There’s no doubt about it. Refined foods are making us fat. Once you understand why then you can get serious about a Fat Loss diet and losing weight.
Loaded with calories, refined foods play havoc on our endocrine system. What’s that you ask? I say endocrine system because these foods directly affect not only your pancreas which produces insulin that helps regulate blood sugar but also your fat. Yes your fat is part of the endocrine system and what your putting in your mouth is most likely adding to fat accumulation. I know, say it ain’t so.
When we eat processed carb foods, you know the cakes, cookies, breads, crackers etc your blood sugars go nuts. In response you release insulin which stores FAT. So the more refined carbs you eat the fatter you’ll get. These refined carbs will not only make you fatter, but prevent your body from using all the excess fat you have from being used as fuel! And the more fat you have will make the insulin you have in your body less effective, so guess what? You release more insulin which makes you fatter!!
Break the cycle. The key is more unprocessed foods. You’ve heard about how we’re supposed to eat 25-35 grams of fiber, well that’s probably not enough. Our bodies evolved on a diet that is over 100 grams of fiber a day! When you see most Americans struggle to get even 15 grams of fiber in their diet you see why we’re in trouble. When I say fiber I mean fiber in whole unprocessed fruits and veggies, not the processed crap you buy in the store. No shortcuts. That's your best Fat Loss Program.
Shocking Fat Loss Truths
I am a doctor. What you are about to read may shock you: most physicians do not know how to cure or prevent disease. In medical school, physicians are taught to treat symptoms, not cure disease. If you go to your physician with high blood pressure, your physician will prescribe an anti-hypertensive medication. If your cholesterol is high, you’ll be put on a cholesterol-lowering drug. If you develop diabetes, you’ll be put on a medication to lower your blood sugars. If you’re overweight, your physician may even prescribe a fat blocking medication, such as Orlistat, now available over the counter under the brand name Alli. These prescriptions will help treat symptoms, but they will not cure your disease.
Since you are reading this, I assume that you are interested in losing weight; health may also be a concern. But it doesn’t really matter whether weight loss or health is your main focus, since both are closely related. The rising obesity rate in this country is directly related to rising rates of diabetes, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, cancer and hypertension. All are rooted in a poor diet that no medication or standard medical treatment will ever cure.
Obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes are only symptoms of the real problem, which is our diet. Many of these diseases are rooted in poor nutrition and diet, but most physicians know very little about the relationship between nutrition, disease and weight loss. Consequently, instead of helping you lower your cholesterol through diet, you are given medication. That’s not the physician’s fault; it’s how he or she was trained. But I was not happy with “band-aid” medicine and knew that there must be a better way, so I started focusing on diet and nutrition, and in addition to Emergency Medicine, I earned board certification as a Physician Nutrition Specialist.
My Personal Mission
My education didn’t stop there. I have spent thousands of hours at the Stanford and Harvard Medical Libraries poring over thousands of original clinical and medical studies, learning as much as I could about diet, nutrition and weight loss. I have many file cabinets full of dog-eared and highlighted journal articles. (By the way, I have since begun to store my journal articles on my computer, which is more convenient and saves trees!) I have read and dissected hundreds of diet and weight loss books, checking the references used to support the material. I didn’t just take the claims in these diet books at face value. “When you take care of patients, trust no one,” is a saying we use in medicine, which means: don’t rely on secondhand reports when treating patients. A good doctor reads reports, double-checks X-rays and examines clinical results for himself. Similarly, I set out to verify all the references in these diet and weight loss books for myself. While the articles referenced in some books did support the claims, many times they did not. A lot of these diet books are complete BS, written by gurus with little or no qualifications. Worse yet, many of these diets not only damage your health but wreck your metabolism, causing subsequent weight gain.
My personal mission is to help people lose weight and improve their health and their lives. I lecture whenever I can at hospitals, community centers and small companies to help spread the word. Many physicians are incredibly receptive to my lectures, not so much for patient care, but for their own personal health! Doctors routinely ask me for my PowerPoint presentations, handouts and recipes. That’s encouraging, because I know that the improvements they see in their own health and weight loss will ultimately help their patients.
Armed with the knowledge that food is more powerful than prescription medicine, I also teach cooking classes. As a part of these classes, I develop recipes--which are also part of this ground breaking program--that taste great and promote health and weight loss. Food should inspire the taste buds while serving as powerful medicine that will help cure obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, and curb the need for diabetes medications. These conditions are not diseases as much as they are symptoms of a nutritionally-deficient diet, full of overly processed and refined foods. Most doctors treat symptoms with medications; I cure and prevent disease with superior nutrition and great tasting food.
The medical-industrial establishment makes money by keeping you sick and overweight
It’s a harsh statement, but it’s true. Take it from someone who is on the inside. I have worked for pharmaceutical companies as part of a startup that now delivers drug information to over half the physicians in the United States on handheld devices. Pharma companies are not interested in curing anything. If you were cured, they would be out of business. That’s why Pfizer continues to reap billions of dollars from its cholesterol lowering medication, Lipitor, while the real cure lies at the grocery store.
Atherosclerotic heart disease, commonly referred to as “clogging of the arteries,” is the leading cause of death in the Untied States. Cardiologists treat atherosclerotic heart disease by opening clogged arteries with stents and prescribing a slew of medications, even though medical studies have demonstrated that heart disease can be REVERSED through diet. Still, cardiologists continue to handle heart disease as a plumbing problem rather than a dietary one, not only because they are not trained to help patients with diet, but because they have NO financial incentive to do so. Cardiologists make money by placing stents and running tests, not by providing nutritional counseling. They do not get reimbursed for helping you with your diet, even though that is the only effective way to prevent and cure heart disease.
If you need to be convinced that hospitals are ignorant or don’t care about nutrition, walk into a hospital cafeteria. It’s full of junk food: hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, cakes, cookies. I’m dumbfounded as I see patients -- who have just had a cardiac bypass -- fill up on hamburgers and fries in the hospital cafeteria. What’s more, fast food restaurants are now sprouting up on hospital premises. I remember my utter shock and disbelief at finding a McDonalds at Children’s Texas Hospital while completing a resident rotation at the Texas Medical Center. Are you kidding me? Increasing numbers of children in this country are diabetic and obese, and one of the nation’s top hospitals has a McDonalds?! Unfortunately Texas Children’s Hospital isn’t the exception. Six of the top 16 hospitals ranked by US News and World Report -- Barnes-Jewish Hospital, The Cleveland Clinic, Duke University Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital, UCLA Medical Center, and University of Michigan Medical Center -- have on-site fast food restaurants. And these are the “top” hospitals in the United States.
The Food Industry makes money by keeping you fat and overweight
Food companies are the major reason why the obesity crisis will not be solved in our lifetimes. Understanding how these companies make money is important, because their financial incentives are usually in direct conflict with your health interests. For optimal health and weight loss, it’s best to consume whole, unrefined foods such as fruits, veggies and grains. However, the profit margins on these foods are quite slim, so food companies refine and repackage these foods to turn a fatter profit.
Corn, for instance, doesn’t have much profit potential in its natural, unrefined wholesome state. But once that same corn is refined and processed into high fructose corn syrup, used to make soda and sold as Coca Cola, it becomes a multibillion dollar product that has contributed to the rising obesity crisis in the United States and abroad.
Refining corn into other food products also enlarges profit margins for food companies. For instance, profit margins start fattening when you pulverize and dry corn to make tortillas. Drying and processing the corn even further to make Corn Flakes breakfast cereal really makes the revenue soar. But the fattest profit margins, no pun intended, are enjoyed when companies pulverize the corn, dry it into flakes and then fry the flakes to make corn chips.
Processed food offers fatter profit margins and a longer shelf life to the companies who produce it. Unfortunately, all this processing causes the caloric content to skyrocket. For example, our four ounce serving of corn goes from 90 calories for boiled corn, to 240 calories for a tortilla, to 429 calories for Corn Flakes and to a whopping 627 calories for corn chips! That’s nearly seven times the original caloric content!
Food companies will do whatever it takes to beef up their profits, even if you pay the price with your health. They’ve even developed cleverly designed marketing programs with “low fat,” “low carb,” and now “100 calorie pack” and “organic” food products. But don’t be fooled: these products offer nothing more than false promises and hope, providing little in the way of real weight loss.
“low fat”
Many food companies pay lip service to weight loss by branding their products as weight loss friendly, but don’t buy into the false hope. Remember when it was all about low fat? It may have been a good idea, but the problem was that the food manufacturers replaced the fat with refined carbs. As a general rule of thumb, refined carbs are “white” carbs: white flour, white rice, white pasta and white sugar. These products are nutritional nightmares. To make white flour, for example, whole wheat is stripped of its nutritious outer bran coating and processed into a refined carb. Also, replacing fat with refined carbs doesn’t result in much of a calorie savings; a low fat muffin is 240 calories while a similar full fat muffin is 270 calories. Worse yet, refined carbs fuel cravings by causing your blood sugar levels to skyrocket and then plummet, causing you to eat even more calories!
“low carb”
Following the low fat fad, food manufacturers jumped on the low carb and good carb craze. Replacing sugar with carb substitutes such as Splenda, they promise that you can have your cake and eat it, too. But it’s basically the low fat craze all over again.. A full carb muffin is about 175 calories, and a similar low carb muffin made with Splenda is about 160 calories. Feel ripped off? You should, because it’s all hype. You can try to avoid fat and carbs, but you can’t change the fact that no matter what you substitute, refined products are packed with calories.
“100 calorie packs”
The latest food manufacturing scheme is the 100 calorie packs fad. Walk through a grocery aisle now, and you’ll see sodas, cookies and chips individually packaged in 100 calorie snack sizes. It’s the same junk food, just repackaged into smaller serving sizes. Don’t be fooled by this window dressing. The problem with highly refined, highly processed food is that it packs a lot of calories and fuels hunger and cravings. That’s why portion control will not work. The food manufacturers know that you won’t stop at 100 calories; it’s nothing more than a clever marketing shell game.
The United States Government is in on it, too
The government is not doing you any favors, either. Like most school children, I was taught “good nutrition” with the Food Pyramid. Or rather, like most of you, I was brainwashed by the Food Pyramid. I now realize that the Food Pyramid is a big lie! It was supposedly created to teach you to eat healthy and “stay within your daily calorie needs.” Sadly, if you follow the pyramid, you’ll gain weight, not “stay within your daily calorie needs.” Why? Because food manufacturers, lobbyists and special interest groups are more concerned about making sure their food industry is prominently displayed in the pyramid than they are with your health. The food industry’s strategy is similar to the tobacco industry: “get ‘em while they’re young.” But it doesn’t stop with the Food Pyramid. Look at any Saturday morning children’s programming and you’ll see advertisements for an array of sugar-coated breakfast cereals and calorie packed beverages. The food industry and wealthy Madison Advertising execs target your kids to get them hooked on junk food, ensuring that rates of obesity and diabetes in children and adolescents will continue to rise.
A good example is the dairy industry which claimed that “consuming at least 24 ounces of dairy products every day will cause you to lose weight and body fat based on the special combination of nutrients, including calcium, in dairy products.” Not only were the studies supporting this claim riddled with errors, but they were funded by the dairy industry. Talk about a conflict of interest! Follow-up studies proved this claim false, and the dairy industry was ordered to stop asserting that dairy products will help you lose weight. Why would you think that milk, which was designed by nature to make a calf double in weight in several months, will make you lose weight?
The Best Fat Loss Program
The key to successful fat loss is to eat whole unprocessed fruits and veggies, period. Eat the whole foods we evolved on, and you will stop the blood sugar - insulin - fat accumulation process and lower your calorie intake as well. There are no short cuts, and when all is said and done you'll be surprised at the fat loss power of "whole foods."
To a Slimmer you,
Best
Marc Lawrence, M.D.