January
is the traditional month for new diets. I get kind of amused reading
this week's Time magazine which chose 3 of the new diet books to
review. The first one disallows wine, salt, sugar and artificial
sweetener. The second forbids carbonated drinks, coffee, gassy foods
including cabbage. The third forbids dairy, white rice, and processed
foods. And the last one forbids volume. Eat anything you want but just
choose small portions.
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Why does every new diet start
off by telling you what you cannot eat?
People
have had problems with excess weight ever since mankind began to grow
food. The hunters and gatherers weren't fat. They spent a lot of time
just searching for food and were grateful for what they could find. And
the game and berries they found also spent time searching for
nourishment and water and didn't store fat either.
But that was then. This is now. We are besotted with food, drink,
choices, and chance. What on earth can we do?
Dr.
John Salerno of the Salerno Center in New York city has taught me that
I can really indulge myself, eat fabulous foods and lose weight. I
have, to date, lost 31 pounds. My blood sugars are now normal. My
cholesterol has gone down. And I have not suffered one day.
I
propose that you can treat your self to luxury foods, pates, smoked
salmon, steaks, ham, shrimp. You're beginning to see a pattern here,
right? High fat, high protein foods. Why would a person do that? Won't
it clog your arteries? Haven't I read all the materials from main
stream medicine that tell you NOT to eat fat? Entire careers have been
built on this premise. Am I not paying attention? Dr. Salerno offers an
alternate world view.
I myself used to be on the masthead of Cooking
Light Magazine which made a very successful venture teaching people to
take fat out of foods. Of course the dark secret in the test kitchen
was that the so-called portions they recommended were laughable. A cake
with 15 servings? Sure it looked good on the cover of the magazine.
Sure, its nutritional numbers looked good. But everybody who worked on
the recipe could joke that they'd eat 3 servings in a hurry. The whole
notion was as flawed as Bernie Madoff's money making schemes.
Fat is good for you. Protein is good for you. I am not making this up.
Before
South Beach, Before Atkins, there was a doctor in England named Richard
Mackarness who wrote a book in the fifties called Eat Fat and Grow
Slim. Now Dr. Mackarness was not basing his diet on some poppycock
theory, but on solid science that went back as far as the nineteenth
century when a mortician named William Banting, who was so fat he had
to walk down the stairs backwards made a stunning discovery. With the
help of a nineteenth century eye, ear, nose and throat doc, he figured
out he could lose weight and eat all the fat he wanted to.
Because, mirable dictu, Banting discovered it wasn't fat that
was his problem, but rather bread, sugar, beer, and potatoes.
Banting
was a fashionable London mortician who actually made the coffin for the
Duke of Wellington. Before he came upon his amazing discovery, he had
tried a number of other remedies: Turkish baths, violent exercise, spa
treatments,
drastic punishing diets, and what they called purgation which sounds so
awful we don't even want to go there. I suppose it's the equivalent of
high colonics today which promise to drop 20 pounds in an hour. Ugh.
But
eventually, he went to see this ear, nose and throat doctor named
William Harvey who put him on a new diet. Within a year, he had lost
all the weight he needed to, about 100 pounds, and much to his
astonishment, Dr. Harvey's
diet was pleasant and not the least painful.
So this is how
Banting became famous. He wrote his own little book which he called
"Letter on Corpulence", published in 1864. He breakfasted on 4 or 5
ounces of beef, mutton, kidney, fish, bacon or cold meat. He had a
little dry toast and a cup of tea. For lunch, he had 5 to 6 ounces of
fish except salmon (See everybody has to leave something out...) pork,
meat, poultry and game. Any vegetable except potatoes, a little toast,
a glass or two of claret or sherry and some fruit. For tea, he had 2-3
ounces of fruit, more tea and another piece of dry toast. By dinner, he
ate again 3-4 ounces of meat washed down with more claret. For a night
cap he took a shot of gin, whiskey or brandy.
And following this generous regimen, he did actually lose more than 100
pounds in a year. He was elated.
His diet was almost totally fatty meat, with some roughage and booze
that helped him regain his youthful shape.
Now
perhaps the most significant caveat about this diet is that it is meant
for people who tend to gain weight. Not for those who have picked up a
10
pesky pounds.
But, in fact, after Dr. Salerno's Full Fat Fast,
which lasts a couple weeks and jump starts your metabolism by
restricting all carbs, you could easily go with the good mortician's
diet and find yourself healthier, slimmer and sound for the coming year.
I
am happy to report that I got through the holiday parties without
gaining any weight. I didn't lose any but I didn't gain, and I pretty
much stuck to Banting's suggestions. Yes, I did have bites of desserts
often. I am addicted to sugar. And I downed a number of Manhattans.
But now it's the new year and for
the first two weeks I'll stick to the full fat fast and know that I
will not have to suffer, I will not have to shave off calories until
I'm as mean as a snake. And I will continue with the weight loss plan
that I started last year. I've lost 30 pounds and expect to lose 30
more.
Now, you'll have to excuse me. I'm going to stop and eat some luscious
smoked salmon from Mackenzie,
Ltd.com and some capers and a squeeze of lemon. What's not to love
about that kind of diet?
One for the Table does not endorse any specific diet plans. Please consult with your healthcare professional before starting any weight loss regime.