Stress And Your Chemistry

Stress And Your Chemistry

Of the many stress factors that assault you, the BHMD is concerned primarily with those affecting nutrition. Moreover, it looks at them in the main on how they inter¬fere with successful weight loss. The BHMD holds to the premise that once the stress-producing elements have been removed from the foods you eat all the rest will be made easier.
Without stress your weight loss is facilitated. With the emergence of a slimmer, healthier, more attractive you, self-esteem and self-confidence return. With the positive reactions to your more appealing appearance you are further encouraged to stay on the diet. In turn, self- approval is reinforced. And thus it goes, one positive factor reinforcing another until the diet's goal has been achieved: the full integration of your physical and psychological well-being through rapid, simple—and en¬joyable!—weight reduction.
To obtain this optimum state of rapid and permanent weight loss together with a relaxed mental condition the BHMD begins by changing your food intake. Scientists are now coming to believe that much of our behavior is influenced by the body's chemistry. Quite a number of them are inclined to see stress as an important factor in altering that chemistry. And since the body's chemistry is affected by diet, there is a growing readiness to combat stress through the right kind of nutrition. The "nervous
eater" frequently reacts not so much 10 his craving for food as to the stress built up in his body through faulty eating practices.
To illustrate, here's a typical question I'm asked in my practice and health seminars: "Is there any harm in drinking lots of Diet Pepsi to cut down my appetite, Dr. Fox?"
A question of this nature usually leads to a discussion of the role of food stressors and how they frustrate the rapid weight-loss process.
I begin by pointing out the health hazards. I explain that the various diet colas are destructive to the immune system by tearing into the body with a huge chemical load. Our immune system repels foreign invaders such as bacteria, viruses and cancer cells. The continual stress caused by food additives and chemicals result in a devas¬tated immune system. Through this ravaged barrier, it is held, enter the conditions producing cancer and other serious illnesses.
But food stressors not only cut down the chances for health and longevity. If it is your object to slim and stay slim, they are the gremlins that play hob with your good intentions. Simply put, food stressors interfere with dis¬cipline.
You have already seen how the doughnut sets off se¬vere blood sugar fluctuations. The sugar in the doughnut drives up your blood sugar and throws the adrenal hor¬mones into a tailspin. Dietwise, it tends to make you lose control of your appetite regulation. Sugar is a stressor. Stress makes you tense. It makes you nervous. Because you are tense and nervous you are not in the proper frame to maintain your diet. Only by eliminating nutri¬tional stress can you prevent your appetite from running wild. And you'll be surprised to find how easily that can be accomplished.
For it is one of the virtues of the BHMD that while you lose weight your tastes undergo a permanent change. In- steadof refined sugars, you savor the "hidden" sugars in starches and legumes. Instead of salt, you want the natu¬ral tartness of certain grains and vegetables, or the seasonings on lean meats. Instead of reaching for a diet cola you find yourself asking for a glass of water, mineral, sparkling, or plain, with a slice of lemon.
The BHMD offers a large selection of natural and tasty suggestions to replace your old fattening and destructive eating habits. In the process your deadened taste buds spring alive again. A whole new world of flavors and savors is opened up to you. And almost without realizing it, you become a disciplined eater.

Halt To Salt

Halt To Salt

The biggest dietary myth next to protein concerns salt.
Somehow, people believe they need salt. So the aver¬age person sprinkles it on his food as if he is doing his body a favor. Many athletes are still convinced that per¬spiring causes the body to need more salt—when in actual fact all the body requires is more water. Food manufacturers pour salt on their products in the belief that they are pleasing consumers. As a result the average person eats far more salt than he should, sometimes as much as 20 times more than needed.
But did you know? You do not need salt at all! In fact, if you're anything like the average American salt is prob¬ably killing you.
What you do need is sodium. A normal individual re¬quires about 400 mgs. of sodium per day. Table salt is 40% sodium. Your daily need does not exceed more than 1/20 teaspoon, and by eating almost any unsalted food you will more than meet this requirement.
In the BHMD I make a distinction: Salt is what you add to food. Sodium is what is already in the food.
If you have a "salty" tooth, the BHMD furnishes enough natural salts in its C.C.-rich menus to satisfy your tastes. You can choose from a tempting variety of gour¬met delights and exciting dishes seasoned with flavors from herbs, spices and natural condiments. Through such "salt-ernatives" you will never more reach for the shaker.
I am very serious about reducing your sodium intake for two reasons. Sodium is a retainer of water, and by cutting down on salt you will rapidly shed as much as five pounds. Your body stores this water to dilute the sodium, and with less sodium less water needs to be retained.
Secondly, sodium is a powerful stressor. If the body takes in too much sodium it can take the kidneys up to 48 hours to eliminate the excess. Overloaded with sodium, water flows from the cells into the fluid surrounding them. Then it passes into the blood, and this is what gives some overweight people a bloated look as well as a bloated feeling.
Robbed of their water the cells function less efficiently. But that is not all.
Retention of water leads to high blood pressure and its associated diseases. As the tissues are flooded your heart has to pump harder. The heart literally has to drain a waterlogged body. These pressures contribute to headaches, congestive heart failure, depression, pre¬menstrual tensions, migraine, and that most serious stress condition of all, hypertension.
In northern Japan, hypertension is a leading cause of death. The people there eat about 40,000 mgs. of salt a day! On the BHMD you reform your eating habits in order that your lost weight will stay lost. The high-protein diets with their limited variety of tastes and flavors cannot adequately reform your ingrained disposition for harmful substances. Scarsdale and Atkins perpetuate the un¬wholesome cravings for sugar and salt. Furthermore, be¬cause they contain too much fats and cholesterols and too little Complex Carbohydrates, they maximize the causes of hypertension. With 20% of Americans prone to this stressful disorder, it is a very grave shortcoming, indeed.
While you follow the BHMD your craving for salt diminishes. That is because the diet makes abundant pro¬vision for tasty combinations. It has recipes from all over the world in which the salt flavors are part of the natural ingredients

Stop Killing Yourself

Stop Killing Yourself

Sometimes shock is the only thing that will bring home a point. In my practice and in my mini-clinics in Beverly
Hills I've often judged it necessary to resort to such blunt tactics to make people care. The dietary facts sometimes need to seize people by the throat and give them a good shaking to make them realize what they are doing to themselves by their overweight and destructive eating practices.
I've actually found an element of fatalism in the reck¬lessness with which we Americans eat, smoke, drink and diet.
Perhaps that's because it's now commonplace to spend the last twenty years of our lives under a cardiologist's supervision. Perhaps it's rather ordinary for someone you know to have had by-pass surgery. Perhaps we figure we're all going to get cancer sooner or later anyway. Perhaps there is an unconscious fear that the whole world is going to blow up and that we may as well begin with ourselves.
Whatever the reason may be, I've found that there is a connection between these fatalistic attitudes and the fact that the average American is fat, that he has a cholesterol level of over 230, and that he will spend the remaining two decades of his life being treated for one thing after another.
It is due to nonchalance about the way you eat and about your body that you have a one-in-three chance of dying of a heart attack by age 60. Your condition is criti¬cal enough for the time to have come that no diet can be complete without dealing with the stress factor. Stress, overweight and faulty eating practices almost ensure that you may never reach old age.
The BHMD can preserve you from this fate. It can stop the breakneck pace at which you are wrecking your health and gambling with the chances of longevity. The BHMD provides a fast and simple program to defeat our grim nutritional statistics.
If you are too heavy and do not exercise your body, the BHMD tells you which foods you should be eating to bring down your weight. If you smoke and drink alcohol, you must stop, or at least cut down to the absolute mini¬mum. The BHMD literally urges you to "take your heart for a walk." And it stipulates that you must begin by
replacing fatty and oily foods with others rich in Complex Carbohydrates.
That's because C.C. provides the best, the fastest and safest way to lose weight without the hazards of ketosis.