As an internist, I see patients daily who have medical problems caused or aggravated by excessive body fat. Other patients are essentially healthy, but ask for my help in losing weight. The standard medical approach too often is:
■ a five-minute lecture on proper
eating and exercise habits
■ presentation of a confusing,
unrealistic, calorie-restricted
diet pamphlet
■ occasional referral to a
dietitian
■ follow-up office visits with
focus more on the medical problem
than the weight problem.
But this approach nearly always fails, and those few who do lose weight typically regain it within a few weeks or months. The reasons for failure of weight loss programs are numerous and complex, but they share a unifying characteristic: lack of knowledge. We need adequate knowledge of nutrition and how our bodies work to avoid wasting time, money, and energy on worthless weight-loss schemes. We must learn to easily identify weight-loss plans that are designed only to enrich the entrepreneur. We must learn to recognize scams that may jeopardize our physical and emotional health. Most importantly, knowledge is your key to successful long-term weight management. Given an adequate knowledge base, most people don’t need to consult physicians, dietitians, or other advisers on weight loss. Acquisition of that knowledge base, however, is not easy. Information and opinions are readily available from the Internet, books, television, magazine and newspaper articles, friends and acquaintances, health food store clerks, hearsay
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at the beauty salon, and advertisements for various weight-loss products. Much of this is worthwhile, much is worthless. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? The “doctor” in my doctor of medicine degree is based on the Latin word for “teacher.” I will share with you what your personal physician likely would teach you, if only he had the time. He would help you find the pearls of knowledge in a sea of complexity, confusion, contradiction, and quackery. My aim is to educate you so that you can seize control of your weight problem. I provide ongoing education on the Internet at http://www.AdvancedMediterraneanDiet.com, where you will find nutrition and health updates, current and past newsletters, FAQs, new recipes, and more.
Although some of the information presented here is common knowledge, most of it is gleaned from my 24 years of clinical experience with overweight patients and from my analysis of scientific literature generated by obesity researchers and clinicians. The most pertinent scientific articles are listed for your consideration at the end of the book under “Selected References By Topic.” Of these 200 references, 108 specifically support my food recommendations. As future studies are published, I will review them for you at the Advanced Mediterranean Diet website. The scientific literature is neither readily available nor understandable to the layperson. Furthermore, technical popularizers in the media tend to sensationalize preliminary research results. They may unwittingly promote fads since they lack the scientific training and clinical experience to recognize the real, but rare, breakthroughs. Having observed my patients’ weight-loss efforts of every description, I know what works and what doesn’t.
[Continued....]
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