The Diet that is not Really a Diet

by John Adee

There is no need to starve in order to lose weight. You can eat as much food as you want, within reason, and lose weight. Just eat the right foods, and that is not too difficult if you know what to eat and drink. In fact you do not need to diet in the sense of going hungry by cutting back on what you eat. What you do is change eating habits. You can eat many of the foods most diet proponents are absolutely against. For example you can eat butter or margarine. You can use all the cream you like in your coffee and you can eat fried foods.
I have tried several diets over the years. All seemed to work for awhile but all had drawback which caused them to be abandoned after a short period of time.

One of the first diets I tried was a low calorie diet. My wife went to meetings and followed their directions. She served meat that was so a small it could get lost on the plate. It made only a large bite or two small bites. We were both constantly hungry. We stuck it out for a few months and we did lose some weight. One day I saw her eating a bag of potato chips. I said “What are you doing?”

She said, “I am starving to death.” That ended that diet for both of us.

A year or two later, after I had regained all the weight lost on the starvation diet and a little extra, I tried the High Protein Diet. With this diet you can eat all the meat you wan but the only vegetables you can eat are cooked dry beans. Even the proponents of this diet counsel one to not stay on this diet for more than three weeks. I could not believe I would get so tired of meat. I did lose weight. I lost quite a bit of weight for just three weeks. But what does one do next? Their counsel was to go on the low calorie diet which had already proved a failure.

One diet that was popular for awhile is the Rotation Diet. In this diet you eat moderately one week. You eat even better the next week. On the third week you go on what I call a starvation diet. Then, as the name implies, you rotate to the next week. On this system I lost weight slowly. The diet was all right for a while but soon I began to dread the starvation week I started skipping this week and the diet did not work very well. The Rotation Diet is alright for those with enough will power to stay on it. It is better to starve one week out of three than to starve all the time.

The next diet to come along was the low carbohydrate diet. In this diet you could eat as much food as you wanted as long as it did not contain any carbohydrates. This restricted one to very few vegetables and no fruits. The health results were similar, but not as severe as many experienced using the High Protein Diet.

I did not try this diet. I heard about the results from others who did. Some developed some very serious ailments. This was particularly true of those who did not really need to diet but wanted to lose a few pounds. Those forty or more pounds overweight seemed to do alright healthwise but many found the diet bland and unappetizing.

On any diet, in order to lose weight, the body eats its own fat. As long as there is plenty of fat to eat, and by doing even mild exercise, the body will stay healthy. When the body gets low on fat then the body starts eating its own muscle. This weakens the body and causes health problems to develop. On any diet, if one is ten pounds or less over weight then they should exercise vigorously for at least an hour, three days a week

Dr. Adkins, one of the main promoters of the diet, made some changes which improved it both health wise and in taste tolerance. He found adding a few carbohydrates actually improved the diet in both taste and in health wise with out subtracting much from the weight loss effect.

On the low carbohydrate diet you can have eggs, bacon or sausage for breakfast, just about all you want as long as you are not a glutton. For my Jewish friends you can substitute steak for the bacon or sausage. You don’t have to be Jewish to do this. Most people like steak and eggs for breakfast occasionally. What you do have to give up is toast, biscuits, pancakes and waffles In fact the main thrust of the diet is to not eat starchy foods or sugars.

For lunch and dinner you have a choice of generous portions of meat. Examples are one half pound of steak or one half of a chicken. There should be no breading on the meat. Most sauces are OK but no flour gravy is allowed. Fried foods are fine. While it does not matter as far as the diet is concerned, one should probably use corn oil, canola oil or olive oil for cooking.

If you are fat your body has been use to living off carbohydrates and sugar. Any excess not needed now is stored as fat. In order to change your body over you have to be very strict about your diet for the first two weeks. You can let up a little the third week. After the third week you continue to add more carbohydrates to your diet until you reach 30 to 35. This permits you to add some fresh fruits such as strawberries, blackberries, cantaloupe and watermelon. You can also have a small bowl of oatmeal twice a week. You need to weigh often. If you are not losing a pound a week then decrease your carbohydrate count by 5. You will soon find a count where you can lose weight slowly. If weight loss is too fast your body may suffer. It is alright to lose 10 to 15 pounds the first three weeks. After the three weeks try to regulate the loss to about 3 or 5 pounds a week. If you are over 50 pounds or more overweight you can safely increase the weight loss. After a few months the diet should be adjusted so that the weight loss is only a pound a week.

Most of the above information above is obtainable from Dr. Atkins’ book “New Diet Revolution.” I suggest you obtain a copy of this book It is readily available and not expensive. It gives you the carbohydrate count of most foods. This you will need. Most food products also give you the total grams of carbohydrates on the package.

Now about some things that are not absolutely true. First do not drink eight glasses of water a day. Some scientist who really looked into it instead of parroting someone else found too much water was harmful as it flushed the body too much and removed essential ingredients. Drink in moderation. Maybe three or four glasses a day unless you are working in hot conditions and or doing hard physical labor then you might get up to eight glasses a day.

Count ice tea as water. How some dieticians got the idea water with a little tea flavor was not water is beyond me. As for coffee drink your regular amount, decaffeinated or regular, but do not use sugar. If you like it sweet, you can use Splenda in place of sugar. Use all the cream you want.

Beer is out. It has too many carbs. Distilled spirits such as vodka, bourbon and gin will not build fat but will slow weight loss temporarily. If you drink them then drink sparingly.

Now for the difference my diet has from other diets. The difference is milk, any milk, buttermilk, whole milk, any reduced or no fat milk, canned milk and cottage cheese. Yogurt can be used but it is not near as effective as the others. Lactate reduced milk is not effective.

One day while I was waiting for my wife to do her therapy, I read an article in Readers Digest that the drinking of milk while on a diet would cause one to lose weight much faster than the diet alone accomplished without the milk. The article was by scientist who had actually made a study of the use of milk; they presented some impressive statistics. I am sorry I no longer have the copy of Readers Digest available so I am unable to present the issue date.

One day I was thinking about the low carbohydrate diet. I did need to lose weight badly. It came to me that if I added milk the low carbohydrate diet would be healthier and if the milk worked then the diet would be better. I tried it and it did work. My wife tried it and it worked for her. When some friends noticed we were loosing weight they asked what we were doing. I told them and they tried the diet with the milk, they have all lost a noticeable amount of weight.

When you start the diet, drink about a half glass of milk each day of the first week. By the third week you should be drinking a full glass. The amount of milk can be gradually increased until you are drinking two glasses a day.

The milk has about 10 to 12 carbohydrates. Do not count the milk as part of the carbohydrate count. The benefit of milk more than offsets the additional carbohydrates.

Let me know if it works for you.

If you go to http://www.adeefinancial.com and click on Books and Articles you can view this article with color pictures which can not be presented. I believe a look is worth while.

John Adee may be contacted at http://www.adeefinancial.com jeasttx@aol.com.

John is a graduate of Oklahoma State University with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He is a retired Patent Agent and former Patent Examiner. He worked for several years as an oil field engineer. John has been a successful trader, in both stocks and futures, for many years. He has written article and published letters about both stocks and futures markets. Many articles and letters are about trading systems and observances he has made over the years. He is a member of The American Rose Society and several technical societies and keeps abreast of the latest advances in science and technology.