Low Everything Diet FAQ 2 – Mineral Madness

Wait, what is the Low Everything Diet? It’s a special diet designed to boost your chances of having a baby girl! atomic sagebrush (that’s ME!) designed the Low Everything Diet as a safer, saner diet option for those interested in natural methods of gender swaying. Check out the Low Everything Diet and the first LE Diet FAQ!

What kind of results is the LE Diet getting?

The LE Diet has gotten 65-70-75% success rate (we have this fluctuation because we cannot force people to comply!). This has stayed consistent over time with only minor statistical variations in either direction. We’ve used this diet for 10+ years on the Gender Dreaming site and got excellent results with it.

Is that ALL?

A few people have seemed disappointed by the 65-75% number. Not me! We are talking about being able to alter the gender ratio by a few easy-to-make changes in diet. Henry the 8th would have killed for this information! And as those of us with 3-4-5 or more boys already suspect, not all of us are starting off from 50-50 chance of either gender. We have numbers that show odds of a second, third, and even 4th boy are higher than they “should” be, so many of us are really probably not coming into every pregnancy at 50-50.

Additionally, our blue swayers on our High Everything Diet have also been getting similar success rates. Since most of us boy moms tend to follow a more HE-type diet naturally, that seems to indicate that those of us with many boys are possibly going from around 65% likely (or more) to conceive another boy to a minimum of 65% likely to have a girl (or more). This is a huge variation and your odds are MUCH better on LE Diet than just eating your normal diet. There are other sites and salesmen out there who claim an impossible 95% success rate, some using diet, others using other methods (including magic, yes, actual magic spells). These people are dishonest. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Please don’t compare the LE Diet to the lies of charlatans.

There are studies out there that claimed to have an 80% success rate with diet. But we are not doing a scientific study here. That is not what the statistics we compiled on Gender Dreaming even are – they were not compiled with any type of scientific rigor at all. People were not kicked out of our “study” if they don’t do things exactly out way (if you read any studies, you’ll see the scientists kick everyone out of the study who doesn’t comply perfectly.) We had no experimental group or control group, just a bunch of us trying stuff and comparing notes when we’re done. We never omitted people who didn’t do things “the right way” from our statistics.

Above all else, Gender Dreaming is meant as a support site, a safe place to come together as friends to talk about gender swaying, gender desire, and anything else.

Thus we included EVERYONE who posts a sway in our numbers, whether they swayed hard or just a little. By taking this inclusive approach, we hoped to avoid the climate on some of the other gender swaying sites where people’s sways are picked apart and there’s some big competition to see who can do the strictest sway (leading to more severe gender disappointment, not to mention dishonesty and unreliable results). It actually got us a better quality of data because if everyone did the exact same thing for their sways, it becomes extremely difficult to pick out the trends of what is actually working vs. what is not. Were I to go through and “kick out” the people who didn’t do things exactly “my way” I could have made the results on Gender Dreaming higher, but I would never do that because it’s not only dishonest, but unkind.

Furthermore, claims made even in studies don’t always equal success in the real world. In the most recent “Dutch” study with a mineral balancing diet + timing that claimed 80% success rate, 172 couples started the process of joining the study, 22 dropped out right away (probably because the diet was too difficult and restrictive), and 150 remained. They then did an additional second experiment using a new group of 50 women. Of the 150 women in the first group, plus the 50 women in the second group, only 32 women were even able to fulfill the requirements of the study to be included in the results. That group got 80% success, but a method that only 1/6 of the people who attempt it can even do, is really USELESS in the real world. (It also cost 1450 euros – that’s over $2000!!!) And it does not really truly mean that this diet got 80% for everyone who tried it, now does it?

Again, if I were to go through and cherry pick my data to select only the people who did LE Diet “my” way (neither too strict nor too lax), I could make my numbers look like that too. But I WILL NOT artificially inflate numbers to make swaying look more effective. We are dealing with life altering decisions – the decision to add another child to the family, the decision between PGD/IVF and swaying – these need to be based on what the average person can reasonably expect and not some number that was manipulated within an inch of its life. And that reliable, real life, real world number appears to be about 65-75%.

Gender Dreaming does not exist to get some tiny fraction of people the highest possible success rate while others sit around in despair. We always wanted the most people to get daughters with the least amount of misery, and so there is a balance to be struck – “perfection” vs. REALITY. Percentages of success can be highly misleading things, because if a technique, no matter how elegantly designed, is undoable for the average person (because remember, with the “mineral balancing” diets, if you go off the diet even just one measly time in 6-12 weeks, according to them you have ruined everything) it’s worthless because of all those people who just can’t stick to a diet without, like, EVER cheating. The all-or-nothing nature of the mineral balancing diets leads people do believe that if they can’t do everything perfectly, they may as well do nothing, and so tons of people who could have successfully swayed with a more relaxed approach, don’t follow ANY diet and end up getting opposites.

If only 32 people out of 200 are able to follow a mineral balancing diet well enough to be included in a study, even if 80% of those 32 people got girls (about 26 people), that is an unacceptable amount of people who can’t do the diet to start out with. If 200 people are able to stick with the LE Diet in some form or another even with occasional or not-so-occasional cheats, and as our stats indicate, about 65% MINIMUM had girls, that’s 130 girls – a HECK of a lot more girls overall. And that is IF you accept those numbers from the Dutch Study at face value, but everyone please note that they were NOT doing just diet, they were also doing timing – aka one attempt. One attempt has gotten as high as 75% for us so it is VERY likely that they would not get the same results with just diet alone anyway.

You can rest assured that our numbers are real world, real live people who sometimes have bad days and fell short on diet. I did not go through and pick and choose only the best of the best sways to include in our results. We included everyone. You can read their posted sways and verify what every swayer in our stats did for their sways. It is also possible to message them independently to confirm what they posted on the Gender Dreaming site is true. You can SEE and CONFIRM the outcomes. Our numbers are different, not because our results are inferior or bad, but because we are more inclusive and a BETTER quality of data.

Which diet should I follow then??

I can all but guarantee that after reading the above there are at least SOME people who are thinking “well gee whiz 80% sounds good to me, I’ll just do one of those mineral diets but unlike all the lazybones who couldn’t stick to it, I WILL”. But remember, that Dutch study was NOT just diet alone, but also included timing – now as we know, timing doesn’t sway, but one attempt, which is always included in strict timing methods, has gotten 65-75% success rates for us with a sample size of hundreds of people (when you’re dealing with a sample size of 26 people as the Dutch study was, getting 80% is well within the statistical variation of 75% range). So it’s very likely that a person doing diet + one attempt can expect higher than 65%, and if you do exercise as well, the exercise has been a strong pink sway tactic). I believe it’s reasonable to assume that swayers who do diet, exercise, and one attempt can expect success rates that are higher than 65% – more along the lines of 75% – and without shelling out 2000 bucks for the privilege.

I know there are still some out there who aren’t convinced. If you ARE convinced, skip down to the rest of the essay where I talk about a lot of other (much more interesting) stuff and sorry to belabor a point!

The case against the IG or InGender Diet – (and indeed, all mineral balancing diets like the diet used by the “Dutch” study) – In our stats on Gender Dreaming, people following the IG Diet (mostly in the first year of the site) got about 42% success for pink (58% boys). People following the IG Diet for boys (again, mostly in the early days of the site) had 48% success for boys (52% girls). You would have had a better rate of success following the IG BOY Diet than the IG Girl Diet, at least among that group of swayers. Aside from that, stats go up and stats go down, but the level of misery that people experience when attempting the mineral diets, particularly the IGD (both for pink and blue) and the potential risk to health from the IGD, is NOT worth it even if it was getting better results.

The case against the FGD (and indeed all mineral diets like the IGD and “Dutch” study) – The “80%” number that is sometimes attributed to the FGD is highly misleading. The only “good” study that found 80% success on diet was the Dutch study which I discussed above, in which over 200 people tried to do their diet and only 32 were able to stick with it. The original studies done by the FGD people were not good studies because they just went back over people’s old food diaries and added up cal-mag-sod-pot levels and ignored all other nutrient data. Then they designed a diet based on mineral content that people supposedly had good results with (just as with the Dutch study, anyone who was not able to stick to the diet 100% was omitted from the results, unlike our numbers where everyone is included), but those diets are different in many ways, not just in mineral levels. It has never been proven to my satisfaction that cal/mag levels vs. other nutrient levels are swaying and in fact I think the data points in the opposite direction.

I do think the FGD and the Dutch diet based on the FGD CAN sway, but it’s not because of mineral levels, it’s because of the differences in the diets themselves. A diet with substantially different calcium vs. potassium levels, is also going to have substantially different EVERYTHING levels. Meat, fruit and vegetable intake, and yes even dairy itself is limited on FGD. And while I have not seen this diet firsthand myself (because I lack the $2000 LOL), I have it on good authority that calorie intake, protein, and fat intake in the Dutch study diet is very similar to that in the LE Diet because it’s based on the high fiber, higher carb, lower fat, and very low saturated fat Dutch National Diet.

Cal-mag or no cal-mag?

I think I’ve gone on pretty much to the brink of obnoxiousness about this but I do still get questions asking me am I SURE? REALLY, REALLY SURE that calcium and magnesium don’t sway pink? And while I am never “sure, really really sure” about ANYTHING when it comes to swaying and question everything constantly, I AM sure that the cal-mag idea cannot work in the way that the boosters of the FGD/IGD/Dutch Diet claim it does.

Firstly, it’s based on a really dumb idea to start with – that animals that are so far removed from mammals that they don’t even reproduce in remotely the same way, can tell us anything about how to alter gender ratio in human beings. Secondly, it’s biologically and historically impossible – not only do levels of minerals in your body always stay constant due to a process called homeostasis but because 75% of all the people on the face of the planet are lactose intolerant and their cultures do not even EAT dairy foods. It is impossible that dairy is a requirement for anyone to conceive daughters because the majority of people on Planet Earth eat very little of it. Lastly, we have evidence showing that cal-mag actually may sway blue both in studies and in data compiled from InGender. Several of us got girls (myself included) without cal-mag after getting sway opposites where we were taking gobs of the stuff. Calcium is not a magic bullet for pink, no way, no how.

That having been said, at times our stats have seemed to show an increased rate of success for cal-mag, and people have asked if they should include cal-mag on the basis of these numbers. NO. First of all, I am not even sure where these newer numbers are coming from. I don’t compile the statistics because it is unethical for me to do so and plus I don’t have time anyway (and really appreciate the hard work of the ladies who kept them for so many years), but I haven’t been having ANYONE use cal-mag for DW in the Custom Plans for many years (though some have chosen to do so anyway) and generally advise everyone against it. I do allow people to include it for DH because the data I have shows no difference in gender ratio with husbands using it and not using it and since some people believe in cal-mag as a magic bullet, I figure it can’t hurt anything. The stats do not say if it’s DH using it, DW using it, or both, how much, when it was taken, etc. So for me to take a look at that number in light of all the evidence pointing away from the use of cal-mag for DW and reintroduce it for women, I believe is a major step in the wrong direction.

There is also an issue where the strictest of the strict people include EVERYTHING, so it ends up being that things that do not even sway, even sway blue, can look more effective than they really are simply because uberstrict people use them while doing overall more effective sways. This is especially true of things that do not inhibit conception – if a sway tactic doesn’t prevent pregnancy naturally it is kept in the mix even as other things are dropped. Since calcium does not inhibit odds of conception, it is often kept in a sway after all other sway tactics are dropped. Since a longer time on diet has been shown to be more effective, I believe some of our stats (cal/mag and ions, to be exact) are coincidental and not cause/effect. Besides that, until recently the success with cal-mag was pretty much the same as the overall stats of the site. Thus I think this is a minor statistical variation and do not recommend taking cal/mag supps for DW and do not foresee doing so in the future, either.

In order for me to begin recommending calcium and magnesium for pink, I would need to see some researchers from a legitimate university do an experiment where they take two groups of several hundred women doing nothing else to sway (including diet, they should just be eating a normal diet), give one cal-mag and then the other not. If cal-mag does anything, then there should be significantly more girls conceived in the cal-mag group. Then they need to repeat the experiment, preferably by switching the two groups. The second group also should have substantially more daughters on the cal-mag. Or I would also accept the first experiment repeated 3 times by different, equally legitimate researchers and let me reiterate – a sample of 32 people does not suffice, these experiments need to be done in several hundred people. Till then, I think the facts are against calcium and swaying.

Aside from all that, IF calcium even sways, HOW? The theories originally underlying the FGD and how it worked, are biologically impossible due to homeostasis. You can’t alter the levels of calcium/sodium in your blood without being very ill to the brink of death and this is a biological fact no matter what you read elsewhere – if the FGD sways, it’s not by changing the levels of minerals in your blood.

The Trivers Willard hypothesis predicts that moms who are in declining condition have more girls – IF (BIG IF) taking a massive dose of cal-mag really truly sways, it’s very likely because it’s harmful to your health or fertility in some way. The same is probably true for DH as well. Unlike diet and exercise which taps into “Nature’s Way” of gently declining fertility as a natural birth control method when resources are scarce, the mechanism for how high levels of calcium might sway (IF it does) is a mystery. Since calcium supplementation has been recently linked to considerably higher rates of heart disease in both women and men, it is not a sway tactic that I think is worth any level of risk (because remember, I think it’s neutral for DH and sways blue for DW in sane levels). I have moved away from recommending cal-mag to men over 45, I’m borderline on it for men 35-45 and no longer use it for any men who have history of heart disease.

But it’s your sway your way, and if you want the cal-mag, it’s fine to take it, just be sure you are NOT using Vit. D at the same time and you’re only doing the supplements and NOT the high levels of dairy intake since dairy is loaded with nutrients and probably sways blue.

So then how about if I just take magnesium?

Several people have asked, “well if calcium sways blue, I’ll just take magnesium.” NO. For starters, the Oxford Study found higher intake of ALL nutrients, including magnesium, to be associated with more boys conceived. And secondly, the only reason why magnesium was ever included in the FGD to begin with was to improve the absorption of calcium. So if you’re not taking calcium, then it’s POINTLESS to bother with magnesium. You’re taking a risk for your sway (more nutrients) and for your health – because overly high levels of magnesium are dangerous and one lady on InGender actually ended up in the hospital from too much magnesium. And all for no benefit because it was supposedly the calcium doing the work, not magnesium! The amount of magnesium suggested both on IG and in the French Gender Diet book is NOT SAFE. Do not exceed 200-250 mg mag and many people cannot even tolerate that much.

This does NOT mean you need to eliminate foods that have magnesium, or ANY nutrient, from your diet when swaying. Remember, it’s LOW nutrient, not NO nutrient.

And if you need magnesium for health (some do) then please go ahead and take it.

Should I cut back on sodium? Why is there a sodium restriction in LE Diet when atomic says she doesn’t even believe in it?

I personally do not believe that sodium sways blue. First of all because there was a subset of pink swayers back on InGender who decided that they couldn’t stick to diet, so they just took cal-mag and cut back on sodium. They had overwhelmingly boys. And on Gender Dreaming in the early days, blue swayers who were the most focused on eliminating dairy and increasing sodium (alone without using other diet strategies) had way more girls than those who did not. But it goes deeper than just observation – it’s biologically impossible that slightly different amounts of dietary sodium could possibly be altering the gender ratio in the population as a whole. The reason for this (also why calcium can’t possibly be swaying and why the pH diets are a bunch of baloney) is a biological process called homeostasis.

You see, your body doesn’t like and doesn’t want either too low or too high levels of sodium (or in fact anything) so when you’re not getting enough, it stores more, and if you’re getting too much, you excrete a lot of it. Net result, the levels in your body stay the same. All the mineral balancing in the world accomplishes NOTHING because the levels in your body just don’t change. The only way for your mineral levels to go outside a normal range is if you are very ill and your body is not functioning properly, or you were in a life-threatening situation such as floating on the ocean in a life raft and suffering from severe dehydration. One of our earliest Gender Dreaming swayers, a medical doctor, did blood tests before and after following a mineral diet and her levels of calcium, magnesium, and potassium stayed the same and her sodium level actually went UP because her body just got better at taking the tiny amount she was eating and storing it. (eventually she gave up on the mineral diet and did go onto get a baby girl on LE Diet). We have subsequently had several others who had blood tests done before and after following a mineral balancing diet and they all had the same experience – no appreciable change in mineral levels and in many cases (both pink and blue swayers) their levels of the things they were limiting actually increased!

Much of the so-called evidence that sodium swayed blue came from the original French Gender Diet book, in a section where they looked over some diets from cultures around the world. But this data was totally cherry-picked to prove their case. They omitted or ignored any culture whose diet did not mesh with their theory. Worldwide, 75% of all adults cannot eat dairy foods at all because they are lactose intolerant as adults and people eat gobs of salt in ALL the countries around the world. This has been well studied; every single country on the face of the planet exceeds the suggested sodium intake of the FGD for pink by 1000-2000 mg a day. Yet the gender ratio hovers at about 50-50 no matter what. In fact, the countries that have the highest naturally occurring gender ratios in the world (most boys naturally conceived) are Northern European nations where most people can digest dairy into adulthood.

There is just absolutely totally no way that the gender ratio in these dairy-loving countries is being altered by the sodium/calcium levels in their diet. And the ethnic group that has the most girls (sub-Saharan Africans or those descended from them) are both lactose intolerant AND carry a gene that makes them retain higher levels of sodium in their blood than other ethnicities, and yet they have the highest percentage of girls on the planet. The mineral balancing diets simply cannot work in the way that it is claimed.

So why do I still keep the sodium restriction in the mix? When I was deciding what to put into the LE Diet and what to leave out, I had to be careful not to change too much too fast. If I threw out EVERYTHING all at once, I knew that most people would not listen and would not be willing to follow such a diet. Thus I had to make some concessions towards people’s expectations and keep some things in the diet even when I didn’t really think they swayed. Anything that was safe and did not reduce odds of conception, I left in – like sodium. The Oxford Study did seem to find that moms who ate more sodium had more boys, but the same study found that moms who conceived boys were eating a lot more food overall, and since most food either contains sodium from processing or is eaten salted, I think it’s most likely that it’s just a coincidence and not cause/effect.

When it comes to ease of following the diet, it’s much easier to do that without the sodium restriction. I did not restrict sodium one iota when I was swaying for my daughter after getting my 4th son while I was trying (albeit not terribly successfully) to restrict it. If ya aren’t feeling the sodium, if you’re miserable on diet limiting it, and if you are like me and think the evidence indicates it probably is not swaying blue, then add it back in!! Virtually ALL of us have given up on sodium restrictions for our pink sways and our results are higher than ever.

And last of the Four Horsemen of the Mineral Diet Apocalypse, but certainly not least, potassium.

Unlike most nutrients, potassium falls into the category of things your body is NOT very good at storing. You need potassium, a lot of potassium, every day. No reliable evidence has ever proven potassium to sway blue. The entire idea of the mineral-balancing diets is biologically impossible. Your body has a mechanism called “homeostasis” whereby if you ingest too much of one type of mineral, it simply excretes more of them, and when you are not getting enough, it starts hanging onto every bit of the stuff that comes your way. The net result is that the levels in your body remain the same at all times. Limiting potassium doesn’t sway and it can be VERY HARMFUL to try to reduce or eliminate potassium from your diet. Your body is incapable of storing much potassium. You need to get enough via foods every day or you risk DEATH (seriously, not exaggerating.)

2500-3500 mg is the potassium goal on the LE Diet. Some people see this number and jump to the erroneous conclusion that they are going to ruin their sway by getting this much. What they don’t realize is that this is actually THE SAME recommendation as the French and InGender Diets (who call for limiting potassium). It is because your body needs this much in order to survive and function. You are not harming your sway one bit, regardless of what swaying school of thought you follow, by getting this amount of potassium. All three swaying diets require this much, because your BODY requires this much.

The difference in potassium intake between “boy diets” and “girl diets” using the old-school mineral balancing, is only 500 mg. This is about the amount of potassium in a bowl of strawberries. Does it make ANY SENSE whatsoever that you would have a boy or a girl based on a bowlful of strawberries??

The only reason there was ever a limit on potassium foods like potatoes and bananas is because FGD and IGD are very heavy in dairy foods. They call for eating or drinking quite a lot of dairy foods every day. Dairy foods have a lot of potassium. In order for them to both limit potassium to the 2500-3500 mg range and include that much dairy, they have to eliminate virtually all other foods that are high in potassium – like bananas, tomatoes, and potatoes. On the LE Diet, we are not doing the high dairy intake. We are not getting a whole big bunch of potassium via dairy and in fact it can be quite difficult for swayers eating the LE Diet to get enough potassium. You do not need, and in fact MUST NOT limit potassium foods on LE Diet.

Tomatoes, bananas, and potatoes are NOT BOY FOODS! The only reason these foods were ever said to be boy-friendly was the potassium. Since we are not eating the large amounts of dairy, and since most of us do not even believe in the mineral-balancing diets any more anyway (usually since we’ve gotten 1 or 2 or 7 boys while eating them LOL) there is absolutely, completely, totally no point in avoiding these foods. You actually make your life much more difficult by avoiding them because all three can make for good meal choices on LE Diet. There are entire cultures based around the lowly potato – both the Irish and the Incas ate this food as a staple in their diet. If the potato was a magical boy food, these cultures would have died out a long time ago!! There are no magic foods, the idea is a silly outdated one barely removed from an old wives’ tale. Please do not avoid foods that can give you much needed potassium because of superstition and bad science.

2500-3500 mg potassium a day seems like a lot, but luckily potassium is in many foods. Nearly all, to some extent. However, it does not need to be legally listed on food labels and thus sometimes people do not realize they’re actually getting some. On websites like My Fitness Pal, the potassium information is inaccurate because the nutritional data is entered by users, who often enter “zero” when they do not spot potassium listed on their food labels. Self.com does have reliable potassium info and I highly suggest checking any food you are in doubt about.

Questions? Join our community at Gender Dreaming, where I’m available to answer all your questions about Natural Gender Selection!

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