"We already have all the marvelous resources within our bodies, but these resources can't be utilized if we cut off the optimal foods and try to sustain our body on non-essential (carbohydrates!) energy."

There was a time when I weighed more than 320 lbs. It is impossible to pin-point exactly when I was at my heaviest; the scales just didn't go that far. This was about 4 years ago. Today I weigh just under 180 lbs! My lowest weight since I started eating the way nature intended, was 168 lbs, but then my wife complained because she didn't like me that skinny.

It is now 18 months since I reached my goal and I've kept my healthy, slim body and this is the way I'm going to stay for the rest of my life. It is not going to be hard; in fact it is going to be very simple. Why am I so confident? My confidence comes from having learned how the body regulates its weight.

It would be pure madness to return to my old way of eating, when I have discovered how to eat so as to never have to be hungry, and at the same time lose weight and stay slim. There must be a magic formula, you say. What is this secret I have discovered for natural weight control? Sorry to disappoint you. I can't reveal any secret or magical formula because there is none.

There is no magic involved in controlling body weight. My discovery is quite simply that I found the way we are supposed to eat to be able to offer our bodies optimal health while at the same time we reach and maintain a healthy body weight.

The rationale for natural weight regulation
I love food and can't stand being hungry. During the period when I was putting on weight, I was always hungry. The amazing thing is that during my weight loss I never experienced hunger. I can't stress enough how important that was to me.

About four years ago, my health hit rock-bottom. My blood pressure was through the roof; in fact, it was the highest that had ever been recorded at the hospital. To be honest, all my test results were abysmal. My heart was in distress and I was pre-diabetic. My joints were so painful I could hardly manage to put on my shirt, and my legs swelled to such proportions they wouldn't fit into my trouser legs. Even with my poor heart working overtime, it still wasn't able to keep up so circulation suffered.

Today, my teenage sons decline to compete with me in anything requiring strength and stamina. Without any training whatsoever, I've become stronger and possess more stamina than they, with their youth, can muster.

Perhaps this sounds like bragging, but to tell the honest truth, I'm healthier and more alert than any other 64-year-olds I have encountered. There isn't one of them I would want to trade places with. To have regained my health, flexibility and stamina after 20 years of living in a shell of morbid obesity; is there a better reason to eat like I was meant to?

But how does it work? Contrary to all advice; forget exercise. Why? A person who is too fat to even lift his/her feet is not capable of exercising. Forget starvation diets. Starvation is not a tenable solution. Your body will eventually turn to digesting its own muscles for sustenance; with disastrous results. I spent the main part of my weight loss period sitting on my duff. And eating until no longer hungry. When I gave my body what it asked for, it rewarded me by burning off the excess fat for energy.

A healthy body does not want to be fat. Once most of my excess body fat was gone, I started to move. Why? My body WANTED to move. Always listen to your body.

Hormonally induced weight loss
What I am mandating here is the use of a hormonally induced weight loss regimen. This regimen has nothing in common with the energy-calculated starvation diets most physicians recommend.Starvation is not an answer and never will be, for someone looking to reduce body weight and sustain the loss.

My discovery is so simple; it is the discovery of how the body's natural weight loss mechanism actually functions. There is nothing new under the sun; the father of dieting, William Banting himself, documented the same phenomenon already in 1864. Many are the pioneers who have "rediscovered" the same facts, time and time again. But, I was unaware of this when I started using my method. Naturally, this is a method that has been adapted and tweaked to my way of living, as this is the way it worked for me.

I'm not saying that it is a better method (well, perhaps I am!), but what I am saying is that it is the only method that truly worked for me. Last year my book, Lose Weight by Daring to Eat, which explains my weight loss experience was published in Sweden, and today over 10,000 people in both Sweden and Norway follow the principles in the book.

3 out of 4 persons achieve excellent results, meaning they lose weight. That, in itself, is of course wonderful & but & what is really REMARKABLE is that EVERYONE regains GOOD HEALTH. Four out of four regain their health. What a marvelous victory! And what a blot on the record of physicians and pharmaceutical companies.

The brown bear taught me a valuable lesson
My diet is very basic; basic as in the diet our hunter-gatherer forefathers ate. "Grampa forefather" serves as my role model. Grampa and the wild brown bear trusted the same survival method. With the aid of glucides and easily digested carbohydrates, the brown bear and Grampa increased and stored body fat.

This body fat ensured their survival during the long winter months in the cave.The same principle works for our present-day Swedish brown bear. He activates his body's fat storing mechanism by eating large quantities of easily digestible carbohydrates (berries). This built-up layer of excess subcutaneous fat ensures his winter survival during hibernation.

The human body triggers the fat storage mechanism with glucides and starch. Here is where present-day bears and humans differ; nowadays the human fat storage mechanism is activated the year round. The easiest way to sabotage this constant fat storage activity is to introduce artificial "winters" so we can - like the brown bear - live on stored fat. If we consume fat exclusively for our nutritional needs, our body will quickly get the hint and start burning our own fat as fuel. As the body fat melts away, the body gets ready for another summer of carbohydrate loading.

For someone carrying a lot of extra body fat, it is advisable to introduce long, artificial winters, while at the same time make the glucide/starch-rich episodes as short as possible.There it is in a nutshell, my method; a hormonally induced weight-loss regimen.

Don't listen to the experts
We all have a natural way, just like other animals, of regulating and maintaining a healthy body weight, and we are in control of this natural way. As long as we use our hormones to signal the body, we can make it do what we want it to do for us. Before I discovered this weight loss method, I listened to and believed the experts, and ate as they mandated. The problem is that these experts have never been morbidly obese themselves. Because of this, most don't understand the weight loss mechanism they are supposedly managing. No doubt, their advice might be useful to a slim individual just wanting to maintain a slim frame. A truly obese person who listens to and follows these experts can, over time, add an enormous amount of surplus fat.

As I approached my 40s, my weight hovered around 230 lbs. I tried starving myself. After ten years of starvation diets, my weight had climbed to 280 lbs. That is an astronomical number for someone who is only 175 cm tall. Another ten years of starvation diets and my weight had reached 320 lbs.

By now I was nearly as round as I was tall. Of course, I would lose 20, 40 lbs, but they were quickly regained. The lost lbs returned with a vengeance and after each "successful" weight loss, the amount of weight regained, became increasingly larger.

Suddenly I found the truth
Shortly before my 60th birthday I had the good fortune to lose a slimming bet. Having lived on fewer and fewer calories only to find myself gaining weight on 800 calories a day, I had had enough. I admitted defeat and started eating. I firmly believe that it was my subconscious wish to eat myself into an early grave.

Month after month of starvation diets, and suddenly there were feasts every day! Hearty servings of bacon and eggs for breakfast. Meat to my heart's desire at lunch, and then more meat for dinner. And loads of butter and creamy, fat-laden sauces! All the rich, fatty foods that I had been deprived of and missed the most, was now to be found at every meal.

A few weeks later I stepped onto the scales, expecting a major weight revelation; and yes, I truly got one. After doubling, nay, even tripling my calorific intake, I weighed less than I had in many years!

It's all about combustion!
In a moment of revelation, I saw the solution to my problem. The importance lay not in how much I ate, it lay in combustion. In that important moment my weight loss method was born.

Conclusion:
If we eat the way nature intended, we will automatically be rewarded with the slim body and good health we were meant to have. Our goal is optimal health in an optimally functioning body. It's impossible to achieve this goal if we strangle our supply of optimal nourishment.

Starvation starts a degenerative process in the body which is contrary to what we want; a body mechanism that functions by burning the right fuel while at the same time providing us with optimal well-being.

We already have all the marvelous resources within our bodies, but these resources can't be utilized if we cut off the optimal foods and try to sustain our body on non-essential (carbohydrates!) energy. If we try, we'll end up obese and ill; we'll be overfed but undernourished.

Heed my advice: Read Richard Morris's book! My book is, so far, only available in Swedish. Not to worry! Richard Morris's book is an excellent substitution for mine.

A quick flipping through the pages made me realize that Richard has written my book & and that I have written his! Hardly surprising; after all, we have made the same journey.

Sten-Sture Skaldeman