Belling The 'Cat'

Belling The 'Cat'

The sugars, fats and salts, the additives and chemicals of processed foods, the excessive high-protein intake—all are stressors preventing the body from achieving the diet¬ary balance which alone assures permanent weight loss. But thus far I've said little about some of the most power¬ful stressors. I call them by a compound name, CAT— that is, Coffee, Alcohol and Tobacco.
All three are stressors which have no place in a com¬plete and healthful diet. I believe enough is known about the dangers to your health without another exposition of their alarming effects. As far as tobacco is concerned, just consult the warning on a cigarette pack. The immod¬erate use of coffee and alcohol provides another list of grisly medical facts. Suffice it to say that in combination with a high-protein diet the effects of CAT over an ex¬tended period of time are suicidal.
The BHMD, though recognizing the dangers of CAT, has a different way of tackling the monster. It is a step- by-step approach rather than a full, head-on attack. I believe that you will be better able to face the CAT after first having experienced your quick and easy weight loss.
It is here that 1 must profess my limitations. As a doc¬tor I can only give the patient opinions. As far as diet is concerned, only the patient can really change his own life. I can tell a patient what's best for him, but only the patient can implement my advice. On the other hand, the serious dieter frequently is the best judge of his own capacity to follow the rules. Therefore, a patient may find
it necessary, for example, to use salt in order to reduce his calorie intake while on my diet plan.
Although I know it's not the best way, I realize that it is better than the more serious danger of being over¬weight. Giant steps are better than small steps, but small steps are better than no steps at all.
However, once you have adjusted yourself to the BHMD it is more likely that you'll be like the runner who builds up stamina to stay the full course. When you look at your new figure you'll be brimming with renewed con¬fidence and self-esteem. The discipline you have ac¬quired almost effortlessly will encourage you to 'bell the CAT.'

How A Typical Frozen Pizza Is Made

How A Typical Frozen Pizza Is Made

You start with wheat,. corn, soybeans, and sugar cane. The wheat is stripped of all its nutritive value, and made into refined flour. Oxidation agents are added to make the refined flour into stiffened gluten flour.
The corn is crushed into refined starch, 'crosslinking agents' are added to make the refined starch into modified starch.
The soybeans are converted to protein flour and oil.
The protein flour is extruded and refined into tex¬tured vegetable protein.
The oil is hydrogenated into margarine.
The sugar cane is made into raw sugar, and then refined into refined sugar.
The stiffened gluten flour, modified starch, tex¬tured vegetable protein, margarine and refined sugar are emulsified, acidulated, conditioned, synthetically dyed, artificially flavored, etc., into artificial cheese, artificial tomato, simulated Italian sausage, and the pizza shell.
We do not eat properly. Our average diet favors meat and other high-protein substances. These are deficient in Vitamin E, the B complex, Vitamin C, zinc, calcium, magnesium, and a host of other necessary nutrients.
At home and in our restaurants we broil, roast, toast and bake the last shred of nutritive value from our food. Our vegetables are soggy. The grains we eat have actu¬ally "massacred" legions of rats. Our fruit juices, with all the bulk removed, are nothing but the color and the sugar.
Besides the sorry state of our food and the way we prepare it, other factors deprive you of valuable nu¬trients. Common drugs such as aspirin, birth control pills, antacids and antibiotics interefere with vitamin and mineral uptake.
In addition, there are things we cannot control, though they impose increased nutritive demands, e.g., air and water pollution, smoking, alcohol, stress.
But not only does our life-style diminish our supply of essential nutrients. The "refined" or processed foods we eat are stealthy burglars that "rob" you of the vitamins and minerals you do have. A serious lack of these may lead to every kind of ailment, from loose gums to break¬down of important organs and, ultimately, death.
I give all my patients a Mineral Analysis and Dietary Survey. I have yet to find a patient with the proper amount and balance of vitamins and nutrients.
Losing weight in a rapid and efficient manner is an absolute certainty if you follow the BHMD. But it is just as important that you feel healthy, vibrant—alive! Your environment and the way you live conspire to deprive you of the nutrients essential to your well-being. There¬fore, the BHMD subscribes to supplements of vitamins and minerals. As a doctor I can't recommend vitamins and minerals for you individually. In the Stress chapter, however, I explain the usefulness of vitamin and mineral supplements and how, after consultation with your physi¬cian, they can work for you.

Bhmd Is Not Vegetarian

Bhmd Is Not Vegetarian

The BHMD supplies all the fats and protein your body needs. The ingredients and condiments that make up the appetizing BHMD menus provide your body with the essentials of protein. These basic building blocks of the body, you may recall, are amino acids.
The amino acids, not the protein, are important for your body's vital metabolic functions. As part of the C.C., the amino acids perform their jobs with a far greater efficiency than the protein derived from meats.
However, that is not to say that the BHMD is a vege¬tarian diet. Your menus make plenty of allowance to in¬dulge your taste for animal substances. Various types of lean meats, chicken and other poultry, as well as fish are included in the C.C. fare. You will prepare them in a way that permits you to obtain the greatest benefit from them. Nevertheless, the daily quantity should not exceed more than a quarter pound.

Vitamins & Minerals

Vitamins & Minerals

If you were living in an optimal environment where the air and soil were pure and the food came to you in its unblemished, untampered, virgin condition, then I would say, you don't need vitamins and minerals. But look at the facts. -
The nutritive value of many of our foods is destroyed before it reaches the consumer. Our fruits and vegetables look beautiful, but they are not especially wholesome. Our food processors perform all kinds of wizardry, as the sweetened, homogenized, stabilized, anti-oxidated, che¬lated, anticaked, firmed, softened and flavored products on our shelves testify.

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

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.)

Hidden Fats & Cholesterol

Hidden Fats & Cholesterol

In my quick review of how the low-carbohydrate/high- protein diets put you in harm's way, it's well to remem¬ber two medical prefixes, neither of which mean much good: they are hyper and hypo. Hyper means "overac¬tive": hypo means "underactive."
A diet that is very low in carbohydrates and high in protein is usually rich in fat and low in fiber. Many cholesterols and fats are hidden in what we think are high-protein foods, such as beef or cheese. Fat-rich foods, in turn, are linked to high levels of blood choles¬terol and to compounds known as triglycerides, which put free fatty acids in your blood.
Now, for some jawbreakers: hyperlipidemia (lipids are fats), hypercholesterolemia and hypertriglyceridemia are associated with coronary heart disease and atheroscle¬rosis. Hyperuricemia means a significant increase in uric acid in the blood, which can promote gout.
All these "overactive" processes are spurred by the ketone-production of diets with low-carbohydrate and high-protein content.
As for the "underactive" effects of such diets, hypoglycemia means insufficient blood sugar; postural hypotension means the trouble you may experience rais¬ing yourself up from a supine position.
Common among dieters is the idea that if they but switch from fats and oils to the high-protein diet, as rec¬ommended by Scarsdale, Atkins, et al, the cholesterol issue is dealt with. For example, they are apt to go along with a diet that allows an abundance of lean meat (beef, lamb, veal); chicken and turkey (with skin removed); lean fish (perch, flounder, haddock, cod); hard-boiled eggs, and cheese.
However, a diet of this sort is virtually restricted to protein and fat. As such it is a mine field seeded with ketosis.
The BHMD has a different approach. It considers all fats equally bad. It also tells you not to get caught up counting cholesterol, or worrying about polyunsaturated, saturated and unsaturated fats. The average American gets 40 to 50% of his calories from fats. The figure should be down to about 20%, and on the BHMD it is actually lower.
It has already been stated that the BHMD is thumbs down on all unnecessary fats. To be on the safe side allow me to add that the same goes for the unsaturated vegetable oils. They are merely vegetable fat which has been processed out of the vegetable. In the vegetable the oil is part of its natural container and harmless. But once it has been passed into an artificial container like a bottle it's another matter entirely.

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.