Adapted from:  Free Dieting The Weight Loss Guide.

The Rosedale Diet is a book authored by Doctor and ‘Metabolic Specialist’ Ronald Rosedale. It promises to help us… “Lose weight fast… live longer”

The author blames many weight problems on a hormone called leptin. New research has shown that the hormone leptin has some control on how the brain regulates hunger – and it may be that some of us are leptin-resistant.

The beginning of the diet plan is a 3 week phase where certain carbs are reduced/eliminated (“the A List”). In this phase you eat the ‘cleanest’ foods.  The goal is to convert your cells from using sugar as fuel to using fat as fuel.

• Eat only “healthy fat foods on his “A” list such as avocados, Cornish game hen, crab, goat cheese, lobster, nuts, olives, venison, and more.
• Eat only fibrous carbs (e.g. green vegetables).
• Starchy carbs and grains are completely out.
• All manufactured foods are out (If it’s in a package, it’s manufactured).

After the first 21 days, gradually add foods from his “B” list such as steak lamb chops, fruits, beans, and so on.  He provides a 28-day menu plan and more than 100 recipes for this stage in his eating plan.

After this phase, other foods are added back in (“the B List”).  After time, additional foods may be added back.

Ideally, you will feel full on this diet and not need to get off of it once you are on it.

The goal is to replace the sugars you have been feeding your cells with fat so that your cells learn to feed on fat and will use your excess fat (like belly and hip fat) as fuel when your total calorie intake is restricted.

The Rosedale diet is basically this:

• Avoid sugars that have been refined.  For example, sugar cane itself is healthy, but not the sugar that’s refined from it.  Natural honey is healthier than refined sugar made from it.  Stay away from high fructose corn syrup and anything that has “ose” in it.  “Ose” stands for sugar.
• Avoid empty calories (food and drink without nutritional value) such as sweetened drinks, and sweetened foods (such as cereals and packaged goodies), etc.
• Eat only carbs that have fiber in them (such as veggies and grains the way that Ma Nature produced them).  Eat a lot of vegetables that come from above ground plants. These are the carbs with fiber included.  The fiber is necessary to slow down the utilization of the sugar in these carbs.
• Restrict starchy carbs such as potatoes and other root vegetables.
• Eat good fats such as olive oil, fish oil, nut and seed oil, (MUFA’s which is short for monounsaturated fats) rather than saturated (animal) or trans-fats (commercially concocted).
• Avoid fats (oils) that came from vegetables (such as corn) that have been chemically altered by food companies.
• Eat the ‘right’ amount of protein for you.  For example “O” blood types typically need more animal protein than “B or C” types.
• Eat slowly to better digest your food and don’t eat 3 hours before bedtime.
• Eat when you are hungry (rather than counting carbs/calories).  Ideally, you will full on this diet when you have eaten enough.
• It is effectively a high fat, high fiber, low non-fibrous carb, moderate/low protein diet.

Critiquing the diet

The Rosedale diet deliberately avoids carb or calorie counting, and instead provides guidelines (i.e. foods to eat, foods to avoid). However the protein recommendations seem low (between 50-75 grams per day) – for a male eating 2000 calories per day this equates to only 10-14% of daily intake. If you are engaging in vigorous exercise or weight training – this will not be enough.

According to Free Dieting, “The book seems yet another twist on Atkins (and Hamptons, and South Beach) – by getting rid of the ‘bad’ fats and introducing more ‘good’ fats. “

Rosedale Supplements

The Rosedale Diet has a large section on supplementation. Not surprisingly, many of these supplements are manufactured by Rosedale’s company. This is not to say that all supplements are bad – but it’s amazing the number of commercial diet books that also have a supplement business on the side – which makes us question loyalties.

If you are on a reduced-calorie diet you should generally be taking a multivitamin-mineral. However, fat loss can and does occur without any supplements. The basis of any good fat loss program is the right diet and exercise. Supplements can only give you that extra edge.

According to Dr. Ronald Rosedale, “There is not a whole lot of middle ground. If you have a carbohydrate without fiber,  it is going to be quickly turned into a sugar, whether it be glucose or not. It may be fructose and won’t necessarily raise your blood glucose, fructose is worse for you then glucose, so if you just go by blood sugar, which is just glucose, it doesn’t mean that you are not raising your blood fructose, or your blood galactose which is the other half of lactose.

All of those sugars are as bad or worse for you than glucose. You can’t just go by so-called blood sugar which is just blood glucose, because we just don’t measure blood fructose or blood galactose, but they are all bad for you. Why are they bad? Well, number one we know that it provokes insulin and every time you provoke insulin it exposes yourself to more insulin and just like walking in a smelly room it is going to become more resistant to insulin.

So every time you have a surge of sugar and you have a surge of insulin, you get more and more insulin resistant and all of the problems we’ve talked about.

The worst carbs are sugars such as high fructose corn syrup found in most soft drinks. HFCS is a sweetener (which our taste buds like) but has no fiber (which is bad for our bodies because that means empty calories).”

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