I’ve been asked a lot about how effective my 30 Sugar Free Days Program and my new Alien Diet Program is for weight loss and while I could give you a lot of diet success stories, why don’t I let the people who have been through the program let you know:

*************************************************

I just began my third week on Sunday, and my wedding ring is loose! All my clothes are baggy and I don’t think I will ever eat sugar again! I love how you said you can feel like an “alien on planet carbohydrate” … that’s exactly how I feel! I have found some wonderful farms in my area and I’m shopping at the market less and less. Thank you so much, this is exactly what I needed!

Hilary Barry

*************************************************

My great news is the my cholesterol went from 268 to 184 and my triglycerides from 271 to 75. I am simply amazed!  My cholesterol and triglycerides have never been that low as far back as my records show which is 1998.  This after being sugar free for just 4 months. It proves to me how dangerous sugar is to our health.  This is great motivation for me!

Thank you again.  I am floating above the clouds after being so down for so long with these high numbers.

Marion Pippin

*************************************************

I’ve been sugar free for a little over 2 weeks now, and Dr. Scott was right, my cravings severely declined within the first week I would say. Now I don’t even think about sweets! That’s not to say that at this point I wouldn’t WANT something sweet , but I have the willpower to turn it down because my cravings are no…t out of control. I’ve never gone this long without sugar or bread, I can’t believe I’ve made it this far

Nerine E

*************************************************

Thanks a million for your program and sage advice. I did not follow the plan strictly for these 30 days (it is my second time around), but kept the principles in mind to adjust my entire lifestyle for the rest of my life. I am a former fat girl, went from 170 lb in my teens to now 115 lbs at 47 years old. I look and feel better tha n I ever have in my life. I can do 30+ pushups, vigorous cardio, working with a preschool population with ceaseless energy. Everyday, I work out and I eat a lower carb, low sugar diet super rich in veggies, fruit, nuts and meats…

I think what you offer us is so great…Your language and formatting is direct, concise and easy to absorb.  You do not come across like a lobbyist, or in-it-for-profit industrialist, or highly technical scientist…

Your encouragement and inspiration works to motivate me.  You are giving the gift of a better-lived life:   with a healthier body, clearer thinking, more energy to be the best YOU…I am so grateful.

Diane Rogers

*************************************************

I’ve completed 7 days and lost 1.5 pounds. I don’t think I’ve ever EVER gone 7 hours without sugar so this is a HUGE accomplishment. I really look forward to the emails. I keep them all and reread when I need a boost.

Very nice program!

Jess Marke

*************************************************

I’ve been low-carbing for 5 years now and feel terrific. Still, I have a sweet treat from time to time and was having a horrid problem eliminating artificial sweeteners from my diet. Your challenge inspired me – 30 days! I could do that.

Thanks for sponsoring this!

Bev C

*************************************************

I’m sorry but I didn’t think to take pictures but I did take body measurements and I lost about 2” off my hips. I hope that helped, I plan to keep doing it for life. Thanks a lot!

Cathy

*************************************************

I’ve been sugar free and actually, mostly meat free as well, for almost 3 weeks now. The weight is coming off finally and I feel free. I feel that I’m healing from all the destructive foods I’ve eaten in the past year. Not eating the meat has provided my liver to clean up, so I’m grateful to be “cleaning house”. I can tell by my increased energy and healthier looking skin, that it’s really helping.

My cravings have virtually disappeared, I think because I’ve eliminated the foods that trigger the cravings. It’s been, actually, the easiest weight I’ve lost in a long time.

So, thank you again. Just had to write and let you know how much I appreciate this.

Elaine A

*************************************************

I have become a much healthier person in the last month (my doctor said I could lower my insulin from 30 units to 25) and I thank God for finding you and your program on the internet! Thank you for staying in touch with me through the 30 day challenge and being the encouragement that you are!

God Bless You, Joe

*************************************************

After just two weeks going sugar free, the biggest benefits I get are:

• Less muscle pain.

• Better sleeping at night.

• More energy.

• Clearer thinking. That is the number one reason I’ve gone without sugar. Sugar fogs my brain. After just two weeks going sugar free, I can think clearly, process difficult decisions effortlessly and remember much better.

• I simply function more efficiently.

Again, thank you for the 30 days plan. I think it’s great!

Yours truly,

Julia M

*************************************************

I just finished the 30 day Sugar Free Days. I really enjoyed having someone who knew what I was going through. I thought I had been sugar free for three months before I started your program, but I didn’t realize how many products I was eating contain sugar by a different name. I would go to my computer each morning before breakfast to read your encouragements. I learned a lot from your e-mails and printed some out for reference.

I am pre diabetic and my blood sugar was in the 100-115 range when I started four months ago. It has only been in the low 90?s for the last week, for which I am grateful to you. I didn’t think I could get it down without medication. I am having my cholesterol checked on Monday. I am hoping for the same result.

Thank you very much,

Marion

*************************************************

Facebook

There are more diet success stories on Facebook, check them out here: Facebook Group 30 Sugar Free Days

Related Posts

• How to Break a Sweet Tooth Addiction (0)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)
• Insulin Resistance (2)
• How Many Calories Should I Eat to Lose Weight? (1)
• Weight Loss Success Stories (1)

Does eating sugar give you a headache? The sugar headache, otherwise known as the Holliday Headache (because we eat so much sugar on Easter, Halloween, Christmas and other holidays) has a lot in common with a hangover headache but it strikes any time year when we overdo sugar.

While most have experienced a sugar headache at some time in their lives it is not well known in medical circles. It might even surprise you to learn that the exact causes of all headaches are a bit of a mystery. Migraines and cluster headaches are thought to be vascular (having to do with blood flow) but how blood changes create a headache is unknown; the same is true of the sugar headache.

I view the sugar headache as a toxicity or dehydration event and while it might be an annoyance it could also be the sign of something more dangerous. Let’s look at dehydration ad toxicity and see how they might cause a headache.

Sugar Dehydration

Dehydration is a common way to get a headache and sugar can lead to dehydration. Eating too much sugar dehydrates your body in two ways.

• Dilution: When you eat too much sugar, your body has to dilute that sugar to keep it from harming your body. This means that water is being pulled from all parts of your body to balance the large amount of sugar in your blood stream. While this water-pulling effect happens all over the body, it is your head that suffers the most.

• Urination: One of the ways that your body has of getting rid of excess sugar is to dump it in your urine. This is especially true of diabetics, who have to go to the bathroom a lot.

Toxicity

The other way to think about sugar is to consider it a toxic event. While your body runs on glucose (a simple sugar) it was never meant to have a ton of simple sugars running around in the blood. If you look to nature, you would find that there are almost no foods that contain the high amount of sugar you would find in a soda or piece of cake. If natural foods do contain a high amount of sugar it is often bound up and hard to get to (like in a sugar cane). The only way to get a large amount of sugar into your body is to have that sugar processed before you put it in your mouth. Processed sugar or processed grains both act like sugar in your body and this is toxic to the very blood cells that carry the sugar throughout the body. (I explain this at length in my book Sugarettes).

Something Worse?

Sugar headaches can also be a warning. If you get sugar headaches often, you might just be diabetic or pre-diabetic. The best way to find out if you are diabetic is to go and see your doctor and have them run some blood tests, but here are the typical symptoms of diabetes:

• Excessive urination: As I mentioned above, sugar acts like a diuretic and will spill sugar and water into the urine. Having to urinate a lot is often one of the first signs of diabetes.
• Excessive thirst: Since diabetics are losing a lot of water (see above), they are often thirsty all the time.
• Excessive hunger: Everyone has periods of time when they are hungry, but diabetics are hungry all the time (with strong cravings for carbohydrates, sweets and sugar). This is one of the strange things about diabetics: They have a lot of sugar in their bodies, but it is not being used by the cells so they are hungry all the time.

Sugar Headache

The reasons why sugar gives you a headache are many and not readily understood. But you don’t have to wait for a reason to stop the pain in your head.

You can stop your sugar headaches and give sugar the boot by trying my 30 Sugar Free Days Program. During the program, you will learn about foods that act like sugar and what you can do about your cravings. Make sure you understand that sugar is doing more harm to your body than just giving you a sugar headache, take this opportunity to learn from your headache that you shouldn’t be putting large amounts of sugar in your mouth and you need to make a change.

Related Posts

• How to Break a Sweet Tooth Addiction (0)
• Insulin Resistance (2)
• Diet Success Stories (2)
• Sugar Detox (0)
• Best way to lose weight fast (3)

Insulin resistance is a modern day problem that is the result of eating modern day foods. What insulin resistance means is that the cells in your body are resistant to insulin. While this may not sound like a big deal, it is. The more insulin resistant your cells become, the high your blood sugar rises (and your body hates high blood sugar). Let’s take a look at just how insulin resistance happens in your body.

How Insulin Resistance Forms

If your blood sugar shoots up high occasionally, there is really no problem. The problem comes when your blood sugar is high over a long period of time or high blood sugar happens every day. To understand this, you have to understand what is happening in the cells of your body.

The cells in your body only want so much sugar; they just want enough sugar to do their jobs. When there is constantly too much insulin and too much sugar in the blood stream (like when you eat sugar at every meal) the only response that the cells have is to remove the doorways (receptors) from the outside of the cell. This process is called down-regulation of receptors. When insulin receptors disappear throughout the body, it creates a whole-body effect called “insulin resistance,” meaning the cells of the body become “resistant” to insulin.

Let’s take a look at what happens to the cell when the body removes receptors, in the following diagram the yellow represents the cell and the blue thingies are the receptors.

A cell goes from having this many receptors (normal):

To having, say, this many:

Now, this is a bit tricky to understand, but imagine if all the cells in your body began to respond to too much sugar by removing their insulin receptors. If every cell in the body removed its receptors, the doorways to sugar, what would happen? The end result would be that you’d have more sugar in your blood.

Why?

Remember that insulin used to be able to push sugar out of the blood stream and put it into the cells. The cells, though, are now getting rid of receptors because there is too much sugar around most of the time. The cells are becoming resistant to insulin. So, even though there is sugar in the blood stream and a lot of insulin, the sugar has no where to go because the cells won’t allow it in. So, now, where does the sugar go? It stays in the blood stream.

But you also have to remember, more sugar in the blood stream creates what? The answer is more sugar in the blood stream leads to more insulin. When your body becomes insulin resistant, the next time you eat a meal, you have a higher amount of sugar in your blood because the cells are refusing to take on that sugar. So, more sugar in the blood stream means that the body will now release more insulin. Do you see the vicious cycle that is starting to develop? More insulin circulating in the body will eventually lead to fewer receptors on cells, which will lead to more sugar in the blood, and more insulin, and fewer receptors and…you get the idea.

Cells will eventually look like this as they get rid of even more receptors:

Now you understand how insulin resistance can develop from eating a high amount of sugar every day. The association between eating sugars and the creation of insulin resistance is, however, far from being a proven phenomenon in human beings. Animal studies demonstrate a relationship between eating sugars and foods that act like sugar and the development of insulin resistance,[i]^,[ii] but the medical community is far from convinced. Like much of the scientific study on sugar and health, much more research is needed.

Over Time

Okay. Let’s see if we can pull this all together. Watch what happens over time, not to the individual cell, but in the whole body. The following chart shows how blood sugar and insulin react to each other and how insulin resistance builds over time when you are consuming sugar foods. (click on the image below to see full size).

What happens over time with insulin resistance is that the body can no longer produce enough insulin and, eventually, insulin production fails. When the body can no longer produce enough insulin or the cells have become resistant to insulin, your body is no longer able to keep blood sugar within a narrow range. This is called diabetes, a situation where the blood sugar is very high.

What Can You Do?

There is a lot that you can do to avoid insulin resistance, the chief among these is to stop eating sugar and foods that act like sugar. I have program called the 30 Sugar Free Days Program where you can join with other people who are giving sugar the boot.

Besides stopping the sugar feast, you can exercise, lower the amount of saturated fat in your diet and eat as many vegetables as you can. Insulin resistance is not a death sentence, but a wake-up call. There is a lot you can do to stop and reverse insulin resistance, but you have to get moving today.

[ii] Daly M: Sugars, insulin sensitivity, and the postprandial state. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Oct;78(4):865S-872S.

Related Posts

• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)
• Metabolic Syndrome (0)
• Sugar Detox (0)
• Best Drug Ever: Exercise (6)
• Diet Success Stories (2)

Want to know how many calories you should eat to lose weight? The answer is simple: If You Want to Lose Weight, Calories Don’t Matter. You might be a bit surprised by that answer (especially when doctors, nutritionists, and government agencies all have suggestions for how many calories you should eat if you want to lose weight). The truth is simple: your body is not a calorimeter. What is a calorimeter? It is the machine that food scientists use to determine how many calories food contains (see picture on this page). The problems with using a machine to decide the value of food are many, but the biggest problem is that a calorimeter has no storage device (the way that you do).

What is a Calorie?

The first thing you need to know is what a calorie is. Here is the definition: A calorie is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C. If you are wondering what that has to do with how much you should eat to lose weight, you are not alone. Food scientists stick an apple in the calorimeter and measure how much energy it produces when they burn it and that (supposedly) tells them how much energy you get from eating that apple. Scientists will tell you that a calorimeter is a good substitution for what happens in the body (but don’t you believe it).

Most people would say that a calorie is the amount of energy that is stored in the food that we eat (and, basically, that is correct), but not the whole story.

If you take the common scientific wisdom about calories as truth, then you would say that everything that you eat has energy in it and that certain foods contain more energy than others. But that doesn’t have anything to do with weight loss. In order to lose weight, you have to focus on which foods you are eating, not how many calories the foods have.

Calories in Calorie out is Bunk

In order to lose weight (food scientists suggest) you have to burn more calories than you take in, but what they forget is what happens to calories that you cannot use right away and there are ways to change what you are storing and what you are not.

You want to store calories? That is easy just keep your blood sugar high.

When your blood sugar is high, three things happen:

• No conversion of fat into energy: Since your body has enough energy running around your blood (in the form of glucose) it will not covert fats into energy. It takes energy to change fat into glucose and almost no energy to store fat as fat.
• No conversion of fructose into energy: In a strange twist, it seems easier for the body to store fructose (a sugar) as fat than it is to change it into energy (glucose). So that soda that is high in fructose goes straight to your hips.
• Fat storage increases: High sugar means high insulin (the hormone that controls sugar) and high insulin means that you will start to store fat.

As you can see, storing calories is easy when your blood sugar is high and the opposite is also true (keeping your blood sugar low means that you are not storing calories).

How Many Calories Should you Eat?

I know you grew up with the idea of calories and are used to thinking about them when you want to lose weight, but here is where you have to change your mind. Instead of thinking how many calories should you eat to lose weight you need to start thinking about what kind of foods you need to eat to lose weight. The beauty of this approach is amazing; you no longer have to count calories and you can eat as much as you want (just pick the right foods).

Here are the basic steps of good weight loss:

• Keep sugar out of your life (this means you also have to avoid the foods that act like sugar).
• Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables: While you might have to watch that you are not eating too many starchy vegetables and sweet fruits, vegetables and fruits are the basis of a good diet.
• Exercise: Yes, you have to get out and move your buns around to lose some weight.
• Avoid dairy: Dairy foods are a common food allergens and tend to pack on the pounds. Try a week without and dairy foods (cheese, milk, yogurt…) and see what happens to your weight.
• Limit meat: Meat should be an occasional meal and not an everyday (or everymeal) food. Try eating meat on the weekends only or avoid it altogether until your weight stabilizes.

Remember, if you want to lose weight, you have to stop saying “how many calories should I eat to lose weight?” and start saying “what foods should I eat to lose weight?”

Related Posts

• Diet Success Stories (2)
• Insulin Resistance (2)
• Weight Loss Success Stories (1)
• When it Comes to Weight Loss, Forget Calories (16)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)

Most weight loss success stories sound pretty much the same. The stories all tell of people losing incredible amounts of weight in short periods of time using some new and crazy diet. But the question you really want to ask is: Did the Weight Stay Off? Everyone reading this page has probably lost weight (maybe even a lot of weight), but the reason why you are here today is because you are looking for a weight loss success story where people take weight off and they actually keep it off. Let’s face it, the only weight loss success story you really want to hear about is yours.

What Works and What doesn’t

After reviewing and experimenting with hundreds of diets in thousands of people, I can tell you something that may surprise you: All Diets Work. From Akins, to South Beach, The Hollywood Diet, The Cabbage Soup Diet, Master Cleanse, yes, even the Grapefruit diet… they all work.

The question is which of these diets work in the long term? Which of these diets can people lose weight and keep it off?

I have two standards for deciding if a diet works in the long term.

• The first is can people actually do the diet long term? When I ask this question of the above diets, most fail. It is hard to eat only bacon and butter (so Atkins and South Beach are out), likewise Master Cleanse, Cabbage and Grapefruit diets can only be done short term. And as far as I can figure out, the Hollywood diet is just a “sell you another product” diet and no one has the money to keep doing that very long.

• The second question I ask is: are you healthier on the diet? Once again, Atkins and South Beach are the first to drop off because eating nothing but high fat and protein foods will do nothing for your longevity. Each of the other diets (Cabbage, Master and Grapefruit) all appear to be healthier, but they are unsustainable.

What’s Left?

After much experimenting I can tell you that the only long term weight loss success stories come from people who make a life change, they change the way that they are eating and living their lives. They realize that their weight gain is a product of the environment that they live in and that going on a short-term diet does nothing because as soon as they are off the diet and back to eating what they normally eat, the weight comes right back. The problem with weight gain is the way that we live our lives and our lives have to change if we are going to lose weight.

Here are the elements of that life change:

• Exercise: A successful diet is one that starts with exercise. It doesn’t have to be anything too strenuous at first, but you do have to commit time to your effort (at least 30-40 minutes a day).
• Vegetables: You have to eat more fruits and vegetables. I suggest eating around 80 to 90 percent of your diet as fruits and vegetables. If that sounds like a lot, it is. Make changes slowly and add as many fruits and vegetables into your diet as possible.
• Fat and Protein: I think humans are designed to eat protein, just not as much as we do. I think that eating meat should be a once-a-week activity and not an every-meal activity.
• Sugar: You got to kick sugar and the foods that act like sugar. Check out my program for kicking sugar: 30 Sugar Free Days.
• Diary: Dairy foods are the worst foods you can eat if you want to lose weight. Drop the dairy and drop the weight.

Remember, if you want to lose weight you are going to have to change the way that you are living. Your own personal weight loss success story comes from realizing where you are and where you want to be and making steps towards that every day.

Related Posts

• Diet Success Stories (2)
• Insulin Resistance (2)
• How Many Calories Should I Eat to Lose Weight? (1)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)
• Metabolic Syndrome (0)

Have you ever wondered which is worse: fat or sugar?

You have probably heard that carbohydrates can lead to weight gain (and this might lead you to think that sugar is worse) but you may have also heard that fat can lead to weight gain (and this may lead you thinking fat is worse). With these two thoughts in your head you can find yourself bouncing from a low-fat diet to a low-carb diet and then back to a low-fat diet.

If you are feeling confused about which is worse (fat or sugar) you are not alone.

This debate has been going on for a long time and has created a truckload of books, none of which address the real issue. Here is the truth: both sugar and fat are bad for you and to make matters worse they often work together to lengthen your waistline and shorten your lifeline.

To understand why fat and sugar work against your health plan you first have to understand what goes on in your body when you eat each of these foods and then understand what happens when you combine them.

Fat to Fat

There are two reasons why fat adds to your weight.

The first is that fat is very energy dense. If you body decides to use the fat you eat as fuel then it only takes a little bit of fat to create a lot of energy. Unfortunately for all of us, our bodies rarely use the fat we eat as fuel (read on).

The second reason dietary fat lead to body fat is that changing food fat into energy takes energy.  In order to use fat as an energy source, your body has to change fat into glucose (the basic energy source in your body). Your body really doesn’t want to spend any energy it doesn’t have to spend changing fat into energy, so it is much simpler to just store that fat.

Sugar Equals Fat

Sugar is also turned into fat in your body because your body doesn’t like to waste energy. When you drink a soda, or eat something sugary, your body cannot possibly use all that sugar energy. Your body’s solution to extra sugar energy running around the body is to store it. This is why low-carb diets work, if you keep your blood sugar low then you also keep your body from converting blood sugar into body fat.

Remember that sugar itself is easy to turn into fat, but there are also foods that act like sugar that will just as easily be turned into fat.

The Double Whammy

To understand why both sugar and fat are bad (especially when they are combined) you have to put yourself in the position of being the energy tsar of your body. Imagine if it was your job to determine where you get energy for the whole body. Your job (as tsar) is to make sure that there is enough glucose running around in your blood to meet all your body’s needs.

Now that you are in charge of energy distribution, imagine what happens after you go to your favorite hamburger restaurant.

The first thing you are served at the restaurant is a soda. It takes only a few minutes after you drink that soda for your blood sugar to rise. If you are the energy tsar and are looking at the energy needs of the body then you are happy that you now how enough energy to run the whole body.

But here is what happens: you keep drinking that soda waiting for your food to arrive and now the as the energy tsar you have to start making choices. What do you do with that extra sugar? You are probably going to start storing it, but it gets even more complicated when you start to eat the rest of the meal.

Here comes fat from the hamburger, French fries and cheese you are eating. Is there any way that you are going to spend the energy to convert that fat into energy? No, you have more energy than you need because of the soda you drank earlier. If you are a smart energy tsar, you are going to simply store that fat as fat and then start storing the extra sugar (now from desert) as fat too.

Which is Worse, Fat or Sugar?

The question about which is worse (fat or sugar) is that they both cause us problems and especially when they are combined in a meal. The low-carb people got it half right and the low-fat people got it half right. If you want to lose weight, you need to find a diet plan that avoids both fats and sugars.

Related Posts

• Which is Better, A Low-Carb or High-Carb Diet? (0)
• Vegan Diet Plan (12)
• When it Comes to Weight Loss, Forget Calories (16)
• Diet Success Stories (2)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)

This question comes across my desk quite often: which is better, a low-carb or a high-carb diet? Because I am so squarely against sugar and foods that act like sugar people assume that I’m automatically in the low-carb diet group. It is almost as if people think that there are only two ways lose weight, you either go with the low-carb (and high fat and protein) crowd, or you go with high-carb (and low fat and protein) crowd. Both of these groups miss the point altogether. Of the two, I would have to say that the high-carb believers have it the most wrong. Humans are not meant to eat grains or sugar in any large amount (if at all). Yes, it is carbohydrates (sugars and foods that act like sugar) that add to your waistline, but that doesn’t mean that the bulk of the rest of your diet should be fat and protein.

What the Low-Carb Lovers Get Right

The low-carb crowd understands that eating carbohydrates adds to our weight. There is no doubt about the connection between eating sugars and foods that act like sugar and the fact that as we eat these simple sugars they get added to our waistlines in the form of fat.

The reasons why the body stores excess sugar are many:

• The first has to do with our basic energy needs. Your body runs on glucose and is the major energy source for all of the cells in your body. Your liver makes the decision of what to do with the energy in your body. But when you are eating sugars and foods that act like sugar all the time your liver has no need to (say) use fat as an energy source because it has all of its energy needs already met. It also means that your body will not convert other sugars (such as fructose) into energy because it is easier to store fructose as fat than it is to convert it into glucose.

• The second has to do with the elevation of insulin (the hormone that controls blood sugar) every time you eat something sugary. Insulin and produces another molecule called glycerol-3-phospate (G3P) and it is G3P that allows fats to go from the blood stream into the fat storage cells. Every time your blood sugar rises, you are creating the conditions for fat storage.

What the Low-Carbers got wrong

When we talk about fat storage high sugar is not the only thing that will raise insulin, protein also increases insulin.[i] There are also other ways to store fat, another molecule called Acylation Stimulating Protein (ASP) will do the same thing as glycerol-3-phospate and it is not dependant on insulin.[ii]

But probably the worst part of the low-carb groups insistence on high protein and high fat meals is that they miss the very foods we should be eating a lot of: vegetables and fruits. The research behind the quality of nutrition in vegetables and fruits cannot be questioned (see my post on Vegetables and Fruits), they are essential for building good, healthy bodies.

If you are on a low-carb diet, try at least eating low-carb vegetables. Don’t miss out on the life-sustaining nutrients of these foods just because you want to lose weight. You don’t want to lose weight and give yourself other problems. Here is a list of the lowest carb veggies:

• Asparagus
• Bean sprouts
• Beet greens
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Cucumber
• Endive lettuce
• Mustard greens
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Swiss chard
• Watercress.

[ii] Redinger RN. The physiology of adiposity. J Ky Med Assoc. 2008 Feb;106(2):53-62.

Related Posts

• Which is Worse, Fat or Sugar? (0)
• Diet Success Stories (2)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)
• Insulin Resistance (2)
• How Many Calories Should I Eat to Lose Weight? (1)

There have been a lot of recent diet books that include a vegan diet plan (and for good reason).

If you are like most people, you have been on a weight roller coaster for as long as you can remember. Sometimes your weight goes up and sometimes your weight goes down, but (just like being on a roller coaster) you are really not in that much control. That can all change if you make the switch to a vegan diet plan.

A vegan is someone who doesn’t eat any meat or meat products (including eggs or dairy products) and while it may sound a bit restrictive it is actually close to what you should be eating and it is a great way to lose weight.

Why Do Vegan Diet Plans Work?

The reason why vegan diet plans work is because they eliminate the largest source of fat in your diet (milk and meat). You probably already know that fat calories are highly dense and that the more fat you eat the fatter you are likely to get.

You may also know to stay away from butter and oils when you are trying to lose weight, but what you may not know is that most of the fat in your diet comes from eating dairy foods (milk, cheese, yogurt…) and meat (chicken, fish, beef…). Yes, even low-fat dairy foods are still very high in fat.

The other reason why a vegan diet plan works is because your body thrives on low calorie and high nutrient foods (otherwise known as fruits and vegetables).

Go a Step Further

Don’t fall into the trap that many people fall into when they become a vegan or vegetarian and start eating nothing but grains. Grains, while okay for you, can act very much like sugar (see my post of Foods That Act Like Sugar) when you eat them.

In case you didn’t know, sugars are also easily turned into fat in your body, so when you are thinking about a diet plan, make sure you don’t fall into the trap of avoiding fats but then eating a lot of sugar. You can avoid both sugars and foods that act like sugars by going on a 30 day adventure I call the 30 Sugar Free Days Program, check it out.

Long Term?

I get this question a lot: “Should I be a vegan for the rest of my life?” While this is a bit of a hard question to answer (because everyone is different), here is what I think.

You should be a non-grain vegan about 90 percent of the time. That means you eat nothing but fruits and vegetables most of the time and about 10 percent of your diet is for grains and meat products. People can follow this diet by only eating meat on the weekend, or only eating a small portion of meat or grain at dinner. You decide what works for you.

But if you want to lose weight fast, the best method is to go 100 percent non-grain vegan and then once you arrive at your ideal weight, then start experimenting with adding back small portions of meat and grains.

Here are some great vegan (or mostly vegan) diet books:

• Breaking the Food Seduction by Neal Barnard MD (St. Martins’ Griffin Press, 2003).
• Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman MD (Little, Brown and Company, 2003).
• Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, by Caldwell B Esselstyn. (Avery Press, 2007).
• The China Study, by Colin Campbell (Benbella Books, 2006).
• The Engine 2 Diet, by Rip Esselstyn (Wellness Central, 2009).

Related Posts

• Which is Worse, Fat or Sugar? (0)
• When it Comes to Weight Loss, Forget Calories (16)
• Diet Success Stories (2)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)
• Insulin Resistance (2)

Low glycemic foods are the best foods to eat if you are trying to control your blood sugar, but it also works well to eat low glycemic foods if your goal is weight loss.

But just what are low glycemic foods?

The Glycemic Index

The glycemic index is a listing of foods and how each of those foods increases our blood sugar. As you might imagine, eating straight sugar increases your blood sugar but here is the strange thing: other foods increase your blood sugar too (some even more than eating straight sugar).

The glycemic index came about when a scientist decided to check someone’s blood sugar and then give them a single food and then test to see what that food did to their blood sugar. It is a simple enough experiment, but it yielded some surprising results. Foods that we thought would increase blood sugar did, but some of those foods act more sugary that sugar itself. Part of this has to do with what we are measuring and part of it has to do with how readily available the sugars in foods are when we eat them.

Here is a breakdown of a typical glycemic index chart:

What you will notice about the chart is that most of high and medium glycemic index foods are grains, sugars and simple starches. These are the foods you want to avoid

Low Glycemic Foods

Here is the list of the some of the low glycemic foods (for a database, go to www.glycemicindex.com )

GRAINS

• Pearl barley

Grain Products

• Fettuccine, egg
• Lasagna
• Linguine
• Macaroni
• Ravioli
• Spaghetti

FRUITS (RAW)

• Apple
• Blackberries
• Blueberries
• Cherries
• Dried apricots
• Grapes
• Kiwi fruit
• Mango
• Orange
• Peach
• Pear
• Pineapple
• Plums
• Raspberries
• Strawberries

VEGETABLES

• Avocados
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Cabbage
• Carrots, raw
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chard
• Eggplant
• Garlic
• Kale
• Onions
• Radish
• Sprouts
• Squash (most)
• Tomato Juice
• Tomato soup
• Tomatoes
• Yam (Canada)

Lettuce of all kinds

• Green leaf
• Iceberg
• Red leaf
• Romaine

Mixed greens

• Arugula
• Beet greens
• Collard Greens
• Dandelion greens
• Endive
• Escarole
• Radicchio
• Red mustard
• Spinach

BEANS

• Baked Beans
• Black eyed beans
• Chickpeas (Garbanzo beans)
• Hummus (chickpea salad dip)
• Lentils, red
• Pinto beans
• Red Kidney Beans
• Romano beans
• Soya beans

DAIRY

• Full-fat cows’ milk
• Cheese (most)

NUTS AND SEEDS

• Almonds
• Cashews
• Macadamia
• Mixed nuts
• Peanut butter (no sugar)
• Peanuts
• Pecans
• Pistachio
• Sunflower seeds
• Walnuts

PROTEIN

• Beef
• Chicken
• Eggs
• Fish
• Pork
• Poultry (all)
• Sausages
• Wild game

MUSHROOMS

• Maitake
• Reishi
• Shitake

Related Posts

• Diet Success Stories (2)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)
• Insulin Resistance (2)
• Sugar Free Diet for Diabetics (0)
• What is Eating Below the Glycemic Index? (11)

I’m often asked what the best way to lose weight fast is and while you might think that there is some mystery about how to lose weight fast there actually isn’t. While I can give you all sorts of complicated formulas for what you need to do to lose the weight you want to lose, I can also make it very simple: Eat what humans are supposed to eat.

The million dollar question, though, is what are humans supposed to eat?

Stop the insanity!

Somehow, people who live in so-called advanced societies have gotten far away from the foods that they should be eating. Almost everything that you put in your mouth can add weight to your hips, thighs (and other places you don’t want to think about).

The reason why this has happened is because the people who make your food have created foods that cater to your taste buds and not to your body. We are all stuck in this sugary-salty-fatty-taste-land where everything we eat makes our taste buds go gaga but our waistlines go  large.

What you want to notice about what I just wrote is this: “the people who make your food.” Because (if you are like most people) you make less and less of your own food; other people are making what you eat. Even if you do cook at home, the meal usually starts with something that comes in a package. This wouldn’t really be a problem except that the people who make your foods want you to eat more and that means making the food taste good.

These foods are full of fat, sugar and salt and these can contribute to your weight gain, but let’s look closer at the three reasons for weight gain.

Reasons why you gain weight

Here is why you are gaining weight when you eat the foods that other people make:

• Fatty foods: many of the foods that you eat are high in fat. While you might recognize that foods such as oils and butter are fat, you might not realize that most of the fat you eat comes in the form of animal proteins and dairy foods.
• Sugar into fat: sugar is easily turned into fat in your body, the worst offender is high fructose corn syrup and soda.
• Lack of exercise: You know that you are probably not as active as you used to be and this can have a dramatic impact on your metabolism.

What you should eat to lose weight

Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but the best way to lose weight fast is to eat only fruits and vegetables. But let me warn you that anyone who is now eating the Standard American Diet (SAD diet) and tries to eat only fruits and vegetables is in for a world of hurt. The reason for this is that your digestive system is not ready for such a dramatic change and will need time to adjust to your new diet. While I don’t believe that you should only eat fruits and vegetables, they should surely be a large part of your diet (80-90 percent).

Here is how to make the transition:

• Take away sugar and foods that act like sugar. I have a program that will help you: 30 Sugar Free Days Program. Doing this program alone can help you lose a ton of weight.
• Start to increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables you eat every day. Make sure every meal has at least two vegetables or fruits. Focus on the green leafy vegetables such as kale, salad greens, arugula, Bok Choy, endive, collard greens, spinach, mustard greens, lettuce (all types) and whatever you like.
• Remove dairy from your diet. This step alone drops a huge percentage of fat out of your diet. Worried about getting enough calcium? Check out my post on Calcium Myths.
• Eat meat or eggs only on the weekends. This will substantially reduce the amount of protein and fat in your diet (therefore reducing calories).
• Snack on fruits and vegetables.

The best way to lose weight fast is to eat the way humans are meant to eat: a diet high in fruits and vegetables. The biggest bonus to this way of eating is that you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight.

Related Posts

• How to Break a Sweet Tooth Addiction (0)
• Why Does Sugar Give Me a Headache? (34)
• Insulin Resistance (2)
• Is Everything That Tastes Good Bad For Me? (3)
• Diet Success Stories (2)