1.    Know your triggers. Become aware of when you crave certain foods. If you know that certain situations make you feel the need for certain foods, either avoid the situations if possible or else prepare yourself by taking something else to eat that may satisfy that need.

2.    Are your emotions a trigger? Are you eating differently when you feel sad, lonely or bored? Look at what else you could substitute instead of food. Perhaps do some voluntary work to shift the emphasis away from yourself. This can help with any feelings of self-pity. Find a new hobby or join an evening class – learn to scuba dive! Bring some excitement into your life.

3.    Habit eating. It is very easy to get into habits such as eating while driving or eating while watching TV. These can become so ingrained that you can end up always eating while watching TV. Have a look at what has become automatic. A patient came to see me who had got into the habit of coming home from work and automatically going to the fridge. This action had almost become unconscious. Awareness of what you are doing and when is the key. Stop, think and ask yourself, ‘Do I really need to eat this now? Will I be happy with the way I feel after I have eaten it?’

4.    Exercise. Exercise releases chemicals called endorphins that make us feel good. Going for a brisk walk or a swim when you feel cravings can even ward off the urge to binge.

5.    Go for complex carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates, starchy foods such as rice, potatoes, millet, wheat, rye, oats and barley, keep the blood sugar in balance so that your body automatically stops craving a ‘quick fix’. Because complex carbohydrates burn slowly, they help us to feel satisfied with less food and also give us a good level of energy. It’s the difference between burning coal and newspaper on a fire. The complex carbohydrates are the coal. They slowly build up heat and keep up a good level of warmth over a long period of time. The newspaper, however, gives a quick burst of heat and then you have to fuel the fire again. You will amazed that you can eat filling and satisfying food, feel good and still lose weight.

6.     Distract yourself. What if you wait for the craving to subside? Yes, they do go, even if you don’t satisfy them. Do something else, read or make a phone call and see what you feel like after that.

7.    Eat little and often. Do not go more than three hours without food. Your blood sugar level will drop and then your body will automatically crave something sweet as a ‘quick fix’. If you leave a large gap between meals, you can actually end up eating far more. Long gaps increase the chemical neuropeptide Y in the brain which actually increases your hunger. Long gaps between meals can also put your body into the famine mode and slow your metabolism down so you can end up putting on more weight. This is why constant dieting makes you fat.

8.    Don’t deny yourself. If you say to yourself you are never going to eat chocolate again, you will almost certainly fail. Be realistic. We are all going to have foods that we are really better off without. If the main foundation of your nutrition is good, relax, go away on holiday and enjoy yourself. If you are out with a friend for a treat, don’t feel excluded if you fancy an ice-cream with them. Buy the best quality you can get of that ice-cream and really become aware of the taste when you eat it. If you keep denying yourself, the craving can just explode so that you end up eating far more than before. It becomes an obsession. If you eat little and often, with good amounts of complex carbohydrates, you will find the cravings will go automatically, without your having to use much willpower.
Jane came to see me knowing that during the week before each period she would sit and eat a box of chocolate every afternoon: she just couldn’t stop herself. I explained to her about the blood sugar swings and cravings and she agreed to eat little and often during her next cycle with more emphasis on complex carbohydrates. She said to me, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ I replied, ‘What have you got to lose by trying it,? Only the cravings.’ I saw her after her next period and she was just amazed. She was amazed not only that the cravings had gone, but the way they had gone. It wasn’t a case of willpower – ‘I will not eat chocolate’ – but that her body didn’t need the chocolate so it didn’t ask her for it. She had gone through the whole month without thinking about chocolate. She had even been out for dinner, was offered an after-dinner mint and felt she could just take it or leave it. And she left it.

*5/101/5*

The Low-Cal Hamburger Plate. Say it’s a hamburger patty, a cup of cottage cheese, a canned peach half, and some melba toast. By applying our Conscious Combining knowledge to this appetizing delight, we can see that the canned peach half will ferment in your stomach, and the cottage cheese is loaded with salt and qualifies as cheese, thus holding up the digestion of everything else on the plate. The melba toast turns to alcohol (since it’s a grain and fermented grains become alcohol) because it gets stuck in your stomach and along with the peach it ferments.
The Fruit and Cottage Cheese Plate. The cottage cheese traps the fruit in your stomach and causes it to ferment. Instead of getting skinny, you get bloated.
Chef’s Salad (also applies to tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad, and shrimp salad—all protein based salads). The problem with these “diet” salads is twofold: they’re filled with veggies that don’t get processed properly but instead sit in a lump in your stomach because of the accompanying protein, and the dressing is swamped with salt.
Picture the size of your stomach. It’s about the size of a small grapefruit. Yet we’re forcing all that bulk to get stuck there. No wonder your stomach complains!
*52\251\8*

There is little available data on the intermittent use, or ‘pulse treatment’, of weight-loss drugs. Most guidelines advocate a consistent use of medication for up to 12 months duration, during which time significant and long-term habit change is to be encouraged and supported. However, as our experience of modern weight-loss agents grows, it is apparent that many patients need clinical support long after a formal weight-loss programme. It would seem reasonable that where a patient remains highly motivated, and where the clinical risk supports it, repeated periods of drug treatment are justified to support weight maintenance and prevent the return or worsening, of comorbid disease markers such as type 2 diabetes. Obesity is a chronic disease and even the most successful patients will require long-term support and intervention. It would seem short-sighted to withhold medication when the need is evident. This approach is not common in everyday practice but is likely to be increasingly seen in the years ahead as both the number of treated patients and general clinical experience increases.
*52/312/5*

Piracetam is considered to be the first true nootropic drug. Since it was developed by UCB Laboratories in Belgium in 1972, almost all major pharmaceutical companies have created some form of nootropic drug based on the molecular structure of piracetam.

How Piracetam Works. Piracetam increases alertness and enhances memory by stimulating the cholinergic system of the brain, especially in the cerebral cortex. The cholinergic system uses the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is synthesized from the smart nutrients choline (or the structurally related compounds lecithin and DMAE), vitamin C, vitamin B5, and vitamin B6.
Piracetam exerts the following effects on the brain:
It stimulates an increase in the metabolic rate and energy level of neurons.
It shields the brain against free-radical damage from hypoxia (oxygen deprivation).
It protects against loss of memory from trauma and poisoning from environmental toxins, such as pesticides and air pollution.
It heightens memory and learning in healthy people, as well as in those who have already suffered a degree of memory loss.
It facilitates the transfer of information between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

Piracetam: Memory and Learning. Several recent studies have confirmed that piracetam enhances learning, memory, and overall mental performance. One study of human subjects revealed that the mental performance of middle-aged people who were in good overall health but complained of a noticeable degree of memory loss improved significantly after four weeks of taking piracetam (4.8 grams per day).
Humans are the only animal species that possess a two-sided brain. The left and right hemispheres of the human brain each control specific mental functions. The flow of information between the two hemispheres has been demonstrated to be absolutely essential for harmonious and optimally sympathetic mental activity. Piracetam has been shown to improve (and even increase) the flow of information between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
The two brain hemispheres are connected by a group of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. It is mainly through these nerve tracts of networks that information from one hemisphere is transmitted to the other. This bidirectional aspect of the human brain dictates that nerves from the eyes and ears, for example, cross over to the opposite side of the brain. Therefore, sights and words that are received by the right eye and ear, respectively, are perceived by the left side of the brain, and information that is presented to the left eye and ear is sent to the visual and hearing centers on the right side of the brain. Piracetam seems to enhance the connection between (to “superconnect”) both sides of the brain via the corpus callosum.

Piracetam Increases Brain Energy. The production of cellular energy depends upon the systematic buildup and breakdown of ATP. Biological aging decreases the amount of ATP available for conversion into energy, particularly in brain and muscle cells. The decreased amount of ATP, in turn, weakens the enzyme-induced processes that trigger the release of energy within the cells. Thus, as most people grow older, they find it increasingly difficult to perform under mental and physical stress, especially for long periods.
Piracetam promotes the synthesis of ATP, the universal form of cellular energy, in the cerebral cortex and so facilitates the transfer of information between the two cerebral hemispheres and increases the synthesis of proteins in brain cells, which research has established that long-term memory depends on.
Integrated information processing is suspected to be an important element of the creative insight enjoyed by artists, musicians, writers, and scientists. Some researchers speculate that because piracetam facilitates communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, it may enhance artistic, creative, and intuitive impulses. Piracetam does not produce the side effects that many people experience with the use of other synthetic stimulants that affect the central nervous system (such as amphetamines and cocaine). Even large doses of piracetam do not produce sedation or changes in brain waves or have adverse effects on the circulatory or respiratory systems. No toxic side effects have been reported in the medical literature following administration of piracetam to humans.
Dosage commonly used: 1.6 to 4.8 g per day (in 2-6 equally divided doses).
Sources: Piracetam is available in Mexico and throughout Europe and can be mail-ordered from the sources in Appendix I. A number of U.S. pharmaceutical companies are currently testing piracetam-based drags that show promise as memory enhancers.
*52\244\2*

All experts agree that, with the rare exceptions of thyroid insufficiency and defective metabolism, the number one cause of obesity is overeating. But what causes overeating?
The basic cause of overeating (and consequent obesity) is a disordered appestat mechanism which controls the appetite. Nutritional deficiencies caused by denatured foods disrupt the work of the appestat. Plenty of physical activity and/or exercise are required to keep the appestat working well. Also, appestat function can be disrupted by negative emotions, such as anxiety, fear, hostility, insecurity, etc. Thus, obese persons should make every effort to avoid such feelings and foster a positive outlook on life.

Dietary considerations
Low calorie Airola Diet of nutritious foods with emphasis on 5 or 6 small meals, instead of two big meals a day. Plenty of raw fruits, vegetables and fresh juices.
Avoid all sugar and white flour, and everything made with them. Avoid salt, coffee, tea, alcohol. Avoid all refined and denatured foods.
Take 2 tsp. of apple cider vinegar in glass of water with every meal.
Low protein diet (35 grams a day) has been found to lead to safe weight reduction without the health damaging side-effects of a high protein diet.

Biological treatments
1. Repeated short juice fasts, one week, to 10 days. Long juice fast, up to 40 days, or more, can also be undertaken, but only under expert supervision.
2. Lots of physical work or exercise, especially walking, jogging, swimming, sports like tennis, etc. Strenuous exercise and/or physical activity are imperative for effective weight control.
3. Dry brush massage, twice a day and intermittent hot-and-cold shower every morning.

*1/103/5*

Fat distribution is now regarded as of equal or greater importance to total fat as a health risk and new techniques of measuring fat distribution have recently been developed. Abdominal fat has been regarded as one of the key indicators and measures of this include waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and the Gonidty or C-Index. Visceral fat, which in the future is likely to prove to be the most powerful predictor of disease, can only be measured in vivo, or in live organisms, through the imaging machines discussed below. How-ever, estimates can be made from techniques that measure abdominal fat including WHR, and the C-index, and more recently using techniques to measure sagittal diameter (SAD), or a measure of abdominal thickness known as the abdominal diameter index (ADI).

Conicity Index (C-Index). The C-Index was developed by Dr Radolfo Valdez and colleagues from Pennsylvania State University in an attempt to combine the best aspects of BMI with WHR or body fat distribution. The C-Index quantifies fat shapes as lying between two extremes; the first a cyclinder, i.e. very lean, and the second, bi-conical.

So far the C-Index has had only limited validatory research carried out on it, some suggesting it may not add significandy to other anthropometric measures. However, variations to this in the future may offer promise for a more sensitive measure.

The C-Index requires measures of height, weight and waist circumference and the following formula:

C = abdominal girth (at umbilicus) in metres/0.109/weight (kg)/height(m)

The range of scores is from 1.00 to 1.73 but, as yet there are no normative figures for comparison. People scoring towards the low end i.e 1.00, are closer to the ideal than those scoring towards the high end i.e. 1.73. The validity of the measure is so far unknown, although reliability and sensitivity could be expected to be quite high.

*65\186\4*

As a physician who has treated hundreds of patients with eating disorders over the past fifteen years, I much prefer the “no-fault” approach to managing eating disorders. Simply put, if you have an eating disorder, or if you are the parent of an anorexic or bulimic child, don’t condemn yourself: You are not to blame.

“Fault” and “blame” are unnecessary-even harmful-concepts. They result in mental roadblocks, such as: “I am sick [or my child is sick] because I am a bad person [or parent]. If I could just snap out of it [or fix the problem], I could make myself [or my child] well.”

Thinking in terms of “fault” is counterproductive. You don’t suffer from an eating disorder because you are “bad” or because you are “not trying hard enough.” On the contrary, I believe you are actually trying very hard to deal with the stresses in your life. Unfortunately, the method you have chosen-starvation or rigid dieting or purging-is just making your problems worse.

People who skip meals to lose weight often succumb to the urge to binge. They wind up eating more than if they had just stuck to the old three-square-meals-a-day formula. Learning to then purge as a way to exert “damage control” over bingeing makes it that much easier to binge in the future, leading to a vicious cycle. Some girls starve themselves as a way of coping with their fears of growing up. The damage starvation does to their bodies may delay their physical and emotional development, but it can’t stop the process of growing older. Rather than helping to overcome the challenges of maturation, an eating disorder can cause physiological havoc that leads to disease, more mental turmoil, and sometimes even death.

Someone on the outside might wonder why people try to cope with their pain through such misguided means as disturbed eating. The answer, I think, is that often they fear their lives will just get worse if they don’t do something-anything. The problem thus arises not from lack of effort but from using the wrong tools. In a time of stress and change, they seek to control one basic element in their lives-food-somehow believing that if they can control their eating habits, they can keep all their other troubles at bay. Attempting to force the body to ignore its inherent biological rules of eating, however, is like believing you’ll always win at gambling in Las Vegas-eventually the “house” always wins.

I conceive of eating disorders as arising, not from some inherent flaw within a person, but from the clash between social values and biological drives that exist within an emotionally vulnerable individual.

*2/35/5*

You’ve probably heard that old admonition to think before you speak. Well, Sue McGovern thinks before she eats—and it has helped her maintain a 30-pound weight loss for 20 years.

Sue, a 42-year-old resident of Shillington, Pennsylvania, never paid much attention to her food choices while she was growing up. “It was nothing for me and two or three of my friends to devour a half-gallon of chocolate-almond ice cream and a 12-pack of doughnuts in a sitting,” she says. “We didn’t think of these episodes as binges. They were simply a way of life.”

For Sue, that way of life eventually started showing on the scale. By the time she was ready to enter college, she weighed 175 pounds.

“But because I was tall and in reasonably good shape, I never looked fat—just big,” she recalls. ‘

In college, Sue didn’t have a car, so she traveled everywhere via *i foot, bike, or skateboard. To her pleasant surprise, she began losing © weight without changing her eating habits. She was down to 155 pounds when she graduated.

But once Sue started working full-time, her active lifestyle ground to a halt. “That’s when I realized that I had to make better food choices if I didn’t want to regain the weight that I had lost,” she says. “I read all that I could about good nutrition and healthy eating, and I changed my eating habits accordingly.”

For the first time in her life, Sue began thinking about what she was putting in her mouth. She stopped eating for the sake of eating and instead chose foods with the greatest nutritional value. Red meat, chips, chocolate, and other high-fat, high-calorie foods disappeared from her diet. Grains, vegetables, and tofu became her staples of choice. “I discovered all kinds of healthful foods that I’d never had before,” she said. “I was intrigued by tofu, sprouts, and herbs. And I spent hours picking berries and wild nuts.”

Through a combination of healthier eating habits and daily exercise—jogging was her activity of choice—Sue managed to take off another 10 pounds. Her weight has remained in the range of 140 to 145 pounds for about 20 years.

WINNING ACTION

Ask yourself, “Is this good for me?” Sometimes, our food choices become so ritualized that we never consider what’s in them or how they’re affecting our bodies. The next time you reach for a snack or sit down to your “usual” meal, ask yourself whether the food has any nutritional value. If you’re looking at a plateful of nothing but calories and fat, choose something else. You and your body deserve better.

*57\89\8*