Myriam,
I am sorry.
I think a lot of people experience the same you do.
They know how to lose weight, but crave food, and so their knowledge does not help them lose weight.
Some people in your situation find a high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet effective.
Eliminating carbohydrates, especially refined carbohydrates, eliminates their cravings and causes weight loss.
There is a new book called “Why We Get Fat and What to Do about It” by the scientific journalist, Gary Taubes.
It is about how carbohydrates are the problem.
———
Michael Eades, MD, the author of several books about low-carb diets such as “Protein Power”, wrote a good article describing the book “Why We Get Fat” here:
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/why-we-get-fat/
Here is how Dr. Eades summarizes what Gary Taubes writes in his book.
He explains why low carb diets work, and why fat people are still hungry even though they have plenty of fat on their body.
It’s all about insulin.
When insulin levels go up, it tells fat cells, “Don’t release any fat right now because I have to burn these carbs first.”
So when people snack on carbs all day long—chips, cookies, crackers, soda, candy, bread, rice, pasta, etc—it suppressed the burning of fat.
And fat people have constantly elevated insulin level, so this prevents the fat cells from releasing fat for energy.
As he notes in the article, it is like having lots of money in the bank, but your ATM card does not work. The same with fat people.
That is why Dr. Eades and Gary Taubes argue that low-carb diets are the answer for fat people to lose weight, because it lowers their insulin levels, and allows fat to be released from fat cells to be burned.
It seems that most people believe that carbs are easily converted into fat, and this is why carbs make you fat, but this is NOT true.
Carbs are NOT easily converted into fat.
The reason they make you fat is because they cause insulin levels to go up, which suppresses the burning of fat.
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I encourage you to read the article.
Here is Dr. Eades’s and Gary Taubes’s email addresses in case you want to ask him questions.
He has helped plenty of patients lose weight by using low-carb diets.
Michael Eades MD, & Mary Dan Eades, MD
369 Montezuma Ave Ste 314
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(303) 530-5555 phone
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
————
Gary Taubes
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
author of “Why We Get Fat” and “Good Calories, Bad Calories”.
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High-fat, low-carb diets have been known to cause weight loss for a long time.
Here is a section from Chapter 15 on Obesity from the 1976 book “Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness” by Broda Barnes, MD, PhD.
He successfully helped patients lose weight using a high-fat, low-carb diet for several decades.
——Quote from Dr. Barnes’s book——-
The eighteen-year-old girl who weighed 295 pounds to begin with, remained on this diet in the hospital for nine additional months.
Her total weight loss was 110 pounds.
She lost most of it from between her knees and shoulders.
Her abdomen and hips showed the most remarkable loss.
And her face was not drawn and haggard as is the case so often with people losing so much weight.
Eleven months after she went back home, she was kind enough to send me a snapshot.
She now weighed 137 pounds, was well proportioned, and her face still was not drawn.
She had lost 48 more pounds at home on her own, knowing what to eat.
She no longer needed a bed under which to hide from company.
The course of her life had been changed.
I have prescribed this diet for patients for more than thirty-five years and the results have been consistent.
There have been no patients who did not lose weight as long as they stayed on the diet.
It is a convenient diet since it contains food that might be prepared for the rest of the family.
When the desired amount of weight has been lost, enough carbohydrate can be added to the diet to maintain weight at that level and that usually means adding a piece of toast for breakfast and a dessert at the other two meals.
There is none of the sudden great shift in eating with starvation or crash diets, and it is necessary only to drop the carbohydrates again if weight begins to accumulate.
——- End of Quote——
If you email me, I will be glad to send you this chapter from his book where he describes exactly his diet and the evidence of its effectiveness for many years ago.
My email address is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Larry Hobbs