by Tanya Zilberter, PhD
About The Weight Loss Breakthrough by Robert Pritikin
"5 easy steps to outsmart your fat instinct - Based on the latest findings from the Pritikin longevity center - A proven plan to shed pounds - without hunger - Sixty delicious new recipes."
[From the book's jacket]
Learning about ourselves helps to work for, not against our biological Nature.
Outsmarting the Fat Instinct
In the late 1959s, Nathan Pritikin was diagnosed with a heart disease and was disappointed with the little help he could get from the official medicine of the time. His son Robert reminiscences in his book on the strange diet of brown rice, whole grains, raw vegetables, fish, and fruit deserts that the family switched to as a result of Nathan's refusal to accept his fate as inevitable.
For the next 30 years he experimented, always on himself himself. He would stick to one mono diet after another, pure meat menus followed by pure lentils menus (his cholesterol dropped after this diet from 280 to 102 mg/dl and jumped up to 158 immediately after adding meat), by dried fruit-only meals, for a week or dozens of days. Records were kept with meticulous registration of his physical and health conditions and blood tests. The result is what we know as the Pritikin Program. Robert took over the Pritikin Longevity Center after his father death in 1985.
Pritikin is strongly convinced that the diet, though invented empirically, is based on the most basic properties of human biology. He came to this conclusion after reviewing strictly scientific data of anthropologists, paleontologists and ethnographers and their views on our ancestors' life style and that of some tribes still living in the remote areas of the globe by the laws of Nature not touched by our civilization. All seemed to be proving the adequacy of the diet of whole grains, fresh plant foods, occasional lean protein meals, and very few calories from fat. Robert finally discovered what he named the Fat Instinct and the ways to deal with it. His reasoning on the "Feast-or-Famine" pattern of eating behavior and the consequences of this pattern in a society where there're more feasts than famines, is the most convincing, and if you are not convinced, you can always go to the original articles and see if there's enough proof - the book is end-noted.
One of the comforting conclusions is that we all are Couch Potatoes, this is how Nature designed us. I mean this to sound comforting because you've probably heard too many times that this blissful state is due to your lack of will power. Maybe not. However, couch potatoes as they were, our ancestors had no choice but to push themselves hard to overcome this instinct every day, and those who did not - had a better chance to die without passing forward their genes.
So, what does the Fat Instinct do to us? Are there any ways to outsmart it? Obviously, there are, otherwise there would be no such book: "We Have the Answers to the Modern Plague!" - this is the title of one of the chapters. Your goals will be set very realistically and your steps will be guided on a day by day basis and at every step you will be able to choose from the "Better," "Better Still," and "Best" options depending on your readiness to make the life style changes.
The book contains recipes, dining out advice, exercise strategies, and decision making counseling.
There are more books on low fat living:
Beyond Pritikin : A Total Nutrition Program for Rapid Weight Loss, Longevity, and Good Health
Parentcare Survival Guide : Helping Your Folks Through the Not-So-Golden Years
Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise
Complete Idiot's Guide to Being Vegetarian (Complete Idiot's Guides)
First, what is the Paleolithic Diet?
Surprise! Thought the logical reasoning allows us to conclude that the nutritional requirements of contemporary humans represent the "end-result of dietary interactions between our ancestral species and their environments," nevertheless there is no single "Paleolithic diet" or average pre-historic fat intake.
The early hominid diet consisted primarily of fruits, nuts and other vegetable matter, and some meat - items that could be foraged for and eaten with little or no processing.
Not everybody agrees. There's a popular concept that our ancestors ate not "some" but much more meat than anything else. Take, for one thing, the "
Neanderthin
: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body.
This logics share the following popular authors:
Michael Crawford (Nutrition and Evolution)
Charles Hunt (Charles Hunt's Diet Evolution)
Ronald Schmid (Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine)
Christian Allan and Wolfgang Lutz (Life Without Bread)
Richard L. Heinrich and Barry Sears (Starch Madness)
Fran McCullough (Living Low-Carb)
Mary and Michael Eades (The Protein Power Lifeplan)
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