The Starch Blocker Diet

by Rosenblatt, Steven; Stauth, Cameron

• ISBN13: 9780060548230
• ISBN10: 0060548231
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-10
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

<p>Are high-carbohydrate, starchy foods -- breads, pasta, potatoes -- your dietary downfall? Here's a program that's almost sinfully satisfying but low in calories, a new medical strategy based on thirty years of clinical testing that helps people lose weight without giving up their favorite foods.</p><p>The anti-carb revolution that's sweeping America has finally found a sane solution. A recently discovered natural substance derived from legumes instantly eliminates most of the calories in starchy foods, giving you a huge caloric reduction and an effective fat-burning metabolism. No more denial diets! Using the groundbreaking information in this book, you can lose weight without hunger for the first time in your life.</p><p>The calorie-neutralizing substance known as Phase 2 binds with the enzyme that digests starch, so when you take it just before meals, most starch, similar to fiber, passes through your system without releasing calories. There are no side effects, but a huge benefit: up to 1/3 of your total daily calories are instantly eliminated! <i>The Starch Blocker Diet </i>provides a simple, three-step program for achieving safe, lasting weight loss:</p><p><blockquote>Step 1: Redistributing Calories<br>You'll actually eat more starchy foods -- to maximize the power of this new way to lose weight!</p><p>Step 2: Taking Emotional Control<br>This program helps you regain power over food by stopping cravings and improving mood chemistry.</p><p>Step 3: Burning Body Fat with Supercharged Exercise<br>When starch calories are neutralized, you burn body fat faster, so exercise has a heightened fat-loss effect.</blockquote></p><p>This no-hunger, nondenial strategy lets you eat a richly satisfying diet while still losing weight. You'll find formulas for individualizing the program to fit your own caloric and lifestyle requirements, a unique starch calorie chart, detailed scientific data, sample menus, and more than 100 delicious, high-starch recipes, many by James Beard Award-winning chef Philippe Boulot.</p>

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
Jay Udani
PART ONE: THE STARCH BLOCKER STRATEGY	1	(46)
Beyond Denial Diets	3	(17)
Finally: A Sane Solution to the Low-Carb Revolution
The Discovery	20	(12)
Changing the Field of Weight Management Forever
The Science	32	(15)
Clinical Proof of Effectiveness
PART TWO: THE STRATEGY'S THREE STEPS	47	(62)
Step One: Redistributing Calories	49	(29)
The Starch Blocker Diet
Step Two: Taking Emotional Control	78	(19)
How Starch Blockers Give You Power over Food
Step Three: Burning Body Fat with Exercise	97	(12)
How Starch Blockers Supercharge Your Physical Activity
PART THREE: GETTING STARTED	109	(216)
An Office Visit	111	(9)
What You Need to Know to Start the Strategy
Your Own Designer Starch Blocker Diet	120	(53)
Choose the Foods That Fit Your Needs
Starch Blocker Diet Menu Plans	173	(46)
Look at All This Food!
Recipes for the Starch Blocker Diet	219	(106)
Lose Fat---Not Flavor
Appendix A Resources for Readers	325	(2)
Appendix B Chapter Notes	327	(7)
Appendix C Details on Studies	334	(7)
Index	341

Excerpts

The Starch Blocker Diet

Chapter One

Beyond Denial Diets

I was facing the kind of day that would once have broken my heart. Iwas scheduled to see three patients who all had the same problem,one that medical science has long struggled unsuccessfully to solve.As recently as a year ago, a day like this would have left me in despair.My greatest source of pain as a doctor.the greatest pain ofalmost all doctors.is knowing the solution to a problem, but beingunable to enact it. My three patients had a problem that has alwaysbeen one of those frustrating, intractable conditions that seems as ifit should be solvable, but usually isn't: weight control.

For many years, I have known the solution. Virtually everyoneknows it: Eat fewer calories. But how do you achieve this, in the realworld, with real people, day after day, year after year? That is the questionthat no doctor, until recently, has been able to adequately answer.

Sure, there are dozens of aggressive low-calorie, low-carbohydrate,low-fat diets, some of them quite capable of inducing weightloss.if people can stay on them. But who can? Apparently, notmany of us, since obesity has doubled in the past twenty years, andmorbid obesity has quadrupled, with most of that increase comingin just the last decade. About 33% of all American people are currentlyobese, and 61% are at least overweight. Even 40% of childrenare overweight or obese. That's 150 million people.a horrifyingpublic health catastrophe.

All of the existing diets that have failed to stop this epidemichave different advantages. Some more effectively provide sufficientnutrients, and others are better at keeping the cardiovascular systemfree of fats. A few excel at controlling key metabolic factors, such asinsulin output. However, they all run headlong into the sameoppressive problem: hunger.

Hunger overcomes the weight management motivations of evenextremely strong-willed people. It's an almost irresistible primal forcethat people have been programmed over the course of a million yearsof evolution to hate.even to fear. It's a relentless emptiness that strikesnot just the body but also the brain, which requires 25% of all caloriesconsumed by adults, and up to 50% of all calories consumed by children.

Hunger whispers a primeval message to the brain and the bodythat starvation is lurking, and that eating is absolutely necessary now. Itmakes people feel weak, ravenous, irritable.and desperate.

Physical hunger is a terribly invasive force, but it's not the onlykind of hunger that dieters have long been unable to endure. There isalso a strong psychological aspect to hunger.We are not only neurologicallyprogrammed to hate and fear hunger, but we are also conditionedby evolutionary forces to crave and appreciate the exquisitetastes of various foods, and to desire these foods as a central part ofour enjoyment of life.

Food, after all, is far more than just calories.Food is, in fact, the veritable essence and elixir of life.the sustaining,nurturing product of our earth, air, sun, and water. It is simplyhuman nature to desire it.

Thus, there is a missing element in virtually all current weightcontrol diets, which are effective only when desired foods are denied.That element is the human element.

If human beings were machines, weight control would be easy.We would all simply consume the exact number of calories we need,and then flip a switch to turn consumption off. But we're notmachines.We are finite beings, full of feelings, destined eventually todie, but determined to live a little first, and to savor the joys of oursenses during our stay on this earth.

Thus, human nature itself is the primary reason 90% of allweight loss diets fail. People just can't.or won't.hold out indefinitelyagainst the physical and psychological onslaught of hunger.So they eat.

Throughout almost all of our million-year human history, thisnatural desire to eat a rich and varied diet caused only occasionalproblems, because the vast majority of people were very physicallyactive. As recently as the early 1900s, most people were vigorouslyactive five to ten hours each day. Forty percent of all people lived onfarms then, and 80% of all farmwork was done with human labor.Most non-farmworkers did manual work in factories and shops.Even people who did nonphysical work usually walked to their jobsand did heavy chores at home.

This, of course, has changed. Technology has freed most of usfrom hard labor, but it has imprisoned us within lifestyles that aremore conducive to fatness than fitness. This is our reward forprogress.and our punishment.

Despite these changes in our lifestyles, though, we are stillstrongly influenced by powerful urges that have existed since antiquity,exhorting us to eat a pleasurable and satisfying diet.

As a result, eating habits that were once the norm are now consideredpathological. People who eat only slightly too much, over along period of time, now frequently become so overweight that theyare labeled as gluttons.

Despite these powerful evolutionary forces, most people tryextremely hard to match their caloric intake with their energy needs,and they sacrifice bravely to shed extra pounds. For months and evenyears at a time, they wage war against their own natural appetites.However, as time wears on, and physical and psychologicalhunger make every passing day more difficult, only about 10% of allpeople.the strongest of the strong.endure. The rest just can'thold out.

When the holdout is over, most people gain significantly moreweight than they had lost, because the "starvation effect" caused bylow-calorie dieting triggers caloric hoarding, causing an apple tobecome almost as fattening as a piece of apple pie once was. In addition,denial-based diets wreak havoc upon the hormones that controlhunger and satiety, such as grhelin and leptin, making hungermore intense and more frequent than ever before.

Causing hunger, though, isn't the only major shortcoming ofeven the best of the conventional denial-based diets.Denial diets.which means virtually all existing weight-lossdiets.also have these destructive liabilities:

Low-calorie diets often forsake necessary nutrients, mostnotably protein. When not enough dietary protein is available, thebody begins to digest its own protein-packed muscles for energy andnutrients. Micronutrients are also commonly neglected, includingthose that help break down fat (such as the omega-3 oils), and thosethat help stabilize blood sugar and control hunger (such aschromium). These nutritional shortfalls debilitate the body andcause food cravings.

Low-carbohydrate diets often compensate for carbohydrate-avoidancewith excess intake of high-triglyceride fats and dietary proteins,which can harm the cardiovascular system, kidneys, liver, gallbladder,and other organs.High-fat foods, of course, can also be fattening.

Low-fat diets are usually too high in carbohydrates. This causesexcessive insulin production, which signals the body to store moreenergy as body fat. This extra insulin production also overworks theorgans that manufacture insulin and can trigger the conditions thatlead to diabetes.

Diets that rely on stimulants and appetite suppressants can causeserious damage. At least a hundred people have died recently fromusing the common herbal diet stimulant ephedra, and many otherpeople have died from taking pharmaceutical diet pills. These diets arealso notoriously ineffective for long-term weight management.Most existing diets are complicated, requiring careful measuringof calories and nutrient grams, purchase of special foods, andrestriction of many restaurant foods.

In place of these stringent, unbalanced diets, what's long beenneeded is a rich, varied, satisfying nutritional program, dense in nutrients.but somehow moderate in calories. Sounds impossible, I know.

But, finally, it's not.

Even so, you may be thinking: So what if weight control is tough?What's the real harm to people? Just not looking good in jeans?Here's the harm: Obesity kills. Eating too much accounts forapproximately 300,000 deaths per year.about seven times as manyas auto accidents. It is the second-leading killer in modern Americanlife, after smoking, and will be the leading killer by 2010, if currentrates continue.

The process of obesity-related death isn't pretty. Often, beforepeople die, they suffer the amputations of limbs due to weightrelateddiabetes, or they become blind from that disease. Many othersare left crippled from heart disease that was caused by overeating,or develop malignancies linked to dietary excess.

There's a terrible emotional toll, too. The lives of far too manypeople are devalued by others just because they're overweight. Thesepeople are mocked, humiliated, discriminated against, ignored, andheld in contempt. Many are denied love. This is not out of the ordinary.

It is common.

Perhaps it has happened to you.

A New Medical Strategy

It had happened to my first patient of the day.Peggy was a lovely young woman, but over the past few years,after she'd become sedentary due to an auto injury, her weight hadsurged an extra 60 pounds, and was not easily accommodated on herfive feet two frame. For the first time in her life, Peggy had becomeashamed of herself. The way she was dressed -- in dark and baggyclothes -- seemed to say, "Don't look at me."

And she was scared. Diabetes ran rampant in her family, and mymedical workup indicated that Peggy was, even at age 28, becomingvulnerable to its early onset.

"I need to go on a diet," she said softly, her eyes fixed on the floor."I don't believe in weight-loss diets anymore."

Peggy sighed, deep and long, and I could almost hear the hopewhoosh out of her.

"I have a new approach," I said. "But it's not a diet. It's a medicalstrategy, based on a new formulation."

"A pill? I won't take diet pills."

"This isn't a diet pill. It's a completely novel approach. It's a diet,but it's even more than that. It's a medical strategy. I think it's a brilliantone."

I told Peggy about starch blockers. Her face began to brighten.

The Starch Blocker Diet. Copyright © by Steven Rosenblatt. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Starch Blocker Diet by Steven Rosenblatt, Cameron Stauth
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.