I went to a seminar on Weight Loss this morning - the weight loss surgery surgeon involved, meant well - he wanted to provide his patients with a program to do after surgery - the need of which was witnessed by the fact that most of the folks in the room, either gastric sleeve or lap band post ops, were still quite overweight (although there were a couple of pre ops in the room also). The surgeon also, has some problems with midline obesity and this, he says, is the latest thing that is working for him but he'd only lost 15 lbs and still had some 15-20 lbs to lose (which he has all in his waist). He is a believer in low carbing but like many of my friends, that, alone, had not worked for him. (Dr Atkins the founder of the low carb diet as we know it, explained in his last book that calories do count and you can gain just as much weight on too much of no carb foods as you can on carbs, a fact which has not been seen much in the media - if at all. Also Dr Atkins had heart disease, which is again, a fact which has not often been seen in the mass media.).
The so called "protocol" seemed to me, a rehash of other low cal diets - similar to the old "Dr Simeon program from the 1950's... in the first stage, you cut the calories down drastically (which of course, damages the metabolism) - they have some kind of protein drink you buy (and also you can intake your protein in other types of product which they also sell. They have 3 stages of this program and in the maintenance stage you can again eat carbohydrates in small quantities. Although sugar is portrayed as the demon in this program - the latest thing in diet plans - apparently aspartame - nutrasweet which is somewhat toxic and far more unhealthy than sugar ever thought of being, is "ok".
The new twist is, this company seems to be targeting physicians (many of whom sadly, know little about weight loss science and regard obesity as a medical problem for which a solution - pills or surgery - can solve and be a cash cow at the same time).
I asked the guy hawking this product - what about maintenance... and he said he would talk about it later. He dismissed it with "well, when you creep up in weight as 'we all do', you go back on the "protocol" for a week or two and take off (crash off?) the weight." He gained some popularity in the room when he said that people don't have to exercise with this "protocol". In fact, he went on to say that even if people were working out a lot, it was advised they did not work out while on the low calorie part of the protocol.
As we all know, yo yo syndrome is the best way to really mess up the metabolism and which causes most folks to be more overweight after repeated attempts at crashing off weight. But they didn't talk about metabolism, of course. Also if you weight cycle as small an amount as five or ten pounds several times, it not only raises the risk for heart disease but also causes the individual to end up with a higher percentage of body fat.
Here's how it works... when you lose weight on a very low cal diet, you only lose 30% bodyfat - the rest of what you lose is muscle and bone (tissue you do NOT want to lose). However when you regain even as little as 5 or 10 lbs, it's all bodyfat (no muscle). The salesperson telling us about this diet, said "everyone's weight creeps up!"
Bottom line is, this diet is quite pricey - according to the physician's website (which is more honest about the cost than the manufacturer's website)... Start up fees are $279 dollars and when you go off the "protocol" and regain and want to go back on "the protocol" for a couple of weeks, it costs $108 dollars a week.
Consider that this "protocol" is being sold to people who have already invested thousands of dollars in weight loss surgery. Looking around the room at the people who attended this meeting most of whom had had weight loss surgery, and were still very overweight, it was clear that weight loss surgery often is ineffective for permanent weight loss.
