The 17 Day Diet (5 page)

Pardon my assumption, but I think you, like thousands of other people I’ve talked to, believe that to lose weight, you have to subsist on carrot and celery sticks. But the old “carry around some celery sticks to munch on” mentality is gone forever. Aren’t you relieved?

There are hundreds of different vegetables you can eat, even if you have to hide them in soups or spaghetti sauce. And you can pretty much eat your way through a couple of bushels without gaining any weight. If you want to change your body and get leaner, stronger and healthier, you have to eat vegetables. A March 1999 study conducted by the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at Tufts University found that the dieters who ate the widest variety of vegetables had the least amount of body fat. You need to eat vegetables if you want to get thin. Vegetables = thin. No vegetables = flabby.

Many of my patients have actually acquired a taste for fresh green leaves with cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, carrots, mushrooms and all sorts of veggies. Some of them have even turned themselves into health nuts who only dip their forks into the salad dressing to really slash caloric intake.

There are more benefits. Eat more vegetables and you will:

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Bubble with energy all day.

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Improve your digestion and elimination, because veggies are high in fiber. High-fiber foods control appetite and help prevent excess calories from being stored as fat.

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Have glowing skin. Your skin loves vitamins and minerals, and you get most of those nutrients from veggies.

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Help prevent major killers like cancer and heart disease, because veggies are rich in disease-fighting antioxidants.

So yes, you heard me: eat your vegetables!

Forgo High-Sugar Fruits

Fruit may seem like a friendly diet food because it’s low-fat, but here’s an example of how having too much of a good thing can sabotage your diet. Certain fruits like pineapple, watermelon and bananas are high in sugar, and they don’t promote fat loss. Too much sugar from any source can goad your body into converting more of what you eat into thigh-padding pounds.

I’m not going to ask you to shun all fruit. Just be moderate in how much you eat—two servings a day, only. On the first two Cycles of the 17 Day Diet, you’ll stick to berries, apples, oranges and grapefruit, which are lower in sugar. By eating like this, a fruit tooth will replace the sweet one that rules your mouth.

Curb the Carbs

Carbohydrates are energy foods. Without them, you’d get fuzzy headed, cranky and very tired, and no one will want to be around you. The low-carb diet craze deemed all carbs evil and fattening. People abandoned all forms of fruit, rice, and pasta and ate mostly protein. The problem is, you can only eat so much protein and fat before you start to get nauseated by it.

Yet, not all carbs are the same. There are bad ones—stuff made mostly out of sugar or over-refined like white bread, white rice, and white pasta. Sugar and sweets are the worst. Consider this: we are eating over twelve times the amount of sugar our great-grandparents consumed. That’s roughly equivalent to 160 pounds of sugar per person per year. Now, imagine filling up your living room or garage with 160 of those one-pound packages you buy at the grocery store. Really get a mental picture of it. Let’s say you don’t eat as much as others, and cut it in half. It’s still a hefty pile, isn’t it? You see, most people have no idea that they’re eating so much sugar. Much of it is hidden in processed, packaged foods we eat, as well as in beverages.

Depending on which Cycle you are in on the 17 Day Diet, you get to eat good carbs: fruit, vegetables, whole grains—anything that hasn’t been stripped of its nutrition.

So the type of carbs you eat is important. But so is the amount. You can go overboard on carbs, even the good kind, and this can be devastating to your natural metabolic processes. Therefore, the 17 Day Diet is low-to-moderate in carbohydrates.

Many people are walking around completely unaware that they may be “carbohydrate sensitive.” When you get carbohydrate sensitive, your body can no longer burn fat effectively, and a good deal of the carbohydrates you eat are packed away as fat. Carbohydrate sensitivity occurs when:

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You habitually eat too much sugar and refined carbohydrates (crackers, bagels, pasta, sugary cereals and desserts, white rice and white bread). Unfortunately, this sensitivity increases with age. It can also lead to insulin resistance, a condition just shy of type 2 diabetes. In insulin resistance, cells don’t recognize glucose anymore, so glucose is barred from entering cells for energy. Your blood sugar tends to rise, you are more fatigued, and you gain more weight mostly around your waist and chest area.

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You suffer from chronic stress. Our bodies deal with stress by raising cortisol levels, a hormone secreted from our adrenal glands. This, in turn, triggers the over-release of glucose and insulin into the bloodstream. The result is insulin resistance. To your physiology, being under chronic stress is the same as if you ate cake all day long.

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You’re a woman. While men burn carbohydrates for energy, women tend to store them as fat. This is especially true as women age. Menopausal women are more prone. They don’t have enough estrogen stores to deal with cortisol and its tendency to make the body store fat. Chalk it up to female biology.

CHECK UP: Are You Carbohydrate Sensitive?

R
ead through the statements below and circle “yes” or “no” depending on which response fits you best.

1.
I crave carbohydrates and sugary foods much of the time.

Yes     No

2.
I have been overweight for much of my life and have struggled to lose weight.

Yes     No

3.
I am a woman and over forty.

Yes     No

4.
I suffer from chronic or bouts of depression and compulsive overeating.

Yes     No

5.
I sometimes suffer from nervousness, irritability.

Yes     No

6.
When I eat sugar, I get tired and groggy, and I don’t think as clearly.

Yes     No

7.
I reach for carbohydrates over protein most or all of the time.

Yes     No

8.
My diet consists of a lot of processed foods like white bread, pastas, sweets or sugary cereals.

Yes     No

9.
I don’t exercise very much or at all.

Yes     No

If you answered “yes” to three or more statements, you may be carbohydrate sensitive. Following the 17 Day Diet will help you by gradually reintroducing good carbs into your diet through each Cycle. Beans and lentils (legumes) do not raise blood sugar or insulin. Starchy vegetables, such as squash, corn, peas and yams, and fruits, such as oranges and apples, are also good and should be okay. So are brown rice, yams, oatmeal and other high-fiber cereals. Limit your servings to no more than two a day. More on this in Cycle 3.

Natural and unprocessed carbs are found in the 17 Day Diet in the vegetables and fruits allowed you. By Cycle 3, you’ll get to introduce other carbs into the diet, including brown rice, oatmeal, whole grains, yams, potatoes, and other natural, high-fiber carbs.

Choose Fats that Burn Fat

Fat in the diet has been blamed for many modern lifestyle diseases: obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and hypertension. Not all fats are created equal, however. Most people know by now they should limit intake of saturated fats, found in animal foods, and avoid trans fats entirely. Processed foods are loaded with trans fats.

Polyunsaturated fats, found mostly in fish and vegetable oils, are what I call “friendly fats.” They are credited with keeping your skin supple and youthful, reducing harmful levels of cholesterol, lowering high blood pressure, contributing to brain and eye development and a host of other health benefits almost akin to a panacea. They also promote weight loss because they keep you feeling fuller for a longer period of time. This keeps you from eating too many calories.

Omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish, boost your metabolism. Adding some weekly servings of fish high in omega-3s (salmon, tuna, mackerel or sardines), while reducing calories, helped overweight people lose more weight than reducing calories alone, according to a study published in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
. The researchers concluded that the omega-3s helped subjects burn more calories. If you don’t like fish, take 3 grams of fish oil supplements daily.

Vitamins from Food

You’re better off getting your vitamins from food. The body absorbs them more easily, and you’ll just feel healthier. Required by your body in tiny amounts, vitamins play important roles in the metabolism of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The vitamins you need daily are found in the 17 Day Diet as follows:

Vitamin A:
Green leafy vegetables, carrots, yams, fruits and eggs.

Vitamin B-complex:
Protein foods, whole grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables.

MISTER M.D., CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME

Are there natural supplements I can take instead of drugs to help lower my cholesterol?

Yes! A strict diet can probably reduce your cholesterol by 10 to 15 percent. Most docs agree that diet works best when combined with cholesterol-reducing drugs like statin drugs. Statins can drop LDL and total cholesterol by as much as a third by inhibiting the production of cholesterol by the liver. But these drugs come with a slew of potential side effects. The most common side effect is muscle aches. Other complaints include headaches, nausea, weakness, upset stomach and joint pain. I see these problems all the time.

Here’s what I do for patients who can’t tolerate statins but need to lower their cholesterol. I prescribe a combination of niacin (a B vitamin), fish oil and flaxseed oil in these amounts:

• Niacin:
250 milligrams a day for two or more weeks until they experience no flushing, which is a common side effect of niacin. After two weeks, I increase their dose to 500 milligrams a day. Once they tolerate that dose well, I increase the dose again to 750 milligrams daily.

• Fish oil:
3 grams a day.

• Flaxseed oil:
1 tablespoon a day (this can be part of a salad dressing.)

All three substances are natural supplements you can purchase at a health food store or your pharmacy. The combination works powerfully to lower cholesterol, but always check with your own physician before self-medicating with supplements.

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Vitamin C:
Fruits and vegetables.

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Vitamin D:
Low-fat dairy foods, fish.

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Vitamin E:
Whole grains, green leafy vegetables and eggs.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a multivitamin-mineral pill daily. Like a lot of doctors, I recommend to adults that they take Flintstones vitamins—two a day. But no more than that, or you’ll find yourself trying to stop your car with your bare feet.

Mighty Minerals

Minerals are among the heaviest substances ever, second only to Orson Welles. But of course, minerals don’t make you heavy. They help you get thin, especially calcium, which may speed up the rate at which your body burns fat.