The Fat Resistance Diet: Unlock the Secret of the Hormone Leptin to: Eliminate Cravings, Supercharge Your Metabolism, Fight Inflammation, Lose Weight & Reprogram Your Body to Stay Thin- - Hardcover

Leo Galland

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 076792052X ISBN 13: 9780767920520

Publisher: Broadway, 2005

Synopsis

No more counting carbs, calories, or fat grams! This revolutionary diet plan works with your hormones to curb your appetite, boost your metabolism, take weight off—and never put it on again.

Cutting-edge scientific research shows that losing weight is not about carbs, calories, or even willpower—it’s about a hormone called leptin and how it functions in your body. Leptin is your body’s natural weight-loss mechanism: it curbs your appetite and jump-starts your metabolism. And when those hormones are working properly, they make you literally fat resistant! You will lose weight effortlessly and efficiently, and never gain those pounds back.

A leading expert in the field of nutritional medicine, Dr. Leo Galland knows that if you’ve struggled to lose weight on diet after diet but still can’t shake those excess pounds, chances are you are “leptin resistant”—your body no longer responds to leptin, making it impossible to slim down, no matter what size portions or how few carbs you eat. But here’s the good news: by adding the right foods to your diet, you can quickly reverse leptin resistance and reprogram your body to start melting away the pounds.

The Fat Resistance Diet is the first weight-loss plan designed specifically to combat leptin resistance, using a unique combination of anti-inflammatory and hormone-balancing foods to get your hormones working again. Used by hundreds of Dr. Galland’s patients with remarkable results, the three-phase regimen includes:
STAGE 1: A fourteen-day starter program that delivers a loss of ten to fourteen pounds in the first two weeks. Inflammation-fighting superfoods work to trigger rapid weight loss and set your hormones straight.
STAGE 2: A ninety-day plan that builds on the benefits of Stage 1 and delivers a loss of at least five pounds a month. You can enjoy a greater variety of foods while still keeping your hormones working overtime.
STAGE 3: Sustainable for life, the meal plans in this phase keep your hormones doing their job, even after you reach your target weight, and offer an expanded, flavorful menu.

With delicious recipes that are rich in healing carbs, healing fats, and powerful phytonutrients, the diet is a breeze to stick with—there are no hard-to-find ingredients, no expensive supplements, and no complicated proportions to figure out. Best of all, when you make the Fat Resistance Diet part of your life, your hormones will do your weight-loss work for you! This groundbreaking program at last reveals the true secret to weight loss success, and will transform you from a chronic dieter into a lean, fat-fighting machine.

About this title

About the Author:

Leo Galland, M.D., received his education and medical training at Harvard and NYU. Regularly chosen by New York magazine as one of the best doctors in New York, as well as listed in America’s Top Doctors, he has appeared on Good Morning America and on CNN, Fox News, and PBS. He lives in New York City.

www.fatresistancediet.com
www.broadwaybooks.com

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

one
Your Fat Is Not Your Fault
When I first met Lilly, she was thirty-five years old, a respected editor at a national news magazine--and more than fifty pounds overweight. On the medical history form that I give to all my new patients, she had summarized her primary health concern: "Can't lose weight."

"All my life it's been this way," she told me in one brief phrase with tears in her eyes. "Sometimes I can lose for a little while, taking off ten or even twenty pounds. But I have to starve myself to make that happen, and even then, it doesn't last."

Lilly's frustration was all the greater because she'd been following one diet or another ever since high school. In college, she'd supplemented her severely restrictive diet with a vigorous exercise routine. "But even when I dropped a few pounds, I always put them back again--and then some," she explained. "I don't know why I can't lose weight. Even when I'm good, I don't lose much. And if I slip for even a single day, I go up five pounds."

By the time Lilly came to see me, she weighed 214 pounds. Yet as I reviewed her diet and exercise plan, I could see that she was indeed making an effort. Every morning, she worked out for forty minutes--"even on Sundays and holidays," she insisted--and she'd gotten her daily intake down to 1,200 calories or less, mostly in the form of low-fat protein bars, chicken breasts, cottage cheese, and green salads. It was hard to see how she could exercise any more or eat any less. Yet the pounds clung stubbornly to her hips, thighs, and belly.

"Okay, doctor," she concluded with a sigh. "Tell me what else to cut out. At this point, I'll try anything."

"Frankly," I told her, "I don't want you to eat less. The problem isn't what you're eating--it's what you're not eating. So from this day forward, I want you to eat more."

Meet the Real Culprit: Leptin Resistance

Like so many other overweight Americans, Lilly was suffering from a condition she'd never heard of--a chemical imbalance that I believe is at the root of our nation's struggle with excess weight. The name of this syndrome is leptin resistance--a hormonal dysfunction that disrupts the body's natural ability to regulate appetite and metabolism. Unfortunately, most doctors are not yet aware of this condition. But my decades of clinical practice as an M.D., my success in treating patients with nutritional medicine, and my in-depth exploration of the latest scientific research have convinced me that if you--like Lilly--can't lose your excess weight, then you, too, are probably suffering from leptin resistance.

I believe that the discovery of leptin resistance is the key to freeing millions of overweight Americans from the tyranny of yo-yo dieting, food cravings, and a continual struggle with their weight. Have you ever had the feeling, as you looked at the bathroom scale or tried to button your jeans, that there was something wrong with your body, some stubborn disorder that simply refused to let you shed your excess weight? Well, I'm here to tell you, you were right. If you've tried in vain to lose weight, if you've fallen off every diet you've ever begun, if you've found your healthy intentions sabotaged by sugar cravings and starch binges, you haven't simply been failing or indulging yourself. You're not deficient in willpower or discipline. You're not weak or helpless or out of control. You're simply suffering from a chemical imbalance, a chemical imbalance you can correct by cutting out the wrong foods and beginning to eat the right ones.

Our bodies are designed to maintain a healthy weight, without any extra effort on our part. When our bodies are working properly, we eat what we want, and if we inadvertently gain a few pounds, the leptin in our system works to suppress our appetite, increase our metabolism, and reestablish our original weight. This is the mechanism that enables people to stay slim--the natural ability of our bodies to regulate themselves.

The problem comes when this natural ability is disrupted, most often by a condition known as inflammation. You may have heard of this syndrome, which has received a lot of attention in the media in recent years. Inflammation contributes to conditions like arthritis, asthma, allergies, and colitis. Many scientists also suspect that it plays a key role in heart disease, atherosclerosis, and cancer. But there's another condition that some scientists now realize is caused by inflammation--obesity. This is because inflammation triggers leptin resistance, which in turn contributes to a sluggish metabolism, unchecked cravings, and, eventually, unwanted pounds.

Inflammation is part of your body's response to many different types of stress, including infection and injury. Sometimes inflammation creates visible signs and symptoms: redness, swelling, heat, and pain. Sometimes it's visible only on a cellular level, so that you--and your doctor--may not even be aware that you have it. But it's present more often than you might suspect; in fact, recent research has found two new causes of inflammation--the type of food you eat and excess weight itself.

So, I told Lilly, your body can get caught in a vicious circle. Inflammation disrupts your body's natural weight regulation system. As a result, you gain weight. Then the excess fat creates more inflammation, making the extra weight unusually difficult to lose. That's why, once begun, weight gain often continues. The weight itself is worsening the condition that caused you to put on weight in the first place.

If you've been a lifelong dieter, you've probably noticed this pattern yourself, without realizing what was causing it. Most people don't stabilize at a single unhealthy weight. Unless, like Lilly, they diet and exercise strenuously, they find that their weight has a tendency to increase. Sometimes they succeed in losing a few pounds--but they usually gain back more than they lost.

I'll explain leptin resistance and the link between inflammation and weight gain more fully in Chapter 2. For now, understand this: your weight problem is not a matter of will or discipline, but a chemical imbalance that, once corrected, holds the key to permanent weight loss. The good news is that this imbalance can be fairly easy to correct, simply by changing the foods you eat.

Once you make this change--adding the right fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and protein sources, and cutting back on sugar and unhealthy fats--you'll notice a remarkable change. Not only will you feel better and look better and find the pounds dropping almost effortlessly, but you'll also stop craving unhealthy foods. Most diets are based on what you can't have. In contrast the Fat Resistance Diet is based on a philosophy of fulfillment, providing your palate with all the tasty, delicious, and satisfying food you could ever want. True, burgers and fries are not on the Fat Resistance Diet, but once your taste buds are reawakened and your body reenergized, "fulfillment" takes on a new meaning. You won't feel hungry, and you won't even feel as if you're on a diet. I know, because I myself eat this way, and it's very satisfying. I'm able to say those magic words that everyone wishes were true: I eat whatever I want, and I never gain weight. If you follow the Fat Resistance Diet, within a few weeks, you'll be saying them, too.
Restoring Your Body's Natural Balance
Lilly was skeptical. But she agreed to give the Fat Resistance Diet a try. I explained to her the basic principles behind the diet: inflammation can be set off by eating certain foods, which she needed to avoid. But inflammation can also be cured by eating other types of foods, so she actually needed to eat more of those. Unfortunately, most American diets are rich in inflammatory ingredients and sadly lacking in anti-inflammatory nutrients. Red meat, white flour, sugar, and hydrogenated fats all inflame your body; so do French fries. On the other hand, berries and cherries, walnuts and almonds, whole grains, and fish help to heal inflammation, as do cabbage, broccoli, garlic, and flaxseeds. In the following chart, you'll find a list of the Top 40 Superfoods that will fast-track your cure for inflammation and enable you to lose weight.

When Lilly heard that I actually wanted her to eat more, she couldn't believe it. "You don't lose weight by eating more," she kept insisting. But I assured her that the Fat Resistance Diet was based strictly on mainstream science: cutting-edge research conducted by scientists at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Rockefeller universities, published in respected medical journals such as JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. I'd prescribed versions of this diet to hundreds of patients, each of whom had gone on to lose substantial amounts of weight. Following my diet, they had achieved their ideal weight and avoided regaining the weight they'd lost.

Lilly agreed to follow an early version of the Fat Resistance Diet. To her joy, she soon began to lose weight at the rate of five pounds a month. (If you follow the plan laid out in this book, you can lose weight even more quickly--ten pounds in the first month, and five to ten pounds a month thereafter.)

Half a year later and thirty pounds lighter, Lilly was able to fit into her high school prom dress. But she didn't stop there. Sticking to the Fat Resistance Diet enabled Lilly to lose an additional four or five pounds a month, even though she was eating more food--and more types of food--than she had throughout her years of dieting.

By the time she'd been on the Fat Resistance Diet for one year, Lilly's weight had dropped to 150 pounds--the lightest she'd been since the age of fifteen. "I feel better than I've ever felt," she said in amazement. "Everyone tells me I look terrific--and not just because of the weight. My skin, my hair, even my fingernails a...

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 076792052X
• ISBN 13: 9780767920520
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368