Currently sitting on the best seller list, Dr. Peter Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet: The Simplest Way to Lose Weight is flying off the selves. Perhaps it is due to our desire to find a simple solution to weight lose that the book has sold over 100,000 copies. But the truth is, simple doesn’t fill up 208 pages…
Who is Dr Peter Gott
Peter H. Gott, M. D. is one of America’s most popular medical columnist. His newspaper column , Ask Dr. Gott, appears in more than 350 newspapers worldwide, including USA Today and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Gott has had a solo family/general practice in rural Connecticut since 1966 and is the medical director of the Hotchkiss School, a coed preparatory boarding school in his community. He is also author of No House Calls: Irreverent Notes on the Practice of Medicine, Summer Windows of Sconset, and Live Longer, Live Better: Taking Care of Your Health after 50. His latest book, No Flour, No Sugar Diet: The Simplest Way to Lose Weight, published in June of 2006 has become an instant success.
What is the No Flour, No Sugar Diet
In its simplest term it is exactly what the title says- NO flour and NO sugar. The idea is that by eliminating flour and sugar from your diet you will avoid junk food. But it is not as simple as looking at the ingredients to see if there is sugar and flour. Sugar comes in many different forms, Dr. Gott proposes that highly proposes sugar is avoided- maltodextrin, fructose, corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup, and so on. Usually when you see flour on a label, that flour has been so highly processed it has the same effect on you that table sugar does. Thus, by avoiding high processed flour as well as highly processed sugar you minimize empty calories.
No Flour, No Sugar addresses reading food labels, and gaining the knowledge of what exactly a flour or a sugar is and how it acts once consumed. Instead of flour and sugar Dr. Gott encourages the consumption of lean meats, brown rice, low-fat dairy products, vegetables, and fruits. The book also encourages exercise. And in keeping with Dr. Gott’s simpiicity, the book doesn’t go in waves or in stages, from the very first day of the diet you “simply” eliminate flours and sugars.
What the Experts Say
Experts agree that eliminating flour and sugar effectively reduces the amount of “empty” calories from your diet. As a result you will also eliminate a great deal of fat out of your diet, because many of these foods which contain processed flour and sugar as high in fat. There has also been a growing consensus about refined carbohydrates: We eat too much of them and they provide us with little nutritive value. Eliminating flour and sugar will greatly reduce the amount of carbohydrates consumed.
However, expects question the practicality of the diet, and the difficulty many people will experience with it. In Dr. Gott’s introduction he mentions that “no one wants to be bothered with counting calories” and “you don’t want to memorize daunting lists of food. However as you progress through the book, you do indeed come across daunting lists of food, and a detailed chart of daily calorie requirements. The No Flour, No Sugar Diet has 80 pages (almost half the book) devoted to meal plans and recipes. For a society addicted to pizza, dinner rolls, and donuts, suddenly eating Spiced Edamame and Vietnamese Shrimp Wraps (p. 101) may present something of a challenge. Food containing flour and sugar make up a large part of the American diet, and while eliminating them will also eliminate the health issues which go along with them it may not be at that simple.
A good health and fitness plan addresses not only diet and excersice, but also behavioural issues associated with eating and working out, something Dr. Gott’s latest book fail to mention. Expects say that those who are already familiar with the basic mechanics of healthy weight loss will find nothing new here, but skipping that donut for breakfast is something we should all think about doing.
