Carbohydrate addict's diet.

Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 11:05:26 -0400
Sender: HERB.TREARNPC.EGE.EDU.TR
From: Maria Minno <afn10853.AFN.ORG>
Subject: Carbohydrate Addict's diet

A friend of mine is using a diet that she swears by. Since I've noticed that many of you people don't mind discussing diets, I'd like to run this by you. Let me know what you think. I will forward your comments to my friend. Here is my friend's description:

The name of the diet is the Carbohydrate Addict's diet. The woman who came up with it tried every known form of diet and was an obese child (like three hundred pounds and very short in high school). She reasoned that it wasn't willpower etc that was troubling dieters but that certain people were able to stay on a diet for a while but soon would gain the weight back and become worse than usual. Many overweight people were very strong willed actually.

There are very few diets that actually work for very long. She did weight watchers and overeaters' anonymous, and all sorts of behavior groups, etc.

She used her own failures to modify her diet as research data and came up with some scientific data concerning insulin, etc. Through a survey she identified people who were addicted to carbohydrate foods whose bodies took them as a signal. So she figured out a way to get around the problem.

During two meals you eat low carbs. Obviously it's impossible to eliminate them. But the simplicity of it is pretty easy for people to follow. You don't eat bread, rice, potatoes, sugar, etc during the two meals, but you do eat proteins and vegetables (not all of them obviously). You can eat in a restaurant or at other people's homes etc without too much trouble. Then you eat a normal well-balanced meal with very few restrictions at night.

You can eat chocolate, bread cake etc as long as you also eat normal stuff. The incredible thing seems to be the realization that once you have held off on bread, junk etc and eaten some decent stuff at the evening meal, you no longer feel driven to eat junk food.

From: "Kenneth J. Hendrickson" <kjh.SEAS.SMU.EDU>

>When would a body's condition indicate that eating meat would be of benefit?

I can answer anecdotally from my own personal experience. I appear to have an overactive pancreas which puts out too much insulin; this causes hyperinsulinemia. When I consume sugar or other refined carbohydrates I initially feel very good, but eventually the hyperinsulinemia drives my blood sugar too low; this is reactive hypoglycemia, because it only happens in response to eating sweet or starchy foods. My reactive hypoglycemia caused me to be grossly obese, lethargic, and unable to concentrate on anything. Unfortunately, since hypoglycemia can't be treated by a synthetic chemical drug, western medicine denies that it even exists, and I had to diagnose and treat myself.

The treatment for reactive hypoglycemia is to avoid sugar, potatoes, corn, wheat, and rice, in all forms. I eat a diet high in protein and very high in fat; basically I eat fresh meat and vegetables.

Since starting what other people call a low-carb diet, I've gained *excellent* health. I have been overweight my entire life; at the beginning of 1995 I was 240#. Now, I'm at 170#, and still losing. I'm now more fit than I was in high school, and I fully expect to be even more fit by this summer. I am full of energy; I always have a generally good feeling, and I also am able to almost continuously participate in fairly rigorous athletic activity. In addition, I know that I'm mentally much more sharp than before.

For me, to eat a vegetarian diet would be deadly. If I avoided the grains and starchy vegetables it would be impossible for me to consume enough food to maintain my weight and health; I would waste away like an AIDS patient. If I ate potatoes, corn, wheat, rice, and other starchy foods, I would rapidly become obese, lethargic, and mentally sluggish. I know this to be the case, because in the past I had this experience consuming a vegetarian diet.

I've become very disenchanted with western medicine. I consider the FDA to be one of the most corrupt and evil branches of the (American) federal government. (Study the NutraPoison approval process if you want to know why.) Western medicine cannot solve the problem of obesity, nor do they know how to treat or prevent diabetes of either type; I have found out how to do both. It is also highly likely that I've found out (for myself) how to avoid heart attacks and strokes. In western medicine, if a big business can't make a large profit from a synthetic drug (that has terrible side effects), then no problem exists---it's all in the patient's head.

I'm just a novice herbalist. I wish to learn much more. I suppose thatin Chinese or traditional medicine, I would be diagnosed as either being very ying or very yang, and needing to consume foods of almost entirely the other type to achieve balance. I'd appreciate hearing from anybody with any comments you may have about my personal situation, or about treating obesity with a high-protein high-fat low-carbohydrate diet.