FOREWORD



The topic of dieting often inspires emotional reactions, strong opinions, heated arguments, and intense despair even among dietitians! Dieters struggle with vague and contradictory information, destructive prejudices, wild and unscientific remedies, and many superstitious misbeliefs. In our culture dieting remains a hot topic because its traditional approach to weight reduction is destined to failure.




That's why we've called this book The Anti-Diet Book. It exposes two fallacies of the traditional weight-reduction diet:





1. People are overweight because they eat too much



2. People overeat primarily because of their emotions.





These approaches to weight problems are not only erroneous, they have perpetuated the problem.
This Anti-Diet Book deflates another common belief: naturally thin people are just lucky. In a way, this is true. Those who never gain weight have managed to avoid the vicious cycle of dieting and overeating, but it is wrong to assume that they are the only ones, the favored few, who can enjoy freedom to eat. Anyone can.




This book describes exactly how an individual can be forever freed from the traditional diet cycle and its devastating effects on the body and psyche. The freedom to satisfy hunger signals by eating real food is the privilege and responsibility of every individual, and it leads to a natural, adaptive, lean body weight.



"How to Become Naturally Thin by Eating More" explains how you can be permanently freed from dieting and overweight. It is a process. The process is not fast, but it is dramatic, particularly to those involved in it. Those who have never suffered from overweight cannot imagine the profound relief that those who follow this recovery plan experience.



This book exposes the real reason that people are overweight and sometimes eat too much. It teaches parents and caretakers how to prevent and treat overweight in growing children. Naturally Thin describes the true place that emotions have in the problems of overeating and overweight. Naturally Thin exposes the overwhelming physical cause of overweight and explains why people are totally helpless to overcome it without the new insights of the Anti-Diet approach.



Naturally Thin answers the painful questions that overweight dieters have secretly asked for years: Why am I still fat when I'm dieting most of the time? Why do thin people seem to eat and eat and never gain? Why do I gain when I'm trying so hard not to eat? Why do I feel out of control when I go off a diet? Why can't I stick to a diet? Why do I always gain lost weight back? There are answers to these questions. These answers will make real sense for a change, a permanent change in you.



MY STORY–

Today, when I tell people that my book is about
obesity, I almost always get a surprised look and this reaction, 'You're not writing from experience!" They can't imagine me fat. Besides, I eat so much! I certainly wouldn't qualify as a good dieter! I act and look just like a naturally thin person. I eat anything I want whenever I want. I don't worry about my diet or my weight.



My clothes always fit. I enjoy wearing a bathing suit. But it wasn't always so.



ADOLESCENT PANIC LED TO MY FIRST DIET–

Like so many women, I started dieting in high school.
After gaining a little thigh padding from hormones, I panicked. Thus began my diet history of over fifteen years. My weight fluctuated between 118 and 194 during that time, including pregnancies. Most of the time I maintained twenty to thirty pounds of excess fat. Maybe this doesn't sound obese to you, but I believed I was very fat, and I was very depressed.



THE THEORY OF ADAPTATION
–After high school, I went to the University of Minnesota to study nursing. My love for science and people attracted me to the nursing profession, but my education alone did not solve my personal weight problem.



I learned much about the human body and mind with coursework in biology, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and psychology. But the focal point of my whole nursing education was the Theory of Adaptation. All the scientific knowledge I gained fit somehow into this fascinating concept of a human being's ability to adapt to diverse and changing environments. It was this Theory of Adaptation which would eventually lead to the answers to my own weight problem, but I saw no connection while I was in school or for some time afterward.



LOOKING FOR SOMETHING BETTER
–
Throughout high school and college I had tried to lose
weight many times with many different diets. But five years after I graduated from nurses' training, I began to look for a better solution to my chronic weight problem. I
was still overweight and dieting, off and on. By then I had had five years of experience in clinic and hospital nursing and was settled into the area of nursing called Medicine. "Medical" units in hospitals include most chronic diseases, including metabolism and nutrition disorders. Working as a charge nurse there, I had started to form some general theories and concepts about obesity but I was still far from a practical explanation or solution.



I WANTED A CURE–
When my search for a solution intensified, I knew I did not want another diet. I wanted a cure. I wanted to be free of diets as I had known them. And I had known them most of my life. I longed to be naturally thin, but I believed it was impossible for me.
You see, I thought the world was divided into two huge groups: natural fats and natural thins. I was certainly a member of the former. It was so easy for me to gain weight, so nearly impossible to lose. How could I turn my heavy-duty body into a lean machine? Was it even possible to bridge that vast chasm between the two worlds of fats and thins? These questions motivated my research.



THE SEARCH FOR A SOLUTION–
I started a small diet clinic where I shared my ideas and gathered more information. I read everything I could find on nutrition, obesity, and diets. I began to talk with people. I interviewed fat people, thin people, medium people, dieters, people who couldn't diet, people who couldn't gain, people who never tried, and people who never stopped trying.



REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT
–In all this interrogation, one particular concept emerged that revolutionized my ideas about obesity. It is this: Obese people, one and all, described feeling out of control during binges. They certainly wanted to be thin. They sincerely and persistently tried to stick to a diet. They had willpower. They were motivated by many important things—health, job, marital relationship, social acceptance, and self-esteem. In spite of these pressures and their own determination, they all reported that at some point in their dieting, something seemed to take over and sooner or later they went berserk—off the diet, on to eating. But never just normal eating. This post-diet eating was urgent, compulsive, excessive and out of control. It seemed that there was nothing they could do to stop it once it got started.



I, too, had experienced this many times. I began to think about it and gradually associated this experience with the Theory of Adaptation. In time, I concluded that the only force stronger than my desire to be thin (since that was my strongest conscious desire at the time), was my body's instinct to survive. This was the turning point in my understanding of obesity.



THE KEY: SURVIVAL–
In school I had learned that survival was the compelling force behind the human ability to adapt to environmental changes. The instinct to survive has a very powerful influence on people as well as animals. It propels and motivates behaviors, even controlling them under certain circumstances. In other words, our physical drive to survive is so powerful that it will actually override our conscious choices if these choices threaten
our survival.



In a way, our bodies sometimes take over the controls, and we act or react on an instinct level. Under the influence of these powers beyond our will, we are out of control. Obese people, then, were accurate when they described feeling out of control during binges. And what was in control during these eating orgies? Their bodies, their survival instincts.



More questions followed. Why would the body provoke overeating in an already overweight person? What role does fat play in aiding survival? How does the body interpret the traditional food-restricted diet? With the answers came even more understanding. The puzzle pieces began to fall into place.



THE LAST DIET
–As I applied the new insights to my own eating
patterns, I stopped dieting-. I began to listen to my body's signals for food. I began to eat more quality food more often, and I stopped trying to burn it off with exercise. The changes I experienced in getting off the diet/binge cycle were very, very gradual because it took me so long to break my dieting habits. I spent two years deprogramming myself (without guidance) from fifteen years of diet misinformation which had conditioned me to fear eating even the most healthful foods.



Inside, I still thought food made me fat. I kept trying to control my eating, off and on, and as long as I did, the diet/binge cycle kept going and my body kept my fat on me. Gradually, though, my weight went down as I improved my eating habits and eliminated my not-eating habits. Finally, I leveled off on the low side of the normal range for a woman my height. Unbelievable!



NATURALLY THIN–
I have been naturally thin for over ten years. My body had the potential to become permanently and naturally thin all the while I was dieting, but I never gave it a chance. I wasn't eating well, and I wasn't eating enough.



After my third baby was born, it took my body only three and a half months to return to my normal pre- pregnancy weight. I had gained forty pounds and only lost eight with the birth, so three and a half months is quite fast. Many people, knowing about the baby, asked how I could have regained my slender shape so quickly. "I did it by eating a lot of good food whenever I had the urge," I admitted. They didn't believe me. By the time you finish this book, I hope you will.