Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

44 Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

vegetables and grains. Cooking your food in oil will make your diet

less effective and you will not lose weight as easily. You may not

even lose any weight at all.

Vigilante and Flynn tested their diet on 120 people, and the av-

erage person lost eight pounds in eight weeks. In the same amount

of tune on my diet, you will lose at least three times that, if you have

that much extra weight to lose. Keep in mind, weight loss slows

down over time. Most people starting almost any diet after eating

haphazardly lose some weight initially. It is easy to drop a few pounds

by merely counting calories, but many overweight individuals with a

strong genetic tendency to obesity and slow metabolism who need to

lose lots of weight may lose very little or none at all. Some may lose

an initial five to fifteen pounds, but then when further weight loss

becomes even more difficult, they give up.

Another problem with Mediterranean diets is the preponderance

of pasta and Italian bread, which not only causes difficulty with

weight control but is also an important factor in increasing colon

cancer risk in populations with this eating style.^34

For the very overweight individual, this Mediterranean diet, like

other conventional weight-loss programs, is neither restrictive enough

nor filling enough to achieve the results desired. Because olive oil

adds so many extra calories to their diet, the dieters still have to care-

fully count calories and eat tiny portions. All those calories supplied

by olive oil, almost one-third of the total caloric intake, make the diet

significantly lower in nutrients and fiber.

You can always lose weight by exercising more, and I am all for

it. However, many very overweight patients are too ill and too heavy

to exercise much. As a former athlete, and today as a physician, I am

an exercise nut and a fanatic about recommending exercise to my

patients, but many patients cannot comply with a substantial exer-

cise program until they are in better health or lose some more weight

first. So many people need a diet that will drop weight effectively,

even if they can't do lots of exercise.

I have tested my recommendation on more than two thousand

patients. The average patient loses the most weight in the first four to

six weeks, with the average being about twenty pounds. The weight

loss continues nicely — those following this program continue to lose

about ten pounds the second month and about a pound and a half

per week thereafter. The weight loss continues at this comparatively

quick rate until they reach their ideal weight.