Candida
There is one other potential reason for blocked weight loss: Candida albicans, known as yeast. Candida is so important that it merits its own detailed discussion in Chapter 25. If you think this problem may be interfering with your weight loss, please consult that chapter.
None of the Above?
I expect close to one hundred percent success in achieving weight loss with my patients, but there are still exceptions. Certain individuals are so metabolically resistant that only more intense dietary restrictions prove successful. Read on, and I ' ll explain what I mean.
Once medications, thyroid problems and Candida are brought under control, we can quite logically expect that almost ninety-nine percent of overweight people who do Atkins diligently will lose and keep off weight. But since there are 150 million overweight Americans, even the remaining one percent means that there are one and a half million metabolically resistant people who still need help. For that group, I suggest something more than the Induction phase ' s 20- grams-of-carbohydrate-a-day meal plan.
I have treated hundreds of these people-all of whom were depending on me to help them-and I had no intention of letting them down. So I asked myself, " What is the most effective weight loss eating pattern ever described?" There can be no question what that is. You read about it in Chapter 7 in the discussion of the metabolic advantage. British researchers Alan Kekwick and Gaston Pawan developed it, and Frederick Benoit and his team confirmed its superiority in burning off fat, compared to an absolute total fast. This extreme diet consists of 1,000 calories, ninety percent of which is comprised of fat. No other weight loss regimen, before or since, has matched its ability to burn off stored fat.
The Fat Fast
The rationale behind the Kekwick diet is crystal clear: It forces the body into lipolysis so it burns its stores of fat. Lipolysis cannot take place if there is a significant source of glucose. Since all carbohydrates and some protein convert to energy by way of glucose, eliminating almost everything but fat from the diet forces even the most resistant body into lipolysis. That explains the ninety percent dietary fat component of the Kekwick diet. Lowering the caloric intake accelerates the need to burn up body fat-thus the 1,000calorie limit.
When I wrote the first edition of this book years ago, I realized that a small but intensely suffering segment of my readers would need to know how to overcome metabolic resistance. So I decided to make the Kekwick diet as enjoyable as possible. But no matter how I tried, the quantities were simply too small and the selection too limited to meet the satiety and tastiness criteria that I had been demanding for people following my program.
I gave it the name " Fat Fast " because it contained virtually no food except for fat. I tried it on scores of patients and was not surprised to observe how often it worked for those who were unable to lose in any other safe, drugless way. Nor was I surprised to hear that none of my patients relished the idea of staying on it. But ten more years of experience with the Fat Fast has
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