Playlist: Success stories (YouTube). Each and every successs story is fascinating! A few are showcased below.

Guidlines:

• New Diet System — Guidelines (12 mins, YouTube, Hindi) by Yogiansh Ramesh Chandra Bhargav explains the guidelines in 13 points.
• New Diet System — Short Summary (14 mins, YouTube, Hindi) by Shri B V Chouhan is also a good summary.
• Guidelines at NewDiet4Health website.
• Two short videos with an overview: What, Why, Who (NDS) (5 mins) and How To Adopt New Diet System (4 mins).

Detailed Guidelines: Playlist by Prateek Vyas is helpful.

Philosophy: Interview with Shri B V Chouhan (26 mins, Hindi) where he explains the essential principles of NDS. Worth watching. At 12:10 in the video, a reference to Bhagvad Gita is made (Chapter 9, Verse 26): "Patram Puspam Phalam Toyam | Yo Me Bhaktya Prayacchati | Tad Aham Bhakty-Upahrtam | Asnami Prayatatmanah". Another reference to Ram Charit Manas is made in this context: What did Lord Ram eat in the forest? The answer in Ram Charit Manas is: "Kand Mool Phal Phool Patti Pani"! What are these words? Kand-Mool refers to tubers like sweet potatoes and yams. Phal refers to fruits (and vegetables). Phool refers to edible flowers. Patti means leafy greens. Pani means water. So "Kand-Mool Phal Phool Patti Pani" is a food system centered around tubers, fruits, vegetables, edible flowers, leafy greens and water!

Details: The videos and articles above are high level. When we start practicing the system, many other questions arise. It would be best to find a senior NDS practitioner or an NDS mentor for guidance. It would also help to read Shri B V Chouhan's books to understand the underlying principles of this system. These books are listed below.

Restaurant: This article reported the opening of a restaurant serving NDS food in Mumbai: Glee Gourmet. Check out their FaceBook page and Instagram profile.

Sailent points of NDS as I understand them are described in sections below.

Instructions: Explained by Yogiansh Ramesh Chandra Bhargav (24 mins, YouTube, Hindi).

Below is a summary of my understanding. For details, please see the video above.

Daily Dry Fasting: After waking up, no food and no water for 6 to 8 hours. For example, let's say we wake up at 4am. Then nothing (no food, no water) is to be consumed till 10 am or 12 noon. This dry fast should be broken with green juice (described in next section). For beginners, doing a dry fast for 6 to 8 hours is typically difficult. So we start practicing with 1/2 hour to 1 hour of dry fasting in the morning, then slowly increase this time period to 6 to 8 hours over a period of several weeks.

Very few people practice dry fasting today. It was a well recognized intervention in the past. Said to be super healing. For example, Nirjala Ekadasi is a traditional dry fasting day practiced in almost every state of India — we don't eat or drink anything for about 36 hours. Ramadan fasting also entails dry fasting. But dry fasting can be a potentially dangerous exercise due to the foods that many of us habitually eat (processed foods, animal products, dairy, oils, salt, sugar, and so on). So we shouldn't suddenly stop eating and drinking and do a dry fast at whim! Only after we start cleaning up our food intake and only after our insides (especially the intestines) have become sufficiently clean, we can start doing dry fasting for a few hours after waking up comfortably. With some practice (typically developed over weeks and months, we can also do dry fasting for an entire day comfortably.

Time Restricted Feeding (TRF): All of our meals should be consumed in a window of 6 to 8 hours. For example, if our first meal is at 12 noon, then our last meal should be between 6pm and 8pm.

Details:

• Time Restricted Feeding (TRF) is a term used in the West to refer to a food system in which our daily calories are consumed in a short window, typically 6 to 8 hours. TRF is a special type of Intermittent Fasting (IF).
• A survey paper from 2018 that summarizes research in IF and TRF: Flipping the Metabolic Switch: Understanding and Applying Health Benefits of Fasting, published in Obesity, 26(2):254—268 in April 2018.
• Dr Greger is also preparing a video series to summarize research related to IF, TRF and so on (watch this video for 1 min) — hopefully, these videos will be published before 2020. He is also preparing a second edition of his book How Now To Die; the new edition will summarize IF and TRF.

Weekly or Biweekly Fasting: A water-only weekly or bi-weekly fast is encouraged. When we first start following NDS (New Diet System), we don't practice whole day fasting for the first few months; we adopt this practice later after we become adept in practicing various other guidelines of the system. Some practitioners practice weekly or biweekly dry fasting for a whole day! They consume no food and no water on fasting days.

Other fasts: The most difficult (and also the most curative) fast is dry-fasting.

Green Juice: The first thing to consume after dry fasting for 6-8 hours in the morning is 500g (16 oz) juice made of primarily green leafy vegetables and some amla. For example, we can mix together spinach, doodhi (lauki or bottle gourd), 2 gooseberries (amla), cilantro, mint, lemon juice and ginger. We may add black salt, cumin powder and jaggery for taste. Among these ingredients, green veggies and amla are the most important.

Alternatives to green juice: coconut water, sugarcane juice without ice or lemon, wheat grass juice.

Raw Lunch: A salad prepared from raw veggies and fruits, along with a dressing made of herbs, spices and lemon. Cooked foods are discouraged. In fact, they are deemed 'harmful' to our bodies.

Fruit-only lunch or veggie-only lunch (without fruits) are also okay. Eat local and seasonal fruits and veggies. Smoothies are also okay as long as we chew them, not gulp them down.

Snacks between Lunch and Dinner: Fruit juice or vegetable juice or a single fruit like banana, apple, chikoo, papaya or some other seasonal fruit.

Raw or Cooked Dinner: For those who are curing themselves of some sickness, dinner should be the same as lunch: raw salad made of fruits, veggies and raw dressing. If we are not sick, we may consume grains and beans also. Both should be eaten raw: soaked & sprouted. For those who cannot maintain a 100% raw lifestyle for any reason, up to 30% of dinner may be cooked; at least 70% of dinner should be raw.

Exclusions: meats of any kind, dairy products (milk, cheese, butter, paneer, buttermilk, and so on), processed foods (white sugar and various partially cooked or fully cooked preparations sold in the supermarket), white salt and oils. Salt, oil and sugar are sometimes called SOS in the Whole Foods, Plant-Based (WFPB) community. Using this terminology, New Diet System would be a raw WFPB-SOS system which emphasizes vegetables and fruits instead of grains and beans.

How Often? Irrespective of whether somebody is curing themselves of sickness or perceiving themselves as disease-free, enemas are recommended twice a day: morning and evening, for 30 days. The morning enema should be done after going to the restroom and passing stools. Evening enema is to be done before going to bed or before having dinner.

In the second month, enemas are done once a day (in the morning only). In the third month, enemas are done every other day (in the morning only).

Instructions & Discussion: Pratik Vyas has some explanatory videos: Why is Enema Important?, How To Do Enema and Enema Q&A.

Enemas and Basti Kriya: This article explains that Basti Kriya is one of the six Hatha Yoga cleansing techniques (shat-kriya/shat-karma). The technique uses water (and or herbs) to clean the colon and the lower intestine. It is a difficult technique to master — very few people can do it successfully today. Enemas are an alternative to accomplish roughly the same effect.

See Books by Shri B V Chouhan.

• New Diet System (NDS)
• NDS NBP — Raw Vegan.

• Pratik D Vyas. Playlists: Lecture Series (Hindi; informative) — Success Stories (Hindi; inspiring).
• Kiran Watare
• Yogiansh Ramesh Chandra Bhargav
• newdiet4health
• Amrish Patel NDS Diet Detox & Yog Center
• Swadarshan Sadhana Kendra (SSK-NDS)

This YouTube video showcases recipes served at an NDS camp.

A few recipes may be found here.

NDS recipes (YouTube playlist).

In the video above, Dr K K Goel mentions that the essential principles of NDS were chalked out by Hridaynarayan Yogi in Badrinarayan Ashram in a village called Chhoti Paanchli near Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India. Pandit Badriprasad was his student; he used to call his system 'Tap Seva Sumiran'. Shri B V Chouhan learnt it from Pandit Badriprasad.

Badrinarayan Ashram: Location. The Ashram allows for overnight stay for multiple days. Also see Books in English — English Magazines (free online). One of the audio books is Divine Cure by Dr Gur Harakh Singh.

Food Related Information: Role of Food — Diet Plan — Fasting — Enema — Recipes — Sprouts

I started experimenting with NDS in May 2019. When I started, all of these interventions were new to me: 100% raw foods in a day, limiting food intake to primarily vegetables and fruits, enemas and dry fasting. At the time of writing, I'm still figuring out the nuances of this system. It's intriguing and fascinating.

In June 2019, I attended a 1-day seminar on wellness organized by ICC Milpitas. I got an opportunity to chat with Dr Goldhamer, director of TrueNorth Health Center, Santa Rosa, CA.

I asked Dr Goldhamer, "Can we eliminate grains and beans from WFPB-SOS and have a nutritionally complete system?" To my surprise, he said, 'Yes!' Turns out that every known nutrient is found in this subset of food components: {fruits, vegetables (especially leaves and tubers (root vegetables)), herbs and spices, nuts and seeds, water}. Processed foods, meats, dairy, salt, oil, sugar, grains, beans: all of these may be eliminated!

Dr Goldhamer mentioned that B-12 is unavailable in the modern world because modern food storage and food handling techniques are 'ultra-clean', so we become B-12 deficient. Otherwise, even B-12 would be also be available in the food components mentioned above.

I also asked Dr Goldhamer, 'Why are grains and beans listed in every nutrition book?' He said, 'because they are cheap! If we move to veggies and fruits, our food cost will increase significantly. The cheapest foods are rice and beans.'

After the conversation with Goldhamer, I connected some dots. My understanding is that historically, rice and beans came into our food via agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Prior to that, people were hunters and gatherers. Indian forest dwellers described in ancient scriptures were gatherers — they thrived on {fruits, vegetables (including tubers (root vegetables)), flowers, water}. Maybe nuts and seeds was part of the food system too.

New Diet System (NDS) quotes two Indian scriptures (Ram Charit Manas and Bhagwad Gita) to explain that a system consisting of {fruits, flowers, vegetables, roots and water} is complete and in fact, the healthiest. At 12:10 in this video, Shri B V Chouhan quotes Bhagvad Gita (Chapter 9, Verse 26): "Patram Puspam Phalam Toyam | Yo Me Bhaktya Prayacchati | Tad Aham Bhakty-Upahrtam | Asnami Prayatatmanah". Another reference to Ram Charit Manas is made ('kand mool phal patti pani'). The word 'kand-mool' refers to tubers (root vegetables). The other components are phal, patti, paani. In childhood, I consumed 'shakarkandi' (sweet potatoes). The word 'shakarkandi' is a combination of 'shakar' (sweet) and 'kand' (root vegetable).

I have followed WFPB for 7 years now to varying degrees of compliance. Since Jan 2019, I have followed WFPB-SOS diligently. Now that I've learnt from Dr Goldhamer that grains and beans may be eliminated from WFPB-SOS without loss of any nutritional component, my inclination to experiment with just {vegetables (leafy, tubers, others), fruits, herbs, spices, nuts n seeds, water} has been fortified.

Among the components mentioned above, tubers play a special role. A good friend told me that potatoes by themselves are an amazing source of a large number of nutrients. He forwarded me a couple of videos. I browsed around and collected information here: The 'Potato Hack'. Also, potatoes are nutritionally dense, so they provide higher calorie density than raw veggies and raw fruits. Raw potatoes are not edible because of compounds like solanine and chaconine. However, raw sweet potatoes are just fine!

I'm planning to follow a food system with tubers ('kand mool'; root vegetables), green veggies (both tender greens and hard leafy greens), other veggies (rainbow colored; both juicy and less juicy), fruits (both juicy and less juicy), nuts and seeds (both in small quantities), herbs and spices (for taste and variety). And I plan to explore low temperature dehydration using a dehydrator.

NDS (New Diet System) has blown me away: the remarkable success stories of those who have cured themselves of serious ailments impacted me a lot. The philosophical roots of NDS have inspired me. The conversation with Dr Goldhamer assured me that WFPB-SOS minus grains and beans is nutritionally complete :) What more evidence and assurances do I need? It's time to do some self experiments.