Kirstie Alley weight loss supplements are as bad as they get. Don’t pay attention to the celebrity endorsement. The lead product, Rescue Me, is useless. Here is what is in it.
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Kirstie Alley Weight Loss Supplements

Kirstie Alley weight loss products are marketed on two websites: (KirstieAlley.com and Kirstie Alley’s Organic Liaison). However, after quite a bit of effort tracking down what they are made of, I have concluded that she does not want to publicize the ingredients of main product, called Rescue Me. There is a good reason for this, since it is pretty crappy.

Unfortunately, too much junk is promoted for weight loss all over the internet. It swamps out information about truly useful products. This is certainly the case with Rescue Me.

I was all set to evaluate the ingredients list and do some research on them so I could explain here what they might do for weight loss. However, the list is either not there or it is so well hidden that I couldn’t find it.

Fortunately, others online have purchased the product and posted scans or photos of the label information. It takes some persistence to find it through a Google search on the combination of “organic liaison” AND “nutrition facts.” Some interesting results came from a TV news station in Dallas via a TV news station in Portland (Doctor finds mostly sugar in Kirstie Alley’s diet formula). This is a quote from that post by Dr. Ilana Bragin:

The Web site doesn’t list what’s in the product, so News 8 in Dallas purchased a bottle of the “Rescue Me” elixir for $49.95 and brought it to Methodist Dallas Medical Center Dr. Ilana Bragin. Her specialty is weight loss management.

“This is really a lot of juice, some sugar, and a couple vitamins that haven’t ever been proven ever to do very much for your appetite suppression or weight loss,” Bragin concluded.

Another site had this image of the Nutrition Facts label:

This is just a summary of certain components of what is the Rescue Me product, not a complete ingredients list.

As Dr. Bragin pointed out, this is a big sugar load -10 grams of sugars out of 15 grams of carbohydrates. All 60 calories per serving can be accounted for by sugar.

Any vitamins and minerals on the label are pointless.

Comments

I really don’t like to be a nattering nabob of negativism. However, sometimes junk like this annoys me so much that I have to say something. There, I feel better now.

Reporting Kirstie Alley weight loss crapola,

Dr. D

The Wheat Belly diet is a major thorn in the side of the USDA-backed ChooseMyPlate dietary recommendations – with good reason. Grains are not part of a healthy diet, whole or otherwise. Here is what you should know and do instead.

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ChooseMyPlate Blunders

This is my initial perspective on the ChooseMyPlate program: Michelle Obama’s MyPlate Replaces Food Pyramid With More Bad Government Advice. You can probably tell what my perspective is based on the title of that post.

Considering the historical, evolutionary, and agricultural evidence against grains in our diet in general, suggesting that they be a major part of what we should eat is poor advice. This is even more clear based on the Wheat Belly book, by Dr. William Davis, that has become a national bestseller.

Wheat Belly MyPlate?

There is a simple fix. All you have to do is make the following changes. Oh, I threw in the ban on dairy because I am lactose intolerant. Actually, suggesting a glass of milk as a part of a healthy meal is silly for a lot of other reasons, too.

Eat hearty!

For the wheat belly diet,

Dr. D.

Got a wheat belly? How about some wheat-free, grain-free bread. Yes, bread. Here is a quick and delicious recipe that you can cook up in a couple of minutes.

Keep this in mind: The new flour is almond flour. There are other seed flours, of course. Almond flour seems to be the best for overall ease of handling and for nutrition. Here is a quick recipe for making a single slice of bread with almond flour. I got this from a friend of mine who showed me how to make it and how absolutely delicious it is.

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
1 pinch salt
1/4 cup almond meal
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking powder

Directions

Melt butter, then add salt and almond meal. Stir well. Stir in baking powder. Beat egg in separate bowl, then stir into almond meal mixture. Microwave on high 1 minute, or more until done. (Experiment with this for your oven.) Let cool on rack. Toast lightly to firm up more, if desired.

Delicious!

For wheat belly recipes,

Dr. D

The bestselling book, Wheat Belly, by Dr. William Davis, provides logical explanations for why we should stop consuming wheat. The science behind this advice is mostly good, although a little uneven.

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Wheat Belly Book

Rodale Press has created a full-fledged marketing program for this book, with backing by the requisite blog: Wheat Belly Blog. It has hit the target market so well that is has become a New York Times Bestseller, which just means that the marketing program is working very well.

I was initially thrilled to see this book come out, since I feel that way about most new diet books. My thrill was helped along in part because the theme of the book slammed dietary carbohydrates, which is a good thing. Going low in carbs is the best of the fat burning diets.

I will have to admit, though, that the book undermines something that I take pride in. It is that, as a professional botanist, I have always proudly called my students’ attention to the only two botanists who have ever won a Nobel Prize. One of them is Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in developing modern dwarf wheat. This high-yield wheat is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.

That is the good news.

The bad news is that there has never been any human toxicity or tolerance testing of modern wheat. Now, it turns out, the growing problems of obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, gluten intolerance, celiac disease, and maybe even depression and other mental disorders are rooted in the consumption of dwarf wheat.

The bottom line is that, for the purposes of better health, the recommendation by Dr. Davis and a growing cadre of other medical professionals is to eliminate dwarf wheat from the human diet. Since at least 99 percent of the wheat-based and wheat-adulterated products on the market are made from dwarf wheat, this means to just stop eating wheat altogether.

All in all, this is outstanding advice.

Tens of thousands of people have already undertaken this dietary change, including me. This doesn’t even include those who have been diagnosed with celiac disease and have had to eliminate dietary gluten completely.

The Test of Science

Most diet books have been published without any scientific backing whatsoever. My first test in evaluating the potential quality of a diet book is to look in the back to see whether there are any references to scientific research. And if they are there, are they high quality. Dr. Davis does, indeed, provide them. This may seem like a nerdy requirement, and you may never look at the list yourself, but it is important to see what the scientific foundation might be for a new diet.

I will be commenting on various aspects of wheat vs. human health in future posts, as explained by Dr. Davis. However, the key point above all is the relationship between modern wheat and obesity. Specifically, is there a cause and effect relationship? This is the most difficult type of challenge for science, and studies of historical correlations or testimonials, no matter how compelling they seem, do not justify any claims about cause and effect. It is it likely that wheat causes the accumulation of visceral fat? Yes, it is likely. We just do not know for sure.

Regarding that point, at the moment we have no experimental studies to rely on except for those involving celiac patients. Let’s hope the critical studies are in the pipeline by now.

This just means that the evidence that we can evaluate is testimonial, or case study, evidence. This is what Dr. Davis provides in abundance, including commentary on his own personal case. It is not experimental science. It is observational science, which is a good start.

Indeed, I can add case histories of many of my friends who suffered long-term overweight, poor digestion, and general health problems that would not go away until they embarked on a wheat-free diet. Some even did experiments on themselves — always seeing weight gain, gas and bloating, and indigestion when returning to wheat, and always seeing these symptoms reverse when they went wheat-free. (They really didn’t mean to do such experiments. They just succumbed to the allure of wheat, repeatedly.)

Do I think that the Wheat Belly diet is worthwhile? Absolutely. I have even come to enjoy planning, preparing, and eating meals without wheat products. I have no need for wheat, and neither do you.

Stay tuned to this topic. There is a lot more to know, and I look forward to digging into it all and talking about it here. I hope you enjoy learning about the ‘quit wheat’ movement as much as I do.

Wheat Belly updates,

Dr. D

The new Digest Diet book from Reader’s Digest is a wonderful example of marketing hyperbole. Can you drop 26 pounds in 3 weeks? Maybe, although highly unlikely. Can you release fat in 21 days? That is an entirely different kettle of fish.

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Digest Diet Grabbers

My first notice of this new book by Liz Vaccariello at Reader’s Digest was on the cover of my April 2012 issue of Reader’s Digest. Here is what got my attention:

• Revolutionary Diet Plan!
• Eat To Release Fat
• Drop Up to 21 Pounds in 21 Days
• Foods with Surprising Slim-Down Powers

Of course I had to read the excerpt inside and then order the book!

By the way, there isn’t any such thing as a Revolutionary Diet Plan inside. There are no such things in general. Even the Atkins diet books (Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, 1981; Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, 2002) were by no means revolutionary. The last truly revolutionary diet plan was probably the HCG Diet by Dr. A.T.W. Simeons in 1954.

How about eating to release fat? Let’s say that this should refer to metabolism that drives the mobilization of stored fat. This can be done with an ultra low-carb diet, such as the ketogenic phase of the Atkins Induction Phase. It requires a diet of 20 grams or fewer per day for 2 weeks. Fat metabolism is indicated by ketolysis, which is measured by Ketostix (reagent strips for urine analysis).

When examining the ‘Fast Release’ Phase of the Digest Diet, I discovered that it is scheduled for the first 4 days of the plan. During this phase, a typical day’s consumption looks like this:

• Breakfast: Fast Release Shake (fruits, etc., with about 50 g carb)
• Snack: Ricotta Boat (bell pepper and ricotta cheese)
• Lunch: Fast Release Shake or Soup
• Dinner: Fast Release Shake or Soup

I really don’t even have to dig into the soup recipes to see that this diet is overloaded with carbs and could not possibly drive ketolysis – meaning selective fat metabolism.

Days 2-4 of the Fast Release Phase are much the same, with the main differences being in the snacks. Day 2 offers a Cheesy Rollup on lettuce; Day 3 a Tomato Cream Spread; Day 4 a Tangy Yogurt Dip.

From what I can tell this is a highly calorie-restricted phase with a lot of liquid intake. Reports of fast weight loss from testimonials are no doubt driven by water loss. Fast weight loss is generally water loss, no matter the diet, including the Atkins Induction Phase.

Quick weight loss, of course, is a nice dream. However, it is accompanied by lots of drawbacks (see: How To Lose Weight Fast – Forget It)

How Well Does It Work?

Weight loss can be very fast on this diet. The hype about ‘up to 21 pounds in 21 days’ and ‘drop 26 pounds in 3 weeks’ is, of course, ridiculous. The are extreme examples like this from a small set of people … just one in the study group … so those are outliers. Whether you lose weight at all is the question, and it is an open one.

Whether you lose FAT…now that is to be determined. I seriously doubt it. Even though fat is the supposed target of this diet, there are no results reported for changes in body fat composition. Just quick weight loss.

If you have just one of the typical recipes as an example of what the Digest Diet advocates for long-term weight management, you will not be successful. Why not? Take a look at the following recipe for ‘Pizza with Wilted Greens, Ricotta, and Almonds’ and you can see where the main flaw is in this dish.

• 1/4 cup plus tsp. water
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 tsp. chopped rosemary
• 12 oz. excarole, cut into 1/2 in. wide ribbons
• 2 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 thin-crust whole wheat pizza shell (12-inch)
• 1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
• 1/4 tsp.fine sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 1/4 no-salt-added tomato paste

See the flaw? This might appear to be a nice, healthful recipe. It isn’t.

Recommendation

The Digest Diet is not a sustainable program for weight loss that selectively drives the metabolism of fat.

One more thing. The science behind this diet is nearly absent, even though it is purported to be a comparison of the best science from multiple weight loss diets.

Oh, and the exercise component of the book is even weaker than the diet itself. No science behind the workouts whatsoever!

Reviewing the Digest Diet – sort of,

Dr. D

How to lose weight fast might seem like too big a challenge. There are good reasons for that. Here is what happens when you overdo quick weight loss.

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Choosing How To Lose Weight Fast

The most common idea the pops into everyone’s mind when contemplating weight loss is to eat less. Let’s consider that for a moment. How much less? How fast can weight loss be?

Low-calorie diets

Low-calorie diets are loosely defined as those that create an energy deficit of 500–1,000 calories per day – meaning that you have to reduce your daily intake by that amount. The general results of low-calorie diets, without considering the types of foods in the diet, are routinely about 1-2 pounds per week.

That is as fast as you can go without starving.

Very low-calorie diets

These are defined by daily intakes of 200–800 Calories total. Without hormonal intervention, this level of intake creates starvation. The average loss for starvation diets is about 3-5 pounds per week.

That is as fast as you can go by starvation alone. Depending on many other factors, most importantly hormone balance, starvation may not be that fast, and may not lead to any weight loss at all.

Side Effects of Quick Weight Loss

The biggest side effects entail the proportional loss of fat vs. muscle vs. water. These are highly variable, although a low-carb calorie restriction diet will lead to losing mostly water weight for the first week or so. Generally calorie restriction causes an equal loss of fat and muscle, which is not necessarily desirable. Fat loss should be the goal.

Here are the most common side effects of quick weight loss:

• Subsequent weight re-gain
• Lowered metabolism, causing future attempts at weight loss to become more difficult, and making weight gain easier
• Muscle atrophy
• Risk of developing Eating Disorders, especially Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa, even if initial intentions of dieting were health-wise
• Prolonged hunger
• Depression
• Reduced sex drive
• Fatigue
• Irritability
• Fainting
• Sinus problems (especially post-nasal drip)
• Rashes
• Acidosis
• Bloodshot eyes
• Gallbladder disease
• Seizures
• Malnutrition, possibly leading to death
• Constipation, due to lack of food-intake
• Dehydration, due to lack of fluid-intake

Even if you know how to lose weight fast, the results and the adverse consequences are not worth doing so.

Advising against quick weight loss,

Dr. D

Gastric bypass surgery is insane. Besides the expense, the danger, and the failure rate of this highly invasive strategy for weight loss, it will also make you age faster. It just does not make sense physiologically. Here is why.

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Gastric Bypass Facts

The entry at Wikipedia on Gastric Bypass Surgery provides lots of details. Note that this entry comes from the medical industry. You can expect that complications and problems are underestimated and success rates are overestimated.

Just some food for thought here. These are notes at the bottom of that page, with explanations on each heading listed here:

Complications of abdominal surgery

• Infection
• Venous thromboembolism
• Hemorrhage
• Hernia
• Bowel obstruction

Complications of gastric bypass

• Anastomotic leakage
• Anastomotic stricture
• Anastomotic ulcer
• Dumping syndrome

Nutritional deficiencies

• Hypoparathyroidism
• Iron
• Zinc
• Tthiamine (also known as vitamin B1)
• Vitamin B12
• Protein malnutrition
• Vitamin A

None of these problems are necessary, because gastric bypass surgery is not necessary!

Crucial Facts About Digestion

Digestion is a hormone-driven process, as is human physiology in general.

Gastric bypass surgery reduces the amount of functional stomach. The stomach makes a hormone called ghrelin, which is the key hormone that stimulates hunger and leads to overeating.

Ghrelin levels are permanently reduced by gastric bypass surgery because there are far fewer stomach cells left that can make it. This means no normal ghrelin response to food.

This may seem like a good thing, because hunger should be lessened with lower levels of ghrelin. However, ghrelin is also the key signal in the body for enabling the proper release of growth hormone. This is a relatively recent and major discovery regarding growth hormone.

Reducing growth hormone release simulates aging. By accelerating this process, the overall effect is to get older faster. Many clinical symptoms appear as we age. Several are starting to show up as a consequence of gastric bypass surgery.

One that has become most obvious is the development of metabolic bone disease – accelerated bone loss. Here is an abstract of a research article that appeared on this topic 7 years ago. Isn’t it interesting that the mainstream medical information on gastric bypass surgery at Wikipedia makes no mention of this problem? See below.

Gastric Bypass – Throwing Youth Away

That pretty much sums up some of the key points about this weight loss strategy. It doesn’t sound too appealing, does it?

Advocating weight loss sanity,

Dr. D

Surprising benefits of vitamin D include vitamin D and weight loss. The key for realizing this benefit is to take it with calcium at breakfast. Here is the research.

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Benefits of Vitamin D

Vitamin D is the new darling of vitamins because taking it in higher than RDA doses offers many health benefits. One of the surprising ones is vitamin D and weight loss. A recent survey of this topic on PubMed listed 702 research articles.

The most practical of them is a 2011 study that shows what the benefits are when taking vitamin D with calcium at breakfast. Here is the abstract of that study in its entirety. I will explain a bit more about what this study means below, in understandable English for the non-scientists.

The blue highlights point to the main points of this study. The phrase, “…increased postprandial FOR and DIT over two successive meals, and reduced
spontaneous energy intake in the subsequent 24 h period,” means:

1. higher level of fat oxidation rate (FOR) after eating (postprandial)
2. higher level of burned calories (DIT, diet induced thermogenesis) after eating
3. ate less by choice (reduced spontaneous energy intake) in the following meals

Don’t scientists use funny words? The bottom line is that, based on this study, when you take extra vitamin D and calcium at breakfast, afterwards you burn more fat and calories and you won’t want to eat as much for the next day or so.

Oh, a good question at this point would be: How much vitamin D and calcium? Here is the latest advice:

The latest advice on vitamin D is to take at least 2,000 IU per day.

As for calcium, recommended doses to go along with daily vitamin D are about 1,000 milligrams of calcium a day for most adults, 700 to 1,000 mg for young children, and 1,300 mg for teenagers and menopausal women.

Updating the benefits of vitamin D and weight loss,

Dr. D

Fat burning foods – what are they really? Actually, the whole notion is silly. Foods do not burn fat. Metabolic redirection makes more sense.

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Fat Burning Foods – No Such Thing

The common phrase that I hear is that your body is like a furnace. If that is the case, then how do you get a furnace to selectively burn just one of the fuels that are stored in it? It would be like storing oil, wood, and coal in a furnace, then adding some kind of magical ‘food’ that makes it burn just one of them. Silly, isn’t it?

It might make more sense if the ‘furnace’ had a liver, some muscles and bones, a pancreas, digestive and circulatory systems, a few hundred hormones, a brain, etc., etc. Oh, and maybe a few trillion tiny compartments (cells). And whatever else that could be built and controlled by about 30,000 genes.

My point is that we are WAY more complicated than the simplistic comparison with a furnace. The way we metabolize foods is biological, not fire-ological. (Okay, I made up that word … you can use it if you wish.)

The Key: Metabolic Redirection

This is also a phrase that I made up, although it underlies everything that happens to our bodies every day. Metabolic redirection depends on what, when, and how much we eat, on dozens of lifestyle factors, and on age. Regarding weight loss, or more accurately, fat loss, the goal is to redirect metabolism to break down stored fat, to store less fat, and to build lean body mass (muscle).

Foods can help you do that. Indeed, your ‘eating style’ (i.e., what, when, how much) may be responsible for as much as 80 percent of anything that you do for managing your metabolism. In fact, what you eat and when you eat are vastly more important than how much you eat (see How Many Calories Should I Eat Is Misguided).

The extent to which foods can help you redirect your metabolism depends on a long list of factors, the main one of which is…

Hormone Balance

This is an extensive topic, which I address in more detail in my Belly Fat Book (no charge). This includes more than 150 steroid hormones, the two most famous being estrogen and testosterone, as well as a whole slew of neurohormones and protein hormones (e.g., insulin, leptin, growth hormone).

If all you did was to pay attention to how to maintain hormone balance – specifically, to correct hormone imbalance – by eating right, then you would be on the right track. I’m going to assume that you have or will be reading about that in my book.

For now I’m just going to give you one pointer about achieving hormone balance. It is this:

Men and women: You are more than likely estrogen dominant.

Two ways to address this issue are: 1) reduce excess stored fat, since fat cells are little estrogen factories; and, 2) reduce the xenoestrogens that you are exposed to every day.

Xenoestrogens are foreign substances that act as estrogens in your body. They are not steroids. They can be as simple as bisphenol-A (BPA), phthalates, or plasticizing agents that leak into plastic containers (water bottles, foods and beverages in cans that are lined with plastic [almost all are!]), and many other common sources. Here is a short list of other sources:

• Petrochemically-derived pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides
• Car exhaust
• Solvents and adhesives such as those found in nail polish and polish remover, paint and paint remover, and glues
• Emulsifiers and waxes in soaps and cosmetics
• Chemicals used for dry cleaning
• Fabric softeners, air fresheners, and petrochemically-based perfumes
• Noxious odors coming from glues, fiberboard, new carpeting, and new paint
• Nearly all plastics
• Industrial waste such as PCBs and dioxins (VERY dangerous toxins!)
• Meat from livestock fed estrogenic drugs to fatten them up
• Synthetic estrogens and progestins that have been flushed down the toilet and have reached our drinking water and food chain (these are even being found in wild-caught fish!)

It may seem like a tall order to avoid all of these sources. Just do whatever you can.

Regarding the misguided concept of fat burning foods, the idea is really to make your foods work better for the metabolic redirection that you seek. Reducing your xenoestrogen exposure will go a long ways toward managing your estrogen dominance and redirecting your metabolism. Eating right will have a much more beneficial impact on your body fat composition when you do so.

Clarifying fat burning foods,

Dr. D

How many calories should I eat a day is a common yet misguided question. For the purpose of weight loss, calories are an almost irrelevant consideration. Here is why.

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How many calories should I eat myth

Here is a bit of a nerdy explanation of what calories really are and why counting calories for weight loss is irrelevant: Unimportance of Calories.

(Note: 1 Calorie [capitalized] equals 1,000 calories [not capitalized], aka 1 kilocalorie or kcal.)

To reiterate the main point in that link, calories in foods reflect the maximum potential heat that can be released from them when they are completely incinerated. The numbers of calories in foods, therefore, represent how much heat they can yield is burned up at 100 percent efficiency.

This is what 100 percent efficiency yields for the three food groups:

• Carbohydrates = 4 Calories per gram
• Proteins = 4 Calories per gram
• Fats = 9 Calories per gram

These are NOT dietary yields!

Humans could not possibly digest any food group to 100 percent efficiency. This is obvious, since some foods are completely indigestible – i.e., yield zero percent efficiency. Cellulose is a clear example. Cellulose ‘contains’ the maximum potential calories of a carbohydrate, since that is what it is. Cellulose yields 4 Calories per gram when it is completely incinerated. It’s rating as a food, however, is zero Calories.

This means that digestive efficiency is a scale that ranges from zero to some percentage that is less than 100. How efficient is it for foods that are not zero?

Some Really Geeky Biochemistry

WARNING! … This is REALLY geeky. That’s why I love it.

A few years ago I co-authored a college-level plant biology textbook, and I was faced with explaining one of the typical nightmares that have been foisted on all beginning biology students for decades: i.e., The step by step biochemical process for the breakdown of a molecule of glucose during cellular respiration (aka, ‘digestion’), including where and how all 36 molecules of ATP are generated, from beginning to end.

Then be ready to explain it on the midterm exam.

I had to do this as student, and all other beginning biology students had to do it. The big surprise for me, as an author digging into the research behind it, came when I discovered that all the textbooks and all the professors were wrong!

That is why I added a full 2-page essay on this topic to my textbook, which I have duplicated here for all of you serious biochemists (and formerly misinformed biology students) out there:

The question you might have is…

Why is this important?

Even if you are challenged by all the biochemistry, here is why this concept is important: It explains why digestion can never, ever be 100 percent efficient.

It also explains that we don’t really know how efficient it can be, although the numbers that I suggest in my essay (20-25 percent) are probably an overestimate.

A Key Missing Variable

Imagine this: to burn a piece of wood, you must first light it, either with a match or with some other form of ‘pre-fire’, to get it started. Biochemists call this the ‘energy of activation’ – the energy required to activate the release of energy (mainly heat) that is available in the otherwise inert wood.

This is the same concept that applies to the digestion of food. The role of enzymes is to lower the energy of activation so that biochemical reactions won’t require so much of it. Otherwise, we would have no such thing as life.

How much is the energy of activation for different foods? We can only estimate it, although it seems to range between 10-30 percent of the maximum potential energy (calories) that are available. The energy of activation is higher for digesting protein than for digesting carbs or fat.

Other Crucial Variables

HOW you metabolize different foods depends on food composition, health and fitness, hormone balance, and lifestyle.

1. Food Composition: Just one example, and one of the most important ones, is the metabolic difference between glucose and fructose. When glucose comes into the body (e.g., from sugar, starchy carbs, or food additives), 20 percent of it is metabolized through the liver and the remaining 80 percent through the rest of the body. In contrast, when fructose comes into the body (e.g., from sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or other food additives), 100 percent of it is metabolized through the liver.

The biochemical steps that break down fructose have a lot in common with those of alcohol, which is why fructose is now considered to be a liver poison. (See comparison table in this post: High Fructose Corn Syrup – Deadliest Food Additives).

Since I have already used up my Geek Quotient for this post, I’ll just say the one of the consequences of digesting excess fructose in the liver is an elevated triglyceride level. You make more fat from fructose that you ever could from glucose!

I think this is ironic because fructose has been recommended as the ‘safer’ sugar due to its lower glycemic index.

The number of Calories per gram for glucose is that same as it is for fructose: 4. In this example, the glucose vs. fructose composition of food, however, is the key for whether you synthesize too much fat (i.e., triglycerides). This has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of calories in either one.

2. Health and Fitness: Foods are inflammatory. During digestion, the inflammatory load of food byproducts induces your body to calm down the flames, so to speak. Carbohydrates are more inflammatory, as a group, than are proteins and fats. If you consume a certain amount of food, dominated by carbs, your body will be a 5-alarm fire regarding inflammation. Not so with the same amount of protein and fat. This is even more problematic with carbs from modern wheat, regardless of whether it is whole grain. Even if you restrict your intake to starvation levels and are hungry all the time, a carb-heavy diet will be inflammatory. Inflammation is like super-glue for fat.

The way your body responds to inflammation is an indication of overall health and fitness. The most obvious indicator is fat: if you have too much of it, then your body’s inflammation response is being overwhelmed. If so, you are not healthy and fit. Your food has become your enemy.

3. Hormone Balance: Good health and metabolism depends on a balance of hundreds of hormones. If you carry too much fat, you are essentially carrying an estrogen factory, so your hormones are already out of balance. If you are aging, like me, into your 60s and beyond, your growth hormone levels have dropped off a cliff. (You can still do something about that, though.) If you have become insulin resistant (diabetic or pre-diabetic) or leptin resistant, no matter how little you eat you will stay fat.

Counting calories will not help you until you address hormone resistance and hormone imbalance. As far as eating is concerned, this means WHAT you eat and WHEN you eat are much more important then how much you eat. By the way, hormone balance and eating patterns are core topics that I explain in my Belly Fat Book, in case you have not got your copy yet.

4. Lifestyle: Oh, this is a huge topic. The most important influence on weight loss or weight gain in the ‘Lifestyle’ category is stress, including sleep deprivation. Americans have a culture of losing sleep and building stress.

My advice is: STOP IT!

Again, this is an influence on your long-term health and weight management that far exceeds any effort you make toward counting and limiting your caloric intake. In fact, just worrying about calories is a source of stress that you don’t need.

Stop Worrying About Calories!

Worrying about how many calories you consume is a nearly useless endeavor. If anything, just trust your body to know how much to eat, when you eat the right foods at the right times. Eat slowly and enjoy what you eat. When you feel satisfied (not stuffed), stop eating. It is as simple as that.

Leave the calorie counting up to the biochemists.

All the best in weight loss,

Dr. D