The Diet Trap by Pamela Smith, R.D. Click here to return to book details CHAPTER 1 - Diet Mania Sometimes when we’re stuck with a locked door in front of us there’s a key hidden under the mat, or a window open on the side of the house.      -Anonymous For JoAnn, the moment of truth came when she couldn’t button her favorite size-8 skirt. Ever since hitting her mid-thirties she had known that a little extra weight was creeping on. But that day, a “little” became depressingly close to “a lot.” When she finally weighed herself, JoAnn, a thirty-nine-year-old mother of two, couldn’t believe she had gained twenty-three pounds-as much, all told, as when she delivered her first baby. Where did all those pounds come from? And when? Oh, JoAnn was aware that she’d been expanding-but she had blamed that on her lack of exercise, on not playing tennis because of a knee injury. She just needed to tone up. Or maybe she should go on a “serious” diet-at least half of her friends were doing that. For Mike, weight had always been a major battle. He was a pudgy, stocky kid who never seemed to grow out of his baby fat. The family nickname for Mike was “Beefy King,” a name that somehow followed him to school. Throughout his early teens, the extra weight was a nuisance that he hadn’t really done much about, except to try to wish it away. That is, until he started playing football. Then his bulk served him well. It helped “Beefy King” rise to be the starting linebacker for his high school team. It also landed him a scholarship to college. Mike played to great acclaim for three years, but then came the knee injury that took him out of the day’s game, and ultimately, out of football. That’s when his weight really ballooned-and that’s when he first tried serious dieting. That was fifteen years ago, and Mike has been on close to fifteen diets since. He’s done Herbalife, protein shakes, Fit for Life, Butterbusters, Jenny Craig, even a hospital fasting program, to name just a few. And he’s always been pretty successful-as long as he was “on it”-and especially if he was exercising hard to boot. But he can’t stay “on it” forever. He gets the “misery factor” weight off, gets distracted or hurts his knee again, and then he’s right back to eating and drinking whatever, whenever, and quits exercising. Worse, he always gains back more than he lost. But as Mike sat before me, his diet history was only part of the story. The bigger issue was that he’d been hospitalized over the previous weekend with chest pains, and extensive testing had revealed a coronary artery that was 90 percent blocked. Blood tests measured his cholesterol at a dangerous 270, with a low level of protective HDLs. Mike’s moment of truth had come: He now had to lose weight, but in a different way from how he ever had before. Now he had to change his lifestyle permanently in order to lower his cholesterol, strengthen his body, and hopefully reverse the blockage without surgery. Mike came to me because he just didn’t know what to do. In the past, either diets he’d tried had failed him or he had failed at them. Deep down he knew they had all been unhealthy. But was it possible to lose weight, keep it off, and restore his health at the same time? Susan had some of the same questions. Her fit-and-trim appearance was the envy of all her friends. They assumed it was easy for her; she must just be naturally thin. They never really saw her eating; but then, she was always a bit tired, but who wouldn’t be with a schedule like hers? What Susan’s friends didn’t know is that staying thin wasn’t “natural” or easy for her, and never had been. They didn’t know that she kept pictures of herself at a plump age of twelve on the refrigerator and bathroom mirror to remind her of what she never wanted to look like again. And she hadn’t backtracked-but it had taken a lot of working out and a lot of dieting. And I do mean diet. Susan sat with me and ticked off her dieting history. A bout of mono served as her first “diet” at age thirteen and gave her enough of a boost to show her she could be thin, and that she liked it-a lot. It also showed her that starving was her best bet for weight loss. But headaches stopped that several years ago. So she turned to her own version of every popular diet to come down the pike. It started with protein shakes in college, then Fit for Life, then a vegetarian diet, then a no-fat diet…. Susan wouldn’t just go “on” the various diets, she would adopt them as a way of life. What she ate depended on which diet she was on at the time. It was the confusing array of new high-protein diets that brought her to me, seeking my direction on which one would be best for her, a vegetarian, to boost her immunes and keep her weight down. She ended her story with, “I’m so tired, and I get sick so easily, so I’m thinking the high-protein diet might be good for me, but is it what I need?” She was too weary to decide on her own anymore. But it was the letter I received from Brenda that summed up the dilemma, confusion, and entrapment of a nation: Pam, What am I doing wrong? I try to eat the right foods and I exercise, but my weight is higher than it’s ever been. At fifty-two, I weigh forty pounds more than I did at thirty-two. Sure, I know it’s been a stressful number of years. There’s been work to do, a family to tend to, spiritual needs, emotional demands. It’s hard to be “good” all the time, but I’ve never been what I’d consider a big overeater. So why do I seem to gain weight so easily? Diets are not the answer for me-I’ve gone on enough of them through the years, and I know better. I’ve probably lost a sum total of 200 pounds, but I’ve gained back 210! Yet I have to admit, going on a crash diet is so tempting to me right now. Especially one of the high-protein/low- or no-carbohydrate ones that EVERYONE seems to be on. I’ve read some of the stuff-and have seen shows from Oprah! to 20/20 to Larry King Live. I’m so confused-maybe eating carbohydrates is the problem. I know they’re good for you and will probably make you live longer-but will they make you live longer fatter? I watch my friends who are on the hot diets eating steak cooked in butter and loading up on bacon and eggs, and I think, “How can people eat that way?” Yet, they are losing weight-no doubt about it. Pam, I don’t know what to do. Maybe we’re supposed to weigh more as we get older. Maybe our Baby Boomer struggle is to try to hold tight to some image of our youth-and have it enshrined in thinness. Or maybe that’s a cop-out, and I’m just giving up. I’m so confused. Can you help me make sense of all this?                 Brenda Millions of Americans are crying out just like Brenda. They want a thin and healthy body, but that body seems to be an impossible dream. More than 120 million people each year report going on a weight loss diet. And, on any given day, about one-third of all adult women (30 million!) are desperately trying to lose weight, searching for the magic diet or workout that will catapult them to their ideal body. They try everything to lose weight, no matter what the cost: high-protein diets, high-carbohydrate diets, food-combining diets, expensive weight-loss programs, drinks, potions, pills, herbs, spas, fasting, and feasting. And they do lose weight-some lose quite a lot. But the vast majority also gain it back, and with a vengeance-most with more than they lost, and most, with more fat than they started with. Many more simply fail to lose any weight at all. The puzzle is this: How come one person can go on a diet, get rid of fat, and keep it off easily, while nine others get caught in a never-ending chain of disappointing diets that lead to despair and defeat? The odds are exactly that overwhelming-nine to one-that people who have lost weight on a diet will gain it back within a year. In fact, follow-up records of virtually every diet program indicate that one-third to one-half of dieters gain back even more weight than they lost. The American Weigh? No doubt about it: Dieting is a national obsession-and problem. The United States is by far the fattest country in the world; the prevalence of overweight people has increased by 20 percent in twenty years. In 1962, 12.8 percent of Americans were obese; in 1980 it was 14 percent. Now, 22.5 percent are obese and more than 50 percent are overweight. On average, we eat 7 percent more calories than we did twenty years ago. Even the nation’s children are pudgy; 25 percent-one quarter of them-are overweight. A 1998 Harris Poll found that 76 percent of adults were heavier than recommended for their height and body frame. In the late seventies, that figure was only 46 percent. The latest estimate is that 97 million Americans are overweight and most of them want to lose the excess poundage. Even more of them go on a diet each year, whether they need to or not. How is all this weight gain possible in a country that spends billions each year on attempts to slim down? The U.S. Department of Agriculture surveyed American eating habits a few years ago and determined that only 12 percent of us have a healthy diet. And making a change-any change-is tough. Some have become so discouraged that they do nothing at all regarding their weight. A major poll in 1998 found that although 58 percent of Americans wanted to lose weight, only 46 percent were seriously trying. Why try again-only to fail? This was where Sandy was when she came to see me for nutritional counseling. She started our meeting with “I’m forty-something and feel as if I’ve been fighting a war against my body for forty-something years. I think I’ve tried every diet created. I’ve swallowed pills, taken shots, and eaten carefully formulated foods and powders. I’ve fasted and drunk protein shakes. I’ve prayed and been prayed for. I’ve spent untold amounts of money on weight-loss programs guaranteed to work. And they do work. Actually I can lose weight quite easily-but not nearly as easily as I can gain it back!” Sandy’s most recent diet had resulted in a rapid loss of sixty-five pounds-down to the thinnest she’d ever been. She had been motivated by the invitation to her twenty-five-year high school reunion, and with dieting helping her to feel thin and beautiful, she had walked proudly through the door. Unfortunately, she broke the diet that night and continued to eat and overeat the rest of the weekend. As with any fad diet, Sandy gained back five pounds almost immediately. Then came a vacation, followed closely by Christmas. She gained back the entire sixty-five pounds within five months. That was a year ago. Sandy finally mustered up the gumption to try again-and started the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet after seeing the book’s authors on a number of TV talk shows. She lost fourteen pounds in four weeks. But then Thanksgiving arrived, and she broke the diet-but just for that one day, of course. And now, three weeks later, Sandy was sitting across from me, having already gained back the full fourteen pounds. She was desperate. Sandy’s story could be the story of countless numbers of discouraged people just like her. A measure of our discouragement is how we suspend our good sense and do some pretty outrageous things, falling for some incredibly ludicrous schemes to lose weight. Americans spend $40 to $60 billion a year on the diet and weight-loss industry-and that dollar figure is increasing every year. The desperate search for how to do it-this time-usually ends with a headfirst fall into a new diet plan or scheme, or a revisit to an old (failed) one. Yes, diet mania is alive and well today-even though statistics show again and again that diets never have and never will be effective on a long-term basis. Diet programs abound, complete with lots of advertising and many faithful followers armed with before-and-after pictures. There is a virtual weight-loss smorgasbord from which to choose our next diet: celebrity authors, diet doctors, model spokespersons, multilevel product plans in mall kiosks-even at churches. More than just a weight-loss game alone, there are diets to combat hypoglycemia, diets to prevent aging, diets to cure chronic fatigue and arthritis. There are high-protein/low-carbohydrate diets and low-protein/high-carbohydrate diets-sometimes written by the same author! Diets and their teachings bounce us back and forth like pinballs between this and that. They get cycled and recycled. As soon as one generation forgets the worthless and dangerous diets of the past, out comes a “new-and-improved,” “revolutionary” version with a new name. Many of these deceptive diets have been used and overused so much that they’ve even been accepted as good nutrition. We’re bombarded with mixed messages. On the one hand, we hear the depressing statistics about diets being ineffective, unhealthy, about their even making us fatter. On the other, those before-and-after pictures in advertisements and infomercials seem too good to ignore. This is the essence of the diet trap: We are sucked dry by life, fall headfirst into overeating and unhealthy choices, and are seduced into the newest diet that will show us how to regain control of our weight, our image, and our lives. But the diet ends up controlling us instead. Our hopes are misplaced, our road a dead end. For most of us, no amount of dieting or exercise will give us the physique of models and movie stars-it’s an unattainable goal. But exercise and better nutrition are attainable. Anyone can improve his or her health by exercising and eating well, even if that person doesn’t become thin. Losing weight can be good for a person, but only if it’s done in a healthy way. A lot of people, despite dieting, weigh more now than they ever have. Is it what they eat? Partly. Is it heredity? Yes, that’s also important. But the secret to permanent weight loss lies elsewhere-it is being set free from the diet trap and embarking on a lifestyle of wellness. Until we are ready to go beyond dieting and look at the real issue-the way we live-then fatigue, unhealthy living, overeating, and being overweight will continue to have a powerful grip on our lives. Destined for Failure I’ve always proclaimed that the word “diet” is the original four-letter word. Think about it: The very word is spelled D-I-E-T, just a letter away from the word die. And that’s how you feel when you’re on a diet-as if you are going to die! This is one big reason why diets are bound to fail. Diets are all about denial-focusing on what you can’t eat. The temporary deprivation cries out for a nice reward. Going “on” a diet to go “off” the diet, being “good” to be “bad,” eating “legal” foods only to “cheat”-all this leaves us exhausted, unhealthy, and usually unsuccessful. People feel guilty about eating unhealthy “bad” food. Yet their biggest nutritional mistake is not what they do eat; it’s what they don’t eat. They don’t choose nourishing foods, and they don’t eat the right foods in the right balance at the right time. Their eating is sporadic and erratic until, driven by hunger and low blood sugar, they choose the very foods they are struggling to avoid. Even when their diets are high in protein, if whole carbohydrates are lacking, the nutritional imbalance ultimately brings failure. Physiologically and in some ways psychologically, dieters are no different from people who are starving. Like water and air, food is necessary for life. Obsessive behavior over weight and dieting creates all sorts of havoc that even health care professionals don’t fully understand. For example, normal eaters will decrease their food intake after a high-calorie meal. Yet, in one study, when dieters were given just one high-calorie meal, they immediately felt the diet was over and began to overeat, even to gorge. The dieting had put them into a state of deprivation that triggered a physiological and emotional drive to eat, and overeat. Their metabolism, moreover, had moved into a “store” rather than “burn” path, so that what they ate was much more damaging. How many times has that happened to you? It’s happened to me a lot. Like many of you, I grew up with dieting as my second language-a bona fide member of the Dieting Generation. And with good reason: I inherited a tendency toward being overweight and had a family filled with compulsive overeaters and obesity. By the time I was eleven I had already gone on my first diet, an awful grapefruit and poached egg diet (it was called the Mayo Clinic diet, but did not originate there-nor has any stamp of approval from this respected medical and research institution ever been given). Was I overweight at the time? Not really. But I was growing and at the start of menses, and my body shape was changing. My hips simply didn’t conform to the popular “Twiggy” look of the day. Add to that an unhealthy dose of fear about my family’s obesity problems, and I fell headlong into the diet trap. I lost weight at first. But, sadly, I regained it-more than I had lost. It was the classic story: I lost five pounds only to gain that five and raise it three. The next year, on the next diet (five days of spinach and orange juice!), I lost ten pounds, and quite quickly gained fifteen. The pendulum was swinging higher and wider each year with each new diet. All the dieting was doing was leaving me a malnourished mess, yet weighing more and more. I spent half of my time discouraged and depressed-and the other half overeating to compensate. In the last semester of my senior year at Florida State University, I got a wake-up call. I was anxious to graduate and take on the world of fashion design and marketing. I needed a class to fill a core requirement for my chosen field and stumbled on a class in nutrition. I was on one of my many diets at the time-lose-five-pounds-in-five-days-for-a-weekend-beach-party crash diet. It was straight out of the newest diet book on the block, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, and it was working great! I had actually shown a loss of twelve pounds in seven days! It was miraculous… and definitely the way I was going to eat for the rest of my life. But then, sitting in this nutrition class in the early seventies, I was amazed to learn of the damage I was doing to my body by following this diet and all the others, by my naiveté and drive for thinness at any cost. And, like all crash dieters, I was paying a high price-poor health, mood swings, and a body that was yo-yoing between fat and lean. I was an “expert” dieter, but I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. While taking the course, I began to understand that I knew precious little about health. I had not been taught-I had only been mentored by diet doctors and gurus who had become successful by selling quick ways to lose weight, not telling the truth about caring for the whole body. After an emotional seesaw and much deliberation, I changed my major to nutrition. It was the first thing in my life that I really felt passionate about-I had to help others learn what I was learning and break free from the diet trap right along with me. That decision changed my life-and changed my dieting ways. I never went on a diet again. Whole-Body Wellness As I learned more about nutrition and began to take care of my physical body, I was able to lose weight and, for the first time, gain health and energy. My nails became strong and long, my hair was shiny and full, my eyes were clear and sparkling. I no longer got headaches every day, nor did I sit on the cliff-line of depression. I could think clearly-even studying was less of a chore. I grew in understanding of why I did what I did, and why I didn’t do the things I wanted to do when it came to self-care and healthy eating. I have now been living this life of wellness and teaching it for twenty-two years. Throughout my years of nutritional and behavioral counseling, people have come to me seeking a quality of life filled with energy and well-being. Many people have knocked on my door because they want to lose weight for good. Some need to manage stress better. Some want more energy. Others arrive very ill, in need of a nutritional plan to control serious disease-even to save their lives. I started my nutrition practice as a Registered Dietitian for a progressive hospital’s oncology unit-working with very brave patients and their families to fight their cancer with every means available. These challenging days led me into private practice working with people seeking wellness, helping them to get well and live well today, while focusing on preventing the diseases of tomorrow. Early in my practice I sensed that, like my dieting college self, most of my clients needed simple nutritional education and guidance. They needed to be led beyond the cultural diet deceptions and myths to a true understanding of holistic health and nutrition. Rather than finding out what they shouldn’t eat, they needed to learn what they should eat, when to eat, and how to balance their intake in a way that would benefit their bodies. My clients needed to learn how to break away from the typical American eating style while still living a normal lifestyle. And they needed to learn the vital part food plays in their well-being. Different from the run-of-the-mill physicians and programs, I worked with my clients in a very focused, time-intensive manner. The foundation of their lifestyle changes was individual and practical. In 1985 I developed The Smart Weigh-a seven-week plan of practical education and lifestyle direction. Since then, over 12,000 people have followed the program-and hundreds of thousands more have adopted the principles found in my books: Eat Well-Live Well, Food for Life, and The Energy Edge. The first step in The Smart Weigh plan was a lifestyle assessment and blood work profile that helped me to learn about a client’s health and weight history, eating and self-care patterns, and current nutritional status. From this information I could develop an educational and meal plan to fit within a person’s lifestyle and preferences. Weekly sessions and consultations helped the person to adopt the newly learned principles and adapt them into habits. As my clients put these principles into practice, most succeeded in achieving their goals: more energy, leaner bodies, weight loss and management, lower cholesterol, and stress resiliency-all direct benefits of the new way of eating and living. They began to learn how to maintain those goals for life. Their success was contagious, and the principles of The Smart Weigh overflowed to their friends and family. And so, I offer you too a word of hope: The Smart Weigh-and its principles revealed in these pages-provides a plan for nourishing your body with the right foods at the right time, and for dealing with what’s eating you. It will allow the healing and repair-the natural ability to lose weight that is scripted into every cell of your body-to flow through your being. It works because, quite simply, it’s how we were created. Whatever our need of the moment-losing weight, gaining weight, controlling overeating, getting well-the goal is to learn how to get our body working for us and with us. In this book, I have tried to break down a complex subject into seven simple principles. These principles are expressed in my Smart Weigh plan in Parts 3 and 4. They will equip you to plan your own proper balance of nutrients at each meal, according to the foods you like, and to develop a lifestyle that will propel you towards your goals. If weight loss-even weight gain or just maintenance-is what you are seeking, I want to help you attain it. But I’m not interested just in weight management, or your hormones, or your heart, or your gut-I’m interested in your whole body and soul. Change in one area shouldn’t have to compromise the vibrancy of another. Just the opposite. That’s why the information you will receive from this book is different from most. It’s not a tunnel-vision view toward one goal at the expense of all others. Rather, it is designed to help you achieve whole-body wellness. No Quick Fixes The amount of personal pain among those striving to be something they cannot be is enormous. It impacts everything they do, everything they see. The effects of the stress and depression are impossible to evaluate. Perhaps for you it’s not so serious, it’s just time to get in control of your waistline and back into last year’s shorts. Sure you know that a healthy, lower-fat eating plan may be the right way to lose weight, but you don’t really have a serious weight problem-you just need a quick fix! People that have a real problem with weight and overeating need to focus on long-term answers. But a slew of New York Times best-sellers are delivering quick results to people all around you. And, if they didn’t work, they wouldn’t be flying off the shelves, right? Right. They are working; they do deliver quick results. But are they wise? A fast-acting diet is not your answer, whether you have eight pounds to lose or eighty. But you do need an answer, and that is why I’ve written this book. Diets are confusing and robbing us of our health, wealth, and wellness. In a day when health care costs are immobilizing our country’s economy, we see a huge segment of our population selling U.S. health to fad diets and diving headfirst into disease. I say ENOUGH! It’s simply time to clear the confusion-to cast a vote for new ways and a new weigh. It’s time to get freed from the diet trap-for life. Click here to order from Amazon: Click here to return to book details