The diet is good only for a nutritionist

Maria Corby, La Stampa, 06.05.2008
Translation: Inopressa

Follow the strictest diet to fit into a size 40? This is the biggest mistake, according to Mark Messege, a wellness guru at the center in Melezzola, in Umbria, where people come to get in shape. He talks about the extra pounds and the desire of people to lose those pounds: "Diets only lead to weight gain." But how can a hungry person get fat with nothing? "That's right," he says ruthlessly. "Every week, more than 80 new diets appear in the media, and the number of obese people increases by 2% annually in Italy. Don't you think that's strange? Low-calorie strict diets only lead to the fact that a person loses the pleasure of life, from communication, from the taste of food. And it's all unhealthy. We are playing with people's health. During these years, the popularization of the strangest diets invented to make people lose weight only led to the spread of bulimia, anorexia and obesity. You lose 4 kg in a month and gain 5 kg in the next month. You say that most of the world's population lives with a diet of less than 1,200 calories a day, but if you lose weight this way, you can die. But our metabolism gets used to everything, especially to saving."

The maxim uttered by the head of one of the most famous Italian beauty centers (specializing in herbal medicine) sounds strange. But Messege explains: "I am from Gascony, Lourdes is located nearby, but I do not perform miracles. I do not prescribe a diet to those who come to me, because when I did this, the results were discouraging: only 2% of clients maintained the achieved result or continued to lose weight, almost all returned to me even fatter than before."

But there is "one secret", and Messege reveals it by mixing science, culture and religion. "Once people observed the rule: Friday is a fast day, a day with light food, only fish. This is a church rule that was supposed to make more hygienic habits, especially of the rich and priests, they were the only ones suffering from gout due to a large amount of protein. The fast day was not invented by me, but by the Church in order to save herself and the nobility. If we follow this rule today, even on Monday, without fat, without salt and only with low-fat proteins and herbs, with breakfast with the right portion of carbohydrates (30 grams of grain bread with jam or honey), we will all feel better."

Skeptical statements of supporters of strict diets immediately sound: "How, just one day of diet a week?" "Yes,– Mark answers. – If you multiply one day by 52 calendar weeks, by the end of the year you will get almost a two-month diet, this is a very long time, it is impossible to sustain such a long diet if you follow it continuously." And how do you correlate this with your clinic, with other weight loss clinics? Are they useless? "Not at all, but we are not Santa Claus. And I say that when my clients began to adhere to the "one easy day" rule, the results of maintaining and further weight loss increased from 2 to 30%. A strict diet in a specialized center under the supervision of doctors can be observed, because it gives motivation and the opportunity to relax in order to withstand everyday stresses, but it does not solve the problem of excess weight, much less the problem of obesity."

Messege's theory, his accusatory speech against the "society of diets", is also confirmed by American studies conducted by specialists of Medicare (state health insurance program), according to which 83% of people who followed a diet subsequently gain and even increase their previous weight. And only a minimal number manage to maintain the achieved results or at least return to the previous results without exceeding them. "There is no need for American examples," Messege continues, "I have been talking about this for many years. As I say, one of the evils in the world is excessive salt consumption, which, according to Le Point magazine, causes the death of 25 thousand people a year in France alone. This is a mass murder."

The number of fat cells in the body remains constant for many years, and only the fat content changes in them: the journal Nature writes about this. The publication claims that the number of fat cells finally stabilizes in adolescence. And it is for this reason, even after a diet, it is very difficult not to regain weight. Swedish scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied adipocytes (cells from which adipose tissue is mainly formed) in people who lived in the period from 1955 to 1963, who had an unusual level of radioactive isotopes in their body due to nuclear tests conducted at that time.

Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru07.05.2008