Leslie was at the end of her rope. She'd been to every doctor in the
Los Angeles area, and nobody could help her. As it happens, her
stepmother is Suzanne Somers, an expert in health, beauty and fitness.
Suzanne knows all the gurus, besides being one herself. But none of them
could fix Leslie's problem. Leslie was 40 pounds overweight. It didn't
seem to matter whether she ate or not. She had this chronic bloating
thing going on—in fact, she got more and more bloated as the day
continued, no matter how little she ate.
I loved Leslie on the
spot. She's adorable. And I was struck by how much she was already doing
the right things—and how little any of them were helping her.
"What's
going on, JJ?" Leslie asked me. At this point, she was beyond
frustrated. "You've got to help me out, because nobody else has ever
been able to."
I felt a lot of sympathy for Leslie, who was
working so hard to lose weight—and with so little result. She exercised
and was very careful about counting calories and controlling portions.
But as I tell all of my clients, your body isn't a savings bank or a
calorimeter. It's a chemistry lab. Counting calories and measuring
portions just isn't enough. You have to know how your body is responding
to the foods you eat. And Leslie's body was telling her that she wasn't
eating right.
I suspected that Leslie's problems stemmed from
food intolerance. She had been eating a high-FI diet for years,
including all the supposedly healthy choices: eggs, tofu, whole-grain
bread, whey protein shakes. She lived on diet sodas and cafe lattes with
skim milk. Sometimes she'd treat herself to some corn chips and salsa.
That made at least 6 of the 7 high-FI foods right there: eggs, soy,
gluten, dairy, artificial sweeteners and corn. All she was missing was
sugar and peanuts, and when she occasionally ate desserts or processed
foods (which are often made with peanut oil), she was consuming those,
too.
"Look," I told Leslie, as gently as I could, "you can be
doing all the right things—exercise, careful eating, the works—but if
you've built up a food intolerance or messed up your digestive tract,
even the right things can't help you. Right now, your immune system is
on high alert, and it's overreacting to many of the foods you eat. Until
we get your immune system to chill out, you won't be able to lose
weight."
Food intolerance is one of the most frustrating
conditions I know. All of a sudden, you can't lose those extra pounds,
even when you are eating and exercising exactly as you always have.
Sometimes you might even be eating less and exercising more—and you
still gain weight! How unfair is that?
The best way to get
Leslie's immune system back on track was to cut out all 7 high-FI foods
and increase her intake of low-FI foods. Once her immune system wasn't
jumping into hyperalert and flooding her system with inflammatory
chemicals, her digestive system would have a chance to heal. I also
suggested my special Virgin Diet Shakes as a source of protein. Along
with the healing foods and healing supplements I recommend, the Virgin
Diet Shakes would help reverse inflammation, reducing all those
"protective" chemicals that were causing Leslie's body to gain weight,
aging her skin and hair and sapping her energy. In 7 days, I promised
Leslie she would lose the bloat and look years younger. The Virgin Diet
was the key.
In fact, that's exactly what happened. When I saw
Leslie a few weeks later, she was so excited that her words kept
tumbling over each other. "I've lost more than 10 pounds already, and I
feel so hopeful about the other 30! Look at my skin. It hasn't looked
this good in years! My friends keep asking if I was away on vacation. At
work, they know I wasn't, so they've started a rumor about me having a
new boyfriend. I can't believe how good I feel!"
I was so happy
for my client because she had finally stopped accepting the weight gain,
exhaustion and premature aging that she had come to believe was her lot
in life. Instead, she was losing weight, feeling great and looking 10
years younger. Terrific was now her new normal. It can also be yours.
STOP COUNTING CALORIES
So,
what's the first thing I'd like you to do on the Virgin Diet? I hope
you're sitting down because my first piece of advice might shock you: stop counting calories.
That's
right, I'm suggesting that you stop counting calories because your body
is not a savings bank or a calorimeter. It's a chemistry lab. Although
the total number of calories counts, it is only part of the story. The source
of the calories matters far more. If your calories come from foods that
are causing your body trouble, then it almost doesn't matter how much
or how little you eat. Even moderate intake of problem foods sets up
your body for weight gain. And as we've seen, those problem foods are
not just cookies, cake and full-sugar soda. They include artificial
sweeteners and diet sodas, low-fat yogurt, eggs, soy and whole grains.
NO MORE MODERATION
Now here's the key to the Virgin Diet: when it comes to weight loss and healthy eating, moderation doesn't work.
Why?
Because weight gain among the nonobese is generally gradual, averaging
almost a pound a year as the result of only moderate changes in diet and
activity. Yes, if you binge for months on potato chips and ice cream,
you're going to put on weight quickly. But that's not how most people
gain weight. They continue eating their normal diet, with maybe just a
tablespoon of butter here or a few extra cookies there. Before they know
it, they've gained a pound a year, which adds up to 10 pounds in 10
years and 20 pounds in 20 years. It looks like age itself is the
problem, but it's not. It's that pound a year that caused all the
trouble.
In other words, the average 30-year-old who consumes a
moderate caloric diet while eating the wrong foods will be 10 pounds
heavier by age 40 for what may seem like no reason at all. And if at any
point along the way that person tries to lose weight—usually by
restricting calories—she's going to find it very difficult to lose
weight, keep it off or both.
Why? Because, you guessed it, your
body is not a bank account or a calorimeter. It is a chemistry lab.
Eating the wrong foods affects your body's chemistry. Gaining weight
affects your body's chemistry. Stress and lifestyle changes affect your
body's chemistry. So, if you want to get that extra weight off, you have
to heal your body's chemistry.
FOOD IS INFORMATION
Okay,
so here's how I like to think of it: food isn't just calories or fat
grams or even a source of energy, food is information. Each bite of food
that you put into your mouth sends your body a message—maybe even
several messages.
Some of these messages relate to your blood
sugar and insulin production. Some of them govern your feelings of
hunger and fullness. Others concern your fat burning and metabolism, and
still others involve your hair, skin, mood and mental functioning.
This
is why I say that not all calories are created equal. You might portion
out a cookie, a hamburger and a serving of cauliflower so they all have
the same number of calories, but each of those three foods is going to
send your body very different messages. And it's the messages we care
about, not just the calories.
Actually, it's not just what you eat that gives your body information. It's also how much you eat at one time, how fast you eat, what combinations you eat, how you feel while you are eating and even what you drink
with what you eat. Every one of those things is important because each
sends your body a message: burn fat or store it; build muscle or lose
it; slow the aging process down or speed it up; create steady, sustained
energy or crash and burn within the next couple hours. Don't worry if
this sounds complicated: I have laid it all out for you. All you have to
do is live by the Virgin Diet Plate and follow my rules of meal timing,
and you will be golden. The Virgin Diet is designed to send only the
right messages to your body—24/7 for 21 days. I'm betting that you'll
like the feeling so much that you'll keep sending all the right messages
for a long, long time after that.
FOOD ALLERGIES: RARE BUT DANGEROUS
Food
allergies are actually rather rare, but they get all the bad press
because they are responsible for the really dramatic food problems that
we hear about, such as the child who takes one bite of a peanut and then
has to be rushed to the hospital. Food allergies trigger special
antibodies in the bloodstream known as immunoglobulin E, or IgE, the
most aggressive defense system our bodies have. Among other chemicals,
IgE antibodies release large amounts of histamine, a substance that causes swelling, mucus, congestion and all the other symptoms that you would normally modify with an antihistamine.
It's
the swelling reaction that makes food allergies so dangerous. In severe
cases, the throat and airways become so swollen that they cut off the
air supply, making you unable to breathe.
Even without such deadly
responses, however, aggressive IgE antibodies generally produce quick,
dramatic reactions, appearing within minutes or even seconds after the
offending food is consumed. Other allergic reactions include rashes,
hives, itching, eczema, nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea, shortness of
breath and chest pain, as well as bloating, nausea, cramping and
stomachache. Because much of our immune system is located in the gut,
food allergies tend to wreak havoc with digestion.
Now, at this point, you might be thinking, But I don't have any of those symptoms, and I feel fine after I eat. If that's your response, terrific! You probably don't have any food allergies. Most ...
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