The author's claim is that carbohydrates and insulin,* not excess calories, are responsible for the obesity epidemic in the United States. Following this plan, he has you deplete your carbohydrate intake (thus calories) in order to establish a daily food plan of between 1,200-1,800 calories. Weight loss occurs because of the reduction of calories. Certainly, most anyone consuming this amount of calories would lose weight.

The benefit to this diet is its simplicity and the fact that it is initially enjoyable for dietary fat lovers. Additionally, sticking to the proper calories (until the carbohydrate cravings overwhelm you) can be easy because a person can only consume so much protein and fat before getting sick of it for the day.

The Downside

Plain and simple - rebound, which is exactly what happened to everyone who followed this same plan in the 1970s. The program did not work then and it will have no lasting success now. Also, high-protein diets can put a person into a state of ketosis, which could cause headaches, bad breath, nausea, and eventual carbohydrate cravings due to the deprivation of this nutrient.

An exhaustive search of peer-reviewed literature related to maintaining weight loss, including the only true records located at the National Weight Control Registry; revealed that not a single person accomplished this feat with this exact or similar regime.

Is this type of diet good for anyone?

If a person had medical complications due to obesity and refused to exercise and reduce calories appropriately for weight loss, a higher than traditionally recommended protein and fat intake may be an alternative to ameliorate symptoms.

*It takes more than insulin to store fat. Insulin is a complex hormone with myriad life giving functions and is only a mechanism that is used in the accumulation of fat stores when a person supplies the calories. The hormone does not cause the body to continually accrue fat unless a person regularly eats too much. Since humans can not live 5 minutes without insulin we must learn to live without eating in excess and then looking for something else to blame it on.