Food Essentials

Eating Food to Lose Weight

Food Essentials attempts to teach any dieter the concept of "Eating to Lose Weight." This is accomplished through analysis and reporting of essential dieting principles related to food and weight loss.

The topics covered:

• Food Combining.....where Dr. Hay went wrong

• The Adipocyte.....the reason any of this matters

• Professional Protein.....the work-horse of weight loss

• World Apart Carbs.....all carbs are not the same

• The Calorie.....holds the key to weight loss nirvana

• The Trick.....food combining at its best

Food Essentials collectively teaches healthy weight loss. Nutritious and healthy, food combining remains an option for dieters frustrated with Yo-Yo dieting.

As a matter of fact, start any diet you like, but within the context of food combining. The net result is maximized and sustained weight loss...healthy weight loss.

Food essentials for a healthy weight loss:

Healthy weight loss is defined by losing fat and fat only. No other means of losing weight is acceptable. Losing fat will leave your body at a higher set metabolic rate, helping to sustain your weight loss success.

All other means of weight loss result in lower set metabolic rates. This means you gain weight in the near future.

Hey, a great thing to do is to personalize your diet. To read about Personalized Weight Loss Plans and to learn how any diet can be personalized, use the link Personalized Weight Loss Plans and learn why this impacts your success or failure.

Let's begin our food essentials discussion with...

Food Combinations and Sustained Acid Conditions

The idea of combining certain foods in specific ratios is nothing new. A diet called "Food Combining" was developed in 1911 by Dr. Hay.

Despite Dr. Hay's incorrect premise, food combining does lead to weight loss. But is it healthy weight loss? In short, yes.

A quick run through of his food chart shows that Dr Hay's diet was nutritious and balanced...the beginnings of healthy weight loss. Where he went wrong was the "end-product" theory of disease and obesity.

End-Product Possibilities

Despite some interesting features of food combining, it's overall premise is incorrect. He based his food combinations on the end-result or end-product of digestion. The two end-product possibilities were an acid or a base.

In general, Dr. Hay felt that acidic end-products caused disease, including obesity. He developed a chart classifying common foods as acidic (mainly proteins), neutral, or basic (mainly starch). He would teach dieters to avoid eating too much of any food at one sitting.

It was a flexible diet with one hard rule...never eat proteins with other acidic foods (especially acidic vegetables) or with starch. From there, balance your meal with other acids and bases keeping heavy starches to a minimum.

So far so good. Although not found in his own writing, the Food Combining theory was based on a balanced meal between acids and bases. With the right acid to base ratio, appetite is suppressed during and for a few hours after eating. The result is you eat less calories of a nutritious diet and ultimately, lose weight.

If followed for an extended period of time, the gradual drop in calories with proper protein intake will lead to a loss of stored fat. This, in turn, causes healthy weight loss.

Dr. Hays went wrong with his sustained acid condition theory. He wrote that digesting a meal with acidic end-products or ingesting a meal heavy with acids places you in a "condition of acidity." This acidic state, if sustained, is a precursor to obesity. He also referred to the acidic condition as the "wrong chemical condition or state."

It turns out that there is no sustained acidic condition in otherwise healthy individuals. With normal kidneys, obese patients neutralize acids as good as anyone else. Of course, the picture becomes a little fuzzy when considering the relationship between kidney problems, diabetes, and obesity. All three almost go hand in hand.

However, Dr. Hay did not think this deep about his acidic condition because not much was known or fully worked out when he practiced medicine.

His "sustained acid chemical condition" today is called a "metabolic acidosis" and can be life threatening. It's hard to separate the teachings of Dr. Hay from the advertising and marketing campaigns associated with the Food Combining Diet. In truth, the literature is contradictory and far from clear on the diseases Dr. Hay associated with the "acid condition." We just guess obesity was included.

Food combining is a good diet. The design, if implemented slowly, will lead to healthy weight loss. Muscle, for the most part, would be spared.

Here are his food essentials and food combining recommendations from 1911:

1. Mix anything from List A with List B

2. Mix anything from List C with List B

3. Never mix List A and C!

4. Mix vegetables or salads -- make these and unprocessed foods the main part of your diet. They are food essentials!

Try to design a few meals based on Dr. Hay's chart, and your knowledge of food essentials. Figure out the number of calories and percent of fat, carbohydrate, and protein. Do some research and see if the meal you developed would lead to healthy weight loss.

Dr. Hay did a pretty good job considering he wrote the diet in 1911. Your take home message...significant weight loss can occur without starving or trying some whacked out diet. Food Combining and food essentials shows that with just minor adjustments, that calorie composition plays a big role in promoting fat loss while preserving muscle.

While "food combining" may work for some people, for many others it will not. For those people, we recommend a weight loss supplement.

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