The Hercules Diet

  “Prove thy servants I beseech thee 10 days; and let them give us Pulse to eat and Water to drink.”

Pythagoras called this the meal of Hercules, Daniel of the Bible called it the Pulse of God, and the Mayan/Inca called it the Teocali taletlket (food for the Temple of the Sun).

Starting today, I’ll be blogging daily on my personal experience on the Pulse diet. I love food and am definitely not the dieting type, so this should be interesting 10 days. The web is full of success stories of weight loss on Pulse but my motivation is to gain lean muscle and detox my system.

I’ll continue my usual daily exercise routine at the gym and at home. I’ll take a before photo and an after photo. Yes, that means half naked photos of me up on the internet, but then, what’s new?

What’s the story behind Pulse?

There is a story of a king, King Nebuchadnezzar who was going through the entire world and conquering different cities and civilizations and his conquest was to rule to world. 

The prophet Daniel and three other Hebrew men had been taken captive to Babylon. There, King Nebuchadnezzar selected them, along with a group of other young men, to be trained over a three-year period as advisers in his royal court. 

The king assigned to them a daily ration of the best food and wine from his own kitchen. Daniel refused to eat the king’s food, preferring instead their own people’s spiritual dietary rations known as “Pulse”- an ancient source of nutrition for mind and body.

“Test us ten days on a diet of Pulse and water,” Daniel said. “At the end of the ten days, see how we look compared to the other young men who are eating the king’s rich food. Then you can decide whether or not to let us continue eating our diet”

After just 10 days, the four lads were found to be healthier, better nourished and had taken on more lean muscle than those who had been eating the food assigned by the king. At the end of the three year training period, no one impressed the king as much as Daniel and his three friends. 

What is Pulse?

That was the question that started a seventeen year quest by Don Tolman.

“Don had always been fascinated with the wisdom of the ancients… particularly as it relates to nutrition, learning, and personal development. He soon learned that Pulse was a lot more than the simple Biblical dictionary definition of vegetables, seeds and grains.” 

“In his research he also learned that the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, and even native American cultures had each developed complex systems of nutrition based on colors, shapes, and ratios found in whole foods. 

In their writings he discovered an understanding that we have lost in our modern age, but which science is just now beginning to validate. Whole foods have a remarkable ability to carry healing and nourishing “information” to the cells of the body.”

“Through his studies and an interesting chain of events, he eventually recreated Pulse the same way it was made thousands of years ago.”  (quote from this site)

What does Pulse look like?

The picture used for this blog is from Tyler Tolman’s site and is what Pulse looks like, although there are slight variations depending on the flavor (I’ve got original, chocolate, peanut butter, kiwifruit and feijoa). 

I expected it to be dry and crunchy, sort-of like scroggin, but in fact it’s moist, chewy and very tasty. I’ve been given enough Pulse to chomp through 3 bags a day. 

So I’m startting my 10 days on Pulse today – I’ll let you know how it goes!

PS – to save having to check my blog for each day’s update on my experience on Pulse, click here to get a daily email instead.