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Today we had a class on low fat eating after the cardiac rehab exercises. Unbelievable. You can guess what the prescription is for food intake for cardiac patients. No more than thirty per cent fat. Ten percent fat should be saturated. Your cholesterol number should be under 200. Eat tub margarine instead of butter. Use olive oil and other polyunsaturates but not too much. Take the skin off the chicken. Bake or roast meat instead of frying. Low fat milk and cheese. Round out the meals with some vegetables.

The people in the group were really interested in eating a good diet and asked a lot of questions. However, after class one woman said she didn't understand why she was not losing weight because she was doing everything right--skin off the chicken, grass fed beef, low fat milk and cheese. I said--All your lipid numbers will be lower and you will lose weight if you cut out meat and dairy. She looked at me like I just arrived from Mars. She said there was no way she was going to cut out meat.

The instructors know darn well their advice is not going to make a difference. Ours kept saying--I know you won't do it if I tell you to cut these things out all together. (Except for some reason they insist you should eat heart healthy fats--up to 30%). I do not know why they don't tell people right out that they won't get well on the AHA diet. At least everyone will have correct information. This way, most think they really are being diligent by taking the skin off chicken and eating low fat milk.

Didi

Hi didi:

OMG how discouraging to sit through that class, knowing that no one there is really helped by doing so. I am glad that your doing it right and still try to encourage others. I've gotten the Martian look too I can empathize on that.

I don't have cardiac issues but can relate some to what you experienced, as I took a Pre-diabetes class and did the required carb counting method to control that disease. I was never on drugs, but gained weight on their diet - as diabetes and weight gain are completely linked - I was so discouraged. Here I have lost the pre diabetes and am loosing the weight too.

I feel like sitting in on that class again and asking the questions Dr. McDougall suggests - like will that actually reverse my condition with this diet? What percentage of people really control their condition doing this or is there something else I can do that really works? Or - what about plant -based diets, are they more effective then this one?

Ugh, Didi, what a disappointment. More and more I have been considering training nutritionally - perhaps the Cornell course with T.C. Campbell- and offering nutrition classes at local YMCAs or churches/temples.

you know, a friend of mine just became a nurse practitioner, and she has been really excited to hear all I've learned, and read every book I sent her way. She educates her patients in diet as well, and has been implementing some plant-based recommendations. I hope her example is a trend that continues to grow and expand. in the emantime, things are a joke.

I was talking to one of the women in my class today. She is very thin and was never fat but she has recently had a triple by pass. She said she has been cooking healthy meals--fish and chicken--for quite a while since her husband had his FIRST by pass. He had his second a couple of years before she had her by pass.

A couple of people in the class have had two by pass surgeries and a couple of people had stents put in after by pass. I cannot believe this is just common to the people in my class and the thousands who have had these surgeries followed by second surgeries and stent followed by stent should give a clue to the highly educated and experienced medical personnel that something is not right.

All seem to have a lot of faith in their doctors. Unless someone is actively looking for alternatives and is beginning to question his or her prescribed diet, I doubt very much that they would give a plant based diet a chance. What they want is a way to be healthy without changing their lifestyle. Which reminds me of a friend of mine who was nursing her baby and got a breast infection which turned into an abscess. My friend insisted on a schedule in which she nursed every four hours. Definitely the wrong kind of schedule for nursing. The counselors from the nursing mother's group, some of whom were nurses and all of whom had years of breastfeeding experience explained that the solution to curing the infection and abscess was to nurse as frequently as possible to keep the breast as empty as possible. My friend insisted on finding a way to cure the infection and abscess (she was also on antibiotics) while continuing the four hour schedule.

I do not understand such thought processes. Why would someone want to suffer and do himself harm rather than change his way of doing things which obviously is not working?

Didi

Didi, it's so sad. Thank goodness you are sticking to this way of eating now.

Have you thought about bringing a copy of Dr. Esselstyn's book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease to one of your meetings to lend to the leaders or to start a conversation among the other participants? It might be very provocative.

I had the same experience. Sometime after completing the program (and taking a job with the Health Network), I was able to have a conversation with the instructors. It simply came down to they are restricted to offering advice that follows the standard protocol. Bottom line the Cardiologists and RD's set the rules and as a group have not adopted plant based.

It appears that 'plant based' is considered radical and many don't believe that patients will follow the program. My one Doc. appears to view it as some sort of fringe group that reports some good results, but he could never 'do it'. A RD that I sometimes speak with has little understanding of Plant Based and "would miss my chicken too much." Until "Main Stream Medicine" endorses "Plant Based" and teaches it to want-a-be RD and MD/DO's little will change.

Makes a person appreciate Dr. McDougall and his small but brave band of real Doctors (and Jeff) much more.

Two of my instructors turned out to only eat Plant Based and want to teach others. It is not allowed.

I can totally believe what is reported here. I just completed the Dr Campbell/ ecornell certificate program on plant based nutrition and honestly loved it. I feel very equipped to stare anyone down now and tell them why I eat this way! And it keeps happening at the fitness center where I go to use the pool a lot, and honestly it is amazing how this is the case by far. Everyone of the older ladies and one of the water instructors too, who have watched my progress and body transformation has exclaimed to me, how much I have lost, and that they could never give up their meat and diary, because they are diabetic. There is just so much diabetes out in this world. A real shame when it can be preventable by a plant based diet. One lady recently could not get over how I have lost 50 lbs by eating potatoes!! She exclaimed to me, you eat potatoes? and went on to say, as a diabetic, she doesn't eat any potatoes, or even corn.... it is so useless to combat such a thing. The doctors in the summit health group we have here, dare not stray from their protocols and so luckily we can all follow the few plant based doctors, like Dr John McDougall and Dr Esselstyn, Dr Barnard, to name a few.
I will never go back to eating dead animal carcasses and any diary ever!! Never felt better in my life, except perhaps in basic training in the Womens' Army Corps!!

People with a history of diabetes in their family could take a lesson from the Pima.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.c ... dians-3258

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/8/1866.full