Blood-type Diet

Eat Right for Your Blood Type

The diet includes 12 steps to effectively manage your diet:

1. Is this diet right for you?
   Many people try the Blood Type Diet in the hopes of enhancing their overall health or fighting a particular disease. Many use the diet as a way of achieving their ideal weight. These are all very good reasons as over the years many people have used the Blood Type Diet to accomplish these goals. The blood type diet is quite effective, as measured by the large numbers of individuals who have reported their results. Interestingly roughly 8 out of 10 individuals report a positive result from following the program, which is especially interesting in light of the fact that each of the four blood groups have quite different diets.



2. Finding out your blood type
   The first task you will have to accomplish is to find out your ABO blood type.
   You can do this by:
   • Having a donor card from the Red Cross or having been typed by a hospital prior to a medical procedure.
   • Ask your doctor to blood type you.
   • Purchasing a home blood typing kit and blood typing yourself.


3. Eat Right For Your Type
   The secret behind the success of eating for your blood type. Each food has a specific value for each specific blood type. A great guide for the Blood Type Diet is Dr. D'Adamo's book, Eat Right 4 Your Type (ER4YT) and it is available at most bookstores. This book will help you become familiar with the science behind the Blood Type Diet. You will learn :
   • How blood type influences digestion, and why different blood types have different strengths and weaknesses.
   • How anthropology has shaped the characteristics of each blood type.
   • How lectins in the diet often determine what foods are good or bad for a particular type.
   Take a look at the diet that is specific for your blood type. You will notice that certain foods are considered 'neutral' or 'avoid' or 'beneficial'. This is different from virtually all other diet books, which tend to only classify foods by their macronutrient content, such as 'low carb' or 'low fat'.



4. Compliance, cooking and meal planning
   It is important in this phase of the ER4YT that you take a careful look at your overall health and medical conditions, your ability to start the diet cold turkey or if you can gradually change your diet and your ability to substitute food to enhance your benefits.



5. Getting your questions answered
   At this point in the diet, people want to completely understand the positives and negatives associated with each food. Personally, I would have wanted these questions answered prior to starting the diet, but the majority of the dieters have made it to this point before questioning any foods.



6. Community support
   The ER4YT website features a community of online bloggers through their bulletin boards. These individuals have detailed theit diet journeys through the ups and the downs of following the diet. Their entries are full of useful information and you can contact the bloggers directly to share information or ask questions.



7. Dealing with specific health issues
   The Blood Type Diet can make a significant difference when dealing with specific health issues, especially when used in conjunction with regular health care.



8. Achieving your ideal weight
   This diet prides itself in overall health with weight loss as an extra bonus. It advises that you discuss all matters with your physician and calculate your Body Mass Index and your daily recommended caloric intake.



9. Exercise and stress reduction
   As with most diets, a combination of exercise and diet maintenance are the two key elements in success. This diet is NO different in that aspect, but it also urges you to exercise as a way of relieving stress and keeping you internally balanced. ER4YT uses the acronym "F.I.T" (frequency, intensity and time) to reach your optimal level of fitness. It also suggests determining your personality type using the Myers Briggs model in order to accurately assess your ability to use the diet to its fullest potential.



10. The Secretor Status
    According to ER4YT, there are two genetic options of the secretor system. This plays a vital roll in determining your ability to secrete ABO blood type genes. A person can be either a secretor (Se) or a non-secretor (se). This is completely independent of whether you are a blood type A, B, AB, or O. In a simplified sense, a "secretor" is a person who secretes their blood type antigens into their body fluids and secretions. I think that this is probably the most frustrating part for potential ER4YT dieters to deal with. It is rather confusing to understand, and I think that people who are easily discouraged will be likely to quit at this point.



11. Using Supplements Intelligently
    Supplements are defined as food derivations, vitamins, minerals and herbs of a non-toxic nature. There is a lot of information about supplements on the internet, and not all of it is FDA compliant, therefore you should proceed with caution and medical advice and supervision. They are not able to supplement completely for a healthy diet.



12. The expertise to help others
    ER4YT depend on word-of-mouth advertising and dieter's support. They have noiced an increase in sales and success stories since they have formed their on-line support groups and bloggers. I think that this is a necessary element, especially for this diet because it can be confusing at times.

Conclusion