The Rosedale Diet

6 ■^ EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ROSEDALE DIET

leptin, she will stop menstruating, and therefore will be unable to con-

ceive. Very recently, leptin amazed the scientific community when it

was found to be able to rewire critical and central portions of the brain

to better do its bidding. The more scientists research leptin, the more

they learn about how vital it is to life.

As hormones go, leptin is the new kid on the block. In fact, it’s so

new, most of your doctors may not have heard of it, or are unsure what

it does. Yet, I consider leptin to be so important for the health and well-

being of my patients that I always measure their leptin levels, and if I

have any say in the matter, doing so will become standard medical prac-

tice within a few years. Measuring leptin is easy—it’s a simple blood

test—but it tells me volumes about my patients’ potential for gaining

weight and the ease with which they will be able to shed excess pounds.

Blood leptin levels indicate how well leptin is functioning in your body.

High fasting levels of leptin (from blood taken after waking and before

eating breakfast) mean that leptin is not functioning well, and there-

fore, unless leptin is brought down to a healthy level, losing weight and

keeping it off will be an insurmountable challenge. Low fasting leptin

levels mean that leptin is able to do its job and that your body won’t sab-

otage your weight-loss efforts by making you constantly hungry.

More important, leptin levels are a bellwether as to how well a per-

son is aging. If their leptin levels are high, it bodes ominously for their

health, and that bodes poorly for longevity. In fact, remember those

calorie-deprived laboratory animals that were much healthier and lived

well beyond their normal life span that I described earlier? They had

very low leptin levels compared to their well-fed peers. Fortunately, it is

easy to lower your leptin levels without starvation by following the

Rosedale Diet, as I’ll describe later.

■ (^) LEPTIN HELPS YOU LOSE FAT
When patients come to me saying that they would like to lose weight,
what they are really saying is that they want to lose fat. No one wants to
lose muscle or bone! The goal of dieting is to burn off excess fat so that