Weight loss can be a rather eluted concept, allow me to share a story from the early stages of my career. I came across a senior physician that told me “I am going to teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about weight loss”, it’s very simple he explained, just follow the Peanut Diet. Strangely enough although I’ve been helping patients lose weight for years, I had never came across that diet. With an attentive ear and my undivided attention, I listened to the most preposterous explanation on weight loss that I had ever heard. Now before I share the diets’ details, it’s important to understand that this senior physician had no idea about my background in the weight loss field.
The doctor goes on to explain the details of this miraculous diet. He says, if you follow it patients are guaranteed to lose weight! The other great thing is the cost, the only expense is the cost of a jar of peanuts. There’s no complicated diet menus, no supplements to buy or rigorous exercise regimens to follow. The more he spoke, the greater my curiosity grew. I was clinging onto every word that came out of his mouth, and wondered how I had never heard of this easy weight loss program that involved no diet menus or exercise to achieve a significant reduction in weight. Could it be that the only requirement needed to have weight loss success was to always carry a peanut with you at all times?
The rules of the Peanut Diet were as follows, whenever you felt hungry throughout the day all you had to do was to take the peanut out of your pocket and place it between your lips. Make sure you push together your lips so that they can hold the peanut at the tip of your mouth. Once you have accomplished this now you are ready to eat, you can eat anything you want as long as you do not remove the peanut from your lips. Then, you keep the peanut in place until the hunger sensation goes away and when it does, you can place the peanut back in your pocket. If you ever get hungry again during the day simply repeat the process, that’s it! My mouth dropped, was this doctor actually telling me this? This story may sound fictitious and unbelievable, but unfortunately it’s true. The explanation was not only given to me by this physician, but also directed to the poor unsuspecting patient that had just asked the doctor if he can help him lose weight.
The reason I like to share this story of the Peanut Diet is because it reveals what a large portion of the population (including doctors), believe that weight loss is as simple as calories in = calories out. This over simplification of a complex medical issue makes people feel like they are failures when it comes to achieving weight loss. As a physician that specializes in weight loss, I have seen many patients that eat a reasonable amount of calories a day, exercise and still cannot manage to lose weight. Since weight loss can be affected by a number of medical issues, such as, insulin resistance, hypothyroidism (slow metabolism), postmenopausal state, etc…
If you are serious about losing weight and you want to achieve long lasting results, it is important to make an appointment with a physician that specializes in weight control. If in the past you were having difficulty losing weight with a standard diet and exercise regimen, it is because we are not created equally and what works for one person may not work for the next. A weight loss physicians will be able to look beyond the simple equation of calories in = calories out, and create then you need a custom tailored diet plan that will guarantee the best results.
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