If Diets Don't Work, What's the Solution to Obesity in America?

My experience as a medical professor gave me evidences that, for most people, diets rarely work, even if they were put on low calorie diet. I found that more than 95% of my patients returned to my clinic by end of the first year, with their original extra over weight, or even heavier. This caused great disappointment to them and to me in the same time.

In year 2005, I got a brilliant idea; why not to train my patients on low-volume meals instead of low-carb, low-fat, or even low-calorie diets?

Of course it is easier to estimate volumes than to count calories. This was the start of my innovated Luqaimat diet which is the first low-volume diet. I trained my patients on this long–lasting habit of eating frequent small volume meals allover the day, while allowing them a moderate-sized diversified meal at end of day. The Luqaimat diet helped 91% of my obese patients to lose most of their extra weight in one year.

In year 2008, I got another, even more groundbreaking idea. I asked my self, if the stomach is the site of hunger sensation, why it does not also contain another site for satiety sensation?

This led me to postulate forward the presence of a satiety spot which I named: “Elhashemy’s Stomach Satiety Spot” or “ESSS”. I deducted the presence of such spot from understanding the relationship between the following two facts:

1. The gastric fundus contains dense plexus of afferent vagal nerve fibers, which in turn is connected to brain satiety center at hypothalamus.

2. Solid food stays long at fundus in contrast to semi-solid foods, which moves quickly to the center of the stomach.

I advised my obese patients (BMI 35 plus) to eat solid Luqaimat (3 pieces of almonds together each hour for 7 hours daily). This activates the afferent vagal nerve endings with the aim to induce feeling of lasting stomach satiety. To my astonishment it works marvelously. My patients lost an average of 100 pounds in a year. These results could only be obtained through bariatric surgery.

My innovated scientific diet plan is the perfect formula for weight loss due to many reasons including the following:

1. Obese people are allowed to eat all their favorite foods (but in small volumes), so they can maintain their diet for good.

2. Obese people are educated about the action of Luqaimat on their gut & brain, so they will get a better mind-gut cooperation.

3. Obese people are trained on satiating their stomach through boosting Elhashemy´s Stomach Satiety Spot "ESSS", so they will not need to eat big volumes of food.

All these reasons result in unprecedented success rate of weight loss.

Nowadays, hundreds of obese Egyptians are following my diet plan instead of going on ordinary diets, or being submitted to bariatric surgery.

You can read details of my innovated Luqaimat diet through searching the web through Google engine for “Luqaimat diet” or “stomach satiety”.

Prof. Dr. Mohamed Elhashemy 3:30PM March 06, 2009

The Potential Results Of Obesity

Obesity has been defined as when excess body fat accumulates in one to where their physical overgrowth makes the person unhealthy to varying degrees. Obesity is different than being overweight, as others determine obesity to be of a more serious concern. While obesity is not a disease, it is a serious health risk for one who has this risk.

As measured by one’s body mass index (BMI), one’s BMI of 25 to 30 kg/m is considered overweight. If their BMI is 30 to 35 kg/m, they are class I obese, 35 to 40 BMI would be class II obese, and any BMI above 40 is class III obesity.

Presently, with obesity affecting children progressively more, the issue of obesity has become a serious public health concern. In the United States, greater than one third of all citizens are obese, and this number continues to progress.

Approximately half of all children under the age of 12 are either obese are overweight. About twenty percent of children ages 2 to 5 years old are either obese are overweight. The consequences of these stats on our children are very concerning, considering the health issues they may or likely experience as they get older.

Worldwide, nearly one and a half billion people are either obese or overweight. In the United States, about one third of adults are either obese or overweight.

Women of low socioeconomic status are likely to be twice as obese compared with those who are not at this status. It is now predicted that, for the first time in about 150 years, our life expectancy is suppose to decline because primarily of this obesity problem.

Morbid obesity is defined as one who has a body mass index of 30 kg/m or greater, and this surgery, along with the three other types of surgery for morbid obesity, should be considered a last resort after all other methods to reduce the patient’s weight have chronically failed.

Morbid obesity greatly affects the health of the patient in a very negative way. It has about 10 co-morbidities that can develop if the situation is not corrected. Some if not most of these co-morbidities are life-threatening.

One solution beneficial in many cases of morbid obesity if one’s obesity is not eventually controlled or corrected is what is known as gastric bypass surgery. This is a type of bariatric surgery that essentially reduces the volume of the human stomach in order to correct and treat morbid obesity by surgical re-construction of the stomach and small intestine.

Patients for such surgeries are those with a BMI of greater than 40, or a BMI greater than 35 if the patient has co-morbidities aside from obesity. This surgery should be considered for the severely obese when other treatment options have failed. The standard of care illustrating as to whether this surgery is reasonable and necessary should be clarified.

There are three surgical variations of gastric bypass surgery, and one is chosen by the surgeon based on their experience and success from the variation they will utilize. Generally, these surgeries are procedures related to gastric restrictive operations or mal-absorptive operations.

Over 200,000 gastric bypass surgeries are performed each year, and this surgery being performed continues to progress as a suitable option for the morbidly obese. There is evidence that this surgery is particularly beneficial for those obese patients that have non-insulin dependent Diabetes Mellitus as well.

It is believed that the results of this surgery to correct morbid obesity greatly limits or prevents such co-morbidities associated with those who are obese. Yet about two percent of those who undergo this surgery die as a result from about a half a dozen complications that could occur. However, the surgery reduces the overall mortality of the patient by 40 percent or so, yet this percentage is debatable due to conflicting clinical studies at times.

Age of the patient should be taken into consideration, as to whether or not the risks of this surgery outweigh any potential benefits for the patient who may have existing co-morbidities that have already caused physiological damage to the patient. Also what should be determined by the surgeon is the amount of safety, effectiveness, and rationale for a particular patient regarding those patients who are elderly, for example.

Many feel bariatric surgery such as this should be considered as a last resort when exercise and diet have failed for a great length of time.

If a person or a doctor is considering this type of surgery, there is a website dedicated to bariatric surgery, which is: www.asmbs.org,

Dan Abshear

Dan of MO 3:05PM March 06, 2009

This is hogwash. Eating less and being more active results in weight loss. There are no other facts. Diets work. The problem is that people do not follow them. So it is false to say diets do not work. It is true to say that adults are child-like when it comes to eating and do not follow diets. Start charging people by the pound over an ideal weight for their health care and just see what happens. This is not a diet issue, it is a cultural issue and that people do not directly pay for the consequences of their actions.

Aggravating this is the availability of unhealthy food in large quantities.

Katherine Hobson: I think it depends how you define "diet," as a plan on paper or an actual practice by real live human beings. As a theoretical plan, yes, you can do the math and show that following a diet that reduces calories below what you burn off every day will result in weight loss. But as a practical matter, large studies invariably find that people have a very difficult time actually putting that into action. If it only works for 15 or 20 percent of people, I'd be hard pressed to say that it works -- or at least, that we should continue to put time, money, and effort into encouraging that approach, until we figure out how to tweak it to improve the results.

Eriemaster of OH 1:54PM March 06, 2009

The research shows diet's don't work.The results show fitness trainers don't work.Teaching kids at school to eat better does not solve anything.All the science in the world is ever going to replace education.Their needs to be a massive plan of action taken to educate people on the importance of eating right.The new fast food culture since the early seventies is here to stay.The workforce being less phisical is here to stay.Things and people change and that's great.Why can't the system change with it? There is great scientific proof to the new way we must look at eating more and exercising less.Many experts believe we are going about this all wrong and that exercise is not what everybody says it is. Using the system of education to impliment new realities need to be exposed and the old health and fitness agenda needs to change.The health industry will not admit they are wrong and that is a big part of the problem.Change can occur quickly if people have to will to make it change.This obesity pandemic will ruin our economies if we don't stand up and be counted.

Just an opinion.Thanks

Pierre William Trudel 11:50AM March 06, 2009