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Thinner?

  "S  alut, Jean!" I said cheerily to the chubby middle-aged Mediterranean man standing in front of my building's elevators.

He was the delivery guy from the pharmacy; he knew me well because I always give him a $2 tip.

His grey beard twitched as he looked at me blankly.

"C'est moi, Jean! Huit-cent-sept!"

His expression began to change somewhat comically as a look of recognition slowly crept across his rumpled features, and I stifled an urge to laugh.

"Monsieur Nicolas?" he stammered, confused. His moustache trembled on his upper lip like a grey caterpillar.

"Jean! It's me! The guy in 807!"

"Mais—mais, vous avez jeunissé!"

I wasn't sure about the French, but I thought he'd said "You've gotten younger!"

And the strange comment wasn't the first time that day; I had just returned from my visit to the hospital, where I had gone into Brigitte's room to find that one of her old friends had come to visit.

"You lost weight"" said Rachel, not even bothering to say hello.

Well, I'm not too sure about getting younger and losing weight. The scale says that I lost around ten pounds over the week or so that I "deprived" myself of wheat, dairy, sugar and meat, but other than having an unfamiliar surge of energy, I look in the mirror and just see same old me . . . but obviously they don't.

Besides, can such a transformation take place within only a few days?

Well, let's see.

Last Sunday, if you recall, was the start of Phase III: The Renewal, or whatever you want to call my process of hitting my microbiome with everything I've got, after pretty much depriving it of everything for a week in Phase II.

I wake up every morning with a coffee and eucalyptus honey—I read somewhere that contrary to what I once thought honey is a lot different to the Biome than sugar, because it actually contains dozens of compounds that white sugar does not, and these compounds are apparently beneficial to the gut bacteria.

I add a dash of organic goat's milk, because, well, no antibiotics.

My "breakfast" is 50 billion bacteria, about 20 different vitamins and minerals, and then a chaser of kefir bolstered with a scoop of Prebiotin and baobab powder. And then . . . well, let "Monsieur Nicolas" tell it:

The result of all this, on Day Five of my "Renew" phase, in which I carefully try to build up the bacterial populations in my gut microbiome while watching carefully my intake of dairy, wheat, glucose, carbohydrates and fats, is that I'm sleeping up to six undisturbed hours per night, I'm walking to and from the hospital every day with a spring in my step and no fatigue whatsoever, and I'm still raring to go in the evenings.

That figures to probably a 150% boost of energy levels, much, much better sleep every night, a calm, untroubled stomach and digestive system, and all around, so far this week, a smashing success!

I am, of course, documenting all this on charts, which I will post as soon as they're completed.

This phase will continue for a week from next Sunday to make two weeks altogether, at which point I will take samples and send them in to uBiome, and then sit back and assess assess assess!

See you in ten pounds.