Dr. A. T. W. Simeons is the pioneering founder of a world renowned hormone ‘diet’. His diet is often used to treat obesity. The diet puts your body into ketosis, similar to a ketogenic diet. However, it uniquely leads to much greater weight loss, often double that of a typical ketogenic diet.
Dr. Simeons was born in London, and after living most of his childhood there studied medicine in the University of Heidelberg. Following the completion of his basic medical degree (summa cum laude), he continued on with his post graduate studies in Germany and in Switzerland.
During this time there, he worked in number of different areas of medicine, eventually deciding to specialise in tropical medicine. In order to pursue this further, he moved to Hamburg where he enrolled in the School of Tropical Medicine there.
While studying and working, Dr. Simeon focused on two main areas. He worked on injection remedies for malaria and studied methods of staining malarial parasites. For this work of his, he was awarded the Red Cross Order of Merit by the Queen of England in 1931.
It was in the same year that Dr. Simeons moved to India, where he resided for nearly 18 years. While he was there, he continued to practice medicine, but observed something rather remarkable. In India, he made a notable observation.
Despite having little to eat, undernourished women were still giving birth to healthy babies. He found that while these mothers might have been underweight and undernourished, their body was producing large amounts of human chorionic gonadotropin.
This was breaking down the fat reserves in the mother and supplying it to the child, resulting in a healthy, normal weight baby. This observation prompted him to study weight management in greater detail. He continued this research in India until 1949, before moving to Rome, Italy.
Following a period of research, Dr. Simeons published ‘Pounds and Inches: A New Approach to Obesity’ in 1954. His theory regarding fat breakdown usually occurs during periods of starvation, but after around 90 days or so, or in pregnancy, the fats that are present around the joints and thighs break down to provide energy and nutrients.
These secondary fat reserves are normally not utilised in healthy people, and can be the reason for weight gain.
In his published report, Dr. Simeons shared a surprising finding. Subjects on a low-calorie diet combined with hormones experienced a holistic weight loss. This approach effectively ‘reshaped’ the body. This was also noticed in subjects who did not exercise.
Even more interestingly, patients did not experience any untoward symptoms such as headaches, weakness, and irritability or hunger pangs. He ultimately concluded from his research that it was the secondary fat reserves that were broken down that helped the subjects slim down dramatically.
Putting together his findings in his manuscript, Dr. Simeons created one of the most talked about weight loss programs on the market today.
Thousands of people still use his program with excellent results. There is no doubt that what appeared to be just an observation has led to one of the major discoveries in weight loss and weight maintenance in the modern era.
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