How The Low Carbohydrate Diet Works - And Why
	From our school days on, we have all been made thoroughly familiar with certain basic facts about food. It is that which can be taken into the body, digested, and used for growth, repair, and energy. Most of us can close our eyes and see, tacked up on the classroom wall, that familiar, many colored chart which was designed to imprint on our memories the 'Basic Seven', the nutritional categories from which our daily food supply must be composed if we were to grow up strong, straight-spined, and brainy . . . leafy green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruits, other fruits and vegetables, milk and its products, the meat group, breads and cereals, butter or fortified margarine. On this diet (with extras like an occasional chocolate bar or a dry Martini) most Americans do manage very well. They grow taller than their forefathers, live longer, and have consistently produced athletes who commanded front-rank places in the international picture. Only recently have American athletes had to struggle for pre-eminence as other nations, benefiting from diets and living standards improved since the Second World War, have begun to offer powerful challenges. But some people-as you know because you are reading this book-do not manage quite so well. They get fat. Sometimes, of course, this happens because the occasional chocolate bar has snowballed into an addiction to sweets and pastries. Sometimes it can be traced to simple overeating of everything in sight; sometimes to a 'need' to relax with five beers a night and all the pretzels you can get hold of. Sometimes, however, an individual accumulates fat on a reasonably balanced diet on which he can prove to his doctor and to his own conscience that he has not overindulged. Overweight, of course-unless it amounts to obesity, about which there can be no two opinions-can be a somewhat elastic concept. William Banting was certainly obese, and even in his day, before the succeeding years of research which established the connection between obesity and certain diseases, both he and his doctor knew something had to be done about it. But if he had been merely a portly man, of well-fed appearance, he would have been considered exceedingly odd to be disturbed about his weight. A noted politician of that day was widely quoted as having declared that he never could put his trust in a man who didn't have to lean backward just a bit to support his own weight. Indeed, until around the time of the First World War, the popular concept of a truly solid citizen decreed that his waistline must reflect his bank account-both must be substantial. Slenderness in youth was acceptable, but as a man grew older it was expected that both he and his family would display, in their measurements, how well he was able to feed them. Other times, other ways. A glance at the weight chart included at the back of this book will indicate what very different standards we hold today about desirable, healthful weight. As a matter of fact, most women will confess, to everyone except their doctors, that they consider even these widely accepted weight allowances to be excessive. 'If I weighed that much I'd be a mountain!' many a five-foot two lady has been heard to exclaim upon checking the 'normal' weight range for her size-somewhere between 7 st. 12 lb. and 8 st. 13 lb. Possibly she has not taken her build into consideration, possibly her age. But possibly she is right. The life-insurance companies which compile most of these tables know that year by year the desirable-weight range tends to come down. But, of course, the modern estimate of what constitutes overweight and how important it is to control it, is not influenced solely by the desire to possess a slender, well-knit body that can show off one's clothes to the greatest advantage. Expanding research and an increasing weight of statistical evidence have alerted us to the relationship between excess weight and good health and life expectancy. If you are over thirty-five and have shown a recent tendency to expand more than a bit, your doctor has already reminded you that every pound you put on increases your vulnerability to hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, and a frightening list of cardiovascular and kidney diseases. Nor are the surgeons overly cheerful when an overweight patient requires an operation, for even relatively common procedures, like hernia corrections and appendectomies, can be complicated by layers of excess fat. Further, corpulent patients require a much longer convalescence, not only from surgery but from illness as well. Insurance tables also supply the portmanteau statistic in which all the other risks are summed up: after 45, with every 10 lb. of excess weight you put on you increase by roughly 10 per cent your chances of early death. We will take it, therefore, as read that you have a weight problem and that for social, sartorial, and health reasons, as well as a dozen other reasons best known to yourself, you are determined to solve it by going on a diet. For many years the standard approach to correction has been to start watching calories. Accepted by doctor and layman alike has been the dictum that if you put on weight it was because you were feeding your body more calories than it required for a day of normal operation. It frugally deposited the oversupply in the liver and in other tissues, to be drawn on as needed. But if the oversupply continued to be too lavish, or if not enough of it was needed-in other words if you consistency overate and did not take enough exercise-you were in trouble. Next: 'Calorie' - A Dirty Word?