November/December 2004 Featured Stories
Protein, Low Carb, or Love?

by Carlton Schreiner

I certainly have watched a lot of health trends come and go during the 21 years I have been a nutritionist! Before I address the current trend of high meat/low carb dieting, i.e. the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Maker's Diet, etc., I feel its time for me to speak to you "out of the box" for a moment. There are several reasons why so many heatlh trends keep coming and going in American culture. Some of the physiological reasons are already obvious while some are overlooked. However, a deeper reason that I feel is the most important to understand has to do with the widespread loss in America of the God-given intuitive relationship with the body and its nutritonal needs. The greater the loss of this intuitive power, the greater the susceptibility to erroneous health trends. The greater the loss of this power, the greater the frustration people feel with this driven society of opulent materialism that hypnotically entices people with regurgitated promises of perfect health and longevity while being virtually powerless to fulfull them. The greater the loss of this power, the greater the emptiness within people's hearts and the more people tend to turn to food to attempt to fill that emptiness.

In addition to being designed to keep us in tune with our health and nutrition needs, intuition also empowers us to receive what are known as the happiness rays of the soul. This is the comforting sunshine of Unconditional Love without which the world is....well, just take a look around you! Whatever your spiritual beliefs may be, your ability to cash in your beliefs for actual spiritual experience depends upon how much you exercise your intuition. Yes, it must be exercised. How? Meditation is the fastest way to develop your power of intuition. It will also help you to read uplifting poetry and listen to spiritually inspiring music because they are created primarily from intuition. If for just 6 weeks you daily exercise your intuition through meditation and regularly exercise your body with moderate aerobic exercise, you should begin to perceive the joyous happiness rays of the soul peaking through the clouds of indifference and offering guidance about how to feed your body more as a temple and less as a bottomless pit of food-moods and unnecessary disease. Be lovingly patient with yourself while persevering. Expect grace to help you, for it is surely there!

Now, on to the Atkins diet… All of the initial "studies" on this diet came from the Atkins company. But millions of people were so desperate to lose weight and so delighted that they could eat all the Atkins candy bars (er, I mean protein bars) meat, eggs, and dairy products they wanted to that they dove in despite the glaring absence of any independent studies. The meat, poultry, and dairy industries were singing all the way to the bank! The rapid weight loss some people experienced was understandable given they went cold turkey off all the processed flour products, refined sugars, and starchy junk they were eating. Furthermore, such a dietary change eliminated consumption of wheat and corn, two of the most common food sensitivities known for causing people to hold water weight (read "The False Fat Diet", by Elson Haas, MD). Eliminating sugar from the diet also reduces the amount of bacteria, yeast, and fungus in the body. Overgrowths of these organisms have also been shown to cause water weight (www.yeastfungus.com). When independent studies on the Atkins diet finally came out it was discovered that the weight loss after one year was virtually the same as a diet of high complex carbohydrates and lower fat and lower protein. Aside from the studies and the political spins surrounding them, there were clinical positions surfacing that were making the news. For example, the Atkins diet was banned in all hospitals in England due its dangerous side effects (constipation, headaches, ketosis, etc.) In my practice I have heard from many clients who initially felt worse on the Atkins diet and had to stop. Others reported feeling better for a year or so and then had to stop.

"The South Beach diet" followed on the heels of the Atkins diet and was less extreme in terms of high fat, high cholesterol, and high protein intake. And then "The Maker's Diet" descended upon us with yet another clever marketing angle to justify abundant flesh eating. This time the author was pronounced in the book's forward to be "on a mision from God". His theological manipulation of the teachings of Jesus and Moses brought him to the conclusion that millions of Americans wanted to hear --- that these were flesh-eating saviors. The book is not without merit but I kept getting the creepy feeling that I was going to turn a page and see a picture of Jesus and Moses with Ronald McDonald in the middle.

The most honest presentation of the facts of nutrition is still to be found among authors like John Robbins who have no health products to sell and who have no appeal to powerful special interest groups. For the lay person caught in the middle, even the clarity of such authors may not suffice and thus seeing a nutritional counselor may help. But even they can disagree! Therefore as you persevere to sort it all out, lovingly strengthen your God-given power of intuition and grace will lead you to the truth.

Carlton Schreiner is a nutritional counselor (www. HealthNaturals.com). He has just released a new book of poems and a CD that sets them to music called "Love is the Cure," details of which can be found at www.loveisthecure.com.