34 ■^ EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ROSEDALE DIET
based on the “just eat a little less each day” further lock people into the
vicious cycle that will ultimately leave them even fatter and sicker.
■ (^) THE DESPERATE STRUGGLE
Americans may be getting fatter, but it’s not for their lack of trying to
slim down. Many of my patients have desperately tried to lose weight
on their own, bouncing from one weight loss diet to the next. Many
have joined gyms and have tried to become more physically active, but
they have not been able to make a dent in either their obesity or their di-
abetes. In fact, most have gone from bad to worse following the stan-
dard “eat less and exercise more” advice. It is almost impossible to
eat less when there is a little devil on your shoulders born from
leptin resistance that is constantly whispering to you, “eat more,
get fatter.”
Numerous studies have documented that weight loss diets almost
always fail, and that it is a rare person who is able to diet and keep the
weight off. More often than not, within a year, dieters wind up even
heavier than they were before they began the weight loss program. In
fact, if you look at the fine print on television commercials or advertise-
ments for diets in which successful dieters are trotted out to talk about
the newest weight loss craze, you will always see a disclaimer noting
that these good results are “atypical.”
I can tell you with confidence that my good results are typical. My
patients typically lose weight, keep it off, and regain their health. Why
do my patients fare so well despite the abysmal odds against them? My
approach to treating obesity is completely different from the standard
approach. I don’t consider obesity to be a disease; for that matter, I
don’t think of diabetes or heart disease as diseases. These conditions
are symptoms of a greater underlying problem—the inability of the
body to use energy correctly to maintain health and life. Instead of
burning off extra fat, as our bodies were meant to do, the body hoards it.
Going on a standard low calorie diet will just aggravate it. If we don’t
treat the underlying cause of this metabolic glitch, we will never truly
cure obesity or diabetes—or any of the symptoms that we call disease,