Basic Pursuits

People who have success doing something get a little haughty and assume if everyone did the same thing, why then they too could too could enjoy the triumph.

But with diet and exercise everyone is different. Some of us drop weight easier on a low carb diet; others on a low fat diet.

Now researchers at the Children"s Hospital Boston may have identified which is which. In brief, people who gain weight around their waste, "apple" people, are high insulin secreters and do better losing weight on low starch diet. "Pear" people, those who gain in their hips, can lose by eating either a low fat or a low starch diet.

Sugar from highly refined starchy foods like pastry and white bread rocket from the digestion track into the blood stream, producing excess sugar there. The body regulates excess blood sugar by secreting insulin, which removes the sugar from the blood and stores it as fat. Not good.

Refined flour and sugar have been available to most people for just over 100 years. This is not nearly enough time for our genetics to adapt to the excess blood sugar that refined white stuff causes. Our bodies store refined white stuff as fat.

Whether you are an apple or a pear, make a plan to remove permanently the refined white stuff from your regular eating. Neither you, nor any of the rest of us are made to handle it.

A New Diet Equation