StrongLife Weight Loss Program Details

Any reduced-calorie diet will result in weight loss and most popular programs base their protocols on a “balanced diet”. If we take the standard USDA recommendations of approximately:

• 60% of calories from “good carbohydrates”
• 25% from protein
• 15% from “healthy fats”

And, reduce the amounts in half (but keep the ratio of macronutrients the same), we will have a “balanced diet” with 1/2 the calories… and people will lose weight. However, there are a several problems with this seemingly logical approach.

First, if we continue to replenish some of the glycogen stores every day with carbohydrates (from 60% “healthy carbs”) our fat burning will stop until the glycogen gained from consuming those carbohydrates have been depleted. This will lead to an unpredictable weight loss.

Second, and more importantly, decreasing the minimal daily requirements of protein (from 25% to 12.5% in the example above) will most certainly lead to muscle loss.

As blood sugar drops (from the reduced-calorie intake) the body will burn fat but will also break down muscle, via a process called gluconeogenesis, as a way to maintain proper glucose levels in the body. When we lose muscle our metabolism actually slows down! Now, when these folks have achieved their goal weight, what is the predictable result? They go back to eating “normal size” meals but their metabolism is slower than before they started, they regain the weight, and often times end up heavier than when they started the diet!

The Physician Supervised Weight Loss Program we have implemented with our patients here at STRONGLIFE takes a different approach – for a relatively short time we will utilize an “unbalanced diet”. We keep the minimum daily protein requirement the same (roughly ½ your lean body weight in grams of protein) and build the diet around this. Understand, this is not a “HIGH PROTEIN DIET”. We provide only the minimum amount of protein required to spare muscle. Loss of muscle mass is totally unacceptable to us during a diet.

Next, if we want to lose fat it is logical that we would eliminate most fats from the diet (except for giving optimal amounts of essential fatty acids). Our approach to carbohydrate intake is to allow dieters approximately 25-35 grams per day. This minimal amount of carbohydrate does not allow the body to replenish glycogen stores in your liver or muscles, which forces the body to stay in the “fat-burning mode” 24-hours a day and is therefore called a “ketogenic diet”.

While under our supervision, our dieters will consume 4 cups of non-starchy vegetables and 2 green salads daily. This provides necessary fiber to prevent constipation. Our dieters also are prescribed a multi-vitamin, calcium, magnesium, potassium and sea salt to ensure proper electrolyte balance. We only supplement what they would normally be acquiring from the food groups that we are temporarily removing from the diet (i.e. dairy, fruits and grains).while the dieter is in ketosis.

Type I diabetics – we have also developed an “Alternative Protocol” which is suitable for Type I diabetics. This program is similar to the ketogenic diet except that we give a dairy, fruit and grain serving every day to prevent the patient from going into a state of ketosis. Because Type I Diabetics do not produce insulin, a risk of ketoacidosis exists and these patients should never be placed on a ketogenic diet. They will still experience approximately the same rate of weight loss as the ketogenic dieters and commonly find they can substantially decrease their insulin requirements.