The AF L-C Diet - CHAPTER ONE: THE DIET THAT SPREAD UNDERGROUND
Some months ago, chronic weight watchers became aware of a strange stirring in the world of nutrition . . . rumors of a diet which was achieving exciting results for people who had never before managed to get their weight problem under control.
Perhaps because it was habitually referred to as the “Air Force” diet, without any official air force sanction, the new formula spread in a curiously underground fashion. It is now legend that copies of the diet were passed from friend to friend and run off on office Mimeograph machines. From the knowledgeable communications media, bits and pieces of material trickled down through the well-defined echelons of the “in” groups—advertising, publishing, finance, and so on—until even in some of the better Seventh Avenue dress houses there were those who possessed perhaps a page of it and were thinking about trying it without exactly knowing what it was.
Then it began to surface, Vogue and Redbook brought it, in brief form, to public attention. A pamphlet entitled “The Drinking Man’s Diet” carried its revolutionary message across the country, climaxing with a Newsweek report in which the word was blazoned wide that on this diet you can continue to drink. To dieters, this is indeed news no other weight-watching diet puts up with liquor, with its enormous number of calories per drink.
But alcohol is not the only hitherto forbidden item which this new diet sanctions. Cream, butter, fried foods are allowed – heresy to those who know (and what dieter does not?) how many calories they contain. It became apparent that if this exceedingly valuable, exceedingly successful new approach to weight control were not to be misunderstood, it had better come out in full, understandable form with the background for its revolutionary approach made clear. Here, then, is: the low carbohydrate diet works by cutting not calories, but carbohydrates. The principle, highly simplified, is that when fuel-producing carbohydrates are restricted, the body, which must burn something for energy, burns fat instead. It works so well that while the dieter is painlessly lowering his weight he has no trouble maintaining good health and high spirits.
Facing the world on Melba Toast
The last consideration is important. If you are reading this book, you probably have dieted. You know what it means to face the world after breakfasting on dry Melba toast and a cup of black coffee. And you know how difficult it is to get through a morning’s work when all you can think of is the delights that await you at lunchtime: a single breadstick partnered by a mound of grainy cottage cheese.
This state of demoralization, sometimes accompanied by nerve tantrums, is a familiar one to many a weight-watcher for a simple reason: whether he counts calories or puts himself on one of the fad “crash” diets (all eggs, all bananas, all grapes or whatever), he takes off weight by cutting down on food. Now, and “diet” will reduce you, in a manner of speaking, if it sharply reduces your food intake over a long enough period. Overweight is no problem in starving communities. This kind of diet will also reduce your vitality, your ability to function both physically and mentally, and even your life span if carried to foolish enough extremes.
The brinkmanship school of dieting
Low calorie diets, of course, are not starvation; they are brinkmanship. They offer the body just enough energy units to get along on, with none left over for storage or padding, and they will generally work moderately well for some people. The emphasis is intentional. For years the principle of calorie-cutting has been the ruling one in weight-watching circles, both medical and lay. Yet is has always been known that there are many for whom this principle will not work. For a great many others it can be made to work only by reducing their food intake to such pitiable proportions that nerves, personality, and productivity suffer. In extreme cases, the body itself can be as deprived of necessary nutrients that the slimmering individual finds himself—or more probably herself — barely able to totter to the doctor’s office so that restorative measures can be taken.
All that dieting – and no results
Clearly, a healthy person of ordinary common sense will not choose to deplete his vitality, lower his resistance to infection, and court anemia among other complex ailments merely in order to face himself more cheerfully in a full-length mirror. Well, there are serious reasons to worry about overweight. Its health hazards – some of which are discussed in Chapter Two – are well enough known to cause that same sensible person to take thought when his scale starts inching upward.
But – you’re overweight. You have taken thought. You’ve tried starving, calorie-counting, exercise. In each case the results to be immediately replaced the moment you returned to anything like a normal diet. In addition you almost lost both your job and your marriage as it became impossible for any individual, however well adjusted, to get along with you. Yet still you waken to each new day aware that for another twenty-four hours you are going to ask your heart to service a plant that may be five, ten, or with really bad luck even twenty pounds heavier than it is efficiently equipped to manage. What to do?
First, if you haven’t already done so, check with your doctor. Second (and contingent upon the outcome of that interview) read the rest of this book. The low carbohydrate diet may be your answer.
Suppose that you are fortunate enough to have a doctor whose concern for your health outweighs his verbal tact. He gives you a thoughtful look, puts down his pen and says, “My friend, we are speaking not of overweight, but of obesity.”
In that case, forget this book, or give it to a friend. Obesity – gross overweight – is a medical classification, not a cosmetic one. If you are truly obese, neither this diet nor any other should be self-applied. You belong entirely in your doctor’s hands, a slave to the letter of any regimen which he, after careful tests, tailors for you. It is possible that you are one of those individuals whose bodies, for reasons not yet fully understood, do not deal in the normal way with food.
The oldest clichés I the folklore of dieting are type A, who cannot look at a slice of beef without gaining four pounds, and type B, who remains underweight on a steady intake of heavy cream, French toast, and chocolate cake. The next time you overhear a luncheon conversation in which these two unfortunates are exchanging complaints, don’t assume that A has been sneaking down to midnight feasts of fried pork chops and sweet potatoes, or that B is merely trying to endow herself with a touch of piquantly peculiar. It is entirely possible that they are telling the truth. Any doctor numbers among his patients some who accumulate weight on very reasonable diets, and others who cannot cover their bones no matter how hard they try. The answer may be metabolic, psychological, glandular, or a complex combination of some or all of these; it may lie along biochemical lines yet to be explored. The one certainty is that in individuals at these extremes, body chemistry does not perform in the predictable manner.
“We’ll certainly have to get a few pounds off!”
But these, as we say, are extremes. Let us replay your scene with the doctor, who says cheerfully, “Well, we’ll certainly have to get a few pounds off you, won’t we!” as he hoists you aboard his scales. In other words, you are overweight, not obese. If your excess weight in not the result of a metabolic or glandular disturbance, and if the doctor checks you out for any other health hazard which he feels might make a lower carbohydrate regimen inadvisable for your particular system, then you’re cleared to go on to Point Two.
At this point a few words of caution: This diet is designed for healthy people. Needless to say, if you are diabetic, anemic, hypertense, or know yourself to be suffering from any other chronic disturbance, you will not undertake this or any other diet or alter your food habits in any way from the routine your doctor has prescribed. But even if you are in good health, do not bypass the medical checkup. No change in your way of life, particularly if you have not had a recent examination or are no longer as close to twenty-one as you once were, should be undertaken without a thorough physical going-over.
In view of the fact that cholesterol has become a household word during the past few years, the possible dangers of diet which does not restrict fat may occur to you even before you see your doctor. Discuss this with him. In all likelihood he will enlighten you on the current medical thinking along these lines, which is that while cholesterol may be involved in some way with arteriosclerosis and heart disease, it is no longer held to be the main factor. Too many aspects of the relationship between cholesterol findings in geriatric cases involving arteriosclerosis showed a significant number of patients to have normal or low (depending upon the “normal” standard accepted) cholesterol. There is, further, the fact that the body manufactures its own cholesterol, a certain amount of which is always present; despite the enormous flood of publicity which has succeeded in making cholesterol a fear symbol to the public, it has by no means proven how diet affects the amount of cholesterol I the body, or how much. Let your doctor tell you whether or not the cholesterol controversy need have any bearing on your particular diet.
Proportion, not elimination
Another word you may want to bring up it ketosis. Perhaps your doctor will anticipate the question. Ketosis is a condition to which chemical compounds called ketones accumulate in the blood as a result of incomplete oxidation of fat. An excess of ketone bodies can be harmful, even poisonous. In relation to the low carbohydrate diet, this has significance because it is generally accepted that fat cannot be completely broken down in the body unless carbohydrates are present. That is why, in the chapter discussing the application of diet, we emphasize proportion, not elimination. You do not cut carbohydrates completely out of your food intake. You reduce them to 60 grams per day, unless your doctor approves a lower figure. You must continue to take in some carbohydrate – a measured quantity – in order to stay healthy.
A further caution, to repeat, this diet works. It has melted up to fourteen pounds a month off people who have never before managed to take off anything like that, stay healthy, and keep it off. But face this honestly: nothing will work if you gorge yourself. Further along, we give you carte blanche to eat as much as you like of certain foods. This is based on the assumption that you will like, or want, a more or less reasonable amount for your height, build, and way of life. If you are planning to use this diet as your Open Sesame to grow overeating, we must point out that while this diet has achieved startling, dramatic results, it has not – so far as we know – performed magic. If you are a neurotically compulsive overeater, you probably will be just as fat at the end of your diet as you are now, and you will have wasted a lot of time during which you should have been seeing a psychiatrist.
Self-control equals pounds off
On the other hand, if you are capable of a normal degree of self-control, you can launch yourself on the low carbohydrate diet with every assurance that pounds will start leaving you almost at once – often by the end of the second day. This alone is enough to boost the morale of the veteran dieter who has known the long agony of sweating out other diets – the weeks of waiting for the scales to prove what a good, self-denying boy (or girl) he has been.
But there are other advantages to this diet which no approach to the problems has ever before offered. Look (at the back of the book) at the meals you can eat! Observe that if you have been fighting for status as a fledgling gourmet, this diet in no way keeps you out of the club. You will find that the simple steak, crisply browned outside and rosy within, oozing delectable no-carbohydrate juices, is ideal for your purposes, but by no means all you are entitled to. You, or whoever cooks for you, can go high cuisine with wines, with herbs, with spices. With butter and cream. Malnourished reader, refugee from a thousand and one nights of sleepless fantasy about real food – on this diet you can have it.
And as for drinking, it’s all true – on this diet you can drink. You can drink anything but beer, really sweet wines, or heavy liqueurs. It may cost a little more, or you may learn to drink a little less, bu5t if you are ready to cooperate in these slight modifications, then the world of the convivial is still wide open to you. Crème de cacoa-type ladies are perhaps the only ones who may be in for a real struggle as they try to make do with an after-dinner brandy instead of the vastly richer brew of their pre-diet choices.
Now, let’s see how it works, and why. |
