The Diet Cure: The 8-Step Program to Rebalance Your Body Chemistry and End Food Cravings, Weight Gain, and Mood Swings--Naturally - Softcover

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THE DIET CURE

Julia Ross, pioneering author and clinician, has been directing innovative counseling programs in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1980. She is the executive director of Recovery Systems, a clinic that treats people from all over the world for overeating and mood problems, using an integrative program that emphasizes nutrient therapy and biochemical rebalancing. Julia trains health practitioners throughout the United States and abroad. Her work has been featured on many radio and television programs and in Psychology Today, Health, Vogue, and other magazines. The author of a second best seller, The Mood Cure, she lives in Marin County, California. Learn more about Julia’s work at dietcure.com, moodcure.com, and recoverysystemsclinic.com.

The

Diet Cure

The 8-Step Program to Rebalance Your Body Chemistry and End Food Cravings, Weight Gain, and Mood Swings—Naturally

JULIA ROSS, M.A.

To
Frances Lillian Ross

and to the women and men
whose struggles have inspired us to find a better way

FOREWORD

Forty years ago, after I had completed my education at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania and at the outset of my medical career, a foolish optimism gripped my profession. It was generally held that to improve the nation’s health, all we had to do was make the existing health care more widely available.

It soon became painfully evident that more health care did not always lead to more health. In fact, the rapid advances of medical science seemed to be increasingly overpowered by the well-marketed culture of unhealthy consumption.

By the early 1980s, this alarming trend found many doctors seeking new ways to heal harmful habits. Twenty years ago, through my private practice and my work as a founding member of the American Holistic Medical Association, I was fortunate enough to become involved with the incredibly effective work of Julia Ross. Most of the patients with overeating and weight problems whom I sent to her clinic received major benefit. Eventually, I was so impressed that I signed on as their backup physician.

I am delighted that her unique approach, now in an updated edition, will be even more accessible. May it help guide you in your efforts toward greater health and well-being.

AUTHOR’S CAUTIONARY NOTE

If you have a known or suspected medical condition, are taking medication of any kind, or have specific health concerns, you should consult a qualified health care provider before following any of the suggestions in this book. Supplement and pharmaceutical dosages are meant to be guidelines only, and dosage and results will vary according to the specific needs of each individual. The dietary guidelines, too, need to be tailored to each individual. Because this book cannot respond to individuals’ needs and circumstances, as we do in our clinic, you should ask for a qualified health care professional to help you assess and apply The Diet Cure. Although we did our best to provide sound and useful information, we cannot and do not promise results to a reader. Neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

The first edition of The Diet Cure was published in 1999. It has been a marvel from the start:

   The minute the book proposal hit the publishing houses, I began to get calls at my clinic from editors and publishers asking for personal help. When I came to New York, more publishers wanted to meet with me than with any other author my seasoned NYC agent had ever represented. Then there was a bidding frenzy. Why? Because the word was all over Manhattan that a truly new approach to the “weight problem” had arrived—the first since Atkins in 1972.

   After publication, grateful readers’ reviews began to flood in. Out of dozens of similar postings, this is my favorite: “The chocolate cravings are gone! The ice cream cravings are gone! Refined carbs are not a part of my life anymore and I don’t miss them. 6 weeks on The Diet Cure and I am down at least a size in clothing and I feel better than I ever have (EVER).” And twelve years later, they keep on coming.

   The Diet Cure keeps on selling—in both the United States and abroad. Take France, where, although obesity is relatively new, Parisian food writer Julien Tort had been struggling with it since childhood. One day, exploring American weight loss methods on the Internet, he discovered low-carb dieting. (This is big news in France, if you can imagine.) He went on Atkins and lost weight easily. He was thrilled. Until his willpower ran out and he reverted to pasta and bread. Back on the Internet he found The Diet Cure. Since then, he’s lost seventy pounds, translated the book, and arranged its 2011 French publication.

   Many people buy multiple copies of The Diet Cure to give to friends and family. While I was at a spa celebrating a recent birthday, the masseuse started talking about a book she said had saved her life. She’d had cancer and had been treated, but could not stick to the cancer-recovery diet because her sugar cravings were so strong. (Sugar is the favorite food of cancer cells.) “Now,” she said, “I’m four years sugar-free and six years cancer-free.” When, intrigued, I asked her the name of the book’s author, and then told her my name, the room became a screaming love fest, and she told me that she’d given away fifty copies of The Diet Cure as gifts.

More than ever before we need this gift: freedom from the unprecedented, diet-related plagues of the twenty-first century. The Diet Cure came out just before the first stunning reports of the obesity epidemic among adults, and then children, were released. Since then, this phenomenon has escalated to the point that even infant obesity has become a significant problem. The incidence of heart disease, kidney failure, and increased cancer risk has also skyrocketed, along with type 2 diabetes among both adults and children.

Why did things suddenly go so wrong? Because weight- and blood-sugar-destabilizing foods are much more plentiful in our diets now, and they are much harder to resist. Thanks to new research worldwide, and to former FDA chief David Kessler’s 2010 exposé, we now know that the food industry’s efforts to make its products more “palatable” have succeeded beyond even its wildest dreams. We’re now officially a nation of food addicts, beyond the help of willpower or any diet. Our only hope is to locate a manual for dismantling that addiction. The Diet Cure is that manual.

So why a new edition? Since the book was first published, our clinic has worked with more than two thousand newly diagnosed overeaters. In the process, we have developed even better methods of correcting the biochemical imbalances that propel us into food addiction. My publisher and I agreed that it was time to send out a new lifeline—an even stronger edition of The Diet Cure that would include all of the clinical advances we’ve made and the research backing them up. To accomplish this, I have updated and streamlined almost half of the book—extreme measures for extreme times.

A few examples:

   We’ve learned more about how to correct deficits in our brain’s appetite chemistry, in our ability to handle stress, and in our sex hormone balance—three well-established triggers of the compulsion to overeat.

   One of the most potent methods for eliminating afternoon, evening, and winter food cravings has only recently become available in the United States. We have it for you.

   We know better how to test for and treat low thyroid function to improve metabolism and calorie burning.

   With diabetes now epidemic, we’ve found solid clinical research confirming our experience that saturated fat is safe, healthful, and the best blood sugar regulator of all.

   The Master Eating Plan has been completely reorganized and updated and includes a vital reevaluation of the facts on red meat, cholesterol, and vegetarianism.

   There are new nutrient supplement protocols, new lab tests, new books and CDs to recommend, new ways to find effective holistic practitioners, and more.

To all of you who have already read The Diet Cure: Trust me when I urge you to invest in this new edition. I’ve seen your dog-eared copies at my lectures and that many of you have even color-indexed them. But I promise that you will find treasures in the material I’ve added. (And I’m a better writer now, too!)

I wish you a successful escape from our twenty-first-century dietary disaster. Everything you’ll need is packed and ready for you here in the new Diet Cure.

My best wishes to all of you!

INTRODUCTION

8 Steps to
the Diet Cure

This is not going to be like any diet book you have ever read. I won’t mention calories except to forbid you to eat too few! I won’t tell you to tune in to your “real” appetite because I know that if you could have you would have long ago. I won’t tell you to discipline yourself because I know that your weight and eating habits are not the result of laziness, gluttony, or weak willpower.

You are trapped inside a body that is malfunctioning, and that body needs help. Years of dieting, psychotherapy, and the best pep talks about fitness can’t help much when what you really need is a biochemical overhaul.

The clients who come to my clinic have already tried psychotherapy. If they haven’t, or if they need more counseling, we provide it. We educate them about their health and encourage them to accept the body that their genes have programmed for them. But when that body is a wreck, psychological and educational approaches just aren’t enough. Fortunately, we have now learned how to identify and repair the underlying physical imbalances that have been neglected for so long.

We used to think that dieting was the cure. Many of us still hope that the next diet will really “do it.” But more of us have learned that dieting leaves us in worse shape than before we ever started. Our health, energy, mood, and weight have all deteriorated because of dieting. And yet we can’t quit. We know no other escape from the weight gain that followed our last diet! We need to be cured of dieting. We need to find an entirely new way to deal with our weight problems.

And we have. You’re about to learn it.

I discovered the Diet Cure while I was desperately looking for a cure for alcohol and drug addiction. At that time I was the director of a large treatment complex in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ohlhoff Outpatient Programs. We provided intensive counseling for addicted adults and adolescents and their families in three counties. In 1986, I began hearing that certain nutritional supplements could stop addicts’ cravings for alcohol and even for cocaine. I asked my staff nutritionist to research and then to start offering these nutrients. They dramatically reduced our clients’ drug and alcohol cravings within a week. Much to our surprise, they also cured the insatiable cravings for sweets and the thirty-pound weight gain that our clients typically suffered in early recovery.*

In 1988, I opened my own outpatient treatment program. Staffed with nutritionists and counselors, the Recovery Systems Clinic, in Mill Valley, California, is five minutes north of San Francisco. Initially, my clients at Recovery Systems were food addicts and others concerned about serious eating disorders and weight problems. Compulsive overeating and bulimia were their most common complaints. Some anorexics came to us, too, as well as people without any eating disorders, but with weight gain that was intractable. If these sound like tough problems, you’re wrong. We rarely failed to help even our most severely impaired clients because we had the secret weapon. We tried the same nutrients with them that I had used with my drug- and alcohol-addicted clients. They were even more effective for eliminating food cravings and had the delightful side effect of eliminating mood swings, too.

As the word spread, we began to get many clients who did not have full-blown eating disorders but were looking for an escape from yo-yo dieting, low energy, moodiness, and a tendency to eat too much bread and ice cream. You can imagine how easy it was for us to help them, having already discovered nutrients that were powerful enough to “cure” the cravings and mood problems of bulimics and drug addicts. These miracle nutrients are called amino acids.

Amino acids are the key to the Diet Cure. They are stronger than willpower and more effective and safer than any appetite-suppressing drugs. Available in every health food store in America, these isolated protein fragments are the super-nutrients that your brain uses to make its most powerful pleasure chemicals: serotonin (our natural Prozac), catecholamines (our natural cocaine), endorphins (naturally stronger than heroin), and GABA (naturally more relaxing than Xanax). A brain that is fully stocked with these natural mood enhancers simply has no need for a sugar high.

What’s more, you don’t have to wait weeks or months to see changes: my clinic’s clients consistently report that within twenty-four hours of taking amino acids, their food cravings disappear. Like them, you will no longer need to diet because you will have stopped overeating—naturally. These benefits soon become permanent. After three to twelve months you won’t need the amino acids and other corrective supplements anymore. Instead, you will be permanently freed from cravings and easily able to follow the Diet Cure’s satisfying eating suggestions for life.

THE EIGHT STEPS

At Recovery Systems, we have discovered specific steps to overcoming each of the eight physical, bodily handicaps that can lead directly to food cravings, overeating, and unnecessary weight gain.

Step One: Correcting BRAIN CHEMISTRY IMBALANCES to eradicate the negative feelings, like anxiety and depression, behind your “emotional” eating.

Step Two: Ending the LOW-CALORIE DIETING that inevitably leads to problems with mood, energy, overeating, and weight.

Step Three: Balancing UNSTABLE BLOOD SUGAR to eliminate the cravings for sweets and starches that propel us toward diabetes and adrenal exhaustion.

Step Four: Repairing LOW THYROID FUNCTION, a common cause of unnecessary weight gain and the fatigue that makes exercise impossible.

Step Five: Overcoming ADDICTIONS TO FOODS YOU’RE ALLERGIC TO and associated symptoms such as bloating, headache, constipation, and asthma.

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