The Pen and Paper Diet is Supported by Research from the Harvard School of Public Health, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research

    TUCSON, AZ, March 04, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Harvard School of Public Health and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center conducted a research study to examine the weight loss success of four popular diets (high carb, high fat, low-fat and high protein). One of the study's co-authors, Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health told CNN that all the diets were winners. He said the key though is tracking calories. The findings from this research have been published in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. Visit the following link to read the full article by CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/25/best.diet/index.html.

The Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research conducted a research study to examine the effects of keeping a food dairy with weight loss. They found that food journaling can double a person's weight loss. Dr. Jack Hollis, lead author of the study, said they found that people lost more weight as they kept more food records. The findings were published in the 2008 August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Visit the following link to read a press release about the findings: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/kpdo-kps062308.php.

The Pen and Paper Diet, a book published last May by Michael Dow, is based on the idea that the key to weight management is having A Personal Daily Calorie Budget. Dow says in the book that a proven way to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight is by tracking calorie consumption using pen and paper. The book uses research from the National Academy of Sciences, the USDA and CDC.

"The uniqueness of this book in regards to other diet books, " says Dow, " is that it provides a babystep approach to becoming more healthy and gaining control over your weight. Instead of requiring people to eat less, eat more healthy and exercise more all at once, the book focuses on the first part, consuming less calories. Once people develop this basic skill of keeping a calorie budget, which takes about 3 minutes a day, they can then focus on eating more healthy and then exercising more."

Dow says it will help people progress through the following stages:
Acknowledge you consume a lot of unhealthy food
Learn to eat just enough unhealthy food so that you reach an ideal weight
Begin substituting the unhealthy food for healthy food
Begin exercising more

Dow says that another important result of having a calorie budget is that it can let a person control their amount of weight loss. "My wife had a lot of things going on this fall and she was comfortable with her size and calorie consumption. After losing 70 lbs, she chose to stop her weight loss for several months and plans on restarting it in a month (by lowering her budget) since she can easily maintain her weight at 200lbs with a daily calorie budget of 2050. I'm proud of her and am confident that she'll be at ideal BMI by the end of the year."

Dow will be involved with a pilot research study examining the effects of The Pen and Paper Diet (the treatment) on bulimia. The hypothesis is the treatment of The Pen and Paper Diet will decrease purging behaviors for people with bulimia. "Anecdotally," Dow says, "bulimia sufferers report an obsession with calorie counting and a general lack of trust. The Pen and Paper Diet addresses both issues. Writing down the info allows a person to forget about what they've consumed since they can reference their food journal and do not need to continuously remember what they've eaten. Also, the calorie info on nutritional labels are estimates of the product since the exact calorie info depends on the weight of the sample. My wife and I have been relying on the calorie info on nutritional labels since we are both still in the stage of substituting unhealthy food for healthy food. We still eat a good bit of packaged food and the calorie info provided has worked just fine."

When asked if these research organizations or other major medical organizations will endorse the book, Dow says "they would need to conduct their own research study on the book to determine its effects. It would be unprofessional for a major research organization to endorse a book without first conducting a study, even if the book encompasses many ideas of proven successful weight loss. I hope by 2015, when the World Health Organization expects there to be 3 Billion overweight and obese people in the world, the book will have endorsements from all parts of the medical community since being overweight increases one's chances for numerous illnesses."

Visit the following link for the World Health Organization reference: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html.

Visit http:www.ThePenAndPaperDiet.com for more info.

About Dow Creative Enterprises, LLC

Dow Creative Enterprises, LLC is a book and website publishing company. For further information, please email [email protected].

# # #