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Dr. Ornish on low-carb diets, weight loss & eating for good health

9/27/2012

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Dr. Dean Ornish is a preventive cardiologist at UCSF who's shown for over 2 decades that some people can reverse the symptoms and signs of their coronary heart disease by just diet and meditation alone (see his 1989 JAMA paper titled "Intensive Lifestyle Changes for Reversal of Coronary Heart Disease"). He's been running the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, where he and his team continue research into how changing what you eat and how you handle your stress can influence your health and your body battles disease. 

So it caught my attention when I learned that Dr. Ornish wrote an essay carried by the New York Times ("Eating for Health, Not Weight," 9/22/2012). In it he writes that the purpose of diets should not be to lose weight. Rather, the purpose should be to improve your health. By virtue of eating for health, you'll control your weight. More importantly, you'll feel better and keep disease away. An interesting point he makes is that being obese doesn't always lead to disease. Studies like this one run in JAMA this year (and covered in another NYT piece) have implied that obese people live longer than thinner people. 

Read on...


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5 Foods that Promote Weight Loss

9/4/2012

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Last summer, a group of Harvard researchers led by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian released a list of habits that led to weight gain (or weight loss) over the course of 20 years after analyzing health records and surveys of about 120,000 mostly middle-aged people. On average, the subjects had gained an average of almost 4 pounds every 4 years, or about 17 pounds over those 20 years.

One of the researchers' findings was that regular physical activity led to some weight loss over those 20 years. Also, people sleeping 6 to 8 hours at night gained less weight than people who slept more than 8 hours or less than six. The most interesting finding of Dr. Mozaffarian and his team’s research was that of 5 foods associated with the most weight gain, and 5 foods associated with weight loss. 

Here’s the list of 5 foods most associated with gaining weight over 20 years (click "read below"):  


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Healthy Indian Recipes: Kala Chana (Black Chickpea Curry)

8/28/2012

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Here’s a delicious recipe from my friend Amee Shah Meghani, who runs her own food blog at Rabbit Food Rocks focusing on how to make relatively simple dishes inspired by Indian and other traditions. What I like about her recipes is that they’re made of mostly plants. Here’s a recipe of hers courtesy of Herbivoracious. 


The recipe is also posted here courtesy of Amee! (Just click on "Read More" below.)


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Which Diet Works?

8/13/2012

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One of the big fallacies in dieting is the belief that it's all about calories, that if one limits how many calories one eats, that he or she is dieting right. But as Mark Bittman writes recently in the NY Times ("Which Diet Works?", June 26, 2012), what matters more than the number of calories is where those calories come from. 

If you believe like many do that it's only calories that matter, then you'll believe this:

"Accept that, and you buy into the contention that consuming 100 calories’ worth of sugar water (like Coke or Gatorade), white bread or French fries is the same as eating 100 calories of broccoli or beans."

They are not the same thing. Yes 100 calories from soda is equal to 100 calories of broccoli. But eating them isn't the same thing. One, you'll get nutrition & fiber in 100 calories of broccoli, and almost nothing else than calories in 100 calories of soda. Two, the sugar in soda will quickly enter your bloodstream, causing a spike in insulin which has many effects, one of which is an increased storage of body fat in your cells. Meanwhile, the much of the sugar in broccoli won't make it to your bloodstream because the fiber from broccoli (which is missing in soda) holds onto it. In other words, the 100 calories from soda will give you more body fat due to metabolic processes under the hood than will 100 calories from broccoli.

Click "read on" to see more of Mr. Bittman's article to read his explanation of a clinical trial that studied the metabolic effects of different diets in a group of initially obese kids who all went on a crash diet and lost weight before the trial. The 3 diets were a low fat diet, a low glycemic index diet, and a very low carb diet. While the subjects on the very low carb diet had the greatest weight loss at the end of the trial, they also had the highest levels of inflammation and stress. (And if you read our book "The Healthy Indian Diet" or other health books like "AntiCancer," you'll know that chronic inflammation and stress are associated with heart disease, diabetes and cancers.)

I like how Mr. Bittman comes to the conclusion that the best kind of diet for people like you and me who are not on diets is a "low glycemic index" diet. What did people eat all over India and elsewhere over the world before modern times? Low glycemic index diets, which were based on meals made of whole grains, some meats and fresh vegetables, and where people ate fruits, nuts, and fermented dairies, and there were almost no refined or processed foods. From everything I've read, the low glycemic index diet is the best diet for a good quality of life and for a long life. 


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Bill Clinton chose Forks over Knives

9/12/2011

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Forks over Knives is an interesting documentary, less for its vegan point of view and more for the stories of two doctors who grew up on farms eating "Western diets" and who are decades later advocates for a whole foods plant-based diet.

As in most documentaries, the filmmaker follows a few individuals to demonstrate the power of this diet in terms of weight loss and improved health. I remember one family man because with the help of a progressive-minded physician, he was able to come off and stay off his medications for diabetes and conditions tied to heart disease (e.g., hypertension and high cholesterol), which is pretty incredible.

The most famous person on the diet advocated by Drs. Essylstyn, Jr. and Campbell isn't in the movie, but you can see him speak briefly on why he adopted a plant-based diet and how he lost weight on that diet. Amazingly, he claims he's been on the diet for many months - which underscores that a plant-based diet isn't about crash dieting but rather part of one's lifestyle.


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    Disclaimer: The facts, advice and opinion on www.healthyindiandiet.com are based on scientific evidence published in journals. However, no content should be construed as medical advice. You should seek the counsel of your physician before making changes based on the content, especially if you have a medical condition.  
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