Chapter One
How I Created the Orgasmic Diet
Why am I writing this book? There's one simple reason: because my diet will make you feel like a goddess--a sex goddess. And you should know about it because it has the power to change your life. As I stated in the introduction, the diet works, works well, and works quickly. It will give you back your sexual power and enable you to feel sensual pleasure, orgasms, and the ripple of desire--when and how you wish.
But before I give you all the information you will need to access the sexual goddess within you, I want to share a bit about myself and how this diet came to be. I want to share this story not to broadcast the ups and downs of my life, but because I think that many women can relate to my experience, specifically to my (former) great difficulty having orgasms and feeling sexual pleasure, and how that one thing missing in my life led me first to the depth of low self-esteem, bad choices, and chronic depression and then to a life full of joy, confidence, and boundless pleasure and fun.
From the Outside Looking In
Nine years ago I had it all--or at least I had convinced myself that I had it all. I was married to a man to whom I was devoted. We both had good jobs; we were doing extremely well in the stock market and looking to buy a house as soon as he finished his PhD in theology. He was the perfect man. He was romantic, thoughtful, prone to spontaneously buying me flowers, fun, smart, witty, in terrific shape, and very good-looking. Our home was filled with antiques and beautiful oriental rugs, thanks to his side job dealing in them, and he was doing important and seminal work for our church. I was very proud of him. I loved him body and soul. We were planning on having a baby.
But the sad truth was, I was miserable, and for a long time, I didn't really know that about myself. I didn't know that I had lost my center, given up my power, and given all of me away. You may be wondering why, if my life looked so good from the outside, I was so miserable. The answer lies in my sexuality.
In my marriage there was a fundamental inequality of power, an inequality hidden behind bedroom doors. I had always had trouble reaching a clitoral orgasm, but this inadequacy soon grew into a source not only of marital strife but also of seething insecurity for me. Soon after we were married, my husband began to tire of the extreme difficulty he faced in bringing me to orgasm; it took me a very long time. He would sigh and roll his eyes, which, of course, completely killed it for me. After the first year, I stopped asking him to pleasure me, and even when he occasionally asked if I wanted to have an orgasm, I was so ashamed I just snapped back no. Soon foreplay dwindled because it became easier to endure sex if I didn't get aroused. Getting aroused and not having an orgasm was worse than just lying there and feeling nothing.
There came a point when it had been more than five years since my husband had given me an orgasm, and more than six months since I had given myself one. I was sexually shutting down. Yet in a desperate attempt to keep my husband sexually satisfied, I would consent to sex--despite my having no desire or feeling whatsoever. Our infrequent interludes began to feel like invasions, degrading to both of us. Here was a man who was better than most at the skills of foreplay and who delighted in the erotic, now reduced to little more than a robot. And here I was, crumbling in shame at my own inadequacies and shortcomings, going through the motions, and unable to speak up on my own behalf.
Opening My Heart to
Questions of Desire
And then something in me began to change. I asked myself, "Is your heart open to sexual pleasure? Is your heart open to change? Are you willing to kindle something inside that might be hard to hold on to?" Some part of me was gasping for life, for a chance to breathe. I began to realize that I had to be willing to believe that I was capable of both feeling sexual and having an orgasm. But I needed a partner. And since my husband and I had become so estranged in the bedroom, I created an imaginary man, a phantom, a Greek god. I needed an imaginary man who was infinitely patient, skilled at foreplay, relaxed, nonjudgmental, and completely focused on female pleasure for its own sake, but also contrarily not focused at all; a sort of dreamy diffusion of a man who kept his pants on, his eyes open, and his mind languorous. This man wanted nothing more than to please me and I didn't have to worry about pleasing him. I kept the idea of this man in my mind's eye, and the sexual frost that had lasted so long within me started to thaw.
I still felt like a sexual cripple, but in my imagination I had a man who was turned on by me exactly as I was. I was still sleeping with my husband (we wanted to have a baby), and instinctively I began making pro-sexual choices. Unwittingly I started out on my path of discovering the Orgasmic Diet.
I wanted to get pregnant, but I was on antidepressants, so I researched natural ways of treating depression and learned how vitamins, minerals, and foods influenced neurochemistry, particularly how protein, fats, and carbohydrates interacted with one another and the brain. As a result, I changed my diet. I then weaned myself off antidepressants under my doctor's supervision. With diet and exercise I managed to hold my depression at bay without the help of drugs. Getting off antidepressants alone was a huge help for my libido, of course, but the changes in my diet started having an effect, too. My libido not only picked up, it took off. Unbeknownst to me, I was creating a program. I still wasn't having orgasms, but at least during sex I was feeling something. Gone was the sensation of being an unmoving and unmoved receptacle. I was thrilled, and my husband was, too.
I got pregnant and was soon about to discover the three other elements of my diet. Of course, I quit drinking coffee and avoided all other stimulants. I also grilled my natal nutritionist on the most current research about fetal brain health. I was worried my baby might inherit depressive tendencies that were apparent on both sides of the family. My nutritionist strongly recommended fish oil, and I started taking a megadose within the first couple months of my pregnancy.
It's not unusual for some women to experience an increase in libido during pregnancy due to hormones, so at the time, I chalked up my jump in libido and sexual ability to my pregnancy and didn't think much of it. After my first child was born and I was breast-feeding, I saw my libido drop just like most every breast-feeding mother's does--lactation hormones are Mother Nature's birth control. But I knew something was up when my libido came roaring back after I weaned her.
When I got pregnant with, breast-fed, and then weaned my second child, I watched my body go through the same cycle of high libido and active sexual response during pregnancy to a dip while I was nursing, and then a dramatic roar-back once I had weaned. Both through the pregnancies and after, I continued with the high-dose fish oil, vitamins, minerals, and a 40 percent carbs-30 percent protein-30 percent fat diet. I stayed off the coffee, and started eating dark chocolate, which I have always enjoyed. I had really begun enjoying the sex my husband and I were having--I wasn't about to give up now!
The final piece to the puzzle for me appeared after watching an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show on vaginal cone weights. After two ten-pound babies, I knew I needed to get my muscle tone back; everything was stretched out down there. So following Oprah's advice, I began exercising with the vaginal cone weights. I was dedicated, working out at least twice a week, and soon I mastered the highest level.
And then something happened that completely blew me away. Driving home late one night after dropping off my girls at their grandmother's for an overnight, I had a long monotonous stretch of highway driving. Listening to the radio, I began to fantasize and reflexively flex my PC muscles. Twenty minutes of intricate fantasy later, and much to my shock, I had an orgasm. It was a different sort of orgasm than the clitoral kind, which had always required so much effort, further up and in. But what was this? How could I, a woman who needed such intense and prolonged stimulation to have an orgasm, all of a sudden have an orgasm with no touch whatsoever? You could have knocked me down with a feather. My first thought was, My marriage is saved! My second thought was, I knew I was onto something.
Yes, I was now enjoying sex and was enthusiastic because, on the diet, I began experiencing better sensation. But our marriage was suffering because I still could not have an orgasm during intercourse. I couldn't get away from that fact, and it rankled me at my very core. So we were still having brief sex with no foreplay, and I was still too insecure to ask for foreplay for fear that it would only lead to frustration, impatience, and feelings of inadequacy. But now this--this newfound ability to orgasm deep in my core was amazing--so why couldn't I put it all together? If I could hone this ability, surely I could have an orgasm from vaginal stimulation--I could have an orgasm just from sex!
I became a maniac. I started researching different ways to tone my PC muscles and became a weight-training fanatic--vagina-wise. I kept tinkering around with my diet, because after careful observation I noticed the orgasmic ability came and went depending on what I was eating, whether I took my fish oil or if I drank too much coffee. I became a sexual mad scientist, using myself as a guinea pig; I isolated the elements of my diet that were contributing to this magical vaginal orgasm ability, and I worked them.
With my mathematics training and my job at a science-focused environmental engineering firm, I approached my body and its responses as a scientist on a mission. I started doing research, investigating why these particular elements worked so well to produce such a magical effect. One by one I stopped and started, increased and decreased specific elements. And to my complete satisfaction, my experimentation bore fruit. Soon, instead of twenty minutes of intense fantasy, driving in a vibrating car, I was able to reduce it to fifteen, then ten, then five minutes simply from flexing and thinking, just sitting in a chair--and then, bang, I started orgasming during sex. I started having an orgasm with no foreplay, just from five minutes or less of receiving hard thrusting (and concentrating pretty hard). Suddenly orgasms were easy for me, a simple by-product of intercourse itself.
My husband was ecstatic! He felt incredibly studly! I was also ecstatic. And driven. After so many years of basically sexual voyeurism, even in the midst of sex, I was now a full and equal participant. I kept researching and tweaking and tinkering with myself. I developed my vaginal muscles even more, to a higher strength and greater coordination. I pushed my diet until my libido was in the stratosphere. Not only did I develop the ability to have dozens of spontaneous orgasms a day, I developed the desire to do so. Having an orgasm became as easy as breathing.
Just as I was beginning to relax into this pleasure, my husband began saying that he thought I had gone too far. He became very uncomfortable with the idea that he wasn't the one in control of giving me an orgasm. He was bothered by my being able to orgasm practically at will. He didn't enjoy it when I would have an orgasm from giving him oral sex. And he didn't like that I had an orgasm simply from him entering me.
And then our sex, which was infrequent at best, dwindled even further, and he started avoiding intercourse. Our rate of vaginal intercourse kept dropping, and for me, now having a very high libido, this was hard to bear. As long as I had thought that the fault was mine and believed that my body just didn't work like other women's, I could take the denial of pleasure, the starvation of touch. I used to accept this former lack of pleasure as the best I could expect. But now everything was different. Now I felt like a goddess. I felt inside that these newfound powers were perfectly wonderful and a cause for celebration--if only my husband could see it that way. But it was too late--our marriage dynamic could not change. I was still the dysfunctional one, the one with the problem. And I started seeing how this attitude had seeped out of the bedroom and into every aspect of our daily lives. I was wrong: we were not in an equal relationship and never would be, and I was not being treated well. I asked him to move out, and three years later we divorced.
The Silver Lining
But as with many bad experiences in our lives, this one had a hidden silver lining. After all of my experimentation and research, I realized I was truly onto something. Not something that was particular to me, to my body alone, but something that I knew would benefit other women, too. I already knew FSD was a big issue from talking with friends and of course from magazines, books, and movies. I knew this as well from dialoguing with hundreds over the Internet on message boards for women with sexual questions and issues; clearly, I was one of thousands--probably millions--of women who were unable to have orgasms and who struggled with low libido. If the diet could help me, it could also help others, so I searched online for communities of women getting together to discuss sexual difficulties and solutions, and I began posting at many such websites. I encouraged women to try my diet, and many did, having similar results. Some just had an increase in libido. Some developed vaginal orgasmic ability for the first time. Some learned to feel a clitoral orgasm more intensely. And some took it all the way and got to where I was.