April 2009 Club Email

Hi all,
This news email is going to the people who have recently signed up through www.theharcombediet.com, book buyers and other people who have emailed me over the past 5 years with diet queries! Thank you so much for signing up, buying books and for your queries. Please feel free to unsubscribe at any time if you don’t want any more updates.

This month I wanted to share with you some absolutely fascinating research that I am doing at the moment. I am spending my life in libraries, or on the internet, reading original obesity journal articles, back as far as 1930.

The key debate that I’m analysing is the holy grail of dieting – is a calorie a calorie?! Followers of The Harcombe Diet will know that I do not believe that cutting calories will help you lose weight and keep it off. Eating less may lose you weight in the short term, but your body adapts incredibly quickly and on Day 1 it will make you hungry and within the first week it will already be starting to store fat and use up lean muscle and slow down your metabolism – all the exact opposite of what you want to happen.

My favourite article is mentioned in my books – the Kekwick & Pawan article from The Lancet (1956). I re-read this last week and here’s more than I put in any of the books…
K&P did 3 key experiments (they worked in the Middlesex hospital, so they could control the food given to all their patients):

- In experiment 1 they gave their patients the ‘normal’ (in 1956) UK daily food intake of 20% protein, 33% fat and 47% carbs. They kept these proportions the same as they put the patients on 2000 cals a day, then 1500 a day, then 1000 a day and finally 500 a day. They found that there was a relationship between lower calories and weight lost (in the 7-9 days they looked at for each calorie level), but that it was not a straight line, by any means, and therefore that we just cannot say rigid things like “to lose 1lb of fat, you need to cut calories by 3500.” (This is my pet myth of all. It has been disproved time and time again – not least by the entire UK and USA populations over the past 30 years!)

- In experiment 2 they gave 14 patients 1000 calories, but split the patients into 3 groups and varied the types of food that they were given. Group A had 90% fat, Group B had 90% protein and Group C had 90% carbs. Their findings were revolutionary. The 90% fat group lost the most, the 90% protein group was just a fraction behind this and the 90% carb group were way behind. They concluded that WHAT we eat is MORE important than HOW MUCH we eat.

- Experiment 3 was genius – they took 5 people who, they observed, maintained weight at 2000 calories a day (in the normal 20/33/47 protein/fat/carb ratio of the time) and they put them on 2000 cals of carbs a day and they all gained weight! They then put the 5 people on 2600 cals (yes – more!) of fat/protein and all but 1 lost weight (they noted in the paper that 1 woman was impacting the results, as she seemed able to retain up to 3 litre of water at her time of the month! Incredible). They then switched the group back to 2000 cals of carbs and they put on weight and then back on to 2600 cals of fat/protein and they lost weight.

Ignore this next 2 sentences if you don’t like maths! I have looked at the 17 studies done on this fat/carb/calorie topic since 1956 and found NO correlation between weight lost and calorie intake in the studies (0.009 to be exact) and a 0.8 correlation between weight lost and low carb intake. (Maths lovers will know that 0 shows practically no relationship and 1 shows a perfect relationship!)

And do you know the ultimate example for me of why calories are not the answer? When my brother was diagnosed with Type I diabetes, at the age of 15, he lost 20 lbs in 10 days. He probably consumed more calories, as the insatiable thirst that goes with diabetes led him to drink sugared, fizzy drinks by the 2 litre bottle. The only thing that changed was that his pancreas stopped working literally overnight and so he stopped producing any insulin. Remember – YOU only produce insulin when you eat carbs and this is why carbs are so important for weight loss.

The Harcombe Diet eliminates all processed carbs in Phase 1 and 2. It restricts even good carbs in Phase 1 (no fruit) and it makes sure you don’t allow carbs to store fat in Phase 2 (by not mixing fats and carbs).

I hope you’ve enjoyed this – and remember – by next month, you could be even closer to your natural weight. Keep going, don’t ever give up on your goal and don’t ever eat less – always eat better!
All the best – Zoë x