Diamond Diet Health Article

Definition

The Diamond diet, popularly known as the Fit for Life Program, is a way of eating designed to be employed as a health lifestyle. Developed by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, it is a set of dietary principles intended to serve as a blueprint for habits that can easily become routine, allowing individuals to take control of their health.

Origins

Harvey Diamond was an ill and underweight child with chronic and painful stomach problems. As a young adult, his health problems continued as he became over-weight. After experiencing the dieting merry-go-round of losing and regaining his weight, Diamond decided that dieting does not work and that he needed to learn how to best care for his body. In 1970, Diamond found his answer in the concept of natural hygiene, an approach to the care and upkeep of the body that focuses on prevention of disease and healthful living. As described by Diamond, the concept of natural hygiene teaches that the body is self-cleansing, self-healing, and self-maintaining. Healing powers are contained within the body itself. He states "the body is always striving for health and .. achieves this by continuously cleansing itself of deleterious waste material." In combination with an overall healthful lifestyle of adequate rest, exercise, sunshine, stress management, and interpersonal relationships, understanding how food impacts this cleansing process allows individuals to eliminate the cause of their health problems.

Almost immediately upon Diamond's introduction to this concept, his lifelong stomach pains ceased. Within one month, he had lost 50 pounds (a loss he was able to maintain). Diamond became a proponent of natural hygiene and, in 1981, began a seminar program known as The Diamond Method. In 1983, he earned a doctorate in nutritional science from the American College of Health Science, a non-accredited college in Austin, Texas. It is the basic fundamentals of natural hygiene that Harvey and Marilyn Diamond synthesized into the dietary and lifestyle principles of the Fit for Life Program.