The Life Plan (12 page)

On the Life Plan, your goal is to achieve a ratio of less than 4 omega-6s to 1 omega-3s. The best way to do this is to avoid foods fried in vegetable oils, such as corn and safflower, and eliminate processed foods, which contain large amounts of omega-6s. At the same time, you will increase the amount of omega-3s in your diet by eating green leafy vegetables and more oily fish, such as sardines, herring, bluefish, shrimp, flounder, mackerel, wild salmon, and swordfish. For those who don’t like fish, fish oil supplements are now an option: You should take 3 to 4 grams per day. Cooking with canola oil instead of vegetable oil also helps.

Omega-3 eggs are laid by chickens that have been fed flaxseeds. The eggs actually contain more omega-3 fatty acids, a healthy essential fat, and less saturated fat than those laid by grain/corn-fed chickens.

Kevin was a 55-year-old photographer with coronary artery disease. He had read about the low-fat, high-complex-carbohydrate diet recommended by Dean Ornish, M.D., and took it to an extreme. He avoided
all
fats. Unfortunately, Kevin developed dry skin, constipation, increased thirst, brittle nails, and dry hair—all signs of essential fatty acid deficiency.

After I taught Kevin how to include healthy fats in his diet and he added essential fatty acid supplements to his program, his symptoms resolved without compromising his heart condition—and he felt a whole lot better.

Over the last 10 to 20 years we have been convinced by the American Heart Association, USDA Food Pyramid, and the food manufacturers that high-carbohydrate/low-fat diets are the way to eat if we want to avoid heart disease and achieve ultimate health. We have all been led to believe that fats are bad and carbohydrates in any form are okay when it comes to healthy eating. We have actually been given license to eat any and all carbs with little or no regard to whether they are the healthy types (vegetables and fruits) or the unhealthy, highly processed types produced by the profit-motivated food manufacturers.

Vegetables and most fruits are healthy carbohydrates because they are digested very slowly and enter our bloodstream in small amounts, gently and gradually increasing our blood sugars. Man-made carbohydrates, on the other hand, come from grains that undergo processing that removes most of their natural fiber and nutrients, making them easily digestible and rapidly assimilated by our bodies. These carbohydrates have very high glycemic indexes (a measure of how fast a particular food will raise your blood sugar), and they mainline sugar into our bloodstream, pushing blood sugars and insulin levels sky-high, causing subsequent huge drops in blood sugars. As our blood sugars fall, hunger returns, cravings rapidly follow, and compulsive, uncontrolled eating takes over. This vicious cycle is replayed countless times, day in and day out, throughout America by most of us who have bought into the high-carb/low-fat mind-set.

The glycemic index determines how fast a particular food will raise your blood sugar. Glucose forms the base number of the index because it’s the second-fastest sugar to get into your bloodstream—maltose is the fastest. Glucose is given a value of 100, and other carbohydrates are given values relative to glucose depending on how fast they get into your blood—the lower the index the longer it takes. Diabetics have successfully used the glycemic index for many years to help control their blood sugars. Recently, people who have wanted to lose weight and prevent cravings have used this index. The idea is that when blood sugar and insulin levels are kept low, your body is much less likely to convert sugars to body fat, and food cravings are reduced or even eliminated altogether. This has worked very well for me, and I recommend it to all of you as another tool that can be used to get lean and stay lean.

You can find a glycemic index list of some of the common foods we eat on my website, www.drlife.com. Foods that have a high index (greater than 60) include ice cream, white breads, all white flour products, bagels, white potatoes, bananas, raisins, potato chips, alcoholic beverages, white rice, and pastas made with white flour.

Low-glycemic-index foods (under 45) include most fruits and vegetables, whole wheat or whole grain foods, regular oatmeal, sugar-free peanut butter, high-fiber sugar-free cereals, yams, brown rice, sugar-free dairy products, grains, legumes (with the exception of baked beans and fava beans), new potatoes, nuts, and most vegetables.

The evidence is overwhelming that the overfat/obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemics are a direct result of our obsession with high-glycemic carbohydrates. It is absolutely critical that the carbohydrates you eat be mostly those with a low glycemic index to ensure the maintenance of low levels of blood sugar and insulin. We should limit our intake of high-glycemic carbs to only immediately before or immediately after a high-intensity weight-training workout. This will shuttle muscle-building nutrients quickly into muscle tissue and promote growth and strength.

Unfortunately, carbohydrates now form the bulk of our diets. Seventy-five percent of all Americans overreact to carbohydrates and produce too much insulin in their bodies. This causes marked fluctuations in blood sugars and higher-than-normal baseline levels of insulin, which, over time, can create a dependency on sugar and highly processed carbohydrates, leading ultimately to more fatness and obesity along with serious health consequences.

In spite of all this, our love for sweets and processed carbohydrates continues to escalate. We eat an average of 20 teaspoons of sugar every day. That’s 320 calories daily, or 117,000 calories a year, which our bodies convert into 33 pounds of fat. And this doesn’t include the natural sugars found in fruits, vegetables, and milk—it’s just the sugar that is added to our foods. It includes white, raw, brown, or cane sugar; corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup; molasses, honey, or sorghum syrup; and fruit juice concentrate. No matter what it is called, it’s all the same—just plain old white table sugar, which has 4 calories per gram and no other nutrients.

Recent studies done at the University of Wisconsin have demonstrated that fat alone, or the combination of fat with sugar or salt, has a powerful neurochemical effect on the brain, causing it to release certain natural chemicals similar to drugs like heroin and morphine that activate pleasure centers and promote addiction. Dr. Ann Kelly, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and the senior author of the study, believes it is the fat that is the primary addicting culprit—especially when it is combined with sugar or salt.

This study, which strongly suggests that fast food is addictive, is expected to be the basis of a number of obesity lawsuits filed against the fast-food industry. In fact, lawyer John Banzhaf III, famous for his battles against the tobacco industry, has already used some of Dr. Kelly’s research as a foundation for lawsuits he is threatening to bring against six fast-food giants (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Kentucky Fried Chicken).

An ultra-low-carbohydrate eating plan is the only way I know to beat carbohydrate addiction. My plan is easy to follow, and I can personally confirm that your hunger will be well controlled and your food cravings and compulsive eating will come to a rapid stop. On this plan you will limit your intake of all carbs to less than 30 grams a day, and replace the carbohydrates you have eliminated with high-quality protein containing low amounts of saturated fat.

My Life Plan diet differs significantly from Dr. Atkins’s low-carb diet, because he promoted (actually encouraged) the consumption of unhealthy saturated fats found in red meats, bacon, and dairy products, while I believe that these fats need to be avoided, since they are proven to cause heart disease. Instead, you will be replacing unhealthy fats with the disease-fighting essential fatty acids and monounsaturated fats I mentioned above. The reason this very-low-carb diet does such a great job in controlling eating and cravings is that it rapidly achieves control over blood sugars and insulin levels and thereby prevents the vicious cycle of hyperinsulinism (high insulin levels) followed by low blood sugar levels—the root cause of cravings and addiction to sugar and processed carbohydrates.

Within a few days after you start this approach, your cravings for sweets, breads, pastas, and bagels will begin to subside. After one week, the cravings will completely disappear and you will notice that your energy levels and endurance dramatically increase. Stay on it for a month and then gradually begin adding healthy carbohydrates (low-glycemic-index fruits and vegetables) back to your diet.

Fiber is vitally important—especially if you want to lose fat without jeopardizing your muscle mass and, at the same time, improve your overall health. On average, American men consume around 10 grams to 12 grams per day, and the recommended intake is 25 grams to 50 grams per day—preferably around 35 grams. In a major study published in the
Journal of the American Heart Association
in October 1999, it was shown that a high intake of fiber reduces not only obesity, but also reduces high blood pressure, other heart disease risk factors, and the risk of many cancers. Some experts even believe fiber plays a greater role in determining heart disease risk than total or saturated fat intake.

Dietary fiber does all of this by remaining mostly undigested in your gastrointestinal tract. This provides bulk to the foods you eat so that undigested food stays in the stomach longer, making you feel fuller and delaying hunger and cravings. Once the food reaches your intestines, it moves along at a faster rate, which slows the release of carbohydrates and cholesterol-raising fats into your bloodstream. Since sugars are slowly absorbed rather than mainlined into your bloodstream, blood sugar levels remain well controlled, and insulin secretion is reduced. Many experts now believe fiber’s effect on blood sugar levels is the main reason for its “fat-fighting” properties and other health benefits.

Because fiber makes you feel full, you eat much less without even thinking about it. This was really brought to light in a recent study from Penn State that showed how people eat about the same
weight
of food on a daily basis. In other words, it is not the total number of calories consumed that controls how much you eat; instead, it’s the volume or weight of the food that you eat that determines when you think you’ve have had enough. When you eat high-fiber foods, you consume a higher volume or weight of food with fewer calories—and you won’t feel the least bit deprived.

The best fiber sources include whole natural foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. Avoid processed foods at all costs. Processed foods have had their fiber (along with many nutrients) removed, but not the calories, which will keep insulin levels high and add inches to your spare tire.

Carbohydrate sensitivity is a term that researchers use to describe a volatile increase in blood sugar as a result of eating carbohydrates (especially those with a high glycemic index, such as the cookies and white bread you crave). As blood sugars rise, carbohydrate-sensitive individuals have very sensitive pancreatic tissue that overreacts and produces excessive amounts of insulin—rapidly driving their blood sugars down. As blood sugars plummet, extreme hunger and cravings, mostly for sweets, take over and this vicious cycle is repeated. Over time this can progress to full-blown insulin resistance syndrome, resulting in diabetes and serious blood vessel disease, hypertension, and premature death.

As many as 75 percent of overweight individuals are thought to be carbohydrate sensitive. Worse, as people with carbohydrate sensitivity age, their sensitivity also increases, and many prominent authorities now believe that this condition can progress to an actual chemical addiction similar to that seen with alcohol, nicotine, and drugs. They recommend that carbohydrate sensitivity be treated very much like these addictions—with abstinence.

The best way to determine if you are carbohydrate sensitive and, if so, to what degree, is by writing down in your food journal your reaction (both physical and emotional) to the foods you eat. This will enable you to “listen” to what your body is “telling” you, and it won’t take long before you know which foods affect you the most.

Water is your most important nutrient. You can live only three days without it, and it is involved in every metabolic reaction in your body. Yet most of us don’t drink enough. When we are properly hydrated our heart and blood vessels work much better, along with all of our other bodily functions—we think better, our strength and endurance are better, we feel better, we are healthier, and we will live longer. Adequate hydration has the added benefit of helping us eat less by giving us a satisfied feeling—a key ingredient to achieving and maintaining a lean, healthy lifestyle.

In one study from Berlin’s Franz-Volhard Clinical Research Center, Michael Boschmann, M.D., and his colleagues tracked energy expenditures among seven men and seven women who were healthy and not overweight. After drinking approximately 17 ounces of water, the subjects’ metabolic rates (the rate at which calories are burned) increased by 30 percent. The increases began within 10 minutes and reached a maximum after 30 to 40 minutes. The study also showed that the increase in metabolic rate differed in men and women. In men, extra water caused them to burn more fat, which fueled the increase in metabolism, whereas in women the additional water increased their breakdown of carbohydrates, which increased their metabolism. The researchers found that up to 40 percent of the increase in calorie burning was caused by the body’s attempt to heat the ingested water. It appears from this study that the colder the water is, the better. A 2002 study published in the
American Journal of Epidemiology
found that drinking five or more glasses of water a day reduced the risk of a fatal heart attack by about 50 percent.