The Health Blog

Water pills, which we doctors call diuretics, have long been a popular weight-loss aid. The idea is that if we’re overweight because we tend to retain excess water, then all we have to do is take a few diuretics (water pills) to flush it all out, and we’ll be slim and trim. But no one becomes obese because he or she retains water. In fact, the percentage of body weight that can be attributed to water actually drops when one becomes obese. Sure, water pills will cause a slight weight loss due to the elimination of water. But those pounds will quickly be regained. So, when all is said and done, taking water pills is pointless and greatly increases the risk of dehydration.

If water retention is really a problem for you, it may be a sign of a medical problem such as an underactive thyroid gland, an overactive adrenal gland, congestive heart failure, kidney

failure, or some other serious condition. See your doctor.

All in all, water pills are not safe, sane diet aids. Their effect is very temporary, and overindulgence may lead to dehydration. To make matters worse, using these water pills can cause you to lose magnesium and potassium, two minerals essential for a healthy cardiovascular system.

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“It’s not your fault if you’re overweight,” says the author of this diet. Obesity is supposedly caused by faulty metabolism, so you should think of your weight problem as a chronic disease that must be cured. The Hilton Head Diet promises to increase your metabolic rate so that you’ll burn more calories—without added effort. It’s also supposed, to change your body chemistry to make managing your weight easier. All this, while encouraging you to eat more meals than before. Sounds great doesn’t it? But wait!

The diet’s first key ingredient is a low-fat, high-complex carbohydrate eating regimen, which is good. But that’s as far as I can agree with the Hilton Head Diet. I see no basis for their claim that the body chemistry is somehow changed, so that you can eat more and lose weight without effort. I also take issue with their idea of “dietary stairstepping.” The author suggests that you divide your desired weight loss into small steps to be tackled one at a time, with time off for rejuvenating your metabolism in between. While it can be a good idea to move forward very gradually, setting your goals at manageable levels so that you can achieve them and stay with them, this “stairstepping” approach seems to admit that you cannot stay with the diet. Why else would you have to take time off to rejuvenate? That hardly suggests that you will be able to stay with this approach indefinitely.

You may find it a problem to follow a diet that say, calls for bacon, eggs, and grapefruit 3 times a day. How are you going to cook it at work? Are you going to make 2 separate dinners at home, one for you and one for the family? What about when you go out to eat?

The solution, as it is throughout this book, is to do the best you can, and use Chitosan to compensate for what you cannot manage. To repeat myself, the best you can is good enough.

Of course, there are some things you can do to help yourself. The first is that you should quickly enroll your whole family in the Fat Blocker Program. Since, unlike other diets you have been on, this one is not excessive in any respect, there is no reason why your spouse should not join in. All you are asking him or her to do is target the meals you eat to their best nutritional balance, and (if they feel they need to lose weight) eat a little less than before and, if necessary, take Chitosan. That’s a long way from asking them to eat nothing but grapefruit or to adhere to a 1,200 calorie diet for the rest of their lives!

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The entire world is conspiring against me, Dr. Fox, the entire world.” That’s how 34-year-old Barbara began our conversation when she came to my office one day. Plopping down in the chair in disgust, the 170-pound, 5′ 4″ mother of 3 continued, “I’m trying to watch my weight, I’m trying to change my eating habits, but I can’t. My kids are always wolfing down Sugar Pops, cupcakes, and red licorice, all at the same time. They eat in front of me, they leave it on the table, the boxes are in the cupboard. At work, someone’s always bringing in glazed doughnuts. At lunchtime, the menu is full of main dishes with Alfredo in the name, and then there’s nothing to eat but cookies and soda in the afternoon.”

I thought I might interject a suggestion while Barbara took a breath, but she continued before I had a chance. “Then, at home, I’m in charge of the cooking! I’ve got to see all that food, I’ve got to handle it, I’ve got to smell it while it’s cooking. And I’m starving while I’m seeing it, handling it, and smelling it. And then, the TV advertises nothing but food, food, food! How can I avoid all of these temptations? It’s a conspiracy!”

Of course, Barbara is right. It’s almost impossible not be exposed to food—and wonderful-tasting food at that. McDonald’s, Burger King, and Pizza Hut; Nabisco, General Mills, and Kraft; Miller, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi; 10,000 restaurant chefs and millions of well-meaning mothers spend half their working hours figuring out how to seduce us into eating more. We seem almost powerless to resist.

Moreover, our so-called lack of willpower is not that at all. The true fact is that we are evolutionarily programmed not to resist the blandishments of food. The real reason that we cannot stay on a low-calorie, hunger-inducing diet for long is not that we lack mental fortitude but that to remain permanently hungry is, quite literally, against human nature. Not to mention uncomfortable!

Humans were programmed, way back in the era of prehistoric man (and quite possibly even before humans evolved from our australopithecine forebears), to eat more than they needed when food was abundant in order to have reserves when it was not. They stored the excess as fat and held onto it tenaciously for emergency use. In fact, our bodies are willing to part with certain fat reserves (such as those saddle bags on the upper thighs or the fatty bulges on the underside of the buttocks) only under two conditions: If we are close to starvation or, for pregnant women, if their fetus needs nourishment. Under few circumstance can we lose fat in those locations.

During our evolution, our survival depended on this mechanism of fat storage because periods of deprivation were inevitable. However, for most of us today, this fat-storage mechanism is not offset by frequent or even occasional lack-of-food emergencies. Inevitably, therefore, we have to fight and struggle to keep our weight down—and most of us fail, at least to some extent. Given our evolutionary programming, most of us simply cannot avoid gaining weight as we age.

Does that then lead to the inevitable conclusion that trying to lose weight (or maintain our optimum weight) as we age is futile? Well, while I wouldn’t go that far, I must admit that it has been a huge problem up to now, and one that for most people has at best been only partly solved up to now. However, the situation has been altered drastically by the Chitosan program. While there is still some difficulty involved in losing weight and keeping it off (because a certain amount of restraint is still needed, and restraint is not one of the things we humans are particularly good at), it is now well within reach and entirely practical for every healthy person.

It is in this context that I offer the following suggestions for how to motivate yourself to lose weight. You now know that with the help of Chitosan you definitely will be able to control your weight. And that knowledge itself is a powerful motivator. As one of my favorite aphorisms has it, your power flows where your attention goes.

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Debbie is a 42-year-old married mother of 2 who works part-time as a secretary while going to college. Always a bit chubby, even as a girl, she recently found herself about 30 pounds

overweight. “I’m really pretty good about my eating,” she told me. “I watch the fat, I eat small portions and hardly ever have dessert. I’m sure I eat less than any of my friends. So why can’t I lose the weight?” When I asked her about her exercising habits, she said, “When do I have time to exercise? I’m either working, at school, taking care of the kids, or studying. I just can’t seem to fit it into my schedule!”

A basic truth that I’ve discovered after years of treating overweight patients is this: We cannot achieve permanent weight loss without exercise. Every living being exercises to some extent. Even breathing is a form of exercise. And our heart is a muscle that never ceases to work out. However, our bodies are designed to do a great deal more exercise than that. Just as we evolved to consume any food we could lay our hands on, so we also evolved in circumstances where we often had to expend a great burst of energy. Even when energy (i.e., food) is in short supply, it’s worth using up a large store of it to evade a saber-toothed tiger, or to hunt down a buffalo. Those bursts of energy were once essential for our survival. However, once the danger was past or the prey captured, there was no further advantage in using up energy. So, we learned to relax and shut down, our stomachs full, our fat building up for future emergencies. In those prehistoric days, we maintained a sensible balance between energy usage and energy storage.

Today, since there are no tigers to flee from and we can obtain all the food we could possibly want with no more energy than it takes to push a cart through a supermarket, our tendency to store energy (i.e., fat) is far greater than our need to expend it. We are out of balance, and that problem has to be dealt with.

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