PUTTING THE CARBOHYDRATE ADDICT’S DIET TO WORK: THE EX-SMOKER’S EXTRA POUNDS (MAC’S STORY)

We all know ex-smokers who tossed out the butts and immediately thereafter started taking on pounds. Arnold McD. (known to all as “Mac”‘ came to us with exactly that story to tell.

He’d quit smoking three months earlier at his doctor’s insistence. In the intervening weeks, he had gained about a dozen pounds. Added to the “six or seven pounds I didn’t need in the first place, that meant Mac was carrying around twenty pounds he wanted to be rid of.

At forty-four, Mac bad reached the age when many of us start to examine our habits to determine how they impact on our health and longevity. Mac’s doctor had. too. and as well as telling him to abandon the cigarettes, he had told him it would be necessary for him to drop some weight.

Mac had tried by himself. “I had heard that some people gained weight after they stopped smoking, but 1 didn’t think it was anything that I couldn’t handle. Now I’m finding it isn’t so easy.”

Oddly, he reported, “I don’t think that I’m eating that much more. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s true.”

That’s why he came to see us.

He tested in the? moderate addiction range, so he appeared a good candidate for the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet. We explained the diet to him and also talked about research on post-smoking physical changes, which often result in increases in the body’s tendency to hold on to or gain weight.

Mac said that lie didn’t quite1 grasp file bio logical underpinnings’, but he was willing to give the diet a try.

He may not have been a scientist, but Mac trusted that we knew what we were” doing. The first week he lost four pounds. We needed to slow down his weight loss, to bring it closer to the ideal of 1 percent of body weight per week. We advised him to increase his intake of low-carbohydrate foods at breakfast and at lunch. It worked, and several visits later his weight-loss rate was down to two pounds per week.

Mac lost his twenty pounds, then decided to “lose a few more while I’m at it.” At twenty-five pounds lighter, his weight leveled off. “I could probably lose more if I cut down on my Low-Carbohydrate Meals, but I don’t need to. I’m five- pounds thinner than 1 planned, 1 haven’t smoked in almost a year, and 1 look better than 1 did at eighteen.”

About three years after his first visit, Mac was in the neighborhood and stopped by to see us. His weight was holding constant, and he felt good about himself. He was even running stop-smoking groups for the organization that had helped him to stop in the first place.