Ate Great, Didn't Lose Weight
Written: Jun 18 '00 (Updated Jun 18 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: First-rate recipes; very healthy foods in general
Cons: NOT for you if your blood sugar is unstable
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| Tholian's Full Review: Fit For Life Diet |
I was on the Fit For Life plan for about four years, during which I not only did not lose weight but actually gained ten pounds. This was not due to program food but to bad eating habits resulting from the side-effects of the program. Allow me to explain....
Fit For Life is Harvey and Marilyn Diamond's 1985 popularization of the nutritional principles of a 19th century alternative-medicine called Natural Hygiene. Foremost among these principles is the idea that the digestive juices required to process starchy foods and proteins actually cancel each other out, causing your meat-and-potatoes meal to rot in your stomach for hours and producing or exacerbating all kinds of illness, not to mention weight gain due to "toxemia." Therefore, Harvey Diamond states, proteins and starches should never, ever be eaten at the same meal and furthermore, should always be combined with vegetables for best digestion. What this means in practice is that you can have the steak, salad and veggies, or the potato, salad and veggies, but never the steak and the potato.
This program is really intended as a lifetime plan for healthy eating, rather than as a weight-loss diet. However, if you take overweight people eating the "normal" American diet and put them on a plan like this, they almost can't fail to lose weight just because of the massive calorie reduction...don't be fooled, portions are not limited on this diet (excepting the sensible advice not to overeat), but it is definitely a low-calorie regime.
The diet also calls for, in addition to proper food combining:
70% of the foods eaten should be high water content--this means fresh fruits and vegetables. Salads are favored over cooked veggies. Fruit is always eaten raw.
Your breakfast every day is the same--fresh fruit and fruit juices, as much as you like at any time during the morning--but ONLY these foods, nothing else.
No coffee/decaf, no soda (diet or regular).
Meat and dairy products are strongly discouraged although a few recipes are provided in the cookbook section...which, by the way, is an absolutely first-class vegetarian cookbook. I would buy this book as a cookbook even if I never followed the diet.
I tried to get into it slowly. First I put the water-content and food-combining principles into action for about two weeks. (I had been a vegetarian for a couple of years already, so it was a minor adjustment.) And I felt great! I had more energy than I knew what to do with, I was never hungry, and it seemed, although I couldn't be sure, that my clothes were a bit looser.
Reasoning that if halfway into the program was good, all the way in would be even better, I cut out coffee and Coke and started the fruit-in-the-morning routine. I immediately came down with a severe cold--in the middle of July, no less--which the Diamonds had warned might happen as a "cleansing sickness." OK, I could accept that.
I expected caffeine-withdrawal headaches and they indeed arrived on schedule. After the cold and the headaches were gone, though, I experienced a profound sense of peace, calm and clarity of thinking. Although I thought it was because of all the fruit I was getting in the AM, I now attribute this to being caffeine-free, having experienced it several times since going off this program, and always associated with giving up caffeine.
All fine and well so far. I was walking every morning, eating my fruit, and after two months I still had not lost any weight despite following the program to the letter. But a disquieting trend was developing in the mornings.
I would arise ravenous, go right to the kitchen and gobble three or four pieces of fruit. I'd feel fine--better than fine, fantastic--for about an hour and a half, then I'd get a desperately angry-depressed feeling which quickly morphed into pure desperation, feeling like my entire life was hopeless and I was a pathetic, total failure. I don't normally think of myself this way so it was quite a shock. I wondered if I was going nuts. I soon discovered that my "desperate" feeling was the cue to eat more fruit, and if I did not do so immediately I would get sweaty, then shaky, then finally sleepy, sometimes even retiring for a half hour nap from which I would awake ravenous as I had first thing that morning.
It was years before I learned that this phenomenon is called passing out due to a blood-sugar crash.
When I woke, it was usually just after noon, and I felt released from prison. The prescribed lunch is usually a large salad. From noon to one in the afternoon my life was occupied with the making and eating of this salad...partly cutting and washing the many fresh veggies required, partly because my mind was so slow and addled from low blood sugar.
At 1 o'clock in the afternoon, I could finally start my day. Thank God, I worked at home at the time, and could build my schedule around this. But still, we're talking about 8 AM to 1 PM thinking of nothing but food, how to get it and when could I eat next, plus feeling sick into the bargain and passing out every third day or so. And I still hadn't lost any weight.
As time went on, my blood-sugar cycles seemed to become shorter and shorter. After a couple of years on the plan I couldn't last but forty-five minutes after a fruit meal before becoming cranky, sweaty and depressed. I would get so hungry between meals that I would grab whatever I could to sate it, lest I go mad--McDonald's french fries, a bag of chips, whatever I could get my hands on. I would be attacked by ravenous hunger at the oddest times. I'm sure this is how I managed to gain ten pounds...you know how it is, when you are absolutely desperate for food you really don't care about diet principles, just getting something in your mouth!
I'm sure you're wondering why I stayed on the plan after all this. I kept thinking I was doing something wrong and if I were just more strict those good feelings from the beginning would come back. The first half of the book, in which Harvey Diamond lays out the philosophical foundation behind the diet, appealed to something in me that cried out for a simple, common-sensical approach to diet. Too bad that the simple approach does not, in actuality, describe how the body works. I wanted the answer to be simple and easy to do. The answer to weight loss is simple but it is not easy to do. Eat less and move more. That's all there is to it.
I cannot say enough to praise Marilyn Diamond for her vegetarian recipes. I tried almost all of them and didn't find a bad one in there, and there are some true strokes of genius--homemade almond milk shakes, delicious main-course salads, inventive vegetarian meals you could serve to company (and I did).
This diet forces you to eat healthy fresh foods, which is very commendable and which can do a lot to improve nutrition. However, the way it really works for weight loss is this: It's a very low calorie diet, plain and simple. The calories are so low that the diet includes liberal amounts of butter, cooking oil and oil-based salad dressing, because the fat satiates your appetite and provides the calories you are not getting from all those very nutritious fruits and veggies!
I recommend the recipes very highly if you are looking for a tasty way to get more fresh foods into your diet. You certainly cannot hurt yourself by adopting some of the recipes. However, if you are considering going whole-hog into the program, I would strongly advise you to get your blood sugar looked at. I wish I had done that; I am concerned that I may have done permanent damage to my insulin-response cycle.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Tholian
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Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 2 members
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