Diet Shock: Downsides of Being the Biggest Loser

Additional Info

• Segment Number: 3
• Audio File: healthy_talk/1518ht5c.mp3
• Organization: Life Extension
• Guest Website: Healthy Talk MD
• Transcription: RadioMD Presents: Healthy Talk | Original Air Date: May 1, 2015
  Host: Michael Smith, MD
  
  Dr. Michael Smith, M.D. with Healthy Talk.
  
  DR MIKE: Have you ever heard of diet shock? Diet shock. You probably haven't. It was a term that I actually coined about ten years ago. I wrote an e-book. I don't even know where it's at now but the e-book was titled Make Your Diet Work. And one of things that I talked about in the e-book was the fact...You know, I was trying to explain why so many people when they try to lose weight, why they have some success in the beginning but then they kind of plateau and often end up gaining weight back. I mean what's going on there? And that's where I came up with this idea of diet shock.
  
  Why it's not always good to be the biggest loser. There definitely is a safe amount of weight loss every week and if you go above that, you have this potential of going into diet shock. So, let me explain what's going on based on my research, looking at different weight loss studies, clinical studies, and not about a specific diet plan--just weight loss in general. What I discovered was anything over 2-3 pounds a week is too much. It's funny, too. I just saw an ad.
  
  I don't remember what diet program it was for or what new weight loss supplement it was for but the ad was something like "Miracle, whatever it was. Miracle supplement. Lose 5 pounds a week." I thought to myself, "No, that's too much. That's going to cause diet shock."
  
  So, what is diet shock? Well, your body is shocked you're cutting out calories so much that—and, by the way it, doesn't really matter what diet program you go on. It really doesn't. All of the diet programs, the different types of diets, even the weight loss supplements out there, ultimately are either decreasing the number of calories you eat and/or increasing the number of calories you burn when you're not exercising raising what's called the "resting metabolic rate". The best programs do both of those. They help you to eat less and burn more. That's a nice balance.
  
  That's a good way, by the way, to avoid diet shock. Bring down calories but bring up what you're burning as well. Keep that metabolism up. That's a great way to avoid diet shock but most diets don't do that, especially the diet programs like the Atkins and the South Beaches. Ultimately, when you look at these programs, even though they may be restricting one kind of food source or whatever, at the end of the day you're eating less. In some cases, significantly less. As a matter of fact, I just talked about one called the yogurt diet and when I really looked at what was going on in the yogurt diet, it really wasn't about the yogurt although there is some evidence that probiotics in yogurt might help. It was really—when I looked at the daily meal program-- the menu-- it was just decreasing calories significantly.
  
  So, most of your diet programs are really about eating less. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. And when you do that--when you eat less--and you don't do something to support metabolism, your metabolism crashes. It goes into a shock-like state and all of your weight loss efforts and all of your weight loss success is completely reversed and you start to gain weight. Your body--this is so important remember as a dieter--your body is designed to do one thing and it does it very well. Do you know what it is? It's designed to not starve. There was a time in human history where famines and food sources were scarce and the body came up with some amazing mechanisms to make sure that you could survive those famines.
  
  One of the reasons, for instance, that we crave fats so much, saturated fats, animal fats, is because that was a great source of energy. There was a time when you could eat the bone marrow, for instance, or the fatty part of a carcass out in the Serengeti Desert or whatever, that some other predator killed and got the good meat but you would go in there as a human thousands of years ago and you would eat that fat because you didn't have to eat a lot of it and it was good high-sustaining energy and that's carrying on today. That's why we like fats so much.
  
  So, there was a time in human history where we weren't surrounded by McDonald's and grocery stores everywhere and food sources everywhere. I mean, there was a time in human history where famine and starvation was a real issue and so the body developed ways of counteracting the loss of calories. And guess what dieting is? It's a loss of calories. I mean, your body ultimately doesn't know you're dieting. It just thinks, "Oh, my gosh. Calories are gone. We're in a famine!" And the body then kicks in these anti-famine, anti-starvation mechanisms that are powerful.
  
  And just to kind of keep it simple, if I could just summarize what all of those anti-starvation mechanisms do in your body: they build fat. What it means is when your body thinks you're in a famine--in a starvation--mode any food source you bring in, even if it's a little bit, is going to turn into fat. Protein turns into fat. Sugar turns into fat. Everything gets stored as fat because fat is a great way to store energy and prevent starvation. So, diet shock is when you cut calories so much and you lose a lot of weight initially that you shock the body into thinking it's starving and then you kick in all of these anti-starvation mechanisms and you turn everything into fat.
  
  You plateau and you eventually gain fat back, usually greater than what you started with. Diet shock. Why it's not always good to be the biggest loser. You really only want to shoot for two—I actually believe two pounds a week is a decent amount, one pound a week is probably better because it's not really about that week. It's about what you're doing as a lifestyle change. It's really about four or five, six, seven, eight years down the line where you're now at a healthy weight where the heart's going to like you and the brain's going to like you better and you look better. It's not really about week to week, it's really a more long-term lifestyle.
  
  So, one pound a week, two pounds a week, based on my research. You might could push it to three pounds a week but if you go over that you're going to kick in diet shock. We've actually learned, by the way, this is really cool. We actually now know...Well, I should say, we have a good idea, a good theory of how the body turns everything into fat. We discovered an enzyme. We've known about the enzyme for a while but just recently in the past, maybe, decade we've been able to measure it in people dieting. What we have found is this enzyme activates 2/3/4 times greater than what it should be in people who are trying to lose weight.
  
  This enzyme is called Glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. Glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. It is the enzyme that turns sugar into fat. This enzyme takes those carbs you're eating even if you're eating very little, even if you've cut your carbs by 50, 60, 70%, when you're in diet shock it takes even just the little bit of carbs you're eating and Glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase turns it into fat very readily. So, when you're going to cut calories make sure you maintain metabolism. The best way to do that is through exercise but there's other nutrients there too like 7-Keto DHEA, green tea, capsaicin, which is the hot pepper extract.
  
  I mean, there are ways to support that so make sure you're focusing on metabolism as well. But when you're cutting calories don't cut so much that you go into diet shock. Another way to prevent diet shock is to inhibit the activity of Glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. And there is really only one well-documented nutrient that does that and that's the African mango extract Irvingia gabonensis. Irvingia gabonensis will inhibit Glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. So, don't be the biggest loser. Don't go into diet shock. Two pounds a week, control Glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase with Irvingia.
  
  This is Healthy Talk on RadioMD. I'm Dr. Mike. Stay well.
• Length (mins): 10
• Waiver Received: No
• Internal Notes: NO GUEST
• Host: Mike Smith, MD