Authors: Mary Enig
Eat Fat, Lose Fat (10 page)
Some diets offer only the USRDAs (or even lesser quantities) of vital nutrients. And often, on these plans, your nutrient sources are mainly synthetic vitamins. Such substances do not provide optimal nourishment since your body is less able to absorb them than the nutrients in
real
foods. As a result, you can only stay on those diets for a short while before your body’s demands for nourishment overcome your willpower. But the nutrient-dense foods in our food plans will amp up your intake of real, readily absorbed nutrients, and help you break out of that vicious cycle.
As with Douglas, your cells may be starving for nutrients, and you may not know it!
Chapters 2 and 3 have shown you the truth about fats: why saturated fats actually are good for you, and why low-fat eating is not the great health benefit it’s been cracked up to be. In the next chapter, we’ll introduce you to our nutritional philosophy of consuming wholesome traditional foods for weight loss and explain exactly why a diet that includes
healthy
fats (especially coconut oil) will help you lose weight in a far more health-supportive and efffective way than today’s popular low-fat diets. Then we’ll compare the Eat Fat, Lose Fat program with other diets that are widely popular today.
Our Nutritional Approach to Weight Loss
Science has progressed a great deal in the past century, but human beings remain basically the same. Your nutritional needs are really no different from those of the people Weston Price met in the Outer Hebrides, the Andes, Africa, Australia, or New Zealand in the 1930s and 1940s, and those people were eating the same way as did their ancestors over thousands of years.
The Eat Fat, Lose Fat diet takes into account the basic nutritional needs of the human organism, needs that modern food technologies usually fail to meet. These technologies produce foods that not only lack a full complement of nutrients but often contain harmful substances produced by industrial processing. On our diet, by contrast, you will be meeting your body’s basic needs by consuming wholesome foods, prepared with methods that make all the nutrients more available.
There’s another reason why Eat Fat, Lose Fat is better aligned with our natural life forces than many other diet plans. Because we emphasize organic fruits and vegetables and organic and grass-fed meat and dairy products, we are contributing to the health of the earth and the balance of our planet’s resources. This method of agriculture honors and feeds the soil, the land and the earth itself, rather than despoiling the land with harsh chemicals and treating living animals without any care or respect. This form of agriculture and animal husbandry is called “sustainable,” because it gives back to the land what is taken out and does not disrupt the environment.
Think about it! Although there are many causes of obesity, including genetics, a sedentary lifestyle, and overconsumption of processed foods, on the very simplest level the condition of overweight represents an imbalanced relationship between you and nature. Eating natural, sustainable foods, as you will learn to do on this diet, restores this native mutual interdependence, which is why this kind of diet, in and of itself, is healing—not only for overweight but for other health conditions as well.
Breaking the Boom-and-Bust Diet Cycle
The nutritional abundance we so fortunately enjoy today in the West, day in and day out, is an anomaly. In contrast to our plethora of food choices, most people who’ve lived on this earth (including the majority today) have gone through periods when food was scarce. In response, humans developed underlying patterns of energy use and fat storage. Even in this time of plenty, the body’s tendency remains the same: to store fat for times of famine or want.
That’s why going on any form of severely restrictive diet usually backfires: it triggers the body’s biologically programmed tendency to store fat. Severe calorie restriction, fasting, or subsisting on juices gives your body the message that a food emergency lies ahead, creating a boomerang effect. When you return to normal eating, you find that your body stubbornly rebuilds its fat stores, ready for another crisis. This is the boom-and-bust cycle unwittingly engineered by other weight-loss programs. It’s the reason why prolonged fasts and cleanses do not result in long-term weight loss or overall well-being. Instead, severe calorie restriction leads to
fat conservation
,
hunger, and bingeing
, as the body desperately seeks to obtain and retain needed nutrients.
When you nourish yourself well, impose a healthy (but not too harsh) discipline, and exercise, your body will start to feel confident that it can let go of that extra weight it’s been carrying around for a rainy day. Follow our path, and you’ll find successful weight loss ahead.
Our Three Diet Plans
All three Eat Fat, Lose Fat plans emphasize a balanced approach to eating, in order to provide your body with all the key nutrients it needs.
•
Quick and Easy Weight Loss
offers two phases, which provide health benefits along with weight loss in an easy-to-follow diet that minimizes time spent in food preparation for those on the go. Most people lose weight just by eating the recommended amount of coconut oil (along with other healthy fats) and cutting out unhealthy fats on Phase One, a moderate-calorie diet. If you still need to shed additional stubborn pounds, Phase Two is a more calorie-restricted (but still very satisfying) program.
•
Health Recovery
provides intensive health benefits, using greater quantities of coconut and other health-promoting foods in a highly nutritious diet that’s more easily digestible for people with serious health problems such as hormonal imbalance, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, and hypothyroidism.
•
Everyday Gourmet
is a complete ongoing maintenance diet that the whole family will love. It offers health benefits with a wider repertory of delicious traditional foods.
Quick and Easy Weight Loss in particular emphasizes four Core Principles that will help you attain health and release excess weight in a natural, nondisruptive way. They are as follows:
- Eat three meals per day, and always eat breakfast;
- Include traditional fats, especially coconut oil;
- Consume nutrient-dense foods, particularly those supplying calcium and vitamins A and D;
- Restrict calories moderately.
These Core Principles provide a synergistic environment that spurs weight loss, because this diet plan will communicate to your body
- that you have safely released it from the feast-or-famine cycle;
- that you will be providing it with what it needs, no more—but no less, either.
In response, your body will give you what
you
need—a slimmer, trimmer look, good health, and an abundance of energy. Imagine what it would be like to be in a stable, mutually satisfying, long-term relationship—with your very own body!
Why Diets with Healthy Fats Help You Lose Weight
The Zone and Atkins weight-loss diets have been popular because they provide adequate amounts of protein and, in the case of the original Atkins diet, plenty of saturated fats. However, on our weight-loss plan, you’ll be eating a more balanced, well-rounded diet, consisting of a wider variety of higher-quality foods without the difficult restrictions on fat that characterize the Zone diet or the extreme limitation of carbohydrates of the Atkins diet. Our moderate-calorie diet adds the magic ingredient of coconut oil to kick-start your metabolism. We feature moderate protein (less than Atkins), lots of vegetables, small amounts of whole grains, and a wide variety of healthy fats, with coconut oil leading the pack.
Most people mistakenly believe that low-fat diets are the only way to lose weight. They do not realize that the right fats, such as coconut oil and other healthy oils in synergistic combination, not only encourage weight loss but also help you heal from a wide range of ailments. Built upon a variety of healthy traditional foods, our diet will provide the right combination of saturated and unsaturated fats to optimize health and weight loss.
James’s Story: Returning to Simple Wisdom
James was a devotee of low-fat dieting. He had to be—he had so much weight to lose. And yes, he did lose a little weight, but nowhere near enough. Besides, he always felt hungry and weak. Frustrated, James decided to stop his low-fat regimen. He quickly regained the 50 pounds he had lost, and then some. In fact, he weighed over 400 pounds and was in terrible shape. Walking just a few feet was painful.
In desperation, James set forth to learn more about nutrition. He read books and learned medical and scientific jargon to uncover the real meaning behind published medical studies. What he discovered left him bewildered and angry, but also determined that he would no longer be a pawn of the food and pharmaceutical industries.
So James and his wife returned to the simple nutritional wisdom he had learned from his mother, an Alabama farm girl and avid gardener. They started their own garden to supplement the organic produce they bought. They ate organic meat as often as possible, and cut all prepared foods from their diet. They added healthy fats back into their diet, particularly coconut oil and lard (in order to avoid all additives and preservatives, they even rendered their own lard!).
The results were stunning. In less than a year, James lost 118 pounds, his wife lost 40 pounds, and they were healthier than they’d ever been. He walked and jogged eight miles a day three times a week and worked out in the gym three days a week. Their friends exclaimed, “We don’t even recognize you anymore!” James himself was astonished that nothing more than eating wholesome foods, grown with care, and including healthy fats in his diet enabled him to lose weight and regain his health.
Years of consuming trans fats, deep-fried foods, and other harmful fat sources can make it hard for some people to digest good fats, at first. But that’s where coconut is key. Coconut oil is easy to digest because most of the fatty acids it contains don’t require bile for digestion. What’s more, the body turns these fatty acids directly into energy, making it terrific for losing weight. All this makes coconut oil the perfect oil for transitioning into healthy fats if you haven’t been eating them up until now.
What the Research Shows
Our program rests on a large and growing body of research that demonstrates why coconut can help you lose weight and boost health. Recent studies show that eliminating fat is not an effective dietary strategy. The low-fat foods you eat instead are nearly always high-carb foods, which trigger the release of insulin, causing your body to
store
fat. What’s more, carb consumption can cause blood sugar surges and drops. As a result, you lack sustained energy levels and instead experience hunger. In contrast, the research confirms that eating the right fats at every meal keeps your blood sugar stable and maximizes your metabolism by providing a steady fuel supply throughout the day. You have more energy for work, exercise, and social activities, keystones of a healthy lifestyle.
The Best of All Fats for Weight Loss
In 1998, researchers at the McGill University obesity research group discovered that, compared to other types of fatty acids, MCFAs (the type of fat found in coconut oil) actually use up energy when they are metabolized, and thus can act as weight-loss agents! That’s right, eating these kinds of fatty acids can help you lose weight. This is because the amount of energy used by the body to oxidize them is greater than the amount of energy they provide. The most rapidly oxidized fatty acid, these scientists found, is the medium-chain fatty acid lauric acid.
Coconut oil contains almost 50 percent lauric acid
.
Coconut oil has a “thermogenic effect,” which means that it raises your body temperature, thus boosting your energy and metabolic rate. A study in Japan, reported in
Journal of Nutritional Science Vitaminology
, 2002, found that consuming medium-chain fatty acids caused greater thermogenesis than did eating long-chain fatty acids, regardless of what kind of MCFA-containing food was eaten.
A number of studies have found that obesity levels in animals decreased in direct proportion to the ratio of coconut oil in their diet. The more coconut they ate, the leaner they were. For example, in a study published in 1996 in the
Journal of Lipid Research,
animals fed a diet consisting of at least 50 percent MCFAs had significant weight loss—even though their diet was not otherwise designed to promote weight loss. In contrast, a control group fed the same diet with the same number of calories, but consisting of 50 percent long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs, found in other foods), lost no weight whatsoever.
Genevieve’s Story: High-Protein, Low-Carb Weren’t Enough
Genevieve, a skilled jeweler, was co-owner of an Oregon jewelry store. Since her job was sedentary, weight gain crept up on her, until one day her business partner tactfully suggested she stick to designing and stay off the sales floor, because she presented a less than attractive appearance.
Resolved to lose the 40 pounds she’d gained, Genevieve decided to try a high-protein, low-carb diet. The weight started to come off slowly, until she read an article about coconut in a women’s magazine. Inspired, she purchased coconut oil and added a couple of tablespoons of it to her morning smoothie.
Over the next three weeks, Genevieve was astonished to find that she lost 11 pounds without ever feeling deprived or hungry. She even started to power walk, something she never would have had the energy to attempt before. Now she walks effortlessly for 30 minutes after work. With renewed energy, she’s been able to stick to her exercise and diet program, has lost all the weight she gained, and is back on the sales floor with customers.
Other studies confirm that MCFAs are oxidized (burned up and used for energy) instead of being stored in the fatty tissue of the body, as are the LCFAs. As a result, you generate more heat to burn calories, kick-starting the body into burning up existing fat stores.
Studies with humans confirm animal research:
- A report published in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
2000, found that adult males oxidized 41 percent of lauric acid (the most common MCFA in coconut oil) but only 13 percent of stearic acid (a LCFA found in other fats). That means that you burn off coconut three times faster than other common fats. - In a study published in
Life Sciences,
1998, researchers at the McGill University obesity research group found that both animals and humans metabolize MCFAs and LCFAs differently. In humans, they found increases in post-meal energy expenditure after short-term feeding of MCFAs. They concluded that “MCFAs hold potential as weight-loss agents.” - Another study, published in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
1991, found that humans consuming a meal containing 30 grams (2 tablespoons) MCFAs and 8 grams (about 1.5 teaspoons) LCFAs had a significant rise in temperature compared to those who ate the same meal containing 38 grams LCFAs. This rise in temperature indicates higher metabolic activity caused by better thyroid functioning, revealing how coconut oil helps your thyroid and boosts your metabolism.
