Low Carb Fantasy
Eat Everything You Want and Lose Weight, Starving The Muscle and Feeding the Fat, RIGHT…

Hi Victoria,

I just got this beautiful flyer in the mail that said I could eat whatever I wanted and still lose weight as long as I took one on their capsules after each meal.  Is that true? Can I really lose weight with these pills? Can I really eat all I want and lose weight?
- Angela

Hi Angela,

I have seen those advertisements that tell you can eat all you want and lose weight as long as you take this miracle pill.  Let me guess… The ad sounds like this…

After a peaceful night’s sleep of you can wake up in the morning indulge in a large buttery croissant that is so delicate, it almost melts in your hand.  You wash it down with a shot of espresso that gives you the ultimate hit of energy and you are head out the door. You jump into your brand new sports car with the top down, hair flowing in the breeze and you stop at Starbuck’s and grab your favorite morning drink, a 20-ounce Venti banana mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream, because "you deserve it" and you run into your office feeling great. 

After your morning carb excursion, you take a miracle pill so that you won’t get fat form any of that right?   And then at your mid morning break, after you have rejected all of the offers from the local less than millionaire men for dinner from your home town singles online, you head downstairs to the little deli to have your favorite freshly delivered slice of warm pound cake with a hint of vanilla frozen yogurt on top.

And that is just the beginning of your day of eating all the carbs, sugar and fat you want without gaining a pound right?  RIGHT…

Wow, what a fantasy these get rich quick companies would have you believe. It’s almost criminal the amount of diet propaganda we are fed every day.  These companies are lying and playing on our weaknesses and want us to spend our hard earned money on their miracle pills which in the end leave you heavier than when you started. You trusted their lies that you could eat whatever you want and lose weight, have a killer body and men chasing you around because you are so carb happy and skinny.

If you want to shut disease down in it’s tracks and have the body of your dreams you must wake up and smell the low fat, sugar free coffee.  You are not going to permanently lose weight eating all the carbs you have developed a taste for. That’s right, your taste buds have been developed over time and if you have the burning desire to be lean, sexy and healthy you can retrain them.

I was getting ready to shoot my video, Ab Lab, the science of sleek firm abs, and I was not happy with my midsection.  It was better than it was when I was 170 lbs. heavier, but I didn’t feel like I was camera ready.  I had been on a low calorie diet, a weight loss diet, so I thought!  Little did I know that it wasn’t so much the number of calories, I was eating, it was the type of calories I was eating that was making me soft and flabby!

I was shocked to find out, that the low calorie diet was stripping hard earned muscle off my body and I was hanging on to body fat. The scale was going down, but I had soft, flabby feeling abdominals.  I was actually damaging my body by starving my muscle and feeding the fat. 

How did I find out? 

One afternoon I was doing body fat testing for some of my high profile clients I personal trained and I decided to do a quick analysis on myself. I almost fell out of my chair as my computer analyzer printed out my results.  In two weeks of rehearsing hours for my production shoot, instructing classes and hours in the gym training with my highly fit clients, I had lost four lbs. of muscle and gained two lbs. of fat.  I was stunned to find that I was achieving the complete opposite of what I desired.  I went to the library to research what was going on with my diet and the poor results I was getting.

The information I came up with was astounding. I did find the answer and I want to share it with you today.

How do I lose muscle and build fat?

Bear with me as I share with you a historical account of one man’s quest of dieting and how time does not always make things better.  I bet you will see yourself in this account of this gentleman’s plight to finally lose weight and repair his health.

William Banting, Low Carbohydrate Promoter

You may think that a low-carbohydrate diet is a new 20th century phenomena and we are just geniuses for coming up with it. The fact is fat, if it had not been for a 19th century English carpenter by the name of William Banting, we would still be gorging trying so solve the mystery.

But it needn't be like that, for nearly 140 years ago one man changed the thinking on diet completely. It all started with a small booklet entitled Letter on Corpulence addressed to the public, not written by a dietician or a doctor, but by an undertaker named William Banting. It became one of the most famous books on obesity ever written. First published in 1863, it went into many editions and continued to be published long after the author's death. The book was revolutionary and it should have changed western medical thinking on diet for weight loss forever.

William Banting was a carpenter and an undertaker to the rich and famous when in his thirties, William started to become overweight and he consulted an eminent surgeon, a kind personal friend, who recommended exercise first thing in the morning. Banting had a boat and lived near the river so he took up rowing the boat for two hours a day. All this did for him was increase his appetite. He put on more weight and was advised to stop. Sound familiar?

He was then advised that he could reduce his obesity by eating less and to consume "moderate and light food" but wasn't really told what that was. He says from trying to do this he became tired and fatigued without reducing his weight, which caused many boils to appear and two carbuncles, pus-filled infected lumps on his skin. He went into the hospital to be operated on and that is where he was fed into even more obesity.

Banting went into the hospital twenty times over a number of years for weight reduction. He tried swimming, walking, riding and taking the sea air. He drank what was called "gallons of physic and liquor potassae," took the spa waters at Leamington, Cheltenham and Harrogate, and tried low-calorie, starvation diets; he also took Turkish baths at a rate of up to three a week for a year but lost only six pounds in all that time.

Banting tried every form of weight loss treatment the medical profession recommended at that time, but it was all in vain. Eventually, discouraged and disillusioned and still very fat, he gave up. By 1862, at the age of 64, William Banting weighed 202 pounds, he was only 5 feet 5 inches tall. He could not bend over to tie his shoes, or to attend to the personal care required to live without considerable pain and difficulty. He had to go downstairs backward very slowly to prevent pain on his knee and ankle joints and huffed and puffed all the way down.

He also had an umbilical rupture, and other bodily ailments. On top of this he found that his sight was failing and he was becoming increasingly deaf. Because of this last problem, he consulted an aural specialist who made light of his case, sponged his ears out and blistered the outer ear—without the slightest benefit and without enquiring into his other ailments. Banting was not satisfied, he left in worse condition than when he went to the specialist.

Eventually, in August of 1862 Banting consulted a noted Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons: an ear, nose and throat specialist. Dr. William Harvey. It was an historic meeting. Dr. Harvey had recently returned from a symposium in Paris where he had heard Dr. Claude Bernard, a renowned Physiologist, speak about a new theory about the role the liver played in the disease of diabetes. Bernard believed that the liver, as well as secreting bile, also secreted a sugar-like substance that it made from elements of the blood passing through it. This started Harvey's thinking about the roles of various food elements in diabetes and he began a major course of research into the whole question of the way in which fats, sugars and starches affected the body.

When Dr. Harvey met Banting, he was interested as much by Banting's obesity as by his deafness, for he recognized that the one was the cause of the other. So Harvey put Banting on a diet. By Christmas, Banting was down to 184 pounds and, by the following August, 156 pounds. Finally he found a method of sound consistent weight loss.

Harvey's advice to him was to give up bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer and potatoes. These, he was told, contained starch and saccharine matter tending to create fat and were to be avoided altogether. When told what he could not eat Banting thought that he had very little left to live on. His kind friend soon showed him that really there was ample and Banting was only too happy to give the plan a fair trial. Within a very few days, he says, he derived immense benefit from it. The plan led to an excellent night's rest with 6 to 8 hours' sleep per night.

Fortunately for us today, Banting was quite a remarkable man. It is for this reason alone that we can know today what this miraculous diet was. In May 1863, at his own expense, Banting published the first edition of his now famous Letter on Corpulence in which he tells us of Harvey's diet plan (see below).

On this diet Banting lost nearly 1 pound per week from August 1862 to August 1863. In his own words he said: "I can confidently state that quantity of diet may safely be left to the natural appetite; and that it is quality only which is essential to abate and cure corpulence."

He went on: "These important desiderata have been attained by the most easy and comfortable means… by a system of diet, that formerly I should have thought dangerously generous."

After 38 weeks. Banting felt better than he had for the past 20 years. By the end of the year, not only had his hearing been restored, he had much more vitality and he had lost 46 lbs. in weight and 12 1/4 inches off his waist. He suffered no inconvenience whatsoever from the new diet, was able to come downstairs forward naturally with perfect ease, go upstairs and take exercise freely without the slightest inconvenience, could perform every necessary office for himself, the umbilical rupture was greatly ameliorated and gave him no anxiety, his sight was restored, his other bodily ailments were ameliorated and passed into the matter of history

Banting's Diet Prior to 1862 –

BREAKFAST: Bread and milk, or a pint of tea with plenty of milk and sugar, buttered toast.
DINNER: meat, beer, much bread (of which he had always been fond) and pastry.
TEA: a meal similar to breakfast.
SUPPER: generally a fruit tart or bread and milk.

Harvey's Diet Plan –

BREAKFAST: 4-5 ounces beef, mutton, kidneys, broiled fish, bacon or cold meat of any kind except pork, a large cup of tea (without milk or sugar), a little biscuit or one ounce of dry toast.
DINNER: 5-6 ounces of any fish except salmon, any meat except pork, any vegetable except potato, one ounce of dry toast, fruit of any pudding, any kind of poultry or game, and 2-3 glasses of good claret, sherry or Madeira (champagne, port, beer were forbidden).
TEA: 2-3 ounces fruit, a rusk or two and a cup of tea without milk or sugar.
SUPPER: 3-4 ounces of meat or fish, similar to dinner, with a glass or two of claret.
NIGHTCAP: Tumbler of grog: gin, whisky or brandy (without sugar) or a glass or two of claret or sherry.

Banting was delighted. He would have gone through hell to achieve all this but it had not been necessary. Indeed the diet allowed so much food, and it was that simple to maintain, that Banting said of it: "I can conscientiously assert I never lived so well as under the new plan of dietary, which I should have formerly thought a dangerous, extravagant trespass upon health."

He says that this present dietary table is far superior to what he was eating before—"more luxurious and liberal, independent of its blessed effect, but when it is proved to be more healthful, the comparisons are simply ridiculous.

"I am very much better both bodily and mentally and pleased to believe that I hold the reins of health and comfort in my own hands."

"It is simply miraculous and I am thankful to Almighty Providence for directing me through an extraordinary chance to the care of a man who worked such a change in so short a time." It is quite obvious from these comments that Banting didn't need the strength of willpower that today's slimmer needs; that he found his weight-loss diet very simple to maintain.

So you see there is no such thing as eating all the sugar and carbs you want and losing weight.  It is a total fantasy. And oh by the way, did you know that a 20-ounce Venti banana mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream contains 720 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat? Or that a banana cream crunch bar that you pick up with the morning coffee has 630 calories and 25 grams of saturated fat? Would you be surprised to find out that a Big Mac has 560 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat, making it the surprisingly better food choice? Crazy!

I saw the light when I was preparing for my video production.  I can’t believe that one bad result shocked me enough to go to the library and search out the truth of permanent weight loss and a tighter flatter midsection.  I started my Low carb lifestyle then, I have never looked back. I finally lost all of my extra fat and my muscles became firm and sexy. My video shoot was spectacular and I was proud to stand in front of the camera to show the world that it is possible to get a flat midsection and lose belly fat and not starve to do it.

If you want to finally lose weight, increase your energy, fight fatigue, shrink your thighs, and drop some pant sizes, you have to face reality and take up the Low Carb Lifestyle.

Start today...

God Bless and make it the Best Week Ever!