Sometimes people, who have succeeded in losing weight over several months, find they have hit what seems an endless stall period where their weight has plateaued for weeks, and they are still far from achieving a normal weight. And sometimes people, who have successfully lost substantial weight, just can’t seem to lose the last ten pounds required to attain their goal of a desired normal weight. Further restriction of carbs below 50-60 grams helps them break through long stall periods or overcome the last ten- pound hurdle. I, therefore, offer them the weight-loss regimen developed and used by Dr. Blake Donaldson, a New York cardiologist, for over four decades in private practice.
The obese individual was to consume three meals of fatty meat, whose cooked weight was at least 8 ounces or ½ pound. No salt was allowed on the meat. One could drink a half-cup of coffee or tea without milk, cream or sugar. One could add a small cube of suet to the plain coffee or tea to give it the taste of bouillon. In between breakfast and lunch one should drink 3 tumblers of water. In between lunch and dinner another three glasses of water should also be drunk. After 5 P.M., no more water was allowed. If thirsty, one could rinse one’s mouth with water but not swallow. The only other item allowed between meals was as many cold pieces of cooked fatty meat one still desired.
His patients were admonished not to stay more than 8 hours in bed, and had to take a mandatory, non-stop, thirty-minute, brisk walk outside on an empty stomach before breakfast. He considered this thirty-minute walk before breakfast the greatest advance in recorded medical history. A safe weight loss of three pounds a week was to be expected. Patients reported in every two weeks. If they failed, to lose 6 pounds, an inquiry was made to ferret out any deviations from the prescribed regimen. He considered fresh fat meat and clean water the perfect primitive foods upon which mankind successfully evolved over a million years as hunters. During that time any weakling, who could not maintain perfect health on fresh fat meat and water was ultimately bred out of existence. The fat man would become thin by burning his own fat off in the flame of fat meat. The five potent enemies an obese person has to face were: 1. The failure to walk thirty minutes without stopping, before breakfast; 2. Flour; 3. Salt; 4. Sugar; 5. Alcohol. Transitional constipation was also to be expected. During the first week only one or two bowel movements were expected to occur. During the second week, three bowel movements. In the third week a once daily bowel movement should become the established norm. Nothing was to be done about this constipation, except to eat more fat on the meat.
Dr. Donaldson called his weight-loss regimen strong medicine. It was for those with intestinal fortitude and not for the weak of will. Yet seventy-five percent of his patients who started on this regimen successfully completed it. One extremely obese patient had to stay on it for nine months to lose all his excess weight. On attaining their weight goals, the regimen became less restrictive. A boiled or baked potato with butter and a piece of fruit could be added to the cooked fatty meat with coffee or tea, if no weight gain ensued.
Myron Jackler is a weight-loss counselor at Eat The Fat Of The Land in Oak Park, Michigan.