The Skip Anti-Diet
The quick answer for shedding stubborn fat: Rather than starving yourself with the diet de jour, learn to eat real food per the W of W. If stubborn fat persists, adapt Skip’s W of W based Anti-Diet (see below) to your unique needs.
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When the Smoke Cleared
Diets come and go but do you remember the Scarsdale Diet?
Like many diets, the Scarsdale Diet had its 15 minutes of fame. The diet was no worse than most, I suppose, but the cardiologist inventor missed most of the glory. The reason for the missed glory was his sudden death at the hands of his jilted girlfriend, Jean Harris, headmistress of an exclusive girls school.
The doctor had left her, the newspapers revealed, for someone “younger and blonder.” Ms. Harris hadn’t meant to kill her cheating lover, she claimed at her trial. She had come to his home to kill herself and he died of accidental gunshot—in his own bedroom—when he tried to stop her. The jury, in view of the three neatly placed bullet holes in his chest, didn’t buy her story.
Ms. Harris, after 12 years in prison, retired to a New Hampshire cabin where she gardened and lived quietly until her recent death at the age of 89. Harris’ death caught my attention because I’ve been thinking of inventing my own diet. On the remote chance I might have my 15 minutes of fame, I’m doing my best to keep the beautiful wife happy.
Why We Get Fat
In the recent post titled Please, Whatever You Do, Don’t Resolve To Lose Weight in 2013, the quoted experts said we gain fat not because of the fat we eat, but because of our excessive intake of sugar and refined carbs common to factory foods. The sugar we consume goes to our blood, raises our insulin level, and the elevated insulin packs the sugar into our cells in the form of triglycerides and then keeps it there.
So, if you want to carry around less fat—eat less sugar and refined carbs. This is not just about vanity—eating less sugar reduces our risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other maladies.
Two Hard Facts About Fat
The above was a simple explanation of a complex process but it omitted two hard facts:
- Some people, through no fault of their own, are simply more prone to gain fat. They can gain fat on the same diet that makes others thin as fashion models.
- Fat, once gained, isn’t easy to shed and the longer you carry it around, the more it wants to stay with you. Worse, for the very obese, there may be a point of no return.
So it’s understandable that people are driven to try the diet de jour, even though they know about the Word of Wisdom. As you know, I’m not qualified to offer diet guidance, being neither MD nor PhD, At WOWL we don’t believe in starvation by diet, instead we advocate eating real foods that are high in nutrients and low in calories. But if I had eaten the WOWL way and was still struggling to shed persistent fat, I would try what I humbly call—The Skip Anti-Diet.
Skip’s Anti-Diet Diet
There are three stages to Skip’s Anti-Diet:
Stage 1: Use one’s best judgment to follow the W of W, guided by the 52 Healthy Changes. This isn’t easy—the BW and I struggle to live all the changes—but it’s important to keep trying. Get plenty of exercise also, it will turn up your metabolic furnace.
Stage 2: If I wanted to lose more fat, I would step up the process this way:
- Pay particular attention to sugar reduction (only 1 soda per week, buy candy a piece at a time as a treat not a regular snack).
- Eat only whole grains. Avoid white (polished) rice, pasta that’s not whole grain (eat your pasta al dente—less cooking reduces the glycemic index (G.I.) and avoid sugary sauces). Eat only cereal, bread, cookies, or crackers that have more grams of fiber than sugar. The fiber>sugar rule is important.
- Eat a salad with dinner. The G.I. of leafy greens and salad ingredients like avocado is zero. Zero!
- Eat homemade soups. Soups are economical, filling, and low in insulin-raising calories. Legumes generally have a low G.I.
- Eat more meat; if you eat two servings of beef and poultry a week, add a serving. Increase your servings of fish also; I love shrimp or crab salads.
- Get enough sleep, at least 8 hours, maybe 9—we crave sugary snacks when tired from lack of sleep plus fat is consumed during the last hours of sleep when sugar is low. Sleep is a fat burner—in the last hours of sleep, when blood sugar is low, a process called ketosis burns fat to give energy to the brain.
Stage 3: Ask you doctor if this even lower G.I. diet would work for you and try it for 90 days:
- Drink water exclusively. No sugary sodas and only a few pure juices.
- Eat lots of vegetables but no potatoes or other starchy roots (yams are OK, especially with butter or cheese—which have a G.I. of zero).
- Besides eating salad at dinner, enjoy a salad with soup for lunch. An EVOO with vinegar dressing is healthy and further reduces G.I.
- Restrict bread and make it whole-wheat sourdough. Sourdough whole grain breads, especially rye bread, have a low G.I. I’d eat the little bread I got with butter or cheese or make a tuna or meat sandwich.
- Limit snacks to nuts (nuts have healthy fats and very low G.I.), vegetables like celery (zero G.I.), cheese, and a little fresh fruit.
- Double your meat intake and enjoy eggs and bacon for breakfast a couple of times per week. (The high-meat Atkins Diet really does work but keep your menu healthy per the W of W.) Eat grapefruit with breakfast several days a week—foods with acid also reduce G.I.
- Eat a full dinner, early in the evening if possible, but no snacks after dinner. Go to bed a little hungry.
- No packaged cereals, candy, cakes, or cookies, with this exception: Treat yourself to a single dessert each week as a reward for compliance with Stage 3 rules.
Please Comment: The idea here is to maintain a healthy W of W diet but tip it towards a lower G.I. by steadily reducing factory foods in favor of farm foods while adding eggs, milk with cream, cheese and meat to provide low-G.I. replacement calories. The W of W calls for "sparing" use of meat products—allowing flexibility for each person's needs. The promise of the W of W is one gains "hidden knowledge" which can include how to eat and remain fit.
I found The Complete Idiot’s Guide to GLycemic Index Weight Loss to be a good resource, if you want to know more. The BW wife has started an experiment with the Skip Anti-Diet—she looks great, really, but thinks her Levi's are a little tight. We’re monitoring blood sugar trends and eating the right stuff. We’ll let you know how it works. Please share what works, or doesn't worki, for you.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 at 10:19AM | by Skip Hellewell | 8 Comments | 42 References | Share Article | Email Article 
Reader Comments (8)
There are some great ideas in this post. I have been very hesitant to increase my meat intake, but I think it is something I will have to do in order to lose weight. We are working on our teeth, and one of the biggest helps for that is keeping your blood sugar down, so the diet for our teeth should help with weight loss. Our plan is to have lots of broth- in soups or straight with some salt for seasoning, plenty of fermented foods- including kefir from raw milk, and non starchy veggies.
Hello Skip! Thank you, once again, for a super post. I think the idea of creating a diet to impress your BW is fantastic news for us and I hope it makes her proud (I made no connection with your introduction and you likening your wife to a volcano). It's endearing to know that you strive to keep her happy! I'm loathed to mention it as it's a minor typo however, as it's one of the healthy changes I've tried to follow the most, I thought it best to call it out.....see Stage 2, second bullet.
Please share your shrimp salad recipe! Shrimp is a food that I don't particularly like, but it's so healthy (high in protein, low in fat), I want to learn to enjoy it. Thanks for the great posts, as always!
I don't disagree with this post, as far as it being an effective way to lose weight, but I am a little confused by the injunction to eat more meat, since the WoW suggests we eat it "sparingly." I know a lot of people have lost weight while eating more meat and less refined carbs, but you can also do it without adding meat. Just trying to understand how this is a WoW diet if meat is increased. Personally, the most success I have had as a young mother in the weight loss department was when I was a mostly whole foods vegan. I never went completely vegan and indulged in animal products occasionally. However, when I started adding back in the animal products more frequently I didn't have nearly the same success. I was also tempted by other less healthy foods too. Seems it was a gateway back into the MAD, if you will. Do you mind explaining how you see increasing meat intake as fitting into the WoW diet? Thanks!
Hi Sabrina Thanks for sharing your success with a whole foods diet. I just read a report from an National Institute of Health committee that the US, though longevity is improving, is falling behind the other modern (read wealthy) nations. Out of 17, we rank 17th. It's a tragedy and, remarkedly, the cure is found in a scripture, the W of W.
Our big goal is to help people get serious about the prescriptions of the W of W so we try to avoid controversy over details and focus on the big picture. The Lord was generous in the W of W, using a non-specific recommendation for how much meat—"sparingly". I take from this that the answer will vary for people and they should use their "wisdom" to find what works best. You've done this, which makes you an unusual person.
We want everyone to do this, without putting handcuffs on them. Some will need a lower carb diet than others and for those good folks, a bit more meat may be the answer. We're all different. Whether 2, 3 or 4 servings of meat a week are right is a personal choice—it all can fit under the tent called "sparing." Our best to you.
This is a great post, and very timely. I personally have a very difficult time losing weight, and when I do, it usually comes off of all the places I'd like to keep it. And even when I was in a great dress size, my face still looked fat and puffy. Recently, I've begun a mostly vegan diet with absolutely no dairy and meat only once a week. For the first time in my adult life, I'm finally seeing my cheek and jawbones become more defined. Getting rid of all dairy has been the key for me, I think. I guess it just goes to show that each individual really has to find what works best for their body.
Thanks for all your research. It's always enjoyable to read what you've distilled from the many resources you're reading.
Hi Valena Thanks for sharing your success with a low-meat and non-dairy diet, which I presume is high in plant foods. Your success seems similar to Sabrina's comment.
Of the 3 stages of the Skip Anti-Diet, this seems most like the 1st stage—just live a pure W of W diet. You avoid one suspect item in that most people who want to lose weight drink non-fat or low-fat milk and this is an artificial product that hasn't really been tested over time, plus has been shown to contribute to infertility. Other readers might like to consider your success and restrict dairy, especially reduced fat diary.
About a year and a half ago when my wife discovered your website we starting taking steps toward cutting processed foods and following the healthy changes. We were both at a healthy weight and made the change without a specific goal in mind, just simply to improve overall health and wellness. Within a few months, though, we both had lost 10 pounds without ever giving any thought to the matter. Our diet beforehand was healthier than average, but we were surprised to find out that breakfast cereals, granola bars, and whatever other processed foods we had been eating were causing us unknowingly to keep a few extra pounds on.