I only gain weight on diets —
why do you think you can make my body loss weight?
You more than likely gain weight on diets because your caloric intake goes too low, and
your body goes into starvation. Also, most people who go on diets also start an exercise
program. This is a guarantee that your weight loss will slow down. And if you are female,
you fat loss will come to a screeching halt.
I know that is against everything you have ever heard, but it is not only true, but
supported by several peer reviewed and published research studies.
To answer why, I think I can support your body's weight loss is because I have done it
with others so many times before.
First, I will not have you exercise until you have lost your fat. Next, I will have you
eat enough food so your body does not go into starvation and hold onto your fat. There is
no calorie counting, no fat gram counting, no carbohydrate counting, no pills, shots,
drinks, or pre-packaged foods - only grocery store food and water. I do ask that you eat
only foods without labels, which, to me, makes things simpler. There are certainly a few
other tricks, but you need to become a patient to learn them.
I'm pregnant and gaining weight
like crazy — can I follow your eating plan?
Weight gain with pregnancy is normal and healthy. Too much weight gain with pregnancy is
unhealthy and dangerous for both the baby and the mother. Proper diet during pregnancy is
very important. Unfortunately, there are many doctors and patients alike who do not know
what makes for a good diet.
Here's just a sampling of an eating plan whether you are pregnant or not: whole
unprocessed foods, proteins, vegetables, fruits, limited grains, lots of water, limit
processed sodium and avoid processed sugar foods. I don't believe there is anyone who can
argue with that way of eating, no mater who they are. It is important not to overeat.
Light to moderate exercise is important when you're pregnant to ensure blood flow through
your filtering organs like your kidneys and liver. These organs clean house for you and
provide a healthy environment for your growing fetus.
Fad food diets, or diets which limit types of food are dangerous!!!
I am a vegetarian — can I
follow your eating plan?
I have had several vegetarians as weight loss patients in the past and we have been
successful together. I do have to say a few things first so that you know my position in
terms of vegetarianism. Many vegetarians I have known have been what I call white
vegetarians or starch vegetarians. It is not just that they don't eat meat. They don't eat
beans or vegetables, except salads and potatoes. They eat largely pasta and bread and that
is why they are putting on weight. I talked about this once on my radio show, and did I
get calls!
The problem with this type of vegetarian is that they lack the ability to digest complex
proteins, and because they feel bad when they eat flesh, because they can't digest it,
they proclaim vegetarianism.
A more typical vegetarian would not be overweight because their diet would be largely
vegetables, beans, corn, fruits, nuts and complex grains.
I did see a true vegetarian who had gained weight following pregnancy. The major concern I
had was getting enough calories into her diet, which we did with nuts and nut butters.
Each person is like a snow flake. There are no two alike, you have to be prepared to learn
something new from each one, give space for something new, and give up your preconceived
ideas for the individual differences of each and every patient.
I have a vacation coming up —
what should I do?
I have seen this work, or shall I say not work, for a number of people. I have seen people
go on vacation and say they will start when they come back and it is as if they were
coming back to go to jail. They eat everything in sight and come back pounds and pounds
heavier.
I have also seen patients start the diet before they go. They torture themselves all
throughout the vacation, and come home feeling like they missed their vacation.
What I find really works well is to cut in half the portions they would normally eat.
Because vacation food generally comes from restaurants, the portions are usually large
enough for two meals anyway. By only eating half, you would not feel deprived, and you
would be preparing yourself for your upcoming dietary changes.
My office is having a big dinner
party and I am expected to attend — what do I do?
This question is difficult because there are a lot of angles to it. One, if you are about
to start the diet, go to the party and eat one half of what you would normally eat,
avoiding the sweets and sugar foods, and staying
away from the salty food. Alcohol is another issue. If you drink mixed drinks, the mix
usually contains sugar, or is sugar free (diet), which is even worse. A martini or Scotch
on the rocks or with water would be the type of drink which would be the least damaging
from the sugar standpoint. You might also want to keep in mind that alcohol will affect
your decision-making, and no matter what you tell yourself, it may be impossible to keep
your commitment.
If you have been on the diet and are in your fat burning groove, you know yourself better
than I do, and know whether or not you can go and avoid the foods which are not on the
recommended list. The problem is, if you are in the groove and eat the wrong foods, they
will pop you right out of the groove, and it may take a lot of effort to get back on
track. If you think they will have proteins like unsalted and unprocessed meat, fish,
poultry and an assortment of vegetables, you may be just fine. If you drink alcohol, your
body will burn the alcohol instead of your fat, which means your fat loss will be slowed
or stopped. Just remember what I said above about the type of drinks you drink. If you eat
sugar your body will, within a few days, convert it to fat, depending on your activity
level and how much and what type of sugar you eat. If you eat fat, your body will use it
for fuel in place of your own fat. If you eat salt, your scale weight will be up
practically immediately, and may take a week or two to come back down. Salt moves sugar
inside the cells of the body and then your body needs and pulls more sugar into the cell.
What I often suggest is to eat before you go to the party so that you can make better
decisions at the party. Remember, once you reduce your body fat and water to the desired
level, going to a party or out to dinner, if you follow a few simple guidelines, will be
just fine. What I always tell my patients is eating wrong once in a while is called
"living life", whereas eating wrong all the time is called "obesity".
Do I have to exercise — I
hate it and do not want to exercise?
Exercise is an important element to good health, however, exercise is not as critical to
weight loss as is thought by many. It can be, however, an important aspect of long term
weight balance along with portion control of your food intake.
Women protect their fat stores when they exercise and therefore do not lose weight, as do
men, with exercise. WHAT???? That's' right. And worse yet, women can actually gain weight
when they try to diet and exercise at the same time. The female of the species is all
about hormones, babies, breast feeding and menstruation. All of this is driven by fat, so
the female body does everything it can do to guard its fat stores. If calories are reduced
and energy expenditure is increased, the female body puts the brakes on and will come to a
screeching metabolic halt. This is supported by many research articles, but for some
reason has never made it into the public sector. Once the fat is at the target level,
exercise can be instituted. But the energy expenditure of the exercise has to be met with
adequate caloric intake to meet the expenditure. This can be a little tricky without close
monitoring and supervision as one makes the transition.
Men, on the other hand, can exercise and diet simultaneously with success. One of the
common diet and exercise problems I commonly see is as one exercises the body needs more
fuel to meet the energy demand, so the person, once having gotten to their ideal weight,
will begin to increase their intake. Then what happens is they get accustomed to being
able to handle larger amounts of food, as long as they continue their exercise. This is
often where the problem starts. When you add exercise into your life, it is important to
only add that which you honestly believe you can maintain. Also, vary your exercise so
your body does not adapt to it.
When I start a male or a female patient, I advise them not to do any more physical
activity than they are presently doing. Once they are getting close to their fat loss
balance point, I start increasing their fuel intake and physical activity, but only as
they are comfortable with it within their lives.
I love coffee — will you make
me give up my coffee?
I don't like to think of myself as the type of person who makes people do anything, but
rather gives them the information and they choose to do it because they understand the
issues that are important.
Let me start by saying I drink a water processed decaffeinated organic coffee a time or
two per week. I might go a week without it and I may only do it in the damp cold days of
winter. Do I have to have it -no? There is a nurturing thing to coffee and tea that we get
confused with the substance itself. What we are often addicted to is the feeling we get
when we take a few minutes out for ourselves.
What happens when we have caffeine from coffee, tea without the balancing effect of
theanine, or soft drinks etc., is that we turn up our "fight or flight"
mechanism. Once we do this, our bodies crave more simple sugars for fuel, our heart rate
goes up, our digestive enzymes decrease, and we tend to become more vaso-constricted,
which means higher blood pressure, and less blood to our extremities and our brain.
Studies of students' test-taking have shown a decreased level of performance among those
who drank coffee right before the test, compared with those who did not drink coffee. All
of these effects are not good for you. They add to an ambient stress level which prevents
your body from resetting to a more normal and lower stress
level.
So, there you are. My advice would be to drink green tea, which does have caffeine, but it
also has theanine which counteracts the negative effects of the caffeine.
How long will it take for me to
reach my goal weight?
Females lose an average of 2.59 pounds of fat per week with a total weight loss per week
of about 3 pounds. Males lose only 1.9 pounds of fat but they lose a total average of 3.8
pounds per week of total weight.
Why the differences? The reason is that the software which figures the fat, water,
toxicity, etc. is weighted differently for males and females, based upon standard tables
of weight and body composition for males and females. The natural makeup of females shows
a higher fat level among females than males. Males have a higher muscular mass and tend to
have a higher extracellular mass. These differences are very much dictated by the hormonal
make-up of each sex.
When I took the averages of all my patients for the first several years of the program, I
excluded all of the patients who had extreme weight losses, yet I kept many of the
patients who fell way below the group mean, some of whom I felt did not make the effort to
do the program correctly. I did this because I wanted to have realistic expectations for
all of my patients. It turned out to be the correct decision, as most people who do the
program with any intention to follow it achieve the average result without difficulty.
All my weight is in my upper
thighs and I am thin everywhere else — Can you get my body to lose my fat thighs
without tuning me into a skeleton?
This portion control and stress reduction program targets fat. So that means it will
stimulate the fat loss from areas where fat is deposited, and you can lose the fat from
specific areas. The one area where females, and some males, often accumulate a
"pouch" which looks like fat but, is actually extra-cellular mass toxicity, is
the area right below the waist line on the tummy. The other area that is the same kind of
deposit is the area right under the upper arm where the triceps muscle is located. The
major material that accumulates in these areas is extra-cellular debris and extra cellular
fluids. It is the most difficult stuff to get rid of, and diet or exercise alone will not
make it leave. It takes a very delicate balance of the two to achieve success. With most
people, particularly females, it is what they think of as their last 5 or 10 pounds, and
if they could only lose that, the pouch would go away. Well certainly the weight loss will
help, but it is not accessible fat like other fat deposits.
I have been too thin on diets
before at a weight which was supposed to be right for me. Do I have to get to that weight
on your plan?
No, you don't. The equipment I use to test you will give me a weight. We do not have to
use it for a goal, but more of a guideline. The test looks at bone mass, age, sex, body
water, muscle mass, etc. before calculating your target weight.
We then can discuss what you have weighed in the past and what you feel is a good weight
for you.
Another thing to consider is if you thought you were too thin at a particular weight on
another diet in the past, it could be that you lost the wrong type of weight. If you were
not monitored with equipment that measured your muscle, fat, water and extra-cellular
mass, you very well could have lost important body material and were not losing what you
really needed to lose.
Are there foods I have to eat
everyday as part of the program?
No, there are no special foods. It is not a low carbohydrate, calorie counting, low fat,
or metabolic stimulant program in any way. It is based upon grocery store food and water
and a resetting of your flight or flight mechanism so that your digestion works better and
you do not crave because of an over-stressed nervous system.
Do I need to take any special
herbs, teas, vitamins, soups, etc?
No, this program is about teaching both you and your body how it can balance its weight,
and, at the same time reduce its stress. It is also about how to be satisfied with real
food, and how to be able to control the portions you eat by being well-fed enough so that
overeating or eating junk is not an option. It is also about learning that if you do eat
incorrectly today, you can get right back with it tomorrow and eat correctly without
having everything go down the drain in failure.
Most people can lose some weight on practically any eating program, but eating in a
healthy manner and reducing your portions is the long-term key to successful weight
balance. You will learn that from the back of your tongue south there are no taste buds,
so the longer you keep something in
your mouth, the more enjoyment there is, to say nothing of extending the wonderfulness of
the flavor. So eat the smallest piece and take forever to swallow it, and it will be far
better than having the biggest piece and
eating it in two bites and then watching as it appears on your hips next week.
The brain may run on sugar, but it makes decisions on fats and proteins.
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