The Z Diet

LOSE THE WEIGHT, KEEP IT OFF!By Warren Willey

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2010 J. Warren Willey II
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-3038-6

Contents

Chapter One

Introduction

All diets work, whether low carb, high carb/low fat, low calorie, very low calorie, the hCG diet, or the Maple Syrup Diet. In reality, the problem in our country is not weight loss. Hundreds and thousands of pounds are lost each day. The problem is that, after they lose the weight, most people tend to turn around and find it again. Our problem is weight loss maintenance.

Diets, or any attempts to better one’s health for that matter, come in many forms, fashions, colors, sales pitches, promises, and expenses. They even come with a variety of different delivery systems, including devices and chemicals that go up your backside … The goal with most of them is to help you get healthier, lose fat, gain strength and vitality, and better your sex life. I could go on, but you have all heard the commercials.

Let me give you a brief synopsis of almost every diet book out there – I call it the Bait, Hook, Reel You In, and Use You as Bait for the Bigger Fish – trick: It starts with a chapter or two of what I refer to as the ‘warm-fuzzies’. The warm-fuzzies are soft, sweet words that rip responsibility right out from under you. “It is not your fault you are fat” or “did you know that “x” chemical in your foods is killing you?” The whole purpose is to make you feel good about what you are reading (i.e. the bait). It then convinces you that what you are about to read is the solution to your problems, in particular, your fat (that’s not your fault, remember?) i.e the hook. The Reel You In portion of the book gives you a solution for weight loss that, without a doubt, works. ( – mind you) This may be to cut all of your carbohydrates from your diet forever, or to remove all fat of any sort from your diet, or, better yet, remove anything from your diet that at one time walked, crawled, swam, ran, or flew! Whatever that diet book or plan’s solution is, it really does work. I am not arguing that it does not. Most of these solutions work for weight loss. Once again – I said weight loss … not weight loss maintenance! The final strategy of these weight loss plans is the Use You as Bait for the Bigger Fish ploy: This simply throws you back in the water, so you will buy the supplements that are part of the solution, or sets you up to buy the next version of the book. It is quite beautiful, from a monetary stand point (at least for somebody …) – but does nothing for you in the long run.

One way or another, hidden or open, subtle or obvious, trick or treat – they cut calories or have you burn more with activity. That sit. That is their secret – even if they tell you that you do not have to restrict your calories or exercise more – they get you to do it. No one likes to be limited, or told not to do something – I see no difference in my weight loss patients’ attitudes toward limitation than I see in my three year old’s. We hate constraint and we hate control (unless we have that control), and diet writers and diet authors know it. Their simple solution: trick you into caloric restriction or increased caloric burn by some other method. I could literally provide you with hundreds of examples, but I am sure, now that you have heard it put like this, that you can see it.

No matter what the ploy, calories come into play and are as important as can be when it comes to dieting, short term weight loss, and long term weight loss maintenance. There are a few situations and developed laws of weight loss that allow some variance with the calories in to calories out standard, as you will soon read, but overall – you must consider calories in weight loss – quick or slow, short or long term.

Are calories all that are important? No. The individual who participates in the diet plan comes into play. By individual, I am referring to one’s psychosocial make up, emotional status, genetics, disease states, and the state of their hormones. For example, some people are more sensitive to carbohydrates and therefore do better with a weight loss plan that when restricts some of the carbohydrates – but calories will come into play.

Why short term weight loss programs don’t work for long term weight loss maintenance.

I am not going to rehash everything you have ever read about the failure of dieting. We all know dieting does not really work; really being defined as getting to one’s goals and maintaining one’s goals long term. I am going to tell you why The Z Diet will work for you.

First, let’s define weight loss maintenance. Maintenance is hard to define as it is largely a personal perception. Do you consider your weight loss a failure if you gain back one often pounds after a diet? In the world of weight loss medicine, we have a few simple definitions: The Institute of Medicine defines weight loss maintenance as intentional weight loss of 5% or more, maintained for one year. The National Institute of Health defines it as weight loss of 10% or more, maintained for one year. The National Weight Control Registry considers it a weight loss of 30 pounds or more, maintained for at least one year. So who is correct? If you put real numbers into their definitions, it really is not a lot of weight. For example: according to The National Institutes of Health, if you weigh 250 pounds, and you lose 25 pounds and keep it off for a year, you are successful! Health wise, even a few pounds off your hide improves your well-being, so any fat loss is successful by my definition. As for you? Can you come up with what you would consider successful weight loss? I think it is a very personal decision, as long as it is realistic. If you dropped sixty pounds of fat from your body, but then gained thirty back, I would still consider your overall effort a success. Honestly, even if you gained fifty-nine back, you would still have succeeded.

But even with the numbers not being that substantial, why do most diets fail? And if you are able to drop a few pounds, why does your diet not work better?

In an article printed in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in February of 2007, some authors asked the same simple question: Why do obese patients not lose more weight when treated with low-calorie diets? Their answers where based on three fundamentals: 1. Fractional energy absorption; 2. Adaptations in energy expenditure; and, 3. Incomplete patient diet adherence. In English: 1. Fat people absorb more food than the rest of us; 2. Metabolism slows down when you restrict calories; and, 3. People do not follow their diets.

Lets look a teach of these: 1. To my knowledge, there is no study supporting the idea that people absorb different amounts of food. Transit time may differ (how quickly food gets from point A to point Brown) but absorption rate does not. Even if larger people did “absorb more food”, it could not account for the lack of weight loss on a low calorie diet, as it would not account for much. 2.1 would absolutely agree that your metabolism slows down when you cut calories, but so does your use of energy. Have you ever been on a low calorie diet and felt fatigued? Did you skip the gym a few times because you were too tired to go while on a low calorie eating plan? Are you more inclined to use the elevator than the stairs while dieting? If the calories are not there (i.e. the energy is not there), your body will, in turn, lessen the energy it expends. Obviously, there is individual variance in metabolic rates from baseline and therefore it is likely safe to assume the same in the dieting state.

This brings me to a quick statement on the Set Point Theory. I bring this up because sitting with diet patients as I do every day, I hear about it. The Set Point Theory gets the credit or blame for a number of conditions I deal with. The Set Point Theory is the idea that no matter what you do in life – eat or exercise too little or too much – your body will find a weight it likes and stay there. Have nothing to eat for awhile and you will decrease your activity, then go on a mad quest for food. Once you find food, you will eat and eat until normalcy is obtained and your set point has been re-reached. There are a lot of studies on this topic in rats: starve the poor little creatures and their appetites plummet, as do their metabolism and their use of energy (sit around and watch soap operas), etc. Give them access to lots of good-tasting food and their appetites, metabolism and activity all sky rocket back up to their previous “normal”. At that point, they stop engorging themselves and go about their business (likely politics …). Human studies are more difficult to interpret, but the general understanding is that our set point is a bit more screwy and dynamic at the same time. In other words, our bodies preferentially and very efficiently prefer the full fat cell vs. the empty one, i.e. they protect themselves from fat loss more than from fat gain. Unlike our politically oriented rats, we tend to go beyond our previous weight as if our bodies are protecting themselves with a little cushion (no pun intended – well maybe) in case that ever happens again.

I personally lean toward the ‘Settling Point’ of the body. This is the concept that your weight and fat levels will ‘settle’ at a given point, based on your environment. You surround yourself with calorie dense, sugar and fat filled snacks, and then wonder why your weight came back so easily. Exposed to great tasting, high fat, high sugar food all the time, your settling point never settles, or at least keeps going up. I will continue another discussion on the homeostatic mechanisms of our body in a coming chapter, so enough tangential mishmash. Lets continue with the study:

3. Adherence – the diet writer’s best friend and worst enemy. I could write the absolutely perfect eating plan, right down to the calorie, with the perfect amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat, and using all of your favorite foods. But if you do not stick to it, you will not lose weight. Studies have shown that, no matter what kind of diet people are on (low carb, high carb, low calorie, etc.), if they comply with the diet, they lose weight. If they do not, they do not lose weight. Simple aye? If only it were so …

Here is where The Z Diet differs: The Z Diet is a lifestyle. If you are reverent to the fundamentals of The Z Diet, apply the principles when appropriate, and simply make changes to your routine in the manner presented, you will be adherent to the diet. In other words, you will succeed! Adherence is perhaps the biggest obstacle in the quest for weight loss maintenance. Simplicity is part of the answer – hence: The Z Diet. Throughout-the book I will give you a number of techniques, eating patterns, food choices, direct and indirect ways to control calories, and ways to improve your lifestyle adherence.

The Law of Free Money

One more quick qualification before we get started – I call it “the law of free money”. I am more than certain you have heard the many tarnished and occasionally humorous stories of the lottery winners or professional ball players who once had millions of dollars, but are now broke? This is due to the Law of Free Money. If you get something of value without any real effort or expenditure on your part, it really has no value to you, and you eventually lose it. The same goes for your health, weight loss, and whatever other goals you may have. Do you know how many people I see in my practice after a bariatric surgery has failed them? They underwent severe alteration to their perfectly good, God-given anatomy, without any real effort of their own (especially when insurance or the state pays for it), and they gained all of their weight back and then some. They fought this law, and the law won. Of course there are those who get away with breaking the law, but they are certainly the exception, not the rule. If you want health; if you want to lose weight and maintain the weight loss, its going to take some effort on your part. Whether it’s making time to exercise or preparing your food or thinking ahead before going to a party, you will have to put forth the effort, especially if you are in it for the long term. Make no mistake: if you’re after the quick solution, you maybe able to obtain it, but chances are you will lose it. The Law of Free Money can’t be changed by Congress or overruled by a non-elected federal judge. You will deal with it, unless your solution is full of effort, sweat, and some serious work. Do not get me wrong – you can do it! Hence the Z Diet. This is a simple solution, but it will still take some effort on your part.

Long term weight loss maintenance takes an understanding of a few key principles that I have broken down in the Z Diet. These include, in no particular order of importance:

Understand your starting point

Your starting point is where you are today, and where you will be every day. I consider your starting point something that is continually changing, and that is why I am a big proponent of tracking measurements and/or following some sort of method to see objectively how you are doing. If you think in these terms, that you change your starting point every time you take a measurement or track something, it will remind you to keep it going. The chapter on Body Category Designation is a simplification of that philosophy. I have offered four different broad starting points to help direct you in your goal of long term weight loss maintenance. Included in this chapter is some detailed information about insulin, a dieter’s best friend and worst enemy. Though this information is listed under the classification The Metabolically Challenged, it is applicable for everyone.

The next chapter covers the Basics of Food, information you must understand in order to maintain long term weight loss. In particular, we will cover the need to keep adequate protein in your eating plan.

The final chapter in the first section is the Z Diet’s first look at calories. I use a broad principle called The Willey Principle to help you develop an understanding or view of your caloric intake from your current starting point.

Understanding what happens to you when you ‘diet’

When you diet, whether for quick weight loss, slow weight loss, or weight loss maintenance, a number of psychological and physiological changes occur. Most of us are quite aware of the obvious ones, so I listed a few that most people, even doctors, do not realize. People’s lack of understanding in the areas I’ve listed is due to the fact that a lot of this information is relatively new and related to a very interesting hormone the fat cell releases, called Leptin. I will not spend a lot of time on Leptin in this book, but I do want you to be aware of what happens to your body and brain as you restrict calories.

I will then follow it with a chapter describing Quick Weight Loss Approaches. Why did I include quick weight loss approaches in a long term weight loss maintenance book? Once again, I think the information is of great value, not only if you decide to use one of these methods, but to your understanding that real weight loss success is a lifestyle, not a diet.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from The Z Diet by Warren Willey Copyright © 2010 by J. Warren Willey II. Excerpted by permission.
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