This article is intended to let you know how I came to discover a method of weight loss that allows my patients to lose about 1 pound a day safely and with no supplements or special, expensive foods or point counting. I want to share what has allowed 50 of my patients to lose more than 2000 pounds combined over a 5-month period of recruitment.
Alwin Lewis, M.D., M.P.H. and I were classmates at Tulane University Medical School and Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. We were good friends then and through the magic of Facebook remain good friends now. It was through Facebook we reconnected and he brought me in on his new weight-loss secrets.
Back in medical school Dr. Lewis was in a terrible car accident in New Orleans. He was in the hospital a long time from his injuries. Me and my fellow classmates were quite worried about him and his future after the injuries sustained were quite substantial. Instead of worrying about completing his Medical and Public Health degrees, he was fighting to get his life and normalcy back.
Due to the surgeries and time in the hospital he was unable to eat well for a time. However when his gut started working again, as hard as he would try, he just couldn’t eat that much. He wasn’t really that hungry after a while of not eating. This was when he discovered his “Hungerstat,” the thermostat in the body that controls hunger. He discovered, albeit through a forced way through his injuries in a car accident, that the body’s thermostat for hunger IS ADJUSTABLE. By not having regular meals, his stomach had naturally shrunken, and there was absolutely no rapid way to get him hungry for quite some time beyond eating a few handfuls of food. He had not had any adjustments to his stomach from the accident either as would happen if it were injured or had gastric bypass.
From this discovery, and his observations of patients going through gastric bypass and other surgical weight loss, he discovered the secret to rapid, sustained weight loss and lifestyle modification and used it own himself and his own patients. Within his Internal Medicine Practice he used his diet for obese patients and discovered through his methods, and with coaching, a patient could have gastric-bypass-amount weight loss without surgery, without supplements or medications.
By using the body’s natural method for fat mobilization, a person could see themselves losing weight, remaining healthy, spending minimal to no cash, and having PERMANENT effects to their thermostat for hunger, their “hungerstat.” In other words, after this diet, the stomach NATURALLY shrinks down and you no longer have a huge appetite, and you eat small handfuls of food, and stop when you have had smaller portions because your stomach has naturally shrunken down.
After we had caught up on Facebook after many years, I had the opportunity to go to his house and stay with him, his wife, and 2 sons when I had a convention to attend in Hollywood. He is now living in Burbank, California so I took advantage of the free place to stay in his guest room.
While there, he had copies of his book that explained this diet around the home. He gave one to me, autographed it, and I read it in one night. I got sucked into the information. The simplicity and the beauty of the diet were mesmerizing and hypnotic. I said to myself, “Is it really that simple?” And I convinced myself it was. I went to the same classes and training as this guy and he was using the science and the knowledge I learned too and it made perfect sense to me.
His basic premise: Why not use the diet they give people who have had a gastric bypass to people who haven’t had one, and see what it does to the hungerstat? In doing so, he discovered several amazing things.
1. You don’t need a surgical gastric bypass to eat as if you have had one. In a few days, your body will get used to having smaller amounts of food and set that as your new hungerstat.
2. Your stomach naturally shrinks down when you fast or eat smaller portion sizes. After a few days, you will feel full just eating 6 or 7 bites of food if you eat 5 bites for a short period per meal.
3. 1 pound of weight loss daily is safe and reliable with the guidance of a physician.
4. You don’t have to be morbidly obese to lose weight using the same diet they use for gastric bypasses and other surgical weight loss solutions.
5. Coaching a patient through a diet can be as successful and satisfying as a gastric bypass that forces it reduced eating.
6. A patient’s self esteem is much better preserved when they lose their weight naturally and through their own willpower than when forced through a surgery.
7. Whether you want to lose 5 to 200 or more pounds, the eating like you had a gastric bypass will work safely and effectively without the surgery so that the surgical risk is eliminated.
8. Many of the myths of weight loss regarding metabolism and mealtimes are disproved based on our experiences with patients on this diet.
The rules of his diet are as follows… this is the instruction sheet I give my patients when they go on it. Nothing more nothing less…
1. Skip breakfast
2. 5 bites of food, whatever you want, for lunch, five bites of food for dinner.
3. 1 bite of food must be protein.
4. Take a Multivitamin with iron every day
5. Drink whatever you want as long as there aren’t any sugars/calories in the drink.
That’s it. That’s the diet rules. This simple rule list has allowed hundreds of patients to lose weight and KEEP IT OFF through their reset hungerstats. It makes it virtually impossible to gain the weight back rapidly or at all when your body gets used to smaller meal sizes, while still maintaining your shrunken stomach without surgery.
Over the years, as medical doctors seeing thousands of obese patients, both he and I have discovered that Meal-substitute diets don’t work. Calorie-counting diets don’t work. An appropriate portion-controlled diet is the most effective strategy for achieving long-lasting weight loss. Dr. Lewis has perfected this method, utilizing a non-surgical gastric bypass approach to help you become thin. He allowed me to use this for my patients on the east coast and my patients have been raving about it
