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

No More 'Sugar Rush'

No More 'Sugar Rush'

Simple carbohydrate such as sugar throws 50 to 100 calories into your bloodstream at one time. This "rush" causes these" simple sugars to burn up too rapidly, triggering hypo¬glycemia, which means low blood sugar. This condition
signals the brain to crave more sugars, thus stimulating appetite.
On the other hand, the unrefined Complex Carbohy¬drate, such as starch, enter the blood stream evenly. It burns up completely and in this slow process a steady, balanced and leisurely supply of sugar is fed to the blood. Consequently, it eliminates the "appetite swings" com¬monly experienced by people with high sugar intake.
Low blood sugar that results in a craving for more sugar is perhaps one of the more obnoxious effects of the high-protein diets. It is probably a factor in the dis¬appointing record of those who have tried these regimens.
It is remarkable that hypoglycemia, that is low blood sugar, is virtually absent in parts of the world where the diet consists of Complex Carbohydrates.
Though the popular high-protein diets recognize, like all diets, the harm of refined sugar, they get around the problem by something even more questionable. That is, artificial sweeteners. The BHMD frowns on the use of all chemicals and food additives. The effect such substances as saccharine appears to have on cancer incidence is too alarming for comfort.
On the BHMD you learn to like sugar in the form na¬ture intended you to have it. Coupled to your joy of quick weight loss will be the relief of bringing your appetite under control. And this wonder will come about without the dangerous side effect of artificial sugar substitutes.

Carbohydrates: Refined And Unrefined

Carbohydrates: Refined And Unrefined

So far we've focused on the "good" carbohydrate, the C.C. But in the drama of dining there is also a "villain" carbohydrate. This element is all the more treacherous because it comes in a sweet, easily digestible and tempt¬ing form. It is the refined carbohydrate.
The chief culprit of the refined carbohydrates is in that doughnut you're eating. It's sugar.
Here's how sugar goes to work: Once you have eaten the doughnut, the sugar it contains causes your blood sugar to rise sharply. Your body responds by having the pancreas pump out insulin to drive the blood sugar down. In turn, the adrenal glands go to work, attempting to stabilize the blood sugar by pouring out adrenal hor¬mones.
Thus, what started with a simple sugary doughnut has resulted in a stress reaction. Eating that doughnut has forced your body to suffer through drastic changes in blood sugar. As a result, your body is tense and you are nervous.
Of course, your body can easily deal with the stress caused by one doughnut. It can maybe even deal with 1,000 doughnuts. But assaulted by demands to handle doughnuts, sugars, fats, salts, food additives, etc., your
body will be overwhelmed and sooner or later it will givt up.
Stressing your body to deal with harmful materials wili result in a general breakdown of parts. Sugar is a refined carbohydrate that plays a big role in such stress. And that means all sugar. Whether it be brown, "raw," molasses, or in the form of honey.
We consume 128 pounds of sugar per person a year. But this astonishing amount does nothing for us. Our bodies do not benefit in the slightest. Sugar supplies neither protein, vitamins or minerals. As I tell my pa¬tients, sugar is a taker, not a giver. Sugar robs you of phosphorus, the B vitamin complex and magnesium. These important vitamins and minerals are used up in the metabolism of sugar.
The BHMD bans sugar because it makes you fat. I designed the BHMD to make you lose weight rapidly and to keep you slim for the rest of your life. But the diet is equally meant to maintain your health, to reduce stress, and make you live longer.
Sugar is the enemy of these noble aims. It is implicated in diabetes, heart disease, elevated blood cholesterol and serum triglyceride levels, mental problems, tooth decay, dermatitis, and high blood pressure.
My diet deals with the sugar issue by having you feast on a variety of starch-rich foods filled with naturally occurring sugar. Complex Carbohydrates like fruits, vegetables, grains, peas and lentils, are what nature de¬signed you to function on. The BHMD offers them in such a luscious and exotic variety that you will not want to add sugar to your daily meals.

Don't Eat Foods High In Cholesterol

Don't Eat Foods High In Cholesterol

There are two kinds of cholesterol you should be concerned with. HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) and LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein), known as the good and bad cholesterol, respectively.
Lipoproteins exist to carry fats through your bloodstream, which is a watery medium. LDL can be characterized as a delivery truck, depositing fats into your cells, and clogging up your arteries. HDL is a scavenger, gathering up fats and choles¬terol; in effect, cleaning up your arteries.
Thus, while your overall cholesterol should be low (below 180), you should also be concerned with the ratio of HDL to total cholesterol.
Here is how you can perform your own coronary risk factor test: Divide total cholesterol by HDL:
total cholesterol HDL
The lower the figure, the better. A ratio of 3.5 is what you want. A ratio between 7 and 9 doubles the standard risk of a heart attack, and a ratio above 12 or 13 indicates a 300% greater chance of suffering heart disease. (Ask your doctor for HDL reading.)

C.C. Vs. Fats & Oils

C.C. Vs. Fats & Oils

In the BHMD fats and oils are replaced by Complex Carbohydrates. These will make you lose weight and in addition do something even more beneficial. As part of your daily diet, C.C. protects you against heart disease and cancer.
The Complex Carbohydrates keep your arteries from clogging up with fats that slow down the flow of blood. For it is one of those marvels of nature that Complex Carbohydrates have the fantastic effect of lowering blood
cholesterol. Thus, among its many other wonders, C.C. reduces the risk of coronary attacks.
A good deal of the Complex Carbohydrates that will buoy up your new diet will be consumed as fiber. The popular high-protein diets are almost criminally deficient in the all-important roughage that comes from the indigestible parts of fruits, vegetables, cereals and grains. Fiber, or "bulk," is incorporated as many delicious items in the BHMD.
And for a very good reason.
It has been shown scientifically that fiber helps increase the body's excretion of cholesterol. With the C.C.-rich fiber you are gaining greater protection against cancer of the colon and the rectum, the most prevalent forms of lethal cancer in our country.
The BHMD offers a wide and zesty assortment of snacks, meals and dishes to reduce your fat intake. For now, let's take one example: the simple potato.
Most people believe that a diet of lean meat will get your weight down better than a diet containing potatoes. But a 3'/2-OZ. porterhouse steak is 82% fat and counts 465 calories. A 3'/2-oz. baked potato, however, contains only 93 calories and is only 0.5% fat. Compare this to a hot dog (80% fat); lunch meat (84%); peanut butter (77%); or take the average cheeseburger, in which the meat is 85% fat, the cheese is 73% fat, and the sauce is 90% fat.
The proof is in the potato, as your scale will verify

An End To Dietary Horror

An End To Dietary Horror

I could go on and on about the dangerous aspects of this fad diet or any other fad diet. The high-protein/high-fat/ low-carbohydrate diet presents to me a horror story of grisly proportions. Fortunately, it has been my pleasure to put an end to its hazardous workings for a number of people.
I have seen many people who were once advocates of the high-protein diet. One of these was BJ, a 40-year-old woman who attended a university-sponsored high- protein diet program for eight months and lost 80 pounds. Her scalp hair thinned out, she was "cold all the time," felt weak, was dizzy, had dry skin, etc. She gained all of her weight back plus 10 pounds. She had more illness during and after the diet than she had before.

How Does Ketosis Work?

How Does Ketosis Work?

The sensible nutrition of the BHMD reflects a way of eating that you can live with day in and day out. It helps
void the disastrous illnesses and potential deaths that may occur with some of the other diets, such as those featuring high-protein/low-carbohydrate.
The "other" diets take different forms. They continually pop up in new guises.
The so-called "protein-sparing modified fast" swept the country about four years ago. It is still around as the protein powder diet.
The protein powder taken by mouth, so goes the theory, prevents the body from breaking down its own protein in the form of muscles; heart, lungs, liver, skin, etc. Consequently, only fat would be burned for fuel for the body in the absence of carbohydrates. So many of the young nurses at the hospitals I attended used these diets and so many of them had multiple symptoms of dizziness, weakness, fainting and shriveling of skin that I was forced to study this ill-fated program in order to help them see the bad side effects.
In 1979, reports of deaths associated with the diet appeared first in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Autopsy studies of the people on this diet— usually young women—showed breakdown of the very protein tissues (heart, liver and others) this diet was sup¬posed to protect.
It turned out that the theory was wrong. The body cannot utilize protein in this or any other diet without carbohydrates. Actually, it is really the carbohydrates which protect the protein tissues from undergoing degen¬eration.
Then, why did people want to use the high-protein diet? Did it cause a fast weight loss? Yes it did, and still does. But the weight loss is not fat loss. It is fluid, that is, water loss.
The reason is simple. All this excess protein that is taken in must be metabolized, and protein requires seven times as much water for its metabolism as Complex Carbohydrates do. The major mode of excretion of metabolized protein is in the urine, much of it as urea (the substance that imparts the characteristic yellow color to the urine). So it takes lots and lots of water to cause this protein excretion. This weight loss is quickly regained.
After 1Vi to 2 days on the high protein diet the glycogen (carbohydrate stored in muscles) is exhausted and the great weight loss occurs. This is the salt-linked carbohydrate fluid loss—a large loss of fluid and minerals in the urine. The great fatigue which occurs at this point reflects the water and mineral losses which grow worse as the days progress.
The claim is made that at this point the body will start producing ketones and that then the fat will melt away. The ketones, as you have learned, are breakdown pro¬ducts of fats—incompletely metabolized fats. When fat is completely metabolized no ketosis occurs since the fat is broken down completely.
When ketosis occurs in people with diabetes mellitus it heralds a rather severe situation as this represents an abnormal demand upon the body. Large amounts of ketones in diabetes can help cause the so-called diabetic coma.
In the non-diabetic at the very least it can cause dam¬aged body chemistry, as well as mineral and vitamin los¬ses. As ketones are being formed and being excreted the body's defense against illness, the immune system, suf¬fers. Sensitivity to cold occurs. The thyroid hormone de¬creases. Changes-for-the-worse show up in liver tests. The blood uric acid increases and this may precipitate a fullblown gout attack.
Further deteriorations become prominent, such as a decrease in blood volume, which may lead to postural hypotension. This is a drop in blood pressure upon stand¬ing, leading to dizziness and weakness. Changes-for-the- worse occur in the ability of the kidneys to excrete waste material. The large potassium loss has been well documented, and I have seen patients on this diet brought to the hospital because of heart irregularities.
Hyponatremia, which is a sodium loss to a degree which is unhealthy, may occur and often is responsible for nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and apathy.
Magnesium and calcium losses occur in gradually dimi¬nishing amounts and the effect on the body, especially on the heart and nervous system, can be bad.
A drastic weight reduction program such as the highprotein, low-carbohydrate diet can cause a flattening of the lining of the intestine and can interfere with absorption of nutrients, causing what we call a malabsorption syndrome.
Vitamin deficiencies also occur in this type of diet. While ingesting protein liquid or powder, the amount of B vitamins excreted in the urine exceeds that of the healthy individual.

Dangers Of Other Diets

Dangers Of Other Diets

The high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet also causes other problems, one of which is bone loss. Osteoporosis, which is thinning of the bone due to calcium loss, is getting to be fairly common in our society. By the time we turn fifty we can start to see significant bone loss on X-ray. Our bones thin out causing more bone breaks (fractures) as well as actual loss in height due to thinning and collapse of vertebrae.
This comes about because a high-protein diet increases calcium loss in the urine. In addition, the excess nitrogen and sulfur from the proteins in the blood are acid by¬products of protein metabolism. The acidity literally leaches the calcium out of the bone.
What happens is that a state of negative calcium bal¬ance is produced. It means the body is losing more cal¬cium than it is taking in. Adding calcium to our foods or in supplements does not seem to help reverse the nega¬tive calcium balance and protect bones against more osteoporosis. Getting off the high-protein diet does, however, cause the calcium balance to become positive, i.e., more calcium enters than is lost.
The average American is getting too many of his daily calories in protein. This means that he is risking the loss of the important mineral calcium. As a result he is sus¬ceptible to spontaneous bone fractures and loss of height, both due to thinning of bone.
In addition, other valuable minerals are lost, including zinc, iron and magnesium. We pay for this in our middle age.

Let's Act Like Grownups

Let's Act Like Grownups

When we talk about diets there is no point in fooling ourselves. The Beverly Hills Medical Diet is no pacifier to still your anxieties about weight. It is no fairy tale in which a wand waves and fat drops automatically. This is what the BHMD will do:
It tells you how to lose weight rapidly. Why you lose it. And what the diet contains that makes it work.
Certain kinds of diet books get my goat. They are the ones written as if the reader is a child who needs to be coaxed to reduce. This approach is not the least irritating quality of the Scarsdale diet, in which the hazardous ketone-stimulated water loss is justified by the rationale that the dieter needs to see immediate results. This type of "evidence," so goes the claim, will encourage the die¬ter through reinforcement to persist in his regimen.
Such reasoning is hardly the approach to a successful, life-time diet. The BHMD reshapes your eating habits because it is in your pattern of food consumption that weight was gained in the first place. The BHMD adjusts your fat person's body to that of a slender person, who will stay slender permanently. The high-protein dieter who has been turned into a nervous "sprinkler" is essen¬tially still as fat as he was before. As you will learn after sampling the delicious BHMD menus, there is a differ¬ence Ipetween weight loss and fat loss.
During my medical-nutritional seminars at the Amer¬ican Institute of Health, I try to involve my patients more deeply into the question of their health. I explain that being merely the guardian of their medical data, it really doesn't belong to me. It is theirs and they are the ones who should be concerned about it. Thus they are moti¬vated to do what they know they should be doing any¬way. We are partners, I explain, but they are the senior partners in our program of nutrition and stress manage¬ment.
There are hundreds of medical tricks that would enable me to delude their trust. But I believe in treating the dieter as an adult capable of taking responsibility in his own hands.
With the same frankness I confront the apology made for ketosis. An increase of ketone bodies in the blood is said to curb appetite. I consider such panaceas unneces¬sary, especially when they are the result of the real dan¬gers posed by ketones. The BHMD has the best appetite restrainer in the world. That is the feeling of being full. The greater amount of chewing required by the C.C. diet, with the subsequent increase of saliva and gastric juices, gives the stomach a sated and satisfied feeling.
Dieting requires a certain amount of discipline. I recog¬nize that voluntary restraint is not an easy matter. With the BHMD, however, this kind of self-control is made a cinch.

SELF-NUTRITIONAL SURVEY

SELF-NUTRITIONAL SURVEY

Too many check (/) marks indicate your nutritional practices need revising.

Check only the questions that you would answer as yes.

Check

( ) 1. I know what good nutrition is but it is difficult for me to apply this knowledge in a consistent manner. ( ) 2. I must learn more about nutrition so I can

eat better. ( ) 3. I have specific problems. ( ) 4. My nutrition is not good. ( ) 5.1 have been put on a restricted diet before. ( ) 6. I have a history of indigestion. ( ) 7. I have a history of constipation. ( ) 8. I have a history of diarrhea. ( ) 9. I have a history of excess gas. ( ) 10. I am overweight. ( ) 11. I am seriously overweight. ( ) 12. I have had trouble losing weight. ( ) 13. I gain weight easily. ( ) 14. I frequently feel listless after eating. ( ) 15. I often have cravings for food I shouldn't eat.

( ) 16. I put salt on my foods.

( ) 17. I crave sugar and sugary foods.

( ) 18. I often eat high fat, high cholesterol foods.

( ) 19. I eat, chew and swallow rapidly.

( ) 20. I don't, as a rule, eat breakfast.

( ) 21. I often eat while working or "on the run."

( ) 22. I feel better immediately after eating, only to slump later.

( ) 23. I like to eat late at night. It helps calm me.

( ) 24. If I go without eating too long I get tense or irritable.

( ) 25. I don't usually read food labels.

( ) 26. Let's face it—I'm a junk food junkie.

( ) 27. I need that coffee in the morning to get going.

( ) 28. I eat pretty well except I don't know when to stop.

( ) 29. I eat lots of canned or convenience foods.

( ) 30. I have food allergies.