The Biochemistry of Weight Loss

Excerpted from
The No-Grain Diet: Conquer Carbohydrate Addiction and Stay Slim for Life
By Joseph Mercola, D.O., Alison Rose Levy

Before I ask you to give up grains, sweets, and starchy foods, I want you to grasp the sound physiological reasons why it's necessary. They may be called comfort foods, but the facts about their health effects aren't comforting at all. First, new medical findings confirm that most grains, not fats, are the chief culprits in weight gain. Next, study after study shows how grains and sugars take you down the road to disease, first causing metabolic slowdown, and weight gain, then leading to pre-diabetic conditions, diabetes, and subsequently to the three big killers: heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Even healthy people who don't need to lose weight, or who only need to lose a few pounds to look fit and trim, can protect themselves from a health downturn by going on the No-Grain Diet. What's more, this diet can help boost your energy and confidence as you take control of your weight and health.

Most critically, going No-Grain will safeguard you from making that destructive turn from grain consumption to grain addiction. If you are overweight and at risk, it's crucial to stop this health deterioration right away. Otherwise, as those pounds pile on, you head down the road to insulin resistance and Metabolic Syndrome (formerly called Syndrome X), which are precursors to diabetes. These conditions are all interconnected in a downward spiraling series of health problems. But the good news is that almost anyone can avoid and/or reverse them by following the No-Grain Diet.

Whenever my patients, or colleagues, question why I oppose excess grain consumption, I remind them that long ago in medical school, I used to be known as "Dr. Fiber," due to my enthusiasm for unrefined whole grains, like teff, amaranth, oats, and others. Yes, the fiber in healthy grains clearly benefits the body's circulatory and digestive systems. Unfortunately, Americans aren't consuming healthy grains. We are consuming unhealthy ones, including bakery items, bread, pasta, pizza, tortillas, breakfast cereals, waffles, pancakes, and fast foods. Eighty-five percent of the grains we consume are refined, the healthy fiber and nutrients stripped away before these foods ever reach our plates. Our bodies react to refined grain products very differently than they do to whole grains. All grains trigger an insulin reaction-and refined grains produce the most intense one. In fact, some argue that our bodies weren't ever designed to eat grains, especially in the quantities most of us do.

Are We Engineered for Grain Consumption?

Historically, the agricultural revolution was the foundation for our technological/industrial development. Approximately six thousand years ago, mankind transitioned from the traditional diet of the hunter-gatherer, which featured protein and fat from fish, shellfish, animal meat, animal organs, and/or dairy products, to a more grain-based diet. Was this a beneficial change? We like to think so. But some evidence suggests that it may have also had negative health impacts.

With ample fruits, vegetables, stone-ground whole-wheat bread, occasional meat and olive, safflower, flaxseed, and sesame oils, the ancient Egyptian diet was a modem nutritionist's heaven! Yet when studies compared thousands of Egyptian mummies to the remains of hunter-gatherer societies, they found that:

• Hunter-gatherers lived longer.
• Agriculturists had more infections and tooth decay.
• Heart disease and arteriosclerosis was more prevalent in mummies.
• Obesity, particularly abdominal obesity, was common among the Egyptians.

Nutritional anthropologists, compiling data from fossil records and other sources, found a significant body of scientific evidence supporting the hypothesis that genetically we are designed to fare better on the hunter-gatherer's diet-or a diet closer to it. According to their research, after grain consumption was widely adopted, the following negative consequences were observed:

• Decrease in height
• Increase in infant mortality
• Decrease in life span
• Increase in infectious diseases
• Increase in dental disease and tooth decay
• Increase in bone diseases like osteoporosis

In ancient times, the grains consumed were 100 percent organic and unrefined, yet still had these negative health impacts. Today 90 percent of our grains are highly processed, only making matters worse. Numerous studies of historical eating patterns show that our current level of refined carbohydrate consumption is unprecedented. Are our bodies designed to process the volume of grain and sugar carbohydrates with which we bombard them with in modem diets?

Loren Cordain, Ph.D., professor at the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University, asserts that "Our genetic makeup is still that of a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer, a species whose nutritional requirements are optimally adapted to wild meats, fruits and vegetables-not to cereal grains. We have wandered down a path toward absolute dependence upon cereal grains . . . [and] it is critical that we fully understand the nutritional shortcomings of cereal grains."

Aren't Grains Healthy?

Carbohydrate foods do contain vital nutrients, but your body can make the simple sugars necessary for bodily functions from non-grain foods. Fiber and beneficial nutrients can better be obtained from vegetables. Grains contain little vitamin C, no vitamin A, and except for yellow com, no beta-carotene. Although touted as good sources of B vitamins (except for vitamin B12), two of the major B vitamin deficiency diseases, pellagra and beriberi, are almost exclusively associated with excessive grain consumption. B6, which performs over one hundred functions in the body, is less easily absorbed from cereal grains than it is from animal products.

Cereal grains are poor sources of calcium, and if eaten to excess, grain calcium can displace more beneficial dairy and vegetable calcium. Further, with their low calcium-to-phosphorous ratio, cereal grains can negatively impact bone growth and metabolism by limiting calcium absorption, and by altering vitamin D metabolism.

Cereal-based diets (particularly if supplemented by vegetable oils) have a less than optimal omega 6:3 fat ratio, with deficiencies in the essential fatty acids EPA and DHA. You'll learn more about omega fats in Chapters Seven and Nine. For now, the bottom line is that some scientists argue that the human genetic constitution is better nourished by the fat ratios found in meat.

Glucose Overload

By far, one of the most critical problems with grain consumption is that grains elevate blood glucose levels, and thus trigger cravings for sweets. Americans consume dangerous quantities of sweets. Before 1900, sugar was a luxury item, enjoyed on special holidays and occasions. In the last hundred years, sugar (and sweetener) use has doubled. According to the USDA (the U.S. Department of Agriculture), between 1970 and 1993, the annual consumption of com sugar alone increased from nineteen to seventy-nine pounds per person. For the last decade, overall sugar consumption rose nearly 1.7 percent a year. In 2002, the average American consumed a whopping 170 pounds of sugar, 20 percent of it in soda. And along with this expanding consumption, our waist sizes have grown proportionately!