The Truth About The Schwarzbein Principle

The Schwarzbein Principle

Every diet and nutrition plan presents itself as a new solution and an easy way to lose weight and be healthy. However, don't always trust the information you read in these diet books. There are several diets that can produce tangible 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 specific fad diets.

One diet that we strongly suggest avoiding 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 by 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 many 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 various 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 elevated insulin levels are directly the result of the combination of 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 that includes four classes of foods – carbohydrates, non-starchy vegetables, fats, and proteins. She believes these four groups need to be eaten simultaneously in particular amounts to properly balance the body's hormones 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 if your Insulin Levels spike too often. The diet's author believes that controlling and balancing the body's hormones makes it possible to limit cravings for food and increase metabolism through diet.

She claims that it is possible to reduce hunger pangs and food cravings in several ways. 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 regulating 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 physiological ills related to aging because it causes Insulin production to stay high and prevents the body from utilizing nutrients with maximum efficiency.

The Meal Plan of The Schwarzbein Principle

The book accompanying this diet plan includes a month's worth of daily menus to show how to institute a “healing” program that 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 day's breakfast would include 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, 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 many similarities with other diets. Several practical and safe weight loss and anti-aging diets suggest low-carb consumption and high protein levels.

One thing that experts are very quick to point out about this diet is that hormone manipulation plays no role in any weight loss resulting from 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 destructive for your health to limit them to the extent outlined in this diet plan. One of the significant 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 positive pressure on 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 emphasize the link between caloric consumption and weight gain (she actually claims that the link is exaggerated), which is significant, 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, explicitly based on the nutrition plan provided, it would be very easy to start gaining weight on this diet if one ate portions 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 limits the consumption of several nutrient-dense foods, can help with weight loss, and can lead you to be deficient in several 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 fundamental limitation on caloric consumption. Because there are no recommendations regarding serving size, there is absolutely no way to estimate the number of calories 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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