The Diet and Nutrition Resource

1 - DIETS DON’T WORK By Raymond Francis If you are more than five pounds over your normal weight, you need to read my book Never Be Fat Again. A catastrophic epidemic of overweight disease is sweeping America. More than two-thirds of all Americans are overweight. This is not a cosmetic problem—it is a serious, chronic and degenerative disease. Even a few extra pounds will accelerate aging, increase susceptibility to cancer and other diseases, increase disability and shorten life. Overweight is not a benign disease, and no one should be or needs to be fat. Lean people live longer, have less disease, less disability, more energy, and a higher quality of life. While millions spend billions trying to lose weight, this epidemic is getting worse every year. More than one-third of our children are overweight. Because of this, life expectancy is expected to turn down, after two hundred years of increases. When I looked at this problem, I wondered why, after all those diets and all that money, time, effort, diet books, diet programs, gimmicks, magic pills and exercise machines overweight is still increasing. I soon found out. Diets don’t work—so don’t go on a diet! Diets are not only ineffective; they are dangerous, even deadly. Besides that, who wants to count calories, weigh out portions, be deprived, eat unnaturally, and feel aggravated and starved? Perhaps it would be worth it if it worked, but it doesn’t, because most diets are scientifically and nutritionally unsound. Their goal is weight loss NOW at any price. They aim at losing weight, which is merely a symptom of this disease. You cannot solve problems by attacking symptoms. Almost anyone can lose 5 to 10 percent of their weight on any number of diets. The weight may go away for a while, but the vast majority of people gain everything back and more, packing on extra pounds. Studies show that overweight people who diet gain more weight than those who don’t. Yet at any point in time, one in three Americans is on a diet. It should be obvious that a slim body and vibrant health are not the usual results of dieting. Many of these people end up doing dangerous yo-yo dieting—cycles of gaining and losing weight—which actually doubles the risk of dying from heart disease, damages immunity and raises the risk of premature death from all causes. It is better to do nothing than go on a diet—the benefits of dieting are too small and the risks too big. The reason I wrote my book Never Be Fat Again was to help overweight people lose weight safely and permanently. But you don’t do that with a diet; you do it with a health-enhancing lifestyle that includes nutritious food, avoiding toxins and regular physical activity. Focusing on weight loss alone is the wrong thing to do, because overweight is a disease. Fat is a symptom; you cannot cure a disease by attacking symptoms. Permanent weight loss is possible only by regaining health. Always remember there is only one disease—malfunctioning cells—and only two causes of disease—deficiency and toxicity. Overweight disease is caused by deficiency and toxicity; it is reversed by addressing these two causes. So how do deficiency and toxicity cause overweight? When the body is deficient in nutrients, the appetite is turned on in order to get what is needed. Nutrient deficiency stimulates appetite, causes hunger and cravings and signals the body to store fat. The problem is our processed-food diets do not contain the required nutrients. So the appetite stays on and we eat more empty calories. The Standard American Diet is deficient in nutrients while also being loaded with more calories than we can use. Whenever we consume more calories than necessary to maintain our current weight, we will store fat. Studies have found that calcium deficiency can turn on fat-storing genes, while adequate calcium will speed fat burning. Similarly, a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids will activate fat-storing genes, while adequate omega-3s will turn them off and speed up fat burning. So guess what? Most Americans are deficient in both calcium and omega-3s. The average American gets only a fraction of the nutrition they require for optimal health. This is why we are operating at far below our biological potential, resulting in our epidemic of chronic disease and overweight. These deficiencies must be corrected if you want to lose weight. As long as the body is not getting the nutrition it needs, you will crave food even though you have just loaded up on high calorie junk food. As you seek to lose weight by consuming fewer calories and increasing exercise, you must make sure the calories you do consume are loaded with nutrition. You cannot simply eat smaller amounts of nutritionally worthless foods. This means you need to eat organic, fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, sprouts, beans and whole grains—foods that contain the highest amount of nutrients and fiber per calorie. Because these real foods are both nutrient-rich and fiber-rich, they will make you feel fuller. This satisfies hunger, shuts off the appetite, and prevents the consumption of too many calories. Empty-calorie, nutrient-poor, fiber-less, make believe foods such as sugar, white flour and most processed and fast foods are not options. Supplements are essential. They help to solve the problem of cellular deficiency, and they also support the body’s detoxification system. Here is a list of the supplements I recommend that work synergistically to provide nutrition, minimize free-radical damage and help the body detoxify: Toxins in our food and environment play a surprisingly important role in our overweight epidemic by impairing the body’s appetite and fat storage controls. Common food additives such as MSG and aspartame, can make us feel hungry even when we do not need food. Fat burning can be turned off and fat storage turned on. Chemicals used in common plastics such as phthalates and bisphenyl-A, as well as PCBs and solvents can cause weight gain. Animals exposed to pesticides can experience huge weight gains without any increase in caloric intake. Domesticated animals are fed growth promoters to fatten them up, but when you eat their meat you ingest those growth promoters, and they fatten you up. Even prescription drugs, including antihistamines, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories and hormones, can cause weight gain. The effects of toxins are magnified when poor diets deprive us of the essential nutrients that our detoxification systems need in order to remove toxins from our bodies. A major source of dietary toxins is processed junk food. Processed foods, from breakfast cereals to hot dogs, to dinner helpers are loaded with toxic artificial preservatives, colorings and flavorings, plus nitrites, MSG, artificial sweeteners and many other toxins. When toxins are included in your diet, it is difficult to lose weight because your appetite and fat storage control systems will be out of control. One can only wonder how many millions of people have failed to achieve permanent weight loss because they included toxin-loaded processed foods in their diet plan. Overweight is a disease that causes a cascade of abnormal biochemistry, resulting in a myriad of health problems and early death. Excess fat is a biological disaster. If you are more than five pounds overweight, it is already possible to measure biochemical abnormalities. So if you have even a few extra pounds, you are not as healthy as you think you are. In fact, you are sick. Fortunately, this is simple to prevent and reverse. Get processed foods out of your life. Replace them with organic, whole, unprocessed plant-based foods. This is automatically a low calorie, low toxin, high nutrient diet. Combine this with high quality supplements and regular physical activity, and you have a program for permanent weight control. Most diseases, including overweight, are unknowingly self-inflicted and they can be self-reversed with aggressive nutrition and detoxification. Permanently reversing overweight requires long-term responsible commitment. Any effort that does not include lifestyle changes will fail. Without fundamental changes, the weight will come back. For more specifics on how to do this, get yourself a copy of Never Be Fat Again. The key is to improve the quality of your food and your lifestyle choices. Your new, beautiful, strong and lean body will mirror the good health that will be yours to enjoy for a lifetime. Raymond Francis is an MIT-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again, host of the Beyond Health Show, chairman of The Project to End Disease and an internationally recognized leader in optimal health maintenance. For more information visit www.beyondhealth.com, email info@healtheamerica.org, or call 800-250-3063. (Comment this)