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Gary Taubes WWGF-Readers-Digest-feature-Feb-2011 PDF
Gary Taubes WWGF-Readers-Digest-feature-Feb-2011 PDF
ANY WAY
TO LOSE
WEIGHT?
Actually, yes. Award-winning
science journalist Gary Taubes
explains (finally!) why conventional
diets don’t work—and what you
can do to lose weight.
I
INTERVIEW BY LISA DAVIS
Eric Westman, MD, who directs the Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic in Durham,
North Carolina, and who cowrote The New Atkins for a New You, has been
studying low-carb diets for 12 years. His five guidelines:
✗
(ORANGE) EVGENIE IVANOV/GETTY IMAGES; (BACON) JAMES AND JAMES/GETTY IMAGES
■ AISLOW-CARB
KEY.
DIET
“When I was first getting into this
and vegetables. You eat what you want
until you’re satiated—you just don’t
eat the things that will make you fat.
subject, I tried the Atkins diet as an “You go on this diet and eat break-
experiment. It had never crossed my fast, and suddenly it’s two o’clock and
mind to do that—I associated it with you’re thinking, Oh, I really should
quackery. But now I would go to a res- eat lunch. But you’re not hungry. I
taurant with friends, and they would used to eat a very low-fat diet, and
get skinless chicken breast with green I was hungry every two hours or so.
salad, and I would get a pepperoni and And I gained weight every year.
melted mozzarella cheese appetizer “The biggest study so far on low-
and a steak. The weight just dropped carb diets came out last year. It com-
off. If I walked down the street, it was pared a low-fat diet in which you got
117
1,200 to 1,800 calories per day with obesity research: that you can have
a low-carbohydrate diet where you an effective diet that doesn’t restrict
could eat as much as you wanted. The calories. But the establishment has
researchers kind of buried this part of ignored that aspect of it. And in most
it, by the way. They barely touched on of the studies that have been done,
the fact that this is a severely calorie- a low-carb diet actually does better
restricted diet compared with an all- than a low-fat, low-calorie diet.”
you-can-eat diet. But what they found
was that the low-carb diet did just as
well. To me, this has been the most
important observation in the field of
■ HIGH FAT IS BETTER
FOR YOUR HEART.
“The idea that dietary fat causes heart
disease is deeply, deeply ingrained.
We all know the Atkins diet kills peo-
WHAT A ple—that’s what we’ve been told, any-
way. When I started eating this way,
LOW-CARB DAY my wife made me get a life insurance
LOOKS LIKE policy. But over the past decade, doz-
A typical menu for Eric Westman, ens of studies have finally looked at
MD, who directs the Duke Lifestyle the Atkins diet, and they show that
Medicine Clinic in Durham, North heart disease risk factors improve
Carolina:
more on this kind of low-carb diet
BREAKFAST than on the low-fat, low-calorie
2-egg ham-and-cheese omelet diet that doctors and the American
Diet cranberry juice Heart Association want you to eat.
Coffee with cream and sugar-free Your HDL goes up, which is the most
sweetener meaningful number in terms of heart
LUNCH health. Small, dense LDL—which is
Salmon salad (2 cups lettuce and particularly dangerous—becomes
1 cup salad vegetables) large, fluffy LDL. And not only does
Water or diet soda your cholesterol profile get better,
DINNER your insulin goes down, and your in-
8-ounce rib eye steak with sulin resistance goes away, and your
blue cheese blood pressure goes down.
1 cup of “mock mashed potatoes” “The low-fat diet that people have
(cauliflower with butter, cream, been eating in hopes of protecting
and bacon) their heart is actually bad for their
DESSERT heart, because it’s high in carbohy-
Sugar-free gelatin or sugar-free drates. The public health effort to
gelatin chocolate pudding get everyone to eat that way is one of
(made with heavy cream) the fundamental reasons that we now
have obesity and diabetes epidemics.”
118 readersdigest.com 2/11
■ IF YOU HAVE A
WEIGHT PROBLEM,
IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.
bohydrates might not make you lean.
But the leanest you can be is on the
diet with the fewest carbohydrates.
“The past 40 or 50 years, obesity re- “Are there some cautions? Yes—
search has basically been an attempt some people feel low energy while
to explain why obese people just don’t their bodies adjust to this way of
have the moral rectitude of lean peo- eating, though adding a little salt or
ple, without actually saying that. It’s bouillon to your diet can take care of
terribly damaging. It’s inexcusable, but that. A low-carb diet can reduce your
it’s still the conventional wisdom. Most blood pressure, too, so you might have
doctors don’t want to deal with obese to adjust your medication—if you
patients because they think they’re have a medical condition, you should
dealing with someone who simply talk to your doctor first. But basically,
doesn’t care enough to do what they I’m just saying, Eat what humans
do: Eat in moderation, and exercise. evolved to eat. Highly refined grains
“I’ll walk down the street and see and sugars were not part of our diet
somebody who’s obese, and I can’t see for 99.999 percent of human history.
it as anything but a hormonal disor- Back when we were hunter-gatherers,
der. Not everyone gets fat from eat- we ate meat as often as we could get
ing carbohydrates—it has to do with it, and when we ate plants, they were
how sensitive your cells are to insulin much tougher and higher in fiber
and specifically how sensitive your fat than they are today—much lower in
cells are versus your muscle cells. But digestible carbs, in other words. This
some huge percentage of the people isn’t a diet. The fundamental idea is,
who do get fat got that way because of Don’t eat the foods that make you fat.
the carbs in their diet. If you’ve been Beyond that, you can eat as much as
fat for a long time, getting rid of car- you want.” n
119