1 IT''S NOT FAT I have excellent news. It''s something you haven''t heard before. It''s very important. * You''re not nearly as overweight as you may think. Much of your weight isn''t even fat. It''s false fat--the bloating and swelling caused by allergy-like food reactions--and you can shed it almost immediately. * This false fat is not your fault. You are not a glutton.
You''re not lazy. You just have a very common metabolic problem: food reactions. * You can solve this metabolic problem . The problem is not permanent, and it''s not hard to correct. You can solve it over the next few days. It need never return. * When you do solve this problem, you''ll regain your power over food. As your false fat fades, so will your food cravings and certain metabolic disorders (such as hormone imbalances).
Without these food cravings and metabolic disorders, you''ll begin to lose your true fat, steadily and surely. Even if you now lack full control over your eating habits, you can take charge again by correcting your food reactions. You can start taking charge today. I urge you to carefully consider this great news. It will be your key to having complete power over what you eat, and over the biochemical reactions that foods cause in your body. When you have this power, you will have an entirely new way to solve your weight problem. You have nothing to gain but knowledge, and nothing to lose but the false fat that''s hurting your appearance and the true fat that''s hurting your health. When you conquer your food reactions, your appearance, your health, and your zest for life will improve immeasurably.
Things will get better because you will make them get better. You will finally have that power. It''s true: Knowledge is power. You really must use the power that this knowledge provides. You owe it to yourself. You''re worth it. And here is why you probably will use this power: Using it will be more pleasant than not using it. For the first time in your life, you are going to enjoy being on a diet.
In fact, like most of my patients, you will almost forget that you are on a diet, because the False Fat Diet is quite different from every other diet you''ve ever been on. It is not based on reducing the quantity of your food. It is based on improving the quality of your food. This diet is not even ultimately intended to make you thin--it is intended to make you healthy. As I often tell my patients, "If you strive for thin, you''ll never win. Strive for health and thin will follow." Thus, in the conventional sense of the word, this is not even a diet. It is an eating strategy .
It''s a scientifically designed method of giving you power over food, so that you can make smart food choices. No one else can make these choices for you, because each of your food choices must be carefully individualized. Every person reacts differently to different foods. You are a unique being with your own special biochemistry and your own one-of-a-kind environment and activities. There is only one you, doing what you do, eating what you eat, and meeting the demands that you meet. Nonetheless, every other diet you''ve ever been on has been designed for other people by other people. They have been one-size-fits-all diets, and that approach simply doesn''t work. This time, with The False Fat Diet , you''ll help design your own personalized diet, free of your own reactive foods.
This diet will be your diet. Yours alone. That''s why it will work. With the help of this book, you''ll learn about the qualities and chemistries of various foods. More important, though, you''ll learn about your own unique body. You''ll learn which foods are good for you and which aren''t--and I promise some surprises. Right now, you may know which foods are healthy for most people. But if you''re basing your own food choices on just this knowledge, you may be doing yourself more harm than good--because you are not most people.
You''re you, and the only diet you''ll ever fully succeed on will be your own individualized diet, free of the particular foods that are healthy for most people, but harmful for you. After years of trying unsuccessfully to lose weight, you may be feeling confused, powerless, frustrated--and hungry. Don''t despair! Many of my patients felt like that before they tried this approach. But most of them have succeeded beyond their dreams. Now it''s your turn. It has taken me approximately 20 years to develop and refine the False Fat Diet. During this time, I have placed hundreds of overweight patients on the diet and have consistently achieved good, and often remarkable, results. The False Fat Diet is based upon a simple, inarguable medical fact: When people regularly eat foods to which they are reactive, they invariably suffer (1) tissue swelling, (2) abdominal bloating, and (3) metabolic disturbances that cause weight gain.
The tissue swelling and abdominal bloating create a false fat that looks exactly like fat, but is not "true fat," or adipose tissue. This false fat often adds the appearance of an extra 10 to 25 pounds. The food reactions that cause false fat are almost never corrected by conventional weight loss diets. In addition, metabolic disturbances caused by food reactions create not just false fat, but also true fat. They create excess adipose tissue by disrupting the metabolism, by disturbing hormonal balance, and by creating intense food cravings. Millions of people have become obese because of these factors. When my patients go on the False Fat Diet, most of them lose the false fat of bloating and swelling very quickly and then lose their extra adipose tissue gradually and steadily. Over the years, I have seen patients try to lose weight with a number of other approaches, but no other weight control diet has been nearly as effective as my False Fat Diet.
Other diets fail to keep weight off permanently because they ignore the terrible burden that food reactions place upon the body. When this burden is removed, most patients respond wonderfully well. Clinical, controlled studies support my belief in the power of this diet. One important study is detailed on page 15. They irrefutably demonstrate that many people who have failed on other diets succeed with this approach. Food reactions are not the only reason people gain weight. However, they are an extremely important reason--one that has gone largely unreported, except in the medical literature. In actuality, an estimated 80% to 90% of all significantly overweight people suffer from these reactions and can lose weight if the condition is corrected.
Food reactions consist of food allergies and food sensitivities , which are similar to allergies. Some doctors refer to all food reactions as allergies, but most physicians feel that the term reactions is more accurate, because it''s more inclusive. Strictly speaking, classic food allergies are relatively rare. Food sensitivities, however, are extremely common. The incidence of food allergies and sensitivities has recently begun to increase dramatically for several reasons. The primary reason is that we eat too many staples, such as wheat, eggs, and milk, which exhaust our bodies'' abilities to digest them. Also, we eat too many packaged, processed foods, which are loaded with reactive fillers and chemicals, such as corn syrup, wheat gluten, and MSG. Obesity and digestive problems, both very common health problems nowadays, also contribute to food reactions.
The increasing incidence of food reactions is mirrored by a recent sharp increase in obesity, which rose from 25% of the population in 1985 to 33% today. If this rate continues, by the year 2030 most people in America will be obese. Childhood obesity has doubled since 1980. Even now, 60% of the population, while not obese, is overweight. Currently, obesity kills 300,000 Americans each year--more people than any other factor except smoking. Overconsumption also stresses digestive functions and leads to inefficient breakdown of foods and malabsorption of large molecules of food, which sets up food reactions. Therefore, I believe that the important effect that food reactions have upon weight control and digestive health must be brought to the attention of the American public and the world. At this point in the history of public health, few things are more vital.
Why This Diet Has Been Successful The False Fat Diet has been successful because it corrects a serious biological flaw that has been proven to trigger weight gain. Throughout the history of medical weight control, the most successful diets have been those that did not radically restrict calories, but instead corrected the metabolic problems that most often cause weight gain. For example, the Sugar Busters diet helped people by showing them how to correct the biological f.