Word of Wisdom living - Word of Wisdom Living

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.