FW FEATURE
Ketogenics:
Hope for a
healthy future By Gary S. Hatrick
G
solution.
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to lose weight after disc
dition marked by a sev
she ever had in her life
discovering she had Celiac disease, a condition
severe reaction to gluten. She got on the
life. She knew she
d d h
needed a change.
She spoke to her boss Dr. Dennis
J. Courtney, M.D. and he told her she
needed to eliminate gluten, being a
determined researcher, she went to
work.
“I researched a diet that would
be best and came upon the ketogenic
diet,” Nicole said. “The Ketogenic
diet is not something typical. It’s kind
of like Atkins, but it’s more fat than
protein which is not ‘normal’ that is,
what, you normally hear for weight
loss. I said ‘you know what I’m going
to try it. If I get fatter, I get fatter.”
The diet was going to necessitate
a change in the way she eats and she
was fairly certain her family wasn’t
going to want to make such a change
and she felt she needed a support
group so she approached Dr. Courtney.
She asked him how he would
feel about doing a weight loss pro-
would support it 100 percent.
Nicole is obviously amused as
Tackett (left) and Dr. Dennis J. Courtney have developed
she tells of pitching all her research
on the ketogenic diet and how it was
good for the body and the brain to the
doctor and he said. “I already knew
all that - let’s give it a try.” It was not
likely a hard sell. Dr. Courtney supports alternative medicines
a ketogenic diet program that has helped
more than 300 people lose weight.
and prefers not to use pharmaceuticals and he believes
that we have to make a change in the way we eat as a society.
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The program is called simply, The Courtney Medical
Group Weight Loss Program.
been told our whole lives is that fat is bad for you. That’s not
the case. It’s really the glucose from the carbs and that we eat
so much processed food.”
The ketogenic diet requires eliminating
foods high in carbohydrates
and processed foods and adding fats.
You are allowed to eat meats so bacon
and hamburgers (without buns) are on
the diet. Healthy oils may be used for
cooking such as olive oil and avocado
oil and you may need to add fats as
strange as that sounds.
“Even snacking on pork rinds is
OK,” Nicole said.
and she reports that she doesn’t feel
deprived and that the biggest battle
were the hardest getting through your
head that fat is not bad because we’ve
been told forever that it’s going to clog
your arteries,” she said.
You don’t feel like your missing
out on things. You can still have a
steak and a salad you just don’t eat the
baked potato and your tastes change
as you change your diet, Nicole said.
“I don’t crave bread. When I try to
eat some bread it’s like choking down
sawdust. After two weeks the craving
went away. I don’t crave pasta. You
don’t have any cravings. Honestly, I’ve
tried every diet under the sun and this
is the only thing I’ve ever stuck to, I’m
kind of proud of myself.”
It’s not that you can never have bread or rice or pasta
ever again. The time will come when you reach your targeted
weight and you enter into a maintenance phase. “When you
get to a maintenance phase you can introduce other foods,
you just don’t eat them in abundance,” Nicole said.
While exercise is not a part of the program. It is a good
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