Most popular diets, especially the ones that claim to work for fast weight loss, depend on reduced calories to cause the fat to burn off. Many researchers have found that the fat almost never stays off when these 'well-balanced' low-calorie diets are used.
However, there is an 'unbalanced' diet that has been shown to work for fast and permanent weight loss, without making people hungry.
Ever since 1825, when Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote a famous book about food called The Physiology of Taste, the most successful therapeutic diets for obesity have been based on the idea that excess body fat was caused by eating too many starchy and floury foods.
Our great-grandmothers would have agreed, because this was considered common sense until about 40 years ago. Diets that work for permanent weight loss restrict the refined carbohydrates, like sugar and flour, without restricting the number of calories consumed as protein or fat.
In 1882 a doctor named William Harvey, who had recently attended a lecture by a famous Paris expert in diabetes, became famous himself by curing a patient of his obesity. His patient, William Banting, wrote a wildly popular pamphlet describing his successful weight loss using the prescribed diet of meat, fish, and game, with a bit of toast and fruit.
Dr. Harvey knew that grain fed to animals makes them fat, that diabetic patients are often overweight, and that a diet based on meat and dairy products would stop the secretion of sugar in the urine of diabetic patients and caused their excess weight to melt away.
Dr. Harvey theorized that excess weight and diabetes may be different manifestations of the same syndrome, and he put his new patient on a diet made up of meat, dairy products and low-starch vegetables. As it turns out, this theory turned out to be correct.
The syndrome has been variously called Syndrome X, insulin resistance syndrome, and most recently metabolic syndrome. Peter Cleave was one of the first to publish studies and theories that connected the 'modern' illnesses of diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, gout and hypertension to one disorder caused by the metabolism of refined carbohydrates.
Fattening Experiment Proves Where Body Fat Comes From
In the 1960s Ethan Sims, a researcher, began a series of 'fattening' experiments. Volunteers were asked to eat an excess number of calories, up to 1000 calories over the amount they would normally eat, in order to find out which foods made them fat.
Volunteers who were given only protein foods, or only fatty foods, lost their appetites and were unable to eat enough to increase the calories as much as the researchers wanted, and they were unable to gain weight.
When volunteers were put on diets that included both carbohydrates and fats, they sometimes ate more than 6000 extra calories in a day and still felt hungry. These volunteers had no trouble at all gaining weight. This research showed that there is something about the carbohydrates themselves that allows people to overeat and still remain hungry.
Over the years a number of obesity specialists have prescribed a low-carb diet to their patients, and these diets have met with considerable success, often without reducing the calories. One of the first doctors to write about his success with a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet was Blake Donaldson, author of Strong Medicine,, in which he gave a number of case studies of people losing as much as three pounds a week. Two other doctors who wrote about using similar diets with their patients were Dr. John Yudkin, author of The Slimming Business, and Dr. Atkin's Diet Revolution, written in 1973.
In a recent book by Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories, the history of obesity, diabetes and heart disease research and treatment is thoroughly explained. After spending over 5 years reading the historical and current literature about the treatment of illnesses associated with the metabolic syndrome, Mr. Taubes concluded that the documentation points to a therapeutic diet based on animal foods and fresh vegetables. This is very similar to the original 'fast weight loss diet' that helped William Banting lose weight back in 1882.
You'll find more about the history of the oldest diet for fast weight loss, plus over 200 original articles to help you find a safe and natural solution to your weight problem, at http://www.stress-free-weight-loss.com
AP - Federal food safety officials warned Monday that consumers should stop eating all foods containing pistachios while they figure out the source of a possible salmonella contamination.
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