The Rosedale Diet

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

Because it doesn’t contain a lot of fat! Many of you were probably raised

on this type of diet yourself, and eat a similar diet today.

The “fat phobia” has created a mind-set in the medical community

that borders on insanity. For example, I recently saw a box of chocolate-

flavored breakfast cereal proudly displaying a stamp of approval from

the American Heart Association. I was stunned. How could the Amer-

ican Heart Association approve of a breakfast cereal containing a

whopping 26 grams of carbohydrate and 14 grams of added sugar! The

cereal in question met their guidelines for being low in saturated fat.

What the unsuspecting consumer doesn’t know is that excess sugar is

simply stored as saturated fat in the body, and if you regularly ate this

cereal, I guarantee you would become leptin resistant and would even-

tually get fat.

What’s wrong with the standard, high carbohydrate–low fat diet?

As we explained in Chapters 1 and 2, your body runs best when it can

burn fat. When you bombard your body with sugar via a high carbohy-

drate diet, it will almost exclusively burn sugar and store fat. You will

become a proficient sugar burner and a poor fat burner. The end result

is obesity and disease. Remember, eating fat is not what makes you fat, it’s

the inability to burn fat that makes you fat.

■ (^) FROM BAD TO WORSE
In Chapter 1, I described how all carbohydrate (except for fiber) is bro-
ken down into sugar in the body. Starchy, sugary carbohydrates produce
a rapid spike in leptin levels, the hormone produced by your fat cells. As
you may remember, leptin should tell the brain that you have enough
fat stored in your body, that you should stop making more fat, and that
it’s okay to start burning some off. It also lets your brain know when you
have had enough food, and blocks the urge to eat.
Constant spikes in leptin levels throughout the day can cause a
breakdown in communication between leptin and your cells. It’s like
having someone constantly yelling in your ear—eventually, you’re going
to protect yourself by getting earplugs to reduce the noise or you’ll go
deaf. Similarly, if your cells are constantly exposed to frequent spikes in