THE PART FAT PLAYS
The all but incredible fact is that recent experimental work has shown many overweight people to be better able to use fats as body fuel than they are to “burn up” dietary starches and sugars (carbohydrates). It has now been established that after the age of thirty-three, from causes which are not yet entirely clear, most people lose weight more readily on a high fat, low carbohydrate diet than on one with less fat and a larger proportion of carbohydrates. Since fat, to be digestible, must be eaten with three parts of something else, the Du Pont diet calls for three parts of protein to one part of fat. Sugar is omitted from the diet and starch is kept relatively low.
“It’s this don’t-bother-to-keep-track-of-the-calories part that still leaves me gasping.” I said to Doctor Pennington. “I can’t get over the old theory that if you eat a lot you’ll gain weight and that if you watch the calories like a hawk your weight will eventually go down.”
“The emphasis today is less on how much you eat than on what you eat and how your body reacts to it.” The doctor replies. Then he told me a story. During the last was, Dr. Robert E. Johnson contributed to our war-research program by developing a mobile nutrition laboratory and taking it to the field as part of his work on the staff of the Fatigue Laboratory.
The final test he conducted before taking charge of the Army Medical Nutrition Laboratory in Chicago was staged in Colorado in 1946. The object of the test was to determine the relationship between the amount of food a soldier eats in a day and the amount of energy he expends voluntarily.
THE FATIGUE QUESTION
There were three test groups. One group of soldiers was given 3000 calories per day, another group 4000 and a third group 5000. All the men did exactly the same work each day. Results showed that the men in the 3000-calorie group lost weight and that those in the 5000-calorie group gained weight, which was more or less to be expected. An interesting and unexpected development was this: The 5000-calorie men did not gain as much weight as the 3000-calorie men lost. The report sheets revealed the reason. Observers had noted that the 3000-calorie soldiers did as little work as they could get away with and then moped about their barracks listlessly in their spare time. The soldiers who at at the rate of 5000 calories a day worked hard and effectively and had so much energy left over that they voluntarily played baseball and other games when they were off duty. They did not put on weight at the rate which might have been expected simply because their ampler diet gave them enough bounce to “burn up” in extra activity a considerable share of the extra calories.
“Instead of being listless and tired,” Doctor Pennington explained, “our Du Pont dieters, like the soldiers in that test, felt energetic and, as a result, were more active than they would have been on a low calorie regimen. But there’s another trick to our diet. I should perhaps point out to you in this connection. Fats stay in the stomach for a longer time that most foods, with the result that they give a feeling of satisfaction and defer the pangs of hunger. We call that ‘satiety value’ and we find we can count on it to keep the average person on our diet from taking on many calories in excess of the daily 3000 which the basic diet supplies. But what I said still goes; you can eat as much meat as your appetite dictates just as long as you keep the lean-fat ratio at the required three-to-one level.”
I was impatient for the play-by-play account, so Doctor Pennington pushed the charts and other papers aside for a moment and handed me a copy of the instructions he gave his twenty dieters.
“The first step,” he said, “is to consult your physician. A number of internists in private practice have for some years been putting patients, busy executives mostly, on diets very like the one we use.
“Your doctor will tell you if you should reduce. He knows better than anyone else whether you are really overweight and he can tell how much you can safely lose. He can warn you, too, if you are one of those rare people whose overweight comes from non-dietary causes or who have a disease condition which would make any factor in this diet inadvisable.
Once on the diet, you will find each meal-breakfast, lunch and dinner-consists of two courses.
THE DIET
The first course of each meal is: One-half pound or more of fresh meat with the fat. You can eat as much as you want. The proper proportion is three parts lean to one part fat. Most of the meat you buy is not fat enough, so it is best to get extra beef-kidney fat and fry it to make up the proper proportion. Good meats are roast beef, steak, roast lamb, lamb chops, stew meat, fresh pork roast and pork chops. Hamburger with added fat is all right if the meat is freshly ground just before it is cooked. Avoid smoked or canned meats, sausages and salted butter. Fresh fish (not smoked or canned) may be substituted upon occasion.
The second course of each meal is: An ordinary portion of any one of the following-white potatoes (boiled, baked or fried), sweet potatoes, boiled rice, grapefruit, grapes, melon, banana or pear, raspberries or blueberries. This part of the diet is strictly limited. No second helpings.
You must not: Use the least particle of salt; nor use flour or sugar.
You must: Drink six glasses of water every day before five o’clock; each day drink the juice of half a lemon in a glass of water; regulate weight completely to normal before adding other foods (otherwise you will quickly regain the weight you have lost).
You may: Have a cup of black coffee or clear tea with each meal; season the meat with black pepper before it is cooked or use paprika, celery seed, lemon, chopped parsley, celery tops or other flavoring which does not contain salt.
You should: Have your doctor check you at intervals; allow time for a thirty-minute walk before breakfast and, as far as practical considerations permit, go to bed at a regular hour and get exactly eight hours’ sleep. Metabolism goes into low gear during sleep; an extra half hour in bed definitely cuts down on weight loss, whereas the half-hour morning walk shifts metabolism into high and works up appetite for a hearty breakfast. It is not necessary to walk fast; walking the full thirty minutes regularly is what matters.
You needn’t: Count calories or stop eating while you are still hungry, or take any strenuous exercise.
“You’ve already been told the story in terms of pounds lost, of how the diet worked out in our test,” said Doctor Pennington. “Now let’s take a look at the effects the regimen had on some of the people in this group who suffered from high blood pressure.”
THE BLOOD-PRESSURE GROUP
He sorted out from the papers strewn over his desk half a dozen sheets of graph paper filled with lines and notations. A solid line stood for the patient’s weight on a given date, while a dotted line recorded his blood pressure at that same time. The two lines told a thrilling and unmistakable story. As they passed vertical divisions representing weeks and months, the dotted lines dipped almost precisely parallel to each dip in the solid lines. Certainly, as Doctor Gehrmann had suggested earlier, overweight and high blood pressure seemed to be Siamese twins. Most gratifyingly, on each sheet both lines progressed at a beautiful slant from the upper left quadrant of the sheet to a point near the lower right-hand corner.
“You see,” explained Doctor Pennington, “fat people get fat all through as well as over. When a body takes in more food that it uses for energy and for the repair of tissues, a portion of the excess, or “unburned,” food is stored as fat in the lining of the blood vessels. Calcium, normally and properly present in the body, impregnates these fatty deposits in the blood-vessel linings and the heart has to pump harder to push blood through the partially clogged vessels. Life expectancy, as well as looks, is bound up in an effective weight-control program.”
Practicability, too, was taken into consideration by Du Pont in planning the diet. Meat can be purchased or ordered everywhere. The “second course” foods were selected with both the traveler and the stay-at-home in mind. A dieter who orders his meal in a restaurant or club can usually get a baked potato (no salt there unless he adds it himself); or, if baked potatoes are not on the menu, he can always ask to have his potatoes fried but not salted. As a change from potatoes, that same restaurant diner can ask for fruit or melon, chosen according to the time of year. A guest at a meal in the home of a friend can minimize the bother by asking that his chops or steak be broiled without salt and that he be given, perhaps, half a grapefruit or a banana. At home, the dieter can have salt-free boiled potatoes, sweet potatoes or rice. The new quick-cooking rice makes preparing a special portion only a few moments’ work for the cook.

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Odille
Terranora, northern NSW, Australia
Fem 53, 170 cms - doing Atkins
SW 131 / CW 103 / GW 64 (kgs)
SW 288.5 / CW 227 / GW 140(lbs)
BP-Nov05 176/96; Dec 05 154/84; Jan 06 122/80; Mar 06 110/76