Ellie:
>I would like to ask Mike if he meant there is some connection with eating
>a lot of sweet fruit, figs I think he said, and a need for the body to
>detox what was previosly eaten? Could you explain this.

Mike:

I think all books about instincto explain the fact in more or less detail.

Experience of instincto shows that the raw food preferences with the
instincto approach are (at least in the beginning) very much determined by
the former diet. Here some personal experience.

I ate whole grain bread virtually from the time I ate solid food to an age
of 26 years every day. My own experience are very comparable with what I
read and heard from other instincts with whole grain background (vegan raw
eaters I met have only part of the experience probably because of the
missing RAF).

In the beginning of instincto fruit/dates replace old sugars eaten with for
instance bread (carbohydrates are sugars). This leads to feelings of
coldness. In the first 10 months or so I ate lots of dates (sometimes
several pounds a day, free for the gathering during my stay at the U of AZ)
and felt very very cold. In fact even at 110 F I did not feel especially
hot and bicycling and running at 100 F was not overly exhausting with very
little sweat to the big surprise to all the others (SAD eaters).

Later on fruit (bananas) and dates and in my case figs tend to detox more
the hard stuff, which is the maillards from grains. Cold feelings after
fruits are usually short and more often a pleasant warm felling persist. I
remember an occasion 2 month ago, after half a pound figs for lunch,
feeling warm for hours even in -10C (14F) cold weather.
During the grain detox period RAF is important too (Tom would probably say
the RAF provides the digestive fire for the fruits, just a question of
perspective). In fact, I remember several occasion where bananas were not
very alluring for days , but during a meal of meat the bunch of bananas
behind me in the shelf took on a very intensive smell. The next day lunch
consisted of 6, 12 or even 20 bananas which good digestion just some slight
sign of constipation (no problem with some disks of cassia). On the other
hand, at other days even half a banana was the limit. I realized several of
those "combinations" of fruits and RAF e.g. eggs/bananas, meat/watermelon,
eggs/figs.

BTW, I talk about to different meals even though sometimes I made
miscombinations and ate like eggs and bananas or eggs and figs with about a
10 minute break in between without any digestion problems. After all
combination rules are not natural even though they apply most of the time
and I try stick to them. Only if the attraction to something becomes too
strong I make a "miscombination" which in almost all those cases turns out
to be a right combination.
On the other hand I had problems with "right combinations", that is green
leafy veggies cause stomach problems when eaten after eggs. There are
always exceptions from the rule.

I don't always eat as much as described above, but the examples are more
extreme cases to illustrated how things work. In the beginning I tried to
stick to much to the desired percentage of carbs/protein and seeds/RAF
which seems to be true in the long run but just does not work for me on a
daily basis. Two or three days without any fruit or a few days only fruit
and some veggies are equally fine with me, as long as the instinct is
involved.

Hope I could help a little.
There should be many others on the list that can contribute much more to
the fruit/detox problem.

Sincerely,

Mike