(The following story is supplied to Latina Lista through a content partnership with Amigos805.com.)
Diets are many, but most of them just concentrate in losing weight not in promoting a healthy lifestyle that keeps one fit… forever. This one does.
By Mariana Llamas-Cendon
Amigos805.com
How many diets have you tried in the last year? Perhaps too many.
How many of those were you able to keep up with for longer than a couple of weeks? Not many I assume.
Now, how many of those really helped you to loose weight and stay fit? Do not answer…
Dr. Salomon Jakubowicz is an endocrinologist from Venezuela who created the healthy living system and a book he calls “Ni una dieta mas” (Diet, no more) to help people, like himself, interested in losing weight through food, not starving diets or pills.
“I was addicted to food. For a long time I looked for solutions and when I studied medicine I finally found it. Plus, my mother is a famous endocrinologist and we have studied how to control the addiction to food: The best solution was to create a lifestyle and protein shakes dedicated to control the anxiety attacks suffered by those addicted to food, those who have a “fatty’s brain,” Jakubowicz said.
But what is a “fatty’s brain”? According to Jakubowicz, it refers to someone who gets up in the morning, skips breakfast or has a little something; by lunch time they area still lacking appetite but in the evening they suffer from unbearable anxiety attacks and eat much more as a consequence.
Jakubowicz confessed that he himself also had a “fatty’s brain.” He has scientifically researched how to control the addiction to food.
“We actually had founded a laboratory specializing in researching the resistance to insulin,” Jakubowicz said. Those studies were the foundation for creating the treatment of “Ni una dieta mas.”
During his research, Jakubowicz has seen those patients who have a diet rich in sugars, carbohydrates or fats did not lose appetite as much as those whose diet is rich in proteins.
“We continued analyzing and we proved that the hormonal effects of those (diets) rich in protein help to control the appetite. Also, we noticed that the best of all proteins is whey, which is really powerful to ease the anxiety attacks provoked by the need to eat candies, and so we used a concentrate of that protein in a shake,” Jakubowicz said.
Breakfast, the one and only
Breakfast is the foundation to weight loss.
“Those who don’t eat breakfast gain weight even if the rest of day they eat only lettuce while running a marathon,” Jakubowicz said.
He recommends eating a little extra during breakfast even if we are already full, in order to avoid the occurrence of evening’s anxiety attack.
“Those who skip breakfast have more anxiety attacks and end up eating more calories than those who eat breakfast, since they have less anxiety attacks and their metabolism is much more accelerated,” he said.
Breakfast should be more nutritious than just a cup of coffee. The ideal breakfast should contain a diet rich in protein such as tuna, slices of turkey, including eggs, and dairy, Jakubowicz said.
“Everybody needs to eat at least 50 grams of protein at breakfast,” he said
Jakubowicz also said that if the body doesn’t get those 50 grams of protein, it will look for it somewhere else… such as, in the muscles.
“If one doesn’t get those 50 grams of protein, he will eat his own muscles looking for those proteins, causing the slow-down of the metabolism, and even though that person may apparently lose 50 grams of weight everyday, he is actually losing muscle,” Jakubowicz said.
“This is pretty bad because it is in the muscle where aliments are burned, so if you lose muscle the day that you eat a tiny cookie it will not be burned but transformed into fat, and therefore an increase in weight.”
Jakubowicz said also that because of that loss in muscle it is not uncommon that some people suffer from muscle aches either in their back or waist.
“Many people come to visit me looking forward to lose weight, but they also tell me they have terrible back pains. The first day they start having breakfast with proteins the pain disappears,” Jakubowicz said.
Breakfast, according to Jakubowicz, it is a fantastic tool over food addiction.
“When do you feel like having a chocolate, at 6 p.m. or 6 a.m.? Most people will feel like having a chocolate in the evening because it is more pleasant to eat not only candy but pizza, bread, cookies…,” he said.
Sadly, overweight people are usually addicted to junk food, and it is very hard for them to follow and keep up with a strict diet that will eliminate those types of food.
“They will try it for a few weeks, but they will fall into temptation as soon as a cake, ice cream or a caramel crosses in front of them,” he said.
But Jakubowicz has a trick: After eating a protein rich breakfast, it is a good idea to have a morning dessert of any of those foods that a person craves the most in the evenings whether they are chocolates, cakes, donuts or whatever.
“Individuals addicted to chocolate who eat it in the morning will think: ‘I already had it and it was not as pleasant,’ but if someone … eats it in the evening, the pleasure caused is going to be so deep that he will turn into a huge addict for the rest of his life,” he said. “Eating should be pleasurable act, not an anxious one.”
Try but can’t
As many of us have experienced, certain diets helped us to lose weight relatively fast, but suddenly it made us gain twice as much weight. Jakubowicz has an explanation for it.
“Dieting is fattening. When someone starts one of those strict diets, in which they barely eat, the metabolism slows down and the addiction gets worse,” he said.
Jakubowicz doesn’t recommend diet pills of any kind.
“Studies show that (diet pills) are not very useful or effective in weight loss. Plus, those have side effects. Many people take them because of their inability to control their appetite. Diet pills can help them the first month, but thereafter the effect is lost,” he said. “A better idea is to think on a healhty lifestyle to control the appetite …”
Facebook diet
No, it is not another frivolous diet. The Facebook Diet isn’t even a diet. It is a gathering of people interested in weight loss and different doctors specialized in the topic that happens once a month in Facebook’s website under the name of “Ni una dieta mas,” which already has approximately 5,000 followers.
Jakubowicz is one of the online panelists, but there are other doctors from the U.S., Mexico and Venezuela.
“Many people would like to come to visit, but I am alone and cannot see that many people,” he said. “Once a month, people interested in losing weight from all over Latin America gathered through Facebook’s website.”
Jakubowicz considers that this online community provides the support that many people need to lose weight that they don’t get from family or friends.
The book
A free copy of Jakubowicz book, “Ni una dieta mas,” can be found at his website: www.niunadietamas.com, as well as recipes, news, testimonies and other interesting features such as sending your questions to Jakubowicz.
In his book, Jakubowicz discusses a variety of topics in-depth from diets, pills, resistance to insulin, carbohydrates, proteins, pregnancy and dieting, childhood and obesity and many others.
