Here's how you can get rid of fat while stuffing yourself full of food at the same time!

Eggs have gotten a bad rap from the anti-egg crowd in recent years. I'd be a rich person if I had a nickel every time I heard someone spout anti-egg propaganda that eating eggs raises your serum cholesterol level. This diet shows how you can lose fat and lower your cholesterol at the same time. Actually, cholesterol is a type of fat and with this diet you will lose that kind of fat as well as regular fat.

HOW IT WORKS

The Egg Diet is a low carbohydrate diet that works by nutritional fasting. Nutritional fasting is where you cease eating certain, but not all, nutrients. In this diet, the only nutrients that we cannot consume are carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are the fuel for fat cells. By eating unlimited quantities of eggs, steak, cheese, and other foods that are low or void of carbohydrates, we can starve ourselves of fat fuel.

Normally, when you eat carbohydrates, they are reduced to a simple sugar called glucose. In addition to your fat cells, all the other cells in your body also burn glucose. Excess glucose that is not used by the other cells is converted to fat and stored in the fat cells. When you don't eat enough carbohydrates to keep all your normal non-fat cells happy, your body has no choice but to start pulling from its fat reserves and converting the fat back into glucose. The important thing to remember is that this happens even if you have been stuffing yourself full of steak, cheese and eggs. Knowing this, we can lose fat while eating all we want of low carbohydrate foods.

Normally, a person's diet is extremely high in carbohydrates (sugars and starches) and other nutrients. We more or less consume a balanced diet every day consisting of the four basic food groups - meat, milk, bread, and fruits and vegetables. While a balanced meal is a very nutritious meal, it is not acceptable for dieting. It is a long standing joke that pizza is a balanced meal. It contains all four food groups - the crust (bread), pepperoni (meat), cheese (milk), and tomato sauce (vegetable). However, if you were to just eat pizza all the time, your waist would swell up like a water balloon in no time at all. The part of the pizza that makes you fat is the crust. There is no other ingredient that does this.

WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME

Because we are so used to eating carbohydrates by the shovel full, most of us are addicted to them. As such, you can expect to go through carbohydrate withdrawal when you first start this diet. Actually, the term addiction and withdrawal probably isn't the correct term to describe it, but you can pretty much plan on getting weak or sick when you first start the diet. This sickness usually manifests itself as simple weakness. Some people get a little nausea and others may get headaches. It usually only lasts for a day or two. If it becomes unbarable, you can always pop in a lifesaver candy to spread it out over several more days. What is actually happening during this period is that your fat cells are shifting gears from "Forward" to "Reverse".

Knowing this, you shouldn't get too worried if you get a little sick when you first start this diet. However, as with all diets, you should consiult with your doctor before starting it to see if it is OK for you. While you are there, have the doctor test your cholesterol level. Then, after you have been on the diet for a while, go back and have it tested again and compare the results. For many people, their cholesterol will be lower after they have been on the diet a while. This flies in the face of all the anti-egg people who say that eggs are bad for your cholesterol level. I say that the proof is in the pudding.

Sugars are in the carbohydrate family - and so are starchy foods like bread, flour, pasta and potatoes. While sugars are the fastest substances that your digestive system can process into Glucose, starches are the next fastest. So fast in fact, that to your digestive system, there isn’t much difference. It takes only a few minutes to process certain starches, like bread for example, into Glucose.

Fats, on the other hand, are very complex molecules. Your digestive system has to really work hard to process fat into Glucose. Consequently, a lot of unprocessed fat simply passes on through and never gets converted. Another important thing to understand is that fat doesn’t get absorbed directly into the body like a lot of people seem to think. The fat in your body had to have once been Glucose, and through the magic of the pancreas and other organs, got converted into body fat.

Now, knowing this, what kind of food do you want to eat if you are trying to loose fat? Certainly not carbohydrates. With all those easy Glucose molecules coming in from your digestive system, there is certainly no reason for your body to try to burn any stored fat. Of course, you could simply cut way back on the amount of carbohydrates to practically nothing, but that would mean going hungry if you weren’tallowed to eat anything else. In fact, that is exactly how mainstream diets all work - starvation.

When in doubt about how much carbohydrates are in a particular food, you can check the “Nutrition Facts” label on the product. You'll lose fat if you stay away from carbohydrates alone, but you'll lose even more if you also try to avoid fat as well. Always buy "lowfat" products whenever their carbohydrate content is equal to or less than the standard version. Many "fat-free" products actually contain more carbohydrates.

One drawback is the expense. While you don’t have to buy special foods from anybody, the quantity of meat that you must eat makes your grocery bill a lot higher than normal. The reason why this is called the Egg Diet is because eggs are allowed in unlimited quantities and don’t cost much. A typical breakfast consists of 2 - 4 fried eggs and a few strips of bacon. (Notice that there are no grits, oatmeal, jelly, orange juice, or toast on that list.)

Another thing to watch out for is meal neglect. For some reason, people who are on this diet become less interested in food and sometimes forget to eat. It sounds silly, but this diet definitely changes your body chemistry somewhat and meal neglect has been observed in more than a few people. It is important to eat at least three meals a day whether you are hungry or not. You should also make sure that you are getting plenty of fluids. Water is the best thing. Milk is acceptable in a pinch.

Soda pop is totally off limits - even diet soda. The reason for this is because diet soda contains an artificial sweetener called aspartame. The Atkins Research Center has discovered that aspartame inhibits your body from converting stored fat into glucose. If you absolutely have to have something sweet to drink, get Diet Rite. Diet Rite is a soft drink that comes in many different flavors including cola and orange. It does not contain any aspartame and is sweetened with Splenda instead. You can also mix unsweetened Kool-Aid packets with Saccharin based artificial sweeteners. Saccharin and Spelnda are both safe for the Egg Diet. Also, don’t let the government cancer warning on the front of every Saccharin based sweetener fool you. The warning was put there by congress in the mid 1970’s and not by the FDA. It is there for political reasons and not medical ones. It is a tribute to the corruptness of the lawmakers of the 1970’s. Just disregard it. Saccharin has been in use for over a hundred years and nobody has ever gotten cancer from it yet.

Here are a few loose ends about the Egg Diet that you may be wondering about:

Cholesterol: Many of you are probably wondering how the (Atkins) Egg Diet affects your cholesterol levels when you are allowed to eat large quantities of fat with no remorse. Well it seems that both carbohydrates and saturated fats are needed to produce cholesterol. Eliminate one of the ingredients, and you don’t have what it takes to make the stuff.

Remember that your body doesn’t absorb fat and cholesterol directly, it has to be broken down by the digestive system first and then remanufactured by the liver using the available raw ingredients. Studies have shown that low carbohydrate diets dramatically reduce the triglyceride levels.

While this isn’t proof that the Egg Diet is good for everyone, it certainly is proof that it is good for me. If you plan to start on the egg diet, have your doctor check your cholesterol levels before and after. I would be interested in seeing if other people have the same positive experience that I did.

Ketones: Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a cheap and easy medical test to see what foods help YOU lose fat and what ones don’t? Of course, there is always the bathroom scale, but a scale can’t tell the difference between water weight and fat weight. Well, lucky for us, there is a cheap medial test you can do right in your own bathroom. It is a called Ketone test.

When your body needs glucose and isn’t getting enough from your digestive system, it will convert stored body fat into glucose. Ketones are chemical waste byproducts of this fat-to-glucose conversion. Although not scientifically correct, you can think of Ketones as being “Liquid Exhaust Fumes from Burning Fat”. These Ketones are picked up by the kidneys and expelled in the urine. The more Ketones that are present in the urine, the more fat you have lost.

If you go to the drug store, you can ask the pharmacist for a box of Ketone Test Strips. These little guys are thin strips of paper with a ketone indicator on the end. I just bought a bottle of 50 for about $10. You don’t have to use them every day, only when you are curious about the amount of fat you have lost. Essentially what you do is hold the business end of test strip in your urine stream and watch it change color. The box comes with a color chart on it so that you can match it up.

If you want to increase your fat loss rate, ketosis strips are a must. In my case, they always show a considerable increase in fat loss when I do moderate amounts of exercise.

Water: Adequate water intake is very important for successful fat loss. If you don’t drink enough water, you will probably either die or not lose any fat at the very least. If you work outside, you should be drinking about a gallon a day. For those that work inside, a half gallon should be sufficient. Of course, more is always better when it comes to water.

Unless you are under orders from your doctor, you should also avoid taking any kind of “water pills”. These pills cause your body to expel unnatural amounts of water. Most diet experts consider these pills as being somewhat dangerous.

Three Meals Daily: One side effect of this diet is the lack of interest in eating. So therefore, you may find yourself wanting to skip several meals in a row. When that happens, you should resist the temptation to skip a meal and eat anyway. Part of the way that the Egg Diet works is by keeping things regular. Skipping a meal actually hurts more than it helps.

Bad Press: For reasons unknown to me, the Atkins Diet and the Egg Diet have been attacked by the press and dieticians. They stress the diets bad points as if to imply that this is all you can expect from it. For example, I saw a report on TV the other day about how some people were getting sick with the Atkins diet. Well of course they are, getting sick for the first few days is a normal part of the diet! However, I didn’t hear them telling everyone about that.

Before Copernicus, the common scientific belief was that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything else, including the sun, revolved around the Earth. When Copernicus came out and said that the sun was the true center of the solar system and that the Earth revolved around it, there was outrage. Copernicus was ridiculed by the so called “experts” of the day. Of course, today we know that Copernicus was right and the “experts” were wrong.

The same thing is happening right now with “expert” dieticians and the Egg Diet. These people have gone to college to become “expert” dieticians. They have devoted most of their lives toward studying diets. They have always been taught that fat in the diet is bad. Now here comes the Egg diet which says that all of what they have learned about fat in the diet isn’t entirely accurate. Lower fat intake will produce faster results on the Egg Diet, but you should not do this by eating more carbohydrates.

Speaking for myself, the Egg Diet has markedly improved my overall health, caused me to lose fat (about 20 pounds so far), and considerably improved my blood chemistry. The “experts” can say what they want. I am sticking to the Egg Diet for now.