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Diet herbs.

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People keep asking me about diet herbs.

Last week I was asked if I could do an article on herbs for weightloss for a local gardening glossy.

It's like, where do I even start to explain how wrong that idea is?

There is no such thing as a magic pill for weight loss. Not even a herbal one.

If you want to lose weight you should eat less and exercise more. That's the only thing that works.

I could do a long long piece on hyperinsulinemia, but that's out of the focus of a gardening rag.

There's some obese people who get a kick out of overeating. They eat 2 or 3 large (as in huge) pizzas every day for lunch, and ask for the dessert menu ... they're OK as long as they also exercise heavily every day, but once they can't, because their knees are shot from all that weight, they're just going downhill.

If you diet by starving yourself (and not by just gently ditching, say, all breads + sodas + sweets), the kilograms will be back in a flash once you stop, and you'll gain more than you lost: the body was in starvation mode and is now guarding itself against the next time food is scarce.

There's this 'mercan TV show (shown over here, too) where a Dr. Phil tells people to eat high-protein, high-vegetable, low-sugar, low-fat, and to exercise.
I'd change two things in that:
1) ditch the low-fat approach: if a food is available both as full-fat and as low-fat, the low-fat version is usually loaded with additives, which again usually are bad for you. A lot of low-fat foods are also loaded with sugar.
Also, we do need fats to function fully, so it's full-out butter and full-out cooking oil, at least in my kitchen.
2) do low-carb foods, too: too much simple carbs sets you up for hyperinsulinemia (syndrome X), which sets you up for adult-onset diabetes down the line.

Comments

Hi, Henriette, is there any one product that contains all the supplements you suggest for hyperinsulinemia? I did well for awhile just with diet, but over the holidays I started drinking wine, and ballooned again. (D'oh!) Time to get back in shape, and I can't do it with diet alone. I had plateaud before.

First, I'm in Finland, which is in northern Europe ... any products I'd know would be fairly obscure to you.
Next, as far as I'm aware there's no single package which would have the lot.

i know that i am writing this a year late, but once i tried to explain the starvation thing to a 14 years-old girl and she looked at me like i was nuts and told me that she'll ask someone who isn't weird..........(sigh). Why ask...she was 150 lbs and 5.'

you should see the amount of sugar and aspartamine and sucralose in foods in america....sometimes I buy them on accident because their so common-place in the grocery stores....and kids down 3 or four in one go......kids...wow....the adults may complain, but they never see what is happening to their children.

suomeksi amerikassa

I am [details deleted] old with [details deleted] toddlers. [details deleted]

Da-h-ling, did you really think I'd let your MLM sucker post onto my blog, unchanged?

Go piss off, there's a good lady.