Bariatric Doctor Paul DeLeeuw Explains How to Lose Weight Without Really Trying

Dr. Paul DeLeeuw has been working as a Bariatrician, or weight loss doctor, since 2008. He has worked with Bariatric Physicians Inc. and Medi Weightloss Clinics throughout Central and Southern Florida during his second career in Bariatrics. Before moving into the science of weight loss, Dr. DeLeeuw enjoyed a 30-year career as a top anesthesiologist in Miami. He was forced to retire from anesthesia due to a shoulder injury.

After spending more than a decade immersed in Bariatrics, Dr. Paul DeLeeuw is revealing his most pertinent findings when it comes to losing weight. Working for a national chain of weight loss clinics has given him insights into the most-recommended weight loss methods, but ultimately, no two experts agree on the single most effective method. In fact, the same system can be life-changing for one individual, and do nothing for a similar person.

Basic Guidelines for Weight Loss

Nearly every diet reduces calorie intake in one way or another, but it’s up to each person to determine what will work best for them. There are some basic guidelines surrounding dieting that should be respected as you sort through the specifics of what works for you:

A diet is useless if you find it hard to stick to.

Intermittent fasting can work wonders for people who have no appetite in the morning, but if you feel dizzy, sick, or cranky without breakfast, this will not be a good fit for you.

Proscriptive diets, like ones that eliminate all carbs or all fats, are much harder to maintain in the long term than moderate diets that seek to create balance.

Knowing your body and your needs is just as important as an effective diet; otherwise, you will find yourself deviating from the plan out of necessity.

What you do today may not affect your weight for weeks.

It is very possible to diet strictly for two weeks and see no change in your weight. You can also overeat for two weeks and see little change in your weight. Weight change happens slowly, over many weeks. This causes many people to become disillusioned and abandon perfectly good diets because the results are slow-coming. Much like steering an ocean liner, the time scale is much longer than you expect it to be.

Humans have built-in restraints to eating.

As humans, we require protein, but the majority of us don’t get enough protein in our diet. The amino acids that makeup proteins are called essential for a reason, but we have a limit to how much protein we can ingest. The average person could never consume three steaks in a row. The same is true for fat; several fats are essential, but pure fat is difficult to even swallow.

But another truth is that we have no internal limits on carbs. Humans can be stuffed to the gills and will still ingest more carbs, with no limit. This is why restaurants can offer dessert menus after everyone has finished with their meals, and still successfully sell desserts. How full you feel is no measure of your appetite for sweets.

You have no idea what you eat.

You may think that you have a handle on what you consume, but you don’t. One of the most effective ways to spur weight loss is to keep a food journal. You can eat whatever you’d like, but you must write it down immediately afterward. Very few people make it past one or two weeks with the journal; those who continue on find that it modifies what they eat, and significant weight is lost.

It’s okay to have “cheat days.”

Scientists have studied weight loss for decades, and one of their biggest mysteries is those people who stick to a strict diet only to plateau after their initial weight loss. This is possible because their bodies go into starvation mode and hold onto every gram of fat possible, and it is actually very common. Most diets that fail, do so because they induce starvation metabolism.

You can beat this by incorporating cheat days. Following a six-day diet instead of a seven-day diet (one day for “cheat” foods) always results in more weight loss as well as feeling more satisfied than those who feel that they are starving.

Exercise is not necessary, or sometimes even helpful, in weight loss.

This sounds incredibly counterintuitive, since moving your muscles burns calories. Common sense says that walking a couple of miles burns calories; you can then eat that number of calories and not gain weight. And yet that’s not true! Researchers do not fully understand exactly why, but the total daily calories burned by active and inactive people are just not that different.

If you build muscle, that muscle eats up energy even when you are not exercising. The Body Mass Index, or BMI, is calculated through your weight and height, and a BMI of over 30 indicates that you are overweight – or does it? Using European numbers, square the number of your height and divide it by your weight in order to calculate your BMI. If you are made up of solid muscle, your BMI will still indicate that you are obese. But muscle is important! Rather than rely on BMI, you can use a specialized scale that sends a current through your feet to measure what percentage of your weight is fat.

The Best Way to Diet

What Dr. Paul DeLeeuw has learned after more than 14 years as a weight loss doctor, is that the most painless way to diet is to not diet at all. Instead, keep a food journal that you update constantly. Never leave home without this journal. You will learn why you are overweight, and you will learn your eating patterns. Once you know your eating patterns, you can shift to a diet that follows your natural eating habits the most closely. Oftentimes, this becomes obvious to the person keeping the journal, even without a doctor’s intervention.

You can contact Dr. Paul DeLeeuw at P.O. Box 1764, New Britain, CT 06050.