Birthdays Party

Birthdays are really let-loose days because it’s your day and nobody else’s. Even those who harp about our fat will take us out, pile it high, and egg us on. Well, this year, you have something to celebrate—being a “born-again skinny.”

To reinforce my own life choice of being a skinny, because that 170-pound whale that I once was is always lurking, I choose to make my birthday one of the most austere days of my year. Almost like a day of worship and reverence for myself, my health, and my skinny being. Read the rest of this entry »

Oriental Restaurants

The worst part of an oriental meal is the MSG (monosodium glutamate). It causes some people to experience what is known as the Chinese restaurant syndrome—that empty feeling after a Chinese meal, a nagging headache, and a large percent of the bloating that follows your meal. Designed to perk up your taste buds, it can also muddle your brain and confound your nervous system. It reacts negatively against your chemical balance. Read the rest of this entry »

My patients are astounded when I encourage them to eat frozen vegetables. But research has conclusively shown that frozen vegetables in a packet are more often than not more nutrient-rich than their `fresh’ counterparts on the supermarket shelves, whose vitamin and mineral content has been damaged by exposure to light, heat and air.

Consider an average bunch of carrots. These carrots will be plucked from the earth on a Monday morning. They will be stored in a shed for some time, then the farmer will, load them onto a truck for transport to the city. For several hours they will travel in a warm truck. Read the rest of this entry »

Fat-free dairy products products, the second main component of the polish foods group, are a fabulous source of nutrients — calcium, potassium, phosphates, protein and many other vital vitamins and minerals. All too often these days, though, these important foods are left out of the diet. It’s very common to hear people — even doctors — claim that ‘milk is only for baby cows, not for humans’, or ‘dairy products are mucus-forming and cause sinusitis’.

I disagree with these sentiments entirely: read on, and you will soon see why. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me give you the bad news first: like red meat, chicken contains significant amounts of fat. The chicken skin is almost entirely composed of fat, and there is also fat hidden inside the flesh of the wing, the drumstick, the thigh and the neck. The only part of the chicken that is acceptable on the X Diet is the breast.

This may come as a surprise to ‘career dieters’, but even without its skin, a deboned chicken breast contains two teaspoons of fat. Read the rest of this entry »

Fish is a dichotomy, because broadly speaking there are two main categories of fish: fatty fish and non-fatty fish.

Fatty fish

I can almost hear you yelling, Tut fatty fish are supposed to be good for your heart!’ Yes, this much is true. Research has shown that the two main types of oils contained in fatty fish can lower cholesterol levels, protect you against heart disease and i_mprove blood fluidity. However, the idea that something is ‘healthy is, once again, disease-specific. The consumption of fish oils should certainly be encouraged in cholesterol patients who are lean, not over-fat. However, if you are over-fat and have high cholesterol levels, all types of fatty fish should be eliminated from the diet. Read the rest of this entry »

The dry-frying technique

`How do I fry without fat?’ is one of the most common questions my patients ask me. Let me introduce you to the concept or dry-frying, which is used in many of the recipes. Dry-frying is a method of sautéing -rood without using oil or butter. There is no difference in the flavour or the final dish, although the preparation takes a little longer.

Hoff fill a teacup with boiling water and add a teaspoon of’ stock powder. Stir until dissolved, then fill the cup to the top with red or white wine - any cheap plonk will do! CIF you don’t drink alcohol, use apple juice instead.) Read the rest of this entry »

Read the nutritional content tables

These tables, printed on the labels of many foods, offer consumers a quick and easy way of detecting fats in food, and are probably your most powerful tool in the quest for fat-free eating! Unfortunately, only some local manufacturers and two major supermarket chains (Woolworths and Pick ‘n Pay) include these tables on their products.

These tables usually show the nutritional breakdown of the food per 100 g of product, showing the proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, sugar, fats, and so on. For the purposes of the X Diet, you can ignore all the food groups except the fats. Read the rest of this entry »

To save me having to make endless lists of other foods that contain fats, I’m going to show you how to become a ‘fat sleuth’ — in other words, to empower yourself as a consumer so that you are easily able to detect hidden fat. And how do you do this? By reading the label of everything — and I mean everything — you buy. Here are some important steps:

Analyze the list of ingredients

Recently, it’s become law that manufacturers of food products have to list ingredients on the label. These should be listed in descending order from the largest ingredient to the smallest (although, at present, only some manufacturers and two large supermarket chains fully comply with this requirement). Read the rest of this entry »

Your pancreas releases insulin

Let’s go back to your blood. Your blood-sugar level has doubled since you ate the wholewheat toast, and your brain is buzzing happily. Not only that, but the ‘flood’ of glucose in your blood has stimulated your pancreas to produce insulin. Think of insulin as an army of soldiers embarking on a mopping-up operation. If there is a large flood of glucose into the bloodstream (caused by eating high-GI foods), the pancreas releases many insulin soldiers into the blood. Read the rest of this entry »