Week one:

Down six pounds- two of it fluid. One week- beer and sausage.

My assessment: he is healthy, fit, full of energy. Evo is working hard at keeping his beer and sausage calorie consumption to less than 1500 calories a day. Since he burns around 2100 a day- he should lose at least a pound a week -or over the course of the month- four pounds.

Why the big drop? Two pounds of it are from total body water – and that might be the diuretic effect of the beer. His fat loss is also about two pounds.  Those numbers are somewhat exact – the weight loss is real.

Will this “diet” work?  Yes,  much like a thousand other diets, limit your calories, use just one food group or a couple, and you will be fine.  Lets add a bit of fine print here: we are following Evo’s cholesterol level, liver chemistries, and a number of other tests to make certain he isn’t getting into trouble.  He is also going to be taking a multivitamin daily. Also some fiber daily. If “German” things come with the sausage – he can eat that.  Sausage and Peppers – for example, or sauerkraut - he can have those.  What he can’t have are the side dishes that are processed – no breads, no potatoes, no rice, no pasta.

Today in the office we discussed the huge difference between this and the Paleo-diet.  In the days of the caveman they drank water- most illness was transmitted through water. Beer is highly purified, has nutrients in it- and while some will say it is evil – it really isn’t. I suspect those who say it is evil are those who are the “pure food” people- similar to “raw” or “vegan” – there is a self-righteous superiority about people on diets.  So- if Evo drank water from the streams (we live in Arizona, so that is difficult) he would probably become ill. Sausage – another processed food- which is meat. While “processed” has a bad name (as bad as an Atheist naming their son Christian) – think about cavemen and meat.  You haul in this big bison, wildebeest, or huge creature– most of it will become rancid and cause more illness quicker. But then we became smart and learned how to process and preserve meats. We have eliminated another cause of early death of the paleo-types – death from botulinum toxin, or salmonella (much worse in those days than today).

So Evo’s diet will lead to a longer life than if he followed a true Paleo-diet. Later in this series we will take a skeptical eye to that particular diet and its failures as well as its good points.  For now- take this as the humor it is meant to be — a caveman in Phoenix would lose more weight on the Paleo-diet than Evo will because they would become sick and die.  We will make certain that doesn’t happen to Evo.

Good job, Evo- first week. Great weight loss, more than expected.

I don't know much about beer - but I'll bet Evo likes this one.

YourDoctorsOrders.com – the Juice and what it’s full of! from TweetMeTV on Vimeo.

Today in the supermarket there is a wide variety of juices available. Great combination of just about any juice you could imagine.  And, if you wanted even fresher juices, there are machines that will do it for you. One of my favorite devices is a juice press that I use for making fresh squeezed orange juice from the trees in my back yard.

But what about using juices for weight loss? For weight loss you want to have a lot of volume in your stomach of bulky high fiber items that are low in calories. For that, vegetables and fruits work well. But if you juice those fruits and vegetables, then the stomach doesn’t register the bulk with the brain.

Every time you eat something, especially something with bulk – the brain registers that sensation through a complex nerve network that begins in the top of the stomach. As bulky food goes through this area, your brain gets the sensation and when it reaches a certain amount it will hold off on sending out those hormones cause you to be hungry.

For example, if you eat a cup of broccoli you will have a lot of bulky foods, but only 12 calories! Your brain will sense that you have eaten a lot and as a result you will not feel hungry for hours. But if you juice all that broccoli you will drink about a cup of juice, and in two hours you will start to feel hungry again.

So while juicing allows you to concentrate a lot of good vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, the juice doesn’t provide the bulk that the stomach needs to keep you from being hungry.

The other caution with juicing is this: don’t store the juice too long, and be sure to keep your juicer clean. There are a lot of bacteria that grow in juices – like salmonella and E. Coli, that can cause severe food poisoning. So, keep your juicer clean — and if you store the juice, be sure to drink it within a day or two — and keep it refrigerated.

So if you want weight loss– eat the vegetables and the fruits– they have plenty of bulk to keep you from being hungry – and provide a lot of nutrients for your body.

YourDoctorsOrders.com – Raw vs. Cooked Veggies from McMedia ProducerGirl on Vimeo.