Life At Slow-Mo

Book Title	The Full Diet: The Revolutionary New Way to Achieve Lasting Weight Loss
Author	Dr. Saira Hameed
Publisher	Michael Joseph – Penguin Random House UK
Published	2022
Pages	352
Where to Buy	Amazon Bookdepository (Free Shipping Anywhere) Periplus (for Indonesian buyers)

• This book is a MUST read for everyone looking to lose weight.
• If you are fighting Type 2 Diabetes, this book can help you, too.

I spotted this book while making a quick peruse at the airport bookstore. Initially, I was looking for a novel to read during the 2.5-hour flight between Jakarta and Labuan Bajo, our vacation destination. As someone who had gone through several cycles of weight loss and weight gain, the “lasting weight loss” title caught my attention.

If you are following my posts about my intermittent fasting journey, you would note that I have been successful in losing significant weight in the past 7 months. This is not special. I have lost weight 4 times before and gained it back again. In 2020, during the first 6 months of the pandemic, I gained 20 kilograms (3 stone 2 lb, or 44 lbs) easily. The problem for me is not about losing weight. It's about staying at my desired weight. It's about why I am so prone to weight gain.

I have read several weight-loss-related books. I found that the ones written by doctors and scientists are the most difficult (in other words, boring) to read. With the good intention of proving their arguments, they quote research in scientific journals almost word for word with the technical terms intact. But thankfully that is not the case with Dr. Hameed’s work.

The book explains The Full Diet. It is a clinical research program on weight loss that is offered to patients at The Imperial Weight Centre. What you read in each of 14 the chapters of the book is what the patients are learning in each of the fortnightly sessions they attend at the clinic.

My takeaways from this book are:

• Any sugar consumption in any form will release insulin, regardless of whether you eat one piece of crisp or a plate full. When insulin is in your bloodstream, its only mission is to find sugar and process it into fat for storage. If most of what you eat are carbs and you don’t burn enough calories, you’re screwed. You may think, “Sweet! I can eat a triple-cheese burger and fries three times a day and exercise hard.” The plot twist is that there is no way you can out-exercise, outrun, nor can you out-anything a bad diet.
• Eating often, especially when your food mostly contains sugar, will cause insulin to always be present in your bloodstream, and your body will always be in fat-storing mode. That is it is important to control the level of insulin your body produces.
• Intermittent fasting is effective for weight loss not only because it promotes the use of body fat as energy. During fasting, insulin production stops because the body takes in no sugar, and along with that fat making process slows down as well. This is a natural two-pronged approach to burning stored fat and reducing new fat.
• Exercising helps to drive insulin levels further down because it causes muscles to burn sugar into energy without the help of insulin.
• Fiber makes you feel full because it feeds the right kind of bacteria and in turn maintains good gut flora, which your digestive system needs to maintain healthy full-and-hunger communication with your brain.
• Feeding your body with real food that is made with few ingredients, in contrast to ultra-processed food that contains chemical additives, will help body process food efficiently. Your body will produce fewer fat cells and you will feel more energized after a meal.

I realized that the reason I was so prone to weight gain is that I used to both eat wrong and eat the wrong stuff. 

I used to eat at any time I would feel like it. I ate when I was hungry, I ate when I saw delicious food, and I ate when I needed a mood booster. Other than causing me to take in more calories than I needed, obviously, the continuous eating prompted my body to keep producing insulin. I ended up storing fat instead of burning them, even when I ran 5 km 4 times a week. 

I ate (and drink) a lot of carbs: rice, bread, cakes, and also beer and liquor. I ate a lot of ultraprocessed food (UPF) like potato chips, corn chips, cookies, etc. Even though I was keeping an eye on the calories, I failed to see the chemical ingredients they contained that wreak havoc on my digestive system.

From now on, I should eat and drink fewer carbs, and I should not eat UPF. I should have a fasting window each day to allow my body to stop producing insulin and stop storing fat. I should also eat more fiber to rid my gut of bad bacteria and invite more good bacteria to settle in. I should ramp up my exercise to burn any sugar, and therefore drive insulin level further down. 

After explaining the scientific concepts behind the diet, each chapter provides you with practical choices you can start doing to begin weight loss and keep it. They help you make better food choices. Better choices will become better habits. Better habits will make you healthier and lean for the rest of your life.

The 352 pages may seem daunting. Don’t worry. The book is so easy to read, I devoured 130 pages during my flights, and finish the rest of the main chapters in two sittings at home. It also contains 67 pages of recipes if you want to prepare your own real food at home. If you love the idea of preparing food but time is at a premium for you, you can find two dozens of speedy food ideas that you can make on the fly.

This book indeed contains the Full Diet. You can read it through to absorb information first, or you can follow each chapter the way the patients at the Imperial Weight Centre do the program. Dedicate one day every two weeks to do your own program. In that one day, read one chapter, and make the choices it proposes to you. Two weeks later, read the next chapter and do it. And so on.

This book indeed contains the Full Diet. You can read it through to absorb information first, or you can follow each chapter the way the patients at the Imperial Weight Centre do the program. Dedicate one day every two weeks to do your own program. In that one day, read one chapter, and make the choices it proposes to you. Two weeks later, read the next chapter and do it. And so on.

You don’t even need to count calories. Just make the right choices, and you will see results.