Dean Ornish

You can lose weight on just about any diet. Keeping it off is a lot harder. A few years ago, the government reviewed all the different weight-loss plans. They found that two-thirds of people gained back all the weight they lost within a year, and 97 percent gained it all back within five years

In the past, lifestyle changes have been viewed only as prevention, increasing costs in the short run for a possible savings years later. Now, our program is offered as a scientifically proven alternative treatment to many patients who otherwise were eligible for coronary artery bypass surgery or angioplasty, resulting in an immediate and substantial cost savings.

Mutual of Omaha calculated an immediate savings of almost $30,000 per patient. These patients reported reductions in angina (chest pain) comparable to what can be achieved with bypass surgery or angioplasty without the costs or risks of surgery.

Increasing evidence shows that the Eat More, Weigh Less diet may help to prevent a wide variety of other illnesses including breast cancer in women, prostate cancer in men, colon cancer, lung cancer, lymphoma, osteoporosis, diabetes, hypertension, and so on, in addition to enabling you to lose weight and to keep it off.

Here’s the good news: women seem to be able to reverse heart disease more easily than men. Many women are prescribed estrogen to lower their risk of heart disease or osteoporosis even though it increases the risk of breast cancer—not a good trade-off. When you go on the Eat More, Weigh Less diet, you may lower your risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, and breast cancer—without having to make these painful choices.

My colleagues and I are trying to create a new model of medicine that is more caring and compassionate as well as more cost-effective by addressing the causes of such chronic diseases as obesity and coronary heart disease rather than just bypassing them literally or figuratively. The program is a new model for lowering health care costs without compromising the quality of care or access to care.

For example, there was a 13 percent increase in fat consumption among men nineteen to fifty years old between 1990 and 1995, and a 21 percent increase in their total caloric intake over the same period, according to the USDA. In 1990, the average man ate 2,215 calories a day; in 1995, he was consuming 2,672 calories.5

Whenever I lecture, I often begin by showing a cartoon of doctors busily mopping up the floor around a sink that’s overflowing without also turning off the faucet

A lot of people take the same approach to health and to losing weight. “Why bother to fool around with all this touchy-feely stuff like diet and exercise and meditation when you can just take a pill like fen-phen or Xenical, or go on a high-protein diet, or have liposuction? Why change your diet and lifestyle when you can just fix it with a bypass operation or an angioplasty?”

Many people are finding that the quick-fix doesn’t last. Just as bypass surgery and angioplasty operations tend to clog up again within a few months or a few years, people who lose weight using the quick-fix approaches usually gain it all back or suffer side effects that range from annoying to disastrous

The drug prevents enzymes in the gastrointestinal track from breaking down the fat you eat into smaller molecules that can be absorbed by the body. Since it blocks the absorption of fat, it also blocks the absorption of some important fat-soluble vitamins, carotenoids, and other essential nutrients.