The Schwarzbein Principle

[Guest guest]

I was wondering if any members in this group have read The

Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth About Weight Loss, Health and Aging

by Schwarzbein. I just finished reading this book, and I would

like to have some feedback on some of the information from the book.

Schwarzbein believes that that low-fat, low-protein, high

carbohydrate diet that is very popular today is the cause of weight

problems and many other degenrative diseases. She recommends

" balancing your diet " by adding more fat and protein. Her diet has

very few restrictions on the amount of fat and protein that one should

include in his or her diet, except that it recommends not eating

" damaged " fats. Her diet is basically a low-carb plan. She

recommends eating protein, fat, carbohydrates, and nonstarchy

vegetbables at each meal. She supports her theories with case studies

of some of her patients who were miserable on low-fat, high-carbo

diets who achieved optimum health by " balancing " their diets with more

protein and fat.

I have a few questions/ comments regarding this style of

eating. First off, from personal experience and from reading this

book, I have come to the conclusion that a high-carbohydrate, low fat

diet is not the best for optimum health. I believe that such a diet

can lead to insulin resistance and other degenerative diseases.

I believe that there are many similarities between the theories

outlined in this book and the Body for Life method. Both plans

recommend eating often (Schwarzbein recommends eating 5 times a day).

Both plans recommend that you do not eat carbohydrates alone. Both

plans recommend that you drink lots of water.

To some degree, both plans distinguish between good and bad

fat. Both plans focus on making sure that enough essential fatty

acids, especially omega-3 fatty acids, are included in your diet. I

believe that both plans recommend not eating damaged fats, such as

hydrogenated fats, oxidized fats, and trans-fatty acids. The plans

differ in regards to saturated fats. BFL instructs one to limit

saturated fat, while " The Principle " does not. In fact, The Principle

includes a short article entitiled " The Myth of Saturated Fat " which

I would like to type here: " There are many studies that vilify

saturated fats. However, while conducting and analyzing the results

of these studies, researchers totally ignored the fact that their

subjects were eating desserts, too many carbohydrates, ingesting

stimulants, not exercising enough, smoking, drinking alcohol, taking

drugs and engaging in all other facts that cause prolong insulin

levels. Because insulin directs all the biochemical processes that

lead to plaque formation in arteries, these subjects had higher rates

of heart disease. However, my clinical experience with thousands of

people has shown that eating saturated fat is not the culprit! On the

contrary, the patients who I have followed, who have increased their

consumption of saturated fats (as well as all other good fats), have

improved their cholesterol profiles, decreased blood pressure and lost

body fat, thereby reducing their risk for heart disease. Eating

saturated fat should be part of your balanced diet while, at the same

time, your focus should be on reduding all the factors that increase

insulin levels. "

As you can tell, does not believe that eating fat, even

saturated fat, makes you fat. Instead, she believes that high insulin

levels is the main culprit. Would anyway on this board like to

comment on this article?

The Principle is designed to improve a person's metabolism,

just as the BFL program is. Both programs believe that building

muscle is the best way to do so. Both programs believe that yo-yo and

extremely restricted diets both can damage a person's metabolism.

Both programs believe in keeping a person's insulin under control;

however, I believe that doing so is stressed more on The Princliple.

The Principle is more extreme in advocating a low-carb regimen. As I

said before, it puts no limits on the amount of fat and protein that

one can consume. BFL puts no limits on protein (to a certain point),

but does put limits on fat. To put it simply, The Principle advocates

getting many of the calories that you normally get from carbs from

fat instead. This is seen as a way to control a person's insulin

levels. Does anyone have any comments on this way of eating?

By keeping a notebook, in which I write down the foods that I

eat during a given day, I can compute the percentage of calories that

I get from each macronutrient. I find that I often get only about 10%

of my calories from fat, and that I get about 65% from carbohydrates

and the rest from protein. I often try to add olive oil and salmon to

my diet to unsure that I am geting enough fat. What do you personally

think is the righ macronutrient breakdown for optimum health and for

weight loss?