The Schwarzbein Principle
Every diet and nutrition plan presents itself as the new solution and the easy way to lose weight and be healthy. Don’t always trust the information that you read in these diet books however. There are a number of diets which can produce real benefits, including the Origin Diet and the Eat Right, Live Longer diet, but many can actually be bad for your health. This is especially true for certain fad diets.
One diet that we strongly suggest to avoid is the Schwarzbein Principle. The title of the book that contains this weight loss plan is The Truth about Weight Loss, Health, and Aging. The stated goal of this diet is to help you lose weight, reverse or soften the effects of aging, and strengthen the body’s resistance to disease through changes in diet. We are going to explain why this diet is a bad idea.
The Schwarzbein Principle at a Glance
High fat, high protein diet
Denies foods with a high glycemic-index, including processed carbohydrates
Purports to be able to balance Hormone Levels in the body
Places an emphasis on foods that you could hunt, gather, pick, milk, or fish for
Who Should Consider the Schwarzbein Principle
No one should consider this diet.
Who Should Avoid the Schwarzbein Principle
Pretty much everyone should avoid this diet.
The Basics of the Schwarzbein Principle
The Schwarzbein Principle is a diet that was invented and proliferated via an Endocrinologist named Diana Schwarzbein. Her diet is a variation on diets like the Origin Diet in that it is both Low-Carb and High Protein, but there are a number of differences between the two diets as well. She claims that the diet has the ability to control Insulin.
Avoiding high insulin levels is the central tenet of the Schwarzbein Principle, and she considers high insulin levels incredibly dangerous, leading to a number of different adverse medical and health issues, including weight gain, low metabolism, mood swings, and accelerated aging. It also increases the intensity of food cravings. She says that elevated insulin levels are directly the result of the combination of a low fat and high carbohydrate diet.
Many diets, as well as the diet recommended by the USDA, utilize a food pyramid, but Schwarzbein’s diet revolves around a food box which includes four classes of foods carbohydrates, non-starch vegetables, fats, and proteins. She believes that these four groups need to be eaten simultaneously in particular amounts in order to properly balance the hormones of the body to encourage longevity and promote Anti-Aging.
Schwarzbein is also an adamant believer in the idea that refined sugar is both addictive and dangerous. In addition to her diet plan, she also advocates heavy use of supplements, including Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids, 5-hydroxytryptophan, calcium, magnesium, and a multivitamin.
The Rationale of the Schwarzbein Principle
The principal idea behind Schwarzbein’s nutrition plan is that a diet that is high in healthy fats and proteins while low in carbs helps to balance insulin and prevent insulin spikes as well as regulate levels of Glucagon. Glucagon is a peptide hormone secreted by the pancreas that directly stimulates an increase in blood sugar. Increased Glucagon Levels lead directly to increased Insulin Levels, which can be a terrible cycle is your Insulin Levels spike too often. The author of the diet believes that by controlling and balancing the body’s hormones, it is possible to limit cravings for food and increase metabolism through diet.
There are a number of ways that she claims that it is possible to reduce hunger pangs and food cravings. A big part of balancing hunger under this system is to eat lots of fiber and good fats and oils. Balancing serotonin levels also plays a role in Schwarzbein’s diet, and serotonin levels can be controlled by avoiding sugar, chocolate, refined carbs, caffeine, and alcohol. She claims that regulating serotonin can reduce cravings.
The Schwarzbein Principle calls for regulation of Carbohydrates, because the diet revolves around the belief that there is no way to overeat good fats and proteins. Only carbs have the ability to spike insulin levels, which she believes is the leading cause of weight gain. She believes that sugar is the culprit of most of the physiological ills related to aging, because it causes Insulin production to stay high and it prevents the body from utilizing nutrients with maximum efficiency.
The Meal Plan of the Schwarzbein Principle
The book that accompanies this diet plan includes a month’s worth of daily menus in order to show how to institute a healing program which claims to balance hormones and encourage health and weight loss. The goal of this first month of meals is both to enhance your metabolism and to increase your insulin resistance. She also includes a month of daily menus and recipe options for vegetarians.
The primary goal of these menus is to balance Insulin and Glucagon production while balancing the glycemic index. It attempts to accomplish this by only including fifteen grams of carbs with each meal and including meals from her four specified food groups provided in her recommended portions.
Under the Schwarzbein Principle, a days breakfast would be along the lines of oatmeal with cream and butter, sausage, sliced tomatoes, and scrambled eggs. Lunch would consist of an olive oil-dressed cobb salad and an apple. Finally, an example of a Schwarzbein dinner would be roasted pork loin, asparagus and brown rice topped with butter, and another salad with olive oil. This diet does not recommend snacking, but allows it, providing examples such as almonds with string cheese and sunflower seeds.
Expert Opinion on the Schwarzbein Principle
The diet outlined with the Schwarzbein Principle shares a number of similarities with other diets. There are a number of effective and safe weight loss and anti-aging diets that suggest both low-carb consumption and high levels of protein.
One thing that experts are very quick to point out with regard to this diet is that hormone manipulation plays no role in any weight loss that occurs as a result of this diet. Any weight loss accomplishments earned while on this diet would explicitly be the result of caloric restriction, no thanks to the increased fat consumption and severely limited carbs. Although it is healthy to be conscientious with carbohydrates, it can actually be counterproductive and even bad for your health to limit them to the extent outlined in this diet plan. One of the major issues that people on this diet would face would be fatigue and exhaustion, because a diet with severely limited carbohydrates would not provide sufficient calories for day to day activity.
Besides the issue with severely limited carbs, the other major issue with this diet is that it recommends far too much saturated fat and cholesterol. Nutrition experts and medical professionals are quick to caution that there is no significant evidence that severely limiting carbs and eating a lot of fat will exert any positive pressure over your hormone balance. Even more specious is the idea that this diet will be able to enhance weight loss gains or have any Anti-Aging effect.
There is No Guarantee that You Will Lose Weight with the Schwarzbein Principle
It may be possible to lose weight on this diet if portions are controlled effectively, but the Schwarzbein Principle does not include any discussion of portion control as a means to lose weight. The example menus don’t include calorie counts or portion sizes, and they usually include a lot of butter and other fatty ingredients with a lot of calories. The author simply does not place sufficient emphasis upon the link between caloric consumption and weight gain (she actually claims that the link is exaggerated), which is significantly if not infinitely more important than balancing hormones through fat consumption.
While it may be possible to lose weight with this diet if portions are tightly regulated, based specifically on the nutrition plan provided, it would actually be very easy to start gaining weight on this diet, if one ate portions that were too large. Even if you did manage to lose weight on this diet, you would lose weight very slowly, even if you ate a sensible number of calories each day. This is because the diet actually limits the consumption of a number of foods which are nutrient dense and can help with weight loss, and can lead you to be deficient in a number of vitamins and minerals, including Fiber, Folic Acid, Vitamin D, and Calcium.
What Type of Calorie Count is Recommended on this Diet?
With the information provided in the Schwarzbein Principle, there is no real limitation on caloric consumption. Because there are no recommendations with regard to serving size, there is absolutely no way to estimate the number of calories that you would be consuming with this diet.
Recommendations of the Schwarzbein Principle
Range-Fed Poultry and Meat Untreated with Antibiotics or Hormones, Limited Starch Vegetables and Whole Grains, Foods High in Fat and Protein
Things to Avoid on the Schwarzbein Principle
Foods with Hydrogenated Fat, High Sodium, Processed Sausage, Vegetable Oils, Foods with a High Glycemic Index, and Processed, Refined Carbohydrates
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The Truth About the Schwarzbein Principle