Philosophy of The Revolutionary Diet

Nearly everyone is looking for the best diet plan to help them with weight loss or weight management. They're constantly buying books and magazines that tout the latest weight loss diet and teach them how to diet. They spend hundreds of dollars on healthy eating guides and meal plans that don't work (or work for a few weeks).

Meanwhile, the answer is right there in history - just live the way Americans did at the time of the American Revolution.

Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and the rest didn't sit in front of the television stuffing their mouths with Doritos and swilling Diet Coke from 64 oz. buckets. They ate real food, worked outside in the fresh air and sunshine, and got plenty of sleep.

Regardless of your diet goals, you can enjoy the benefits of healthy living without starving yourself and without suffering. Oh yeah, it's not that hard. Just eat real food and get some exercise. You'll be amazed at how quickly you get great results, how good you feel, and how good you look. And all without the pain and sacrifice that you experienced with diets in the past.

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Dukan Diet: French Food Faddism Or Long Term Diet?

My Revolutionary Diet takes us back to the simpler time of 1776.  The French seem determined to one-up me with their Dukan Diet:

From Medical News Today:

There was the South Beach Diet, Atkins, Sonoma, Cabbage Soup and even the Buddah Diet. There is the Fennagold, Grapefruit Diet and Herbalife. Now there is a diet coming out of France, The Dukan Diet, that is all the newest rage.

The Dukan method proposes a healthy eating plan that returns to the foods which founded the human species, those eaten by primitive man, the hunter-gatherers, proteins and vegetables, 100 foods including 72 from the animal world and 28 from the plant world. This offer also features the magic words: As Much As You Like.

The Diet's website claims that the French medical establishment, in common with all Western countries, feels helpless faced with the steady rise in obesity that the WHO (World Health Organisation) describes as the first non-infectious epidemic. Medicines to treat it are rare and of limited use, sufferers try diet after diet demonstrating the absence of consensus on any effective method.

Given this context, many general practitioners, struck by the results obtained by their patients and especially by their long-term weight stabilization, have adopted the Dukan Diet, either by learning it and applying it to their patients, or by advising them to buy the Dukan Diet book.
Pierre Dukan remarked during a medical conference:

"This mobilisation of converted users, a word-of-mouth movement powerful enough to cross cultures and frontiers, aided by the support of the medical establishment leads me to think that perhaps I have touched on a universal dimension of weight loss. A method which uses natural eating to counteract poor cultural dietary habits linked to over-abundance which leads to the excess weight problems we are seeing today. "


So what are the facts? Is Dukan a fad or the way to go? You decide.

Food faddism and fad diet usually refer to idiosyncratic diets and eating patterns that promote short-term weight loss, usually with no concern for long-term weight maintenance, and enjoy temporary popularity.

Many forms of food faddism and fad diets are supported by pseudo-scientific claims. Fad diets claim to be scientific but do not follow the scientific method in establishing their validity. Some in the scientific community comment that food faddism is born of ignorance about basic scientific dietary facts. Some scientific studies suggest there is no evidence supporting the assertion that weight loss is enhanced by factors other than a reduction in caloric intake, or that fad diets help dieters achieve long term weight loss. Fad diets generally ignore or refute what is known about fundamental associations between dietary pattern and human health.

For many people weight loss is a chronic endeavor. All too often the shedding of pounds is a temporary event followed by a steady regain of lost weight. Most popular diets are unsuccessful in the long run because they fail to address the multi-faceted nature of what successful, permanent weight loss entails. Luckily, research has revealed many invaluable strategies which can help increase odds of permanent weight loss.

The Diet Channel website recommends the following ten strategies for long term weight loss:
  1. Exercise is essential for weight loss
  2. Weight loss and weight training
  3. Keep a diary for triggers that hinder weight loss
  4. Stay focused on being healthy, not on becoming thin
  5. Find out why you overeat
  6. Weight loss support: join a weight management group
  7. Portion control
  8. Lose weight slowly with small changes
  9. Eating slowly can lead to weight loss
  10. Weight loss through eating less fat while doing it wisely
Simply limiting high fat foods in the diet can be helpful with weight loss. That's because fats pack in nine calories per gram compared to only four calories per gram from proteins or carbohydrates. To many, the message to limit fats implied an endorsement to eat unlimited amounts of fat-free products; however in some cases fat-free foods have as many calories as their fat laden counterparts. If you eat more calories than your body uses, you will gain weight. Eating less fat will help you to lose weight. Eating less fat and replacing it with excessive amounts of fat-free products will not.
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