Anyone tried the Eating Right for your Blood Type Diet?

[obrigada]

Would be really interested to know if anyone has tried this diet

Also do you think you need to count calories also, or will it naturally be lower?

altho, i'm a newbie to the blood group diet alfie my usual diet is so similar and i have never counted calories or been on a diet, i'm a size 10 - 12 and look best at this size and have gravitated back to it easily after having both DCs.

all really interesting thumb, thank you - exactly the detail i wanted.

re snacks - my first thought is home-made (vegan) cakes - there's no way on earth i can give those beauties up but assuming i'm cool with wheat, is there anything else in them that might be a problem?

the whole wheat/durum thing is doing my head in!

i was a proper D'Adamo groupie tonight - had lentils, garlic and kale (in dal form), rice with lemon squeezed over it plus my 1 glass of (oh so beneficial) red wine

oh and i read somewhere on the godawful website that you don't need to follow it 100% and it gave different % according to your health/age etc. aha, here it is:

What is compliance?
If you are recovering from an illness or desire weight loss, then 80%-100% of your food choices should be highly beneficial.
If you are a healthy individual over the age of 55, 80% of foods should be beneficial.
If you are under 55 and healthy, 70% or more of your food choices should beneficial.
The remainder of your food choices should be neutral. Avoids should not be eaten.

so on rereading it, that's actually saying you do need to avoid your 'avoids' 100%

Ppeat - it shouldn't make any difference unless for some incredibly bizarre and rare reason you are really an AB but your B gene is switched off. The genes for the blue hat and the yellow hat are co-dominant, so if you have both genes, you should get both hats. There are weaker forms of the A group that might have been missed in a rapid blood test, but I didn't think there were any weak forms of the B group. Will check later and post back - can't do it now, just off out to take DS swimming. :)

Thanks so much for taking the time thumb this is soo interesting like a detective novel!! I know that D'damo has bought out research and literature on the genome most recently so are you both saying that the blood type is not very sophisticated?

BUT interestingly i can't eat even a little bit of chicken now which is neutral for A types but I'm fine with a small bit of turkey so you may be right!! but I live on avocadoes and haven't noticed any probs (I'll cut back and see how Iam). although i'm terrible with dairy!

Anyone blood type O who could simplify things for me

Ppeat - um. The "original" blood typing was the ABO grouping system, discovered by Landsteiner in 1901, so it's been known for 110 years. Since then, numerous variants have been discovered, primarily of the A group - but these aren't relevant to you :). There have also been at least 3 variants of the B group discovered - and it is just possible that you may have one of them. The B variants are weaker than the original B antigen and may not show up on cell typing, causing an error.

When were you tested yourself? Because it is possible that if it wasn't done thoroughly, you may have tested as a group A on cell basis and your serum results been, if not ignored, then written off as an anomaly (which should never happen in a hospital or blood transfusion blood laboratory). All group A people should also have anti-B antibodies; and a proper blood grouping test should check for both of these (one reason why the quick cell-only tests aren't 100% accurate). So in fact, it's a bit more sophisticated than it at first appears.

To be honest, with your family blood history, I'd be tempted to go and get it sorted by a serologist just to see what happened. If you ever need a blood transfusion and you are not a straightforward group A, you could be in trouble if you are given group A blood - but if you are, then I'm still not at all sure how your DD got to be a group AB - but with today's techniques, they can do a genetic test to see what you're supposed to be.

ABs I believe don't do very well on dairy (because of the A component of their blood), or at least don't cope with it as well as group Bs, although some is ok.

I don't want to lead you too far astray here! But I would recommend you try and get this investigated if you can do it without it costing you a lot of money.

Thank you again thumb I used the' do it yourself' testing kits you can get in the big chemists are they the 'cell only' tests you're talking about? sorry for being dim here i'm very much NOT a scientist .

Obrigada DH is an O type so i can help you if you like; it's basically meat,fish veg and fruit with rice and rye bread oh and butter. Not bad if you concentrate on what you CAN eat rather than the negative side

just found another great snacky thing for As.... cherry liquorice! I've been getting the Panda one to nibble on at work for ages as it somehow helps me keep calm anyway - it's cherry and molasses, both great for As!

thumb and pp do you think you'll kinda know the things that aren't right for you?

e.g. i keep finding things that i somehow knew weren't good for me - eg just seen rhubarb and oranges are both 'avoids' and i've always felt suspicious of them for no good reason whereas i have never had that feeling about wheat. i don't get any digestive problems with it for instance. do you think that means it's probably ok?

the two things which are really bugging me now are green olives and chickpeas (as in humous) which are both faves of mine and i've never noticed a bad reaction to.

ppeat - you definitely need to get yourself tested properly, just giving blood will get you a proper test without paying for it (if you can give blood that is). Yes, the DIY test kits are cell only, because you are using whole blood (cells and plasma) - in a blood lab, the blood is separated out so the antibodies can be tested against control cells as well. The thing I found out about the B variants is that it can be a very weak result when the cells are tested so it could be missed. Even so, you have one DC that has tested up as AB and 2 that have tested as A - so that makes life still more interesting.

Usually people's blood group is defined by a particular gene allele and all our genes are in pairs, so we each have 2 alleles. The A and B genes are co-dominant, which means if they're there, they produce the blood group antigens. To get group O, A & B both have to be absent. So, to be O, both alleles have to be O (O/O). To be A, you can either be homozygous and have 2 A alleles (A/A), or be heterozygous and have one A allele and one O (A/O). B works the same as A so you get (B/B) and (B/O). AB - now that's the fun one. Normally it involves one A allele and one B allele, so you get (A/B) - but sometimes you can get both on one gene so it looks like (AB/O).

It is just feasible that you have (ABvar/A) on your genes, which would make you ABvar, where Bvar = the weak variant of B, and allows you to pass on the ABvar gene to one child and the A gene to the others. I have no idea how likely this is, apart from pretty rare, but it could happen, I guess!

Very interesting indeed though :)

Cake - that's what made me try it, tbh - reading that chicken and pork were big no-no items for me. I had noticed before doing it that I frequently felt quite sick after eating spit roast chicken and especially pork - spit roast pork gave me an evil sick headache. But even pork sausages made me feel nauseous. Not enough to stop me eating them though until I read Eat Right 4 your type. So, having realised that those 2 things didn't agree with me anyway, I thought I'd give it a go - and bang! The difference was amazing.

Thing is, sometimes you have low grade symptoms that you barely even notice because they're your "norm" - and you only realise that you weren't feeling the best when the low grade symptoms go away! Also, I noticed that the bod tends to heave a huge sigh of relief when you stop giving it stuff it doesn't cope well with, but if you re-introduce it, the bod has an almighty strop (reaction) so you really do know that it's not ideal to be eating that thing! Happened to a friend of mine who has a big wheat intolerance - she came off wheat, felt better, but then had a massive craving for fresh baked bread - scoffed half a baguette and had a huge reaction, swollen face, throat, eyelids, the lot. She felt dreadful. And didn't do it again!

Some of the things on my avoid list I do still have, like avocadoes, duck, goose - but so rarely that I don't think they impact on me as much as the other stuff. Before going onto this, my diet was very Italianate - lots of tomato, chicken, pasta, bacon etc. And lots of digestive ishoos and mucho throwing up after even a couple of glasses of wine (usually out with friends having pizza or pasta).
Olives are also all on my avoid list but they don't seem to cause me any problem at all, so I don't follow it rigidly - I do cheat a bit. I do notice though if anything sets me off - and if it did, then I would stop eating it.

I'm a group B and olives, tomatoes, sweetcorn and chicken are amongst my favourite foods, yet on this diet I'd have to avoid them! This was the main reason I never bought the book in the bookshop when looking through it. Recently I've been doing Slimming World which has actually involved cutting out olives and sweetcorn (on the red version) and I've lost a little weight. Since re-introducing olives, weight loss has stopped. Who knows, maybe there's something in it but it seems very counter-intuitive as these are my favourite foods.

bigwombat - sometimes it's the foods we crave that do us the most damage. Wheat intolerants may crave bread, for e.g.; and there is a group of foods called the salicylate foods, which includes apples - people who are intolerant to salicylates may eat/drink apple products far more than "normal".
That is interesting about the olives and weight though - while I know my biggest issues i chocolate, maybe I would be better giving up the olives after all. :(

thanks for that thumb. perhaps the best bet is to do total exclusion for a few weeks and then reintroduce some of my questionable items like olives. mind you - A's can at least have kalamata ones - weirdly.

re blood groups and genes. My father is O, my mother is A, I'm A but my sister is an O (tested it during nursing training). at the time, she went thru a big 'wtf. am i adopted?!' thing (she's not) but we've just assumed she's a bit of a freak of nature and the genes went a bit skewy producing her O instead of an A. but on reading what you're saying, I'm now wondering if it's more likely that the test wasn't right. what do you think?

incidentally she eats a v similar diet to mine (also a vegan) but has all manners of health issues (IBS, suspected intolerances, fibro myalgia, weight gain) compared to my rude health and great digestion, so actually it would make sense that she's an O not an A!

A bouquet to you Thumb it gets more and more interesting doesn't it?I'm in fr. ATM but next time we're in london I 'll have my blood tested at our docs. as part of a health check up. They lost the results last time ('cos there was no urgency).B.T.W. I know that sometimes people crave what is bad for them!!Dh is a prime example!

cakes In my encyclopedia of blood type it says that green olives are okay for us As as long as we're secretors. The main problem for me is the strong brine and or vinegar they put them in I can't stand it!! Vinegar is a no-no for us.You were talking about vegan home baking earlier. I do that too shall we swop recipes? Mine are easy and actually good for us!!

I'm going to watch this thread for when I have a spare hour to follow all the links.

I need to get my arse in gear, seriously overweight and pretty miserable (though homesickness accounts for some of the last!).

I'm an Oneg so I'm not sure what that means. Look forward to finding out!

No. Because I am lucky enough to have a blood type which means I have critical facilities and am able to detect bullshit.

And everyone you know has amazing health do they? Seeker

Iam only on it because it works, read thumbwitch's first post for evidence and she's a scientist. I and my 83 mother who are on it are healthier than ANY of our peers and all of our friends. One should try and have an open mind IMO.

mrs distinctly Well done for being flexible in your outlook.

which book do you have/recommend pp? this one? www.amazon.co.uk/Eat-Right-Blood-Type-Individual/dp/0241954371/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321612190&sr=8-1

on his site he def says green=avoid

Cake - no, your case is very straightforward. Your Dad is O, so his genes are O/O - your mum is A but for your sister to be O your mum has to be A/O. So your sister has got an O from your dad and an O from your mum, while you got an O from your Dad and an A from your mum (hence you being an A). Theoretically there is a 50:50 chance of each child being either an A or an O.

The only difficulties arise when you get random groups that shouldn't really be there, as with ppeat; or even with my own mum who was a Bneg, but both her parents claimed to be O. Not possible (and she was definitely the product of both her parents!) As I know my maternal grandfather was O neg, then it has to have been my maternal grandmother who was the B. But this means that my Mum's blood group is B/O; my Dad also claims he is O, so again in theory there was a 50:50 chance of each of us 3 being B or O - but in fact we're all B neg - yay! which is a bit of a PITA as it's the second rarest blood group in the UK (the rarest is AB neg, followed by B neg, then AB pos, then B pos etc.)

The sign of a mature thinker is the ability to have an open mind, btw. :)

how weird they didn't explain that to her properly at the time - leaving her all confused. thank you for that - will tell her she's fine and not a freak after all!

Cakes that book looks fine but you can pick them up 2nd hand; thinking about it maybe the one you linked is better because it has more up to date research? I've only got the old encyclopedia i wonder should i buy the new one as well? i 'll ask the F.B. site people.

A thought for alfie the 'free from' products often have GF flour in them which usually has potato flour that is an avoid for both As and Os sorry! Cakes when i bake I use a mix of kamut and rice flour and sometimes ground walnuts, almonds etc. especially if i want them to be sticky inside.

Yes, thumb, I think you're right about craving what's not good for you. I seem to get a bit addicted to salty things, such as olives. I will have another look at this book next time I'm in a bookshop. And olives are quite high in fat which might explain why they're not much good on a diet!

bigwombat if you join us on the paul mckenna thread you'll find an eating plan that educates your attitude to food; I combine it with the blood type and have lost 2 and half stone, you don't count cals or carbs or worry about high fat, I don't eat olives (a few green ones occ.) but i cook with olive oil and use it instead of butter and have lost the weight i needed to .

what's a "blood scientist"?