Then do the exercises on the text.

THE ONE SENSIBLE WAY TO DIET

An interview with Dr. Grant Gwinup, chairman of the Division of Endocrinology and director of the Metabolic Research Laboratory at the University of California at Irvine.

Read the text carefully paying attention to the underlined words and expressions.

Then do the exercises on the text.

Q. Just about everyone I meet is on a diet or about to go on one. Aren't we overdoing the reducing bit?

A. I don't think so. Recent studies show that 85 out of 100 persons are weight-prone; they die before their time. People reduce for the wrong reasons - mostly for looks. They fail to realize that obesity is a major health hazard. If all deaths from cancer were eliminated, two years would be added to man's life-span; but if all deaths related to obesity were removed, the life span would jump seven years. What's wrong about reducing is not how much we do but how we do it. Practically every reducing diet - no matter how well it works at the start - is doomed to fail, after a few weeks.

Q. Are you saying that many diets have a common basic fault?

A. Correct. Any diet that changes the pattern of your natural eating habits is physiologically unsound and therefore unacceptable to your body. Most fad diets work - for a short time. But after a few weeks, you are forced to quit, and any weight loss is promptly regained. Scientific studies show that approximately 45 percent of your daily food calories come from fats, 40 percent are derived from carbohydrates and 15 percent from proteins. You can tolerate minor variations in these ratios but not drastic changes. You don't need a college education to select a balanced diet; just let your natural desires lead you. Selection of the right ratio is a built-in mechanism. Pills - sedatives, stimulants, appetite depressants – are ineffective, too. The weight loss they induce is merely transitory, and once the pills are stopped, the weight is regained.

Q. Are low-calorie foods an aid to reducing?

A. Not really. Filling your stomach with low-calorie foods won't satisfy your hunger; only sufficient calories can do that. Most people mistakenly believe that when the stomach is full, hunger is satisfied. Control of hunger is in a group of cells located at the base of your brain, called the appestat, which functions much like the thermostat in your home. When the amount of sugar circulating in your blood drops below a fixed level, the appestat clicks on and signals hunger. Then, when the level rises to a certain point, the appestat registers satiety and clicks off.

Q. If the amount of food or calories we eat is automatically regulated by the appestat, why are some persons fatter than others?

A. That's still the big unknown. Obviously, a fat man's appestat must switch on and off at a higher setting than a thin man's. Why, we don't know. Nor do we know how to change the setting.

Q. Then the attempts to reduce seem doomed to fail. Why try?

A. It's hopeless only if you try to reduce by fooling your appestat or radically altering your natural eating patterns. You can control your weight successfully by applying a basic principle that you learned in high-school physics - the conservation of matter.

Q. You mean, of course, that matter cannot be created or destroyed - that it can only be transformed from one form to another.

A. Merely change the word matter to energy, and you have the answer to weight control. I call the concept "Energetics". Our bodies transform the food we eat into energy, which we use to maintain life processes and to perform our daily activities. The energy we do not use immediately is stored as body fat for future use. Food, as everyone is aware, contains varying amounts of calories. Recently, scientists have been able to count the number of calories our bodies use in performing basic functions, as well as in various sports and work activities. Since all foods and activities now have caloric equivalents, we can keep daily count of the calories we eat and the calories we expend (see the table).

Q. The formula sounds simple: to maintain body weight, keep calories eaten and those spent in perfect balance; to gain weight, eat more calories than you spend; and to reduce, eat fewer calories than you burn up. But how do you know how much?

A. By using this equation: 3500 calories equal one pound of body fat. Thus, if your goal is to lose one pound a week, your caloric intake for the period must be 3500 calories less than your caloric expenditure. Whenever you eat fewer calories than you spend, your body takes the needed calories from stored body fat, thereby reducing your weight.

Q. When you cut down your caloric intake, can you eliminate the most fattening foods?

A. If you do, you will commit the same error that makes all fad diets fail - altering you basic eating pattern. Although some foods are more fattening than others - for example, fats contain more than twice as many calories per ounce as carbohydrates or proteins - you should not stop eating fats; just reduce your overall caloric intake.

Q. Then Energetics is not, strictly speaking, a diet but rather a method of controlling weight?

A. True. You do not change your way of eating. When mealtime comes, eat the foods you like; merely regulate the amount.

Q. It seems that you have two ways to control weight with your method: 1) the amount of calories you consume; 2) the amount of exercise you do.

A. Yes; ideally, you should combine the two. For instance, to lose a pound a week, you can reduce your caloric intake by 1400 and increase your expenditures by 2100. On a daily basis, you can accomplish the goal by doing without three slices of bread and by taking a brisk 60-minute walk.

Q. It's sometimes said that exercise is a poor way of lose weight, since the activity also increases the appetite. Is exercise self-defeating?

A. Not so. Exercise does stimulate appetite and will increase eating, but not enough to account for the calories burned. Tests on individuals prove that vigorous exercise for one half-hour a day will produce a weight loss despite increased food consumption. The usual ratio between exercise and increased eating is about 800 calories expended and 500 taken in, leaving a deficit of 300. I've known of lumberjacks who eat as much as 6000 calories a day - more than twice the usual amount - without gaining weight.

Q. Suppose a woman wants to take five pounds off her hips and thighs. How can she do this with your method?

A. She can't do this with any method. Spot-reducing is an illusion. Exercising one set of muscles or having them jiggled with some machine will not reduce the fat from that area. However, it will improve muscle tone and perhaps appearance. When stored fat is burned, it is taken from all over the body, not just where the activity exists.

Q. What exercises are better than others in burning stored fat?

A. There are two answers to your question: what is ideal and what is practical. Ideally, the more vigorous the exercise, the more fat it will consume. But how many persons can go cross-country skiing every day? Or play tennis singles for an hour? Or take a fast swim daily? Practically, you must pick the activity that's most convenient: a brisk walk; calisthenics in your room; using stairs instead of elevators; in short, anything that will make you breathe hard.

Q. Suppose a man wants to lose 30 pounds. How long should it take him with Energetics?

A. Most patients who lose weight gradually have an easier time maintaining that loss. I believe in "inching down". If 30 pounds is your goal, do it in five-pound segments. The first month take off the initial five pounds, maintain that weight for an additional month, and the next month reduce another five pounds, and so on. On this regimen, you can scrap 30 pounds in a year and keep them off!

Q. With Energetics, controlling your weight seems to be like balancing your bank account. Deposits are the food you eat, withdrawals are your activities, and how they balance is the statement of your weight - up, down or even.

A. Exactly. Start by writing down your expenditures, expressed in calories according to the values in the chart, - include everything you do each day while on the job, at home or at play. Also make note of every morsel of food you eat or drink for a week and then average the totals to a daily basis. The difference between intake and output will indicate how much you must decrease your food calories and increase your activities to achieve the weight you want.

Q. Are there any hints you can give to make lifea bit more bearable for the unhappy dieters?

A. Unfortunately, a dieter must live his life a little on the hungry side. However, the burden can be eased. Many reducers make the mistake of saving almost their entire allotment of calories for the evening meal when their activities are at an all-time low and consequently when many of these calories will be stored as body fat and not burned. Instead, dieters should spread their intake of food calories more equally throughout the day to match the calories used in their daily activities. By doing this, all the calories you eat will be burned by your job and recreation, and will not be stored. As a matter of fact, if you are going to reduce, forget the standard three-meals-a-day routine - you'll do better as a nibbler than as a gobbler.

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