’m not sure why. 

The thought of exercising is definitely entering my mind more, but I don’t know if that would be considered cheating or not.  I want to give this color diet a chance, but maybe part of it is that the process gets you thinking about weight loss so much that you want to take charge, initiate action and exercise more, which is also a trait of a more red-like aura.

Ok, for lunch I stopped by Pok-E-Jo’s and picked up some macaroni & cheese, corn and cheesey mashed potatoes.  All are yellow, orange or white.  I wanted some red Gatorade but was out of one’s and change, so I just got some water.  I love mac-n-cheese… especially the kind from a restaurant like Pok-E-Jo’s or Lubys.

I still feel like exercising… more than I have in the past.  I’m wearing, as suggested in Linda’s “booster suggestions”, more red than I normally do.  I also need to get some red sunglasses to help get more red into my body.

Man, all this sounds and feels corny, yet makes a strange sort of sense.

Day two: Tuesday, 1/30/07

One of the things she recommends is to try on a pair of pants you couldn’t get on recently.  She says to do this in the first few days, so since we’re a little behind on laundry, I check out a pair of my jeans that I haven’t been able to button.  Yes, amazingly enough, I can get them on.  It’s a little tight, but not uncomfortable and I’m thinking “no way…”  How could something have an effect in just one day?

Color bath went fine, and I’m still liking Blue Man Group.  You’re supposed to erase your mind of negative thoughts, and I find that pretty easy to do. 

Today two people said I looked thinner.  I’m thinking “no way!”

I had my two glasses of solarized water (sipped throughout the morning, not gulped, as I read on a couple sites).  For food I had diced pears (no skin - that would be green), an egg-over-medium sandwich with tomato & mayo, and some hash browns, cheese pizza and a little bit of grilled chicken, cooked in my new Rocket Grill we got for Christmas.  The parts that cooked fully tasted great (I didn’t even season it) but there were uncooked parts.  Probably because I grilled a frozen chicken breast.

I noticed that I was a lot more tired near the end of the day, and I felt the same way the day before.  Maybe my body is tired after all that metabolising of stuff since I’m bringing more red into my aura.  Maybe it was the carbs of what I ate for lunch.

I still miss my friend, Mr. Pepsi.

Day three: Wednesday, 1/31/07

I got to thinking - I’m thinking about exercising a lot more.  I’m still not exercising, but that’s not my point.  I’m thinking about exercising.  I mean, I’m thinking about running, jogging, boxing, moving, jumping, etc.  It’s the visualization I’m talking about.  Maybe this red energy infusing into my aura is causing me to think more about activity, and the thinking is enough to make a physical change.

Color bath was nice - still same Blue Man Group.  I should get some more music I guess, but it’s still good for me so far.  Also am staying solid on the solarized water.

Food consisted of mandarin oranges, a banana, mac-n-cheese (have I mentioned I love mac-n-cheese?), a Comice pear (it’s a pear with a red skin), orange juice.  I also had some “peaches ‘n creme” fruit cocktail, which was pretty darn good.

We have pool league on Wednesdays, so I had some chips and salsa and the waitress made me some concoction of orange juice, pineapple juice, cranberry juice and sprite. 

I also got to thinking - maybe I was so tired the first two days because I have absolutely no caffeine in my diet…. I mean, going from a few pepsi’s a day to nothing will impact you.  I don’t drink coffee so I’m not missing it much.

I started to miss Mr. Burger but it didn’t last long.  I don’t feel hungry at all with all this fruit and stuff around.

Day four: Thursday, 2/1/07

The morning color bath is definitely something I wake up and look forward to.  A nice 30 minutes alone, listening to good music, while I try to relax yet have some energy and just wake up in general. 

For the water, I know that adding more water to one’s diet can only be good, as long as you don’t overdo it or drink bad water.  I’m enjoying the water, but we need to be able to make more, so I think I’m going to look into some of the bottles you can get for solarizing water.

Days five through about twenty-one

Ok, I stopped recording daily entries about what was going on, but in general, I stuck to the plan.  During the 3-4 weeks, I only missed a color bath once, and I only missed out on my solarized water one day.  I also “cheated” on the food once by having salmon, but hey, it’s pink, right?

I went to California for a few days, and lemme tell you, that put a kink in the plans but I mostly survived.  For one, I left my solarizing water glasses in my rental car as I was coming home.  Ooops.  It was also while in California that I cheated with the salmon, but I was out with about 80 other colleagues at a fancy winery and you didn’t get a choice for your food - they plopped down this incredibly gorgeous and amazingly cooked filet mignon and a succulent piece of salmon, and some mashed potatoes.  I scarfed down the potatoes and was still starving.  So I dug into the salmon and it was, not surprisingly, perfect.

Throughout the diet, I felt a lot better in that I felt energetic, a lot more focused, and I felt, well, “smarter.”  I felt a little thinner and several people commented that I looked thinner.  I think most of the time they were seeing my face as being thinner.  I didn’t weigh myself through the ordeal because despite how empirical it would be, I really wanted to see how I _felt_ and if it was a noticible difference versus any specific weight I lost.

So I eventually grew a little bored of it, and it was a little too much effort, and I think now if I just limited what I ate a little more in general, and, dang it, exercised regularly, I’d lose all the weight I need to lose. 

For now, I’m still drinking the solarized water because I think it helps my concentration and focus.  I have also decided to slightly limit my red meat intake because I have noticed that a heavy diet drenched in red meat does seem to weigh me down.  I will also go out and buy a couple more red bulbs because I enjoyed the color baths for a relaxing “get ready for the day” type of experience.  I know that I woke up refreshed every day I was on this diet, and that’s saying something.

So, until the next trial….

I didn’t read this blog. But I know about your diet. You told me about it. Wayne, no matter what you do, you have to both eat right and count calories. It sucks. Everytime I have lost all my weight (more than 80 pounds each time), I have eaten well and counted calories. And ate six times a day. And I shot for 2-3 pounds per week. I am doing that now (albeit last week wasn’t a good week for me, I hate going to the grocery store and so I ate out a bit), and it’s working.
There are a number of “ways” to eat, but the bottom line is water, calories, number of times you eat a day and exercise. That’s it.

Oh, and if you have an emotional eating problem, dealing with that; but I doubt you have that. Of course, if you do, when you start eating right and not bingeing, then your emotions naturally come out. I have had the distinct pleasure of dealing with my stress eating. It’s harde.

You got your stuff together pretty well, except that baseball snafu. So just eat right. And if you are worried about the karma of animals, go vegetarian. It’s not that big of a leap anyway, since you would be eating a ton of veggies and complex carbs, and not much meat.

Oh and one more thing; you can balance yin and yang with natural foods; you don’t have to use color to balance your chakras. Also, get some natural quartz crystals that are single terminated (one point) and use those while you meditate. Just be open to new things. I highly recommend a chakra clearing soundbite, because there are chords/notes that go with each chakra, and they already put it together for you. You can get a bunch of chakra clearing wavs (good ones) off of napster. I also get a lot of meditation music off of napster.
Classical music helps clear your chakras and balance your aura as well.
If you are really trying to balance your aura, then you gotta reach deeper than the physical. Remember that the physical aura is directly related to the etheral, emotional, mental, spiritial and UEF. Your HEF is fourfold, and moves from the outer to the inner. Your etheral manifests what you experience physically, and can have the footprint long before anything physical happens to you. So you gotta work from the outside in; not the inside out. No matter how you slice it, meditation your own way will clear your chakras and cleanse your aura. No one’s meditation is the same; no one follows the same path. Try different things. What works for me may not work for you. Eating is definitely important; but you don’t have to colorize your diet. If you are more yin, eat more yang foods. But you gotta complement it with meditation and chakra clearing. Only then can you actually experience the UEF which will ultimately cleanse your auras from the outside in.

I have a really cool way for you to see how you can feel the chakras. I didn’t believe it a bit. You know how skeptical I am; read and learn first, give it is a shot, and mostly dump it. But this was amazing, and I was shocked. You can use this on your family members and friends. And if you are really in a bind, and you gotta get some help, see a Reiki practitioner. They will channel the UEF into your body, and you will amazingly better in just a few sessions.

Color light therapy does work. So does aromatherapy. It’s not just about smelling. The essential oils do dissapate into the air, and they do enter your system through the lungs. Their restorative and reparative qualities have worked very well for me.

I don’t necessarily believe everything, but any book by Doreen Virtue are ones I would highly recommend. Angels, yes. Fairies and Goddesses, not sure really about that. Not sure I am ready to take that leap. But time will indeed tell.

I am learning about the scientific metaphysical properties of crystals in general (now called quantum physics), and about metaphysics in general. Not the typically-held beliefs about metaphysics (paganism, witchcraft, etc), but about energy and matter, and their relationship. I have learned a lot, and it’s been quite interesting.

Let me know if you want more info. I have a number of books I can recommend to you.

Michelle

Sorry, quantum physics as metaphysical; not as crystal therapy exclusively.

Interesting you mention Reiki. I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I are co-founders of the Astrological Society of Austin, the Austin chapter of NCGR. One of the other founders, Donna Woodwell (the leader, President, the person who really pushed for the chapter to be formed) is a Usui Reiki Master, and when I talked to her about this, she gave a knowing laugh and said something to the effect of “well, your diet won’t change your aura and your aura’s balance won’t affect your diet.” And she also mentioned that the things I was doing would help me be more focused, if anything, and feel better but not help weight or diet. And now that I’ve stopped for a week or so now, I must say that I’ve felt unfocused ever since. I know I felt very focused, more driven, and a lot more in tune with my responsibilities (ie, at work, or home special projects) when I was on the regimen.

Well, you can always read up on what I was talking about. I am certainly not telling you to stop your color diet; I am only saying that you might want to consider other things to assist in balancing your chakras and your aura. Why don’t you try going to the Reiki Master? I am sure she can also provide a bunch of insight on how you can keep your balance and keep your aura in check.

You might also want to consider researching Macrobiotics. I enjoyed it when I did it, and it’s actually quite inexpensive to eat macrobiotically. My food bill was cut in half when I ate macrobiotic foods. In a nutshell, you basically eat food that leans toward the center between yin and yang to balance your body. Eating the extremes tends to create worse cravings. When I ate that way, I felt a lot better, my cravings subsided, and I felt a lot more balanced and nutrionally sound. I quit doing it because I had to cook so much, and frankly, I hate cooking for one person. But you can start slowly, by introducing more complex grains into your diet, start eating miso soup, Bancha tea, getting caffeine out of your system, and stop eating sugar. I also highly recommend getting meat out your system, and including fish only in your diet. I know that is sacreligious to a meat eater like yourself, but it will help too. By the way; remember, meat doesn’t mean red meat. It means meat. Period. Chicken is meat. Pork is meat.

Anyway, you can go on down to whole foods and central market to get what you need. The Epicurean in Austin has a lot of stuff that you will need to cook with. How you cook your food is as important as what you eat. The bottom line is to balance yin and yang foods and yin and yang cooking methods with your food.

It’s not tough; it’s cheaper, and you eat mostly grains, vegetables and small amounts of protein in the form of tofu and fish. Sea vegetables are also used, and I actually kinda liked them. I found that I liked miso soup a lot, and you can make all kinds of really good soups with it. It’s like a stock make of sea veggies. But it tastes good. Bancha tea tastes good too.

Go to the Kushi Institute online and you can read about macrobiotics. There are a bunch of good books you can buy on amazon as well. There is also a restaurant down on Barton Springs Road that serves macrobiotic food only.

Start slowly; introduce a little at a time. It’s not a big transition to eat complex grains and veggies. Start pressure cooking your grains, and that will get you halfway there. Then, eat certain veggies grown locally, if possible, as they match the climate in which you live. Just start there; grains and veggies, and you are halfway there. Work on the caffeine (no Pepsi’s, which makes you a communist anyway), and of course, drink lots of water. I like to put lemon juice in my water. It increases my craving for water and tastes better.

My two cents.

hi, was wondering …..whats the difference between meat and fish. i mean isnt fish meat? y is it ok to eat fish but not meat?I am trying to go veg, so i stopped red meat a while back and chicken this year am still eating fish occasionally but thought would slowly elimimnate that aswell…anything??

Tina, I can’t say I have an answer, because I don’t. All I know is that fish is white (and salmon is pink) so it was on my “ok” list for this diet. I am not interested in vegetarianism, so I have not read up on it. I would suppose most assume “if it has eyes, I don’t eat it” and that would include the fishies. If you’re trying to go vegetarian, following that little rule will probably help. About the only thing that I’ve noticed is that when I eat a LOT of red meat, I feel more tired and sluggish in general. So I try to not gorge myself. That’s probably the hardest part

Good luck!

Lol! Were we having that conversation almost a year ago now? Wow - time flies!

Michelle’s responses above contain a lot of good advice on the subject. The “human energy field” is like the energetic interface between the mind and body. As Michelle points out, it’s affected by numerous factors — your beliefs and thought patterns, emotions, physical health, environment, relationships with other people, and yes, even diet. It’s just been my experience, after 15 years of working with different types of energy modalities, that a week of changing your diet isn’t going to change your energy field over the long term, not unless it’s accompanied by some kind of major psychic shock or trauma. As in other areas of life, effective “quick fixes” are hard to come by. A healthy, balanced diet, accompanied by regular exercise, is still everyone’s best bet for health, longevity and vitality.

But if you’re interested in exploring more on the subject, I’ve got a shelf of books on auras, chakras, energy fields and the like. Somewhere around here I’ve even got a copy of recordings from Rosalyn Bruyere’s work on the human energy field at UCLA. Next time you stop by, you can take a look (or a listen) .