This is my first blog in a very long time! I am routinely disrupted by two toddlers (and a preteen), so let’s pray this goes smoothly enough.

I somewhat desperately want to get this information out to you because I think it can be of service to a lot of people (and already is), but I feel it’s my duty to bring it to my personal corner of the world.

What Is The No Amylose Diet?

In a nutshell, it’s a therapeutic diet that eliminates added glucose and amylose – the most common type of starch that we eat.

Who Created the No Amylose Diet?

This therapeutic diet was created by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker and used on his thousands of patients for 20 years before he published his first book on the topic in 2005, called “Lose The Weight You Hate.” It has continued, for almost another 20 years, to help people lose weight, as well as a first line treatment for mold and CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome). This diet is particularly effective in those CIRS-affected with an elevated MMP9 lab result. (See your doctor to find this out).

Why Eliminate Amylose (and Glucose)?

These two constituents are known to raise blood sugar quickly and lead to a corresponding dip in blood sugar over time. In the process, they also create leptin resistance and insulin resistance. These things can occur for other reasons as well, and still respond favourably to the elimination of glucose and amylose.

That’s because a high insulin state is an INFLAMMATORY state. If you have any kind of health condition that is aggravated by inflammation – which means, most health conditions – it is of service to eliminate foods that exacerbate that inflammation.

If we can decrease specifically the carbs and foods that do this, our insulin levels will decrease overall, and our inflammation levels will decrease with it.

What Do You Remove?

You basically avoid food with glucose (sugar added to it), including white sugar, brown sugar, turbinado sugar, ‘glucose-fructose’, sucrose, evaporated cane juice, corn syrup, and so forth.

You also avoid the amylose starch which means avoiding ALL grains – yes ALL grains; white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots (and any other vegetable growing under the ground, except for onions and garlic).

What Do You Eat?

Here are the foods to choose from on a no-amylose diet:

• All animal proteins – red meat, chicken, turkey, all fish and seafood, eggs
• Dairy, as long as you tolerate it – although for the purposes of weight loss, I recommend avoiding most dairy until you hit your goal weight (dairy on its own triggers an excessive insulin response)
• All above-ground vegetables, as well as onions and garlic
• Coconut flour, almond flour, and corn starch are fine
• Corn is fine and corn flour
• Very small amounts of honey and maple syrup
• All fruits, fresh and dried
• Herbs and spices
• Sugar-free beverages, although fresh squeezed fruit juices with no sugar added are allowed
• Dark chocolate and cacao, cocoa and cacao butter products, coconut butter / oil, coconut milk, coconut meat, coconut cream, extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, avocado oil mayo, avocados, tallow and butter are all great fats to choose on this diet
• All nuts and seeds and nut butters
• Beans and legumes if you tolerate – they contain starch, but not amylose. They contain raffinose and stachyose, starches prone to making us have gas.
• Dr. Shoemaker still advises to not over-eat and go buck wild, be reasonable, obviously, don’t eat a pound of nuts a day (perhaps a small handful only) and don’t over-eat in general. But because this diet resets leptin sensitivity, it becomes harder and harder to over-eat anyways.

How Does The No Amylose Diet Work?

Firstly by eliminating glucose and amylose, we decrease overall insulin in the body as well as insulin spikes, both of which contribute to resistant, stubborn, hard-to-lose weight. Any time insulin is elevated in the body, it is virtually impossible to lose weight, no matter what we do or how hard we try.

We also run into what’s called ‘Insulin resistance,’ where we have been exposed to SO much insulin over time that our cells stop responding to it as effectively. This worsens the situation, because the body then pumps out MORE insulin in an effort to get the cells to respond to it. This super elevated insulin level (beyond the physiological requirements of a healthy body), further worsens the stubborn weight picture.

Next up, most of us with weight issues also have leptin resistance. Leptin is the hormone that tells us when we’re full and thus to stop eating. If our leptin is no longer working – which typically happens due to eating too many refined carbs, emotional eating, eating omega 6 seed oils, and eating any time we aren’t hungry – our body can no longer accurately tell when we’re full. This means we often eat more calories than we need – well past the point of physiological requirements. This is a long term recipe for weight gain.

By being low in carbs, low in refined carbs, and low in lectins (anti-nutrients predominantly found in grains), as well as low in seed oils, we actually begin to reverse leptin resistance.

This means we learn when our body is full again, and we end up eating significantly less, leading to easier weight loss.

How Long Do You Do The No-Amylose Diet For?

Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker advised doing this diet for at least 12 weeks, or as long as it took to reach goal weight.

He does allow for one ‘cheat meal’ after every ten days of perfect adherence to the protocol. Of course you don’t have to do a cheat meal, especially if it hurts your body and results – particularly with other things like CIRS, inflammation, and digestive issues.

On the other hand, if knowing you have this special meal to look forward to means that you have better compliance over the ten day period prior, it might be a good motivator to keep you on track, especially for weight loss purposes. (Meaning, if the cheat doesn’t inflame you and worsen your symptoms).

People whom are strictly looking for weight loss might not have CIRS or other highly sensitive issues, and a single cheat meal might not overly inflame them as it would to someone with a dysregulated immune system.

How Do You Maintain Your Results?

After achieving your goal weight, Dr. Shoemaker states you need to have your fasting insulin measured. Personally I would run both fasting insulin and fasting glucose together at the same time, around 8am. This allows for the calculation of something called the HOMA IR score, or your insulin resistance score, to see if you are still somewhat insulin resistant. (If you are overweight, gaining weight, or can’t lose weight, there is definitely some degree of insulin resistance present.)

You can calculate your HOMA IR score here: https://thebloodcode.com/calculators/

This is a score you can track over time to see how well your insulin is functioning. Ideally you want to be *non* insulin resistant and keep it that way via nutrition and exercise.

Dr. Shoemaker then states to take just your insulin score and divide it by 70.

• If your insulin level exceeds 30, you can have two amylose servings PER WEEK to maintain your new weight. A serving would be a single sandwich, a muffin or a potato.
• If your insulin level is 20 – 29, you can have 3 servings per week
• If your insulin level is 15 or less, you can have amylose every OTHER day
• And if it is 10 or less, you can have ONE serving a day, although apparently this is a rare person, and they probably wouldn’t have weight gain in the first place (these are all your perpetually skinny friends)

You can do your insulin level at any time, including before or during the diet, to find this out. Apparently your insulin levels don’t or barely change over time, hence why you can do this test before you even start the no-amylose diet.

When it comes to the HOMA IR score changing over time, that’s because your fasting glucose should go down over time, signalling that you are less (or not at all) insulin resistant. So fasting glucose WILL change over time (and should), whereas fasting insulin will NOT change over time.

I have not run fasting insulin on enough clients, enough times, to have noticed the insulin not changing. Dr. Shoemaker is an MD with access to covered lab testing and has run it thousands of times, so I will outsource this knowledge to him.

WARNING: Those Who Will Gain ALL The Weight Back

Dr. Shoemaker noted that out of his thousands of weight loss patients treated, for those who lost 30lbs or more, 70% would maintain this weight loss over one year later.

Reliably, the 30% who gained it back did one thing consistently: they FAILED to measure their fasting insulin, and failed to adhere to the maintenance amount of amylose per week. Thus, they gained all the weight back.

It is a relatively cheap test and possibly even free depending on your situation. I would highly recommend getting it ASAP.

The 00-2-3

Dr. Shoemaker tells patients to adhere to the 00-2-3

0 servings of glucose per day

0 servings of amylose per day

2 servings of protein per day (lunch and dinner, at least)

3 servings of vegetables (at least), and 3 servings of fruit per day (max)

When you adhere to this formula, large amounts of weight loss have been seen, sometimes as high as 45lbs in 12 weeks. Granted, the more you have to lose, the faster you will lose it. If you only have 30 – 36lbs to shed (as I do), it can take a longer time. The last 5-10lbs are always the longest.

Typical No-Amylose Diet for a Day

Breakfast: Omelette – Greek omelette with feta, black olives, bell peppers; or a Western Omelette with onions, ham and green bell peppers

Or a fruit platter

Or breakfast sausages with fruit juice

Lunch: Some type of meat (salmon filet, chicken breast, boiled eggs) over a salad with homemade salad dressing

Snacks: square of dark chocolate; dried fruit or dried fruit bar; apple with nut butter; handful of nuts and seeds, RX bar etc

Dinner: 6-8oz of meat / fish with a side of vegetables

Dessert: homemade frozen fruit and honey sorbet, cashew ‘cheesecake’ on occasion, fresh fruit, dark chocolate, sugar free jello

How Does the Low Amylose Diet Help Mold / CIRS?

The no amylose diet helps CIRS by reducing the inflammatory load brought on by food. By eliminating glucose and amylose, insulin levels drop drastically. Insulin is a pro-inflammatory hormone that exacerbates inflammation in the body. This means that as insulin drops, inflammation drops, and thus so do the symptoms of CIRS. Any inflammatory disease will typically respond this way to the diet. It is not a ‘curative’ diet, but can help reduce inflammation and thus symptoms considerably.

Since mold is a large trigger of CIRS, it helps the inflammation aspect. But mold in the body is also known to consume (and make us crave) carbohydrates, as well as contribute to stubborn weight gain. By removing starch – one of the favoured fuel sources of mold like candida, we decrease feeding it and decrease candida symptoms.

I have never been a fan of ‘the candida diet,’ I have never seen it work, and it’s far too restrictive. Many mold experts agree. Removing fruit, for instance, doesn’t seem to help candida. The candida diet also removes nuts and seeds high in molds, and yet the no-amylose diet includes these. Oddly my candida symptoms have improved drastically with the removal of amylose, but with the inclusion of fruit (even ‘mold prone fruit’) and nuts and seeds.

My Own Experience with The No-Amylose Diet:

I have been on the no-amylose diet for 15 days now. I have shed 3lbs in that time, going from 179lbs to 176lbs (sharing TMI here, seeing as women ‘shouldn’t share their weight,’ perhaps but hoping it is to your benefit).

Since my two back-to-back pregnancies, I have been classified as overweight. I previously weighed 140lbs, which is a great weight for my height (almost 5’6″) and a body fat percentage of 20%. It is my goal to return to that weight, and I’m still 36lbs away.

With my two pregnancies (in 2020 and 2021) I noticed it felt like some type of autoimmunity got ‘turned on’ in my body. I became extremely inflamed. I developed a large non-H-pylori gastric ulcer, and esophagitis (inflammation of the esophagus). My IBS symptoms (which I’m almost positive are autoimmune in nature) worsened 10-fold. I had extremely bad heartburn, acne, and resistant weight gain, as well as full-body, intensely painful aches.

I have long been searching for an effective therapeutic diet for my situation.

I tried the carnivore diet with good success for 1 month, 3 times. (So 3 months total on separate occasions). However I don’t find ketosis to be a productive state for me, it kills my energy levels, and I can’t mother 3 children with low energy. Being in ketosis while breastfeeding also meant I needed to consume upwards of 9grams of sodium per day to maintain milk supply, which is rather disgusting.

I had also tried The Lion Diet for a week (eating only red meat), about 3 times as well, and had the same general problem with ketosis. While I gained healing and decreased inflammation with these diets, they didn’t suit me long term.

I tried the HCG protocol several times, I made it through one full round and did lose weight (I was previously 189lbs). I actually went from 189, my weight after the second pregnancy, down to 165 and felt significantly better.

Then I tried to utilize Matt Stone’s Rehabilitative Rest and Aggressive Re-feeding (RRARF) protocol this summer to address my brain fog, and I quickly gained up to 179 within a few weeks.

Why? I now know: STARCHES! The RRARF protocol diet is SO DAMN HIGH IN STARCH!

(And yes, I could write an entire entry documenting my weight journey, which only began since having kids at age 27, and I probably will at some point).

I was reflecting on all the times I was lean, including after my first pregnancy. I found it relatively easy to shed weight the year after my first daughter was born because – you guessed it – I was eating paleo and avoided all starch! Maybe the very rare quarter piece of sweet potato with butter.

I quickly started gaining weight after she turned 1 because I reintroduced… STARCH! As well as a lot of glucose in frequent Starbucks caramel macchiatos, which were part of my emotional eating picture at the time. (Naturopathic School with a baby was highly stressful and tiring).

I eventually lost 25lbs using the HCG protocol which… you guessed it… contains no starch or glucose (it is a no amylose diet with expedited results). At that time I went from 142lbs, down to 117lbs, but this weight was too low for me and I didn’t have enough muscle mass. I spent the next few years building muscle mass and got up to 135lbs.

About 3 years later I first tried Matt Stone’s RRARF protocol. I did his protocol to try to heal my adrenal fatigue, which I now believe was actually caused by CIRS / mold toxins. I went up to 165! Then back down to 140, (using hcg) before becoming pregnant with my first of the 2 back-to-back pregnancies.

And then all throughout pregnancies and breastfeeding…. I ATE STARCH!

I am so sure now that the starch has been my issue all along!

Bottom Line: When I reflect on my history, all the times I was lean, I was not eating starch

All the times I gained weight FAST, was when I introduced starch.

This is common for overweight people – most of us react this way to starch.

While I have lost on average 1.5lbs a week, this is not expedited, it is just regular, healthy weight loss. I could probably expect to hit my goal within 24 weeks or 6 months. So let’s check in May 1st and see if I’ve hit my goal? I will keep you posted! And if you wanted to try this with expedited results – including healing your insulin and leptin even faster – the HCG protocol can definitely help with that. I will be posting more in the future about what that is. It is basically a 100-year-old protocol, designed by an MD, that I’ve been using with clients since 2016. It involves whole foods, no starch, and the supplemental use of HCG.

Other Results I’ve Gotten On The No-Amylose Diet

It’s only been a short time of about 2 weeks but I’ve also noticed:

• Extremely increased energy, no more midday naps required (since I came off caffeine 3 months ago)
• Clearer skin
• More awake and energized in general
• No more brain fog – the one thing I was majorly trying to get rid of
• Digestion continues to improve – zero gas, bloating, constipation or other factors of IBS and SIBO
• More restful sleep
• Extremely hard to over eat or engage in emotional eating; when I’m full and not hungry, the thought of ingesting food strikes me as completely disgusting – which is brand new for me. Normally I never feel full and could eat any time of day. All of my skinny friends have always reported feeling this way – a few bites of a cookie and they are totally full, and the thought of one more bite disgusts them.

These results are somewhat confounded by two other variables:

The fact that I’ve been off caffeine for 3 whole months now – which is making my digestion and health stronger every day

And the fact that I’ve been taking activated charcoal for 15 days as well – to soak up / absorb candida biotoxins.

So I can’t absolutely say for sure which element of this trifecta is giving me all of these results,

But the No-amylose diet + no caffeine + activated charcoal are changing my life IMMENSELY.

Should You Try The No-Amylose Diet?

I don’t think there is a lot to lose by cutting out white sugar and starch (do you?)

I’ve generally advocated for a grain-free diet for many years, and at the very least, a gluten-free grain diet. I think avoiding grains most of the week is beneficial for health, because grains are so loaded with anti-nutrients and lectins that can harm the immune system and gut. (And brain).

Ultimately I think if you want to lose weight, cut inflammation, find a longterm healthy way of eating, and / or control candida, this is definitely a therapeutic diet worth trying. There are a lot of resources out there and a nutritionist, ND, functional MD or health coach can definitely help, particularly if they are versed in this diet and / or The Shoemaker Protocol.

Any questions? Comment below!

Please also comment below if there’s anything here you LOVE and want to see more of, any formatting issues you dislike (or formatting you like) – this is. anew website and platform for me, and I’m trying to make it as user-friendly for my audience as possible. Let me know!