In response to your numerous requests on Ideal Protein Weigh Loss Program, here are the basics:

Phase I of the diet is for the entire time you want to lose weight to your goal. Women typically lose 3-5 lbs per week and men 5-7 lbs per week. Following the diet strictly is important for this to occur. One of the biggest causes of weight gain is increased insulin secretion. This is normally a problem with the North American Diet that is high in refined carbohydrates and a stressful lifestyle. This leads to higher insulin levels and more hypoglycemia and cravings for more carbohydrates and fat storage. The cycle of low and high blood sugar repeats itself many times during a day. This is how metabolic syndrome develops. This is a common medical problem that has been explained in previous blogs where blood pressure and cholesterol increases along with weight gain and insulin resistance. Heart disease and diabetes develop as a result of this. It is this principle that the Ideal Protein Weight Loss Program works.

Just to break the news to you up front, Phase I of this program (where all of the weight loss occurs), involves zero alcohol, fruit, dairy, sugar, bead, pasta, potatoes, corn, carrots or peas. Yes I said zero alchohol - just for the weight loss phase, sorry. This normally turns 1/2 of the people away. It doesn’t mean you can never have these things again, just not while you are losing the weight. When you consider a few months of work can prevent diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and extend your life, it seems like more of a possibility. In the first few days of the program you will deplete your body’s normal immediate source of energy - glycogen. At that point your body needs to decide where to go to burn fuel for energy Fat or Muscle. Because we give you a small amount of protein daily, your muscles and lean body mass are preserved and the fat is used for energy. This is a condition called ketosis. As long as you consume even a small amount of sugar, the body will have a hard time burning fat. The key is the quality of the protein. High quality protein is absorbed better than low quality protein. Ideal Protein utilizes high quality protein from farms in Germany and Ontario to give the best absorption possible.

So…in Phase I you have an Ideal protein product with breakfast, lunch and a snack in the evening. You MUST consume two cups of vegetables at lunch and supper (these can be distributed during the morning and afternoon if needed). Supper involves 8 oz of meat or fish. You can have your one coffee in the morning, no sugar and you can use skim milk or you can ad a splash of your chocolate drink). If you need more during the day you can have herbal tea (no caffeine) and you must consume 64 oz of water per day minimum. You can go online www.stonesdrugstore.com to check out the food.

For those of you who will immediately claim that this is not a healthy way to eat or live, weight loss is not a normal or healthy state. Catabolism is not something you want to continue, and fruit is not bad, neither is corn or potatoes. However if you want to lose the weight safely, quickly and effectively, these are the rules to follow.

The three things I like about this plan are: safe, rapid, motivating weight loss; loss of fat and not lean body mass, and a gradual release into a regular and healthy eating habit. Most diet plans cause you to lose both fat and lean body mass (muscle, bone, organs, water etc). If you gain weight again you gain fat. This means your percent body fat increases with this gain. We start the program with a weigh in and a measurement on the Body Composition Analyzer, which tells us your lean body weight, your percent body fat and your hydration level. We use this analyzer each week to follow your weight loss to be sure you are only losing fat and preserving muscle.

This is not a high protein diet. It gives a relatively small amount of protein to protect muscles. In fact it gives Health Canada recommended levels of daily protein. It does give lower calories than you are used to. There is an alternative plan for those that require more, but just about everyone we have on the plan is on the regular plan. The majority of people on the diet do not feel hungry. There are a few vitamin and mineral supplements needed while on this diet that must be taken and sea salt is also needed.

Once you’ve reached your weight loss goal you do 2 weeks of Phase 2 where you get your lunch back to normal. You simply have 8 oz of meat for lunch instead of the Ideal Protein food. This is followed by 2 weeks of Phase 3 where you take away the breakfast Ideal Protein food and you bring back fruit and bread to your diet. There 2 phases are key to the program because they slowly bring your insulin levels back up. Skipping these steps can result in a spike in insulin and weight gain. Phase 4 is zero Ideal Protein foods and you have been reintroduced to a normal diet. This may prove to be the toughest part of the diet since you are back on your own in your choices of what to eat. We stress that patients come back periodically to check their weight and fat percent before it gets out of hand again. We also measure your basal metabolic rate so we know what sort of calorie intake you should have.

Eating 850-900 calories a day on Phase 1 means you cannot help but lose weight. Depleting your body of glycogen means you will be in ketosis and you will be burning fat for energy. Keep in mind that alcohol prevents the enzyme system in the liver that converts fat to sugar from working and this (combined with an already low sugar availability) can cause you to pass out.

It is important to fill out the health questionnaire before starting since there are some people that may need an alternate plan or may not be able to go on the plan at all.

We have a local radio personality on this protocol, Nikki. She is encouraged to write on her blog in a brutally honest way to allow the reader to get a true feel of what the plan is like. She recently wrote on the cost of the plan, sometimes this cost of $84 per week plus supplements is a deterrent. Here’s what she had to say:

Besides being asked what I eat while on the Ideal Protein weight loss program, I’m also asked a lot about how much it costs. You can find lots of people online who say being on the program increases your grocery bill a lot. And this is a big criticism of the program since you also have to add the cost of the Ideal Protein food and supplements.

So I decided to keep track of my grocery bills to see if it was true that my grocery bills would increase and to see if the program was overly expensive or not.

This is what I have found:

Total spent on groceries since Jan. 7: $940.83 *this is for me and my daughter since it’s too much work to break down just me.
Weekly average grocery bill on Ideal Protein: $104.54
Weekly average grocery bill before Ideal Protein: $110

photo courtesy of Her Coins

Based on this, I’m not spending more on my weekly groceries, but I did buy a lot of fresh produce then so maybe that is why.

I have noticed I am not throwing out as much wasted food (rotten / spoiled.) Substantially less to be honest. Before Ideal Protein, weekly I had lettuce, fruit and other stuff I hadn’t gotten to, that was off and had to be thrown out. Over the past 9 weeks, I think I’ve only thrown out radishes that the greens rotted to. And a tomato. Literally 1. That’s insane. And good. It means more of the money I spent on those groceries went in our mouths and not in our compost.

However, my weekly food budget for before I started Ideal Protein should also reflect the amount of food we were eating out. Since I don’t have receipts for all of these, I went back to July 2015 to check out my Visa charges for this and alcohol. My mouth dropped to the floor:

$498.76 - in take out and alcohol for the month.

That is a lot of money.

When you factor that in - my weekly food total jumps from $110 to $260.

You also have to factor in the cost of Ideal Protein.

The first week is the most expensive since you have to buy all the supplements. That week runs you about $200. The other weeks are roughly $80 in food. So if I just look at the first month on Ideal Protein, that adds up to:

$440 for the 1st month - still $58 bucks less than before I was on it.

After that first month it’s about $360 - which is definitely cheaper than my previous take out habit.

Base on this - it looks like being on Ideal Protein is actually costing me less than my previous bad eating style.

Not to mention - the health benefits you get from loosing the weight are worth millions. Especailly when it comes to preventing life threatening diseases.

 

With any weight loss plan, once the plan ends, then the plan can fail. Following phase 4 is key. To help our patients we have developed a series of YouTube videos that walks you through all areas of the grocery store:

 

 

If this sounds like something you need, contact us and we can get you started!

Graham MacKenzie PhC, Stone’s Pharmasave, Baddeck, Nova Scotia