I LOST 25 POUNDS IN 6 WEEKS!”

Name: Paul McComb
Age: 28
Height: 5'9"
Starting weight: 180
Six weeks later: 155
Once Paul McComb left college and gained some weight, he figured that
extra heft was his to keep for life. But when he walked into a nutrition store
and stepped on a scale that told him how much he weighed (180 pounds)
and how much he should weigh (155 pounds), something changed: his
attitude.
So McComb went on the Abs Diet—and lost 25 pounds.
He made significant changes by doing such things as eliminating the four or
five daily Cokes and skipping the midnight chips. He says the transition was
easy because the Abs Diet allowed him to eat plenty—six times a day, in fact.
6 T H E A B S D I E T
higher than among lean ones, according to a Swedish study. The
World Health Organization estimates that up to one-third of cancers
of the colon, kidney, and digestive tract are caused by being
overweight and inactive. And having an excess of fat around your
gut is especially dangerous. See, cancer is caused by mutations
that occur in cells as they divide. Fat tissue in your abdomen
spurs your body to produce hormones that prompt your cells to divide.
More cell division means more opportunities for cell mutations,
which means more cancer risk.
A lean waistline also heads off another of our most pressing
health problems—diabetes. Currently, 13 million Americans have
been diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes, and many more go undiagnosed.
Fat, especially belly fat, bears the blame. There’s a
misconception that diabetes comes only from eating too much re-
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 7
“With the eating six times a day, I didn’t feel like snacking on chips,” he reports.
“I used to not eat at all during the day; then I’d come home, eat dinner,
and have chips in the evening. When I started eating all day, it was like, holy
cow, I just wasn’t as hungry.”
McComb says the key to his success was planning meals around the Abs
Diet Powerfoods, so he wasn’t tempted by vending machines and snack
bars. He’d eat turkey on multigrain bread for lunch, have whole-wheat
pasta or chicken for dinner, and snack on peanut butter and chocolate milk.
He was happy that he didn’t have to count calories, watch carbs, or give
up the foods he loves. “Understanding the Powerfoods concept and how
these foods work together helped me eat—a lot—and still watch the
weight come off.”
McComb, who did the Abs Diet Workout at home with 20-pound dumbbells,
says he’ll always incorporate the principles of the Abs Diet into his lifestyle. “I
feel a lot better now. I feel more confident because I set a goal for myself and
I actually achieved it. Even my skin is a bit clearer. I find I’m getting better
sleep, I’m waking up more rested, and the bags under my eyes are going
away. Everything seems to be that much better in my life. I’m sure some of my
friends are sick of hearing how much weight I lost.”
fined sugar, like the kind in chocolate and ice cream. But people
contract diabetes after years of eating high-carbohydrate foods
that are easily converted into sugar—foods like white bread,
pasta, and mashed potatoes. Scarfing down a basket of bread and
a bowl of pasta can do the same thing to your body that a carton
of ice cream does: flood it with sugar calories. The calories you
can’t burn are what converts into fat cells that pad your gut and
leaves you with a disease that, if untreated, can lead to impotence,
blindness, heart attacks, strokes, amputation, and death. And
that, my friend, can really ruin your day.
Upper-body obesity is also the most significant risk factor for
obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which the soft tissue in
the back of your throat collapses during sleep, blocking your
airway. When that happens, your brain signals you to wake up
and to start breathing again. As you nod off once more, the
same thing happens, and it can continue hundreds of times
during the night—making you chronically groggy and unable to
get the rest your body needs. (You won’t remember waking up
over and over again; you’ll just wonder why 8 hours of sleep left
you dragging.) Fat’s role is that it can impede muscles that inflate
and ventilate the lungs, forcing you to work harder to get
enough air. When Australian researchers studied 313 patients
with severe obesity, they found that 62 percent of them with a
waist circumference of 49 inches or more had a serious sleep
disturbance and that 28 percent of obese patients with smaller
waists (35 to 49 inches) had sleep problems. Being overweight
also puts you at risk for a lot of other conditions that rob you of
a good night’s rest, including asthma and gastroesophageal reflux.
When Dutch researchers studied nearly 6,000 men, they
found that even those whose waistlines measured a relatively
modest 37 to 40 inches had a significantly increased risk of respiratory
problems, such as wheezing, chronic coughing, and
shortness of breath. All of this can create an ugly cycle: Ab-
8 T H E A B S D I E T
dominal fat leads to poor sleep. Poor sleep means you drag
through your day. Sluggish and tired, your body craves some
quick energy, so you snack on some high-calorie junk food. That
extra junk food leads to more abdominal fat, which leads to . . .
well, you get the picture.
I could fill this whole book with evidence, but I’m going to boil
it down to one sentence: A smaller waist equals fewer health
risks.