Restoring Your Body's Natural Balance

The Fat Resistance Diet: Unlock the Secret of the Hormone Leptin
by Leo Galland, M.D.

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Lilly was skeptical. But she agreed to give the Fat Resistance Diet a try. I explained to her the basic principles behind the diet: inflammation can be set off by eating certain foods, which she needed to avoid. But inflammation can also be cured by eating other types of foods, so she actually needed to eat more of those. Unfortunately, most American diets are rich in inflammatory ingredients and sadly lacking in anti-inflammatory nutrients. Red meat, white flour, sugar, and hydrogenated fats all inflame your body; so do French fries. On the other hand, berries and cherries, walnuts and almonds, whole grains, and fish help to heal inflammation, as do cabbage, broccoli, garlic, and flaxseeds. In the following chart, you'll find a list of the Top 40 Superfoods that will fast-track your cure for inflammation and enable you to lose weight.

When Lilly heard that I actually wanted her to eat more, she couldn't believe it. "You don't lose weight by eating more," she kept insisting. But I assured her that the Fat Resistance Diet was based strictly on mainstream science: cutting-edge research conducted by scientists at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Rockefeller universities, published in respected medical journals such as JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. I'd prescribed versions of this diet to hundreds of patients, each of whom had gone on to lose substantial amounts of weight. Following my diet, they had achieved their ideal weight and avoided regaining the weight they'd lost.

Lilly agreed to follow an early version of the Fat Resistance Diet. To her joy, she soon began to lose weight at the rate of five pounds a month. (If you follow the plan laid out in this book, you can lose weight even more quickly — ten pounds in the first month, and five to ten pounds a month thereafter.)

Half a year later and thirty pounds lighter, Lilly was able to fit into her high school prom dress. But she didn't stop there. Sticking to the Fat Resistance Diet enabled Lilly to lose an additional four or five pounds a month, even though she was eating more food — and more types of food — than she had throughout her years of dieting.

By the time she'd been on the Fat Resistance Diet for one year, Lilly's weight had dropped to 150 pounds — the lightest she'd been since the age of fifteen. "I feel better than I've ever felt," she said in amazement. "Everyone tells me I look terrific — and not just because of the weight. My skin, my hair, even my fingernails all feel healthier. I'm calmer, I have more stamina, and I'm sleeping better than I have in years."

Yes, I told her, those were all the effects of curing her inflammation. Obesity is only one result of a condition with many side effects, including skin problems, thinning or lackluster hair, indigestion, gas, bloating, sleep problems, irritability, and depression. Curing the underlying inflammation had not only healed Lilly's weight problem but resolved her other symptoms as well — symptoms she hadn't even realized were linked to her obesity.

Best of all, she concluded, was her newfound trust in herself and her eating choices. "Before, I felt I was always on the verge of losing control," she told me. "Now, I can indulge my love of food and enjoy eating. I'm at peace with what I eat and at peace with my body. I never thought I could feel this way — and I feel this way all the time."

Discovering the Fat Resistance Diet

By now, you may be ready to turn to Part Three and start following the Fat Resistance Diet — and if that's how you feel, go right ahead. The three stages of this eating plan have been carefully designed so that you can simply follow the recipes and meal suggestions without having to think further about what you eat.

But if you, like Lilly, want to know more, read on. I will tell you how I discovered the Fat Resistance Diet, and why I am so certain that it will bring you a lifelong healthy weight.

The story begins almost twenty-five years ago, soon after I started practicing as an internist. I had always been a problem solver — someone who enjoyed looking at a situation and figuring out how to make it better. So when patients began coming to me with problems that other doctors hadn't been able to resolve, I started looking for new solutions.

As I explained in my first book, Superimmunity for Kids, I soon realized that many of the problems I was seeing — from arthritis to asthma — were related to a faulty immune system, which had in turn been impaired by a deficiency of essential fats in the American diet. Most doctors at the time had no knowledge of essential fats, largely because the groundbreaking research on fish oils had not been popularized.

Fortunately, I was aware of these new scientific breakthroughs for two simple reasons: I had an interest in nutrition and I kept up with the scientific literature. But I'd had a very challenging professor in medical school — one who had insisted that we learn not only how to treat patients but also how to interpret the science that had produced new treatments. In fact, he taught us, the generally accepted interpretations of cutting-edge research are often incorrect. Many medical protocols are too simplistic or represent a misunderstanding of what the research means. If we were to be effective physicians, we would have to keep up with the research ourselves. Only then could we be sure that our patients were benefiting from the most current scientific knowledge.

I put his teachings to good use as I began to review the latest scientific research on the biochemistry of inflammation and its relationship to a wide variety of immune disorders, including asthma, allergies, arthritis, joint pain, fatigue, and colitis. I soon realized that a lack of omega-3 oils and other essential fatty acids was at the root of many of my patients' problems, and that their conditions could be healed with proper nutrition.

In the course of prescribing the seeds, nuts, fish, and oils that contained the healing fats my patients needed, I began to notice something interesting. Not only would my patients show improvement in their "presenting condition" — the asthma, arthritis, or colitis that they had come to me to heal — but they would also feel better generally, more energetic, relaxed, and clear-headed. Many of them told me they no longer struggled with depression, that they had resolved long-standing sleep problems, or that they were getting compliments on their hair and skin. And many of them, without even trying, had begun to lose weight.

Of course, many of my patients were trying to lose weight. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, I had numerous patients who were following Pritikin, and similar low-fat diets that were popular at the time. The ten years that followed were marked by Dr. Robert Atkins and the low-carb eating plan. As time went on, I began to notice that both approaches, while not particularly successful at long-term weight loss, were leaving my patients with a disturbing set of side effects: fatigue, constipation, bloating, gassiness, skin problems, menstrual problems, joint pains, dry hair, brittle nails, irritability, sleep problems, and depression. It became clear that these symptoms were the result of nutritional deficiencies. While the low-fat diets tended to be deficient in essential fats, low-carb dieters were lacking in the fiber and plant-based nutrients that their immune systems needed to function. As a result, their bodies were struggling to overcome inflammation and its related symptoms — but they didn't have the nutrients they needed to accomplish this essential task.

To make matters worse, my patients were unable to lose weight permanently with these other diets. Even when they were following the diets, they reported constant cravings for starches, sweets, or other forbidden foods. And as soon as they ended the most restrictive portion of the diets — particularly on low-carb regimens — they found themselves not only regaining their lost weight but often adding a few more pounds as well.

Copyright © 2005 by Leo Galland, M.D.. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Dr. Leo Galland received his education and medical training at Harvard and NYU. Regularly chosen by New York magazine as one of the best doctors in New York, as well as listed in America's Top Doctors, he has appeared on Good Morning America and on CNN, Fox News, and PBS. He lives in New York City.