By Nate Schweber
Nutritionist Carly Feigan knows that New Yorkers are on the go, that they eat out a lot, and that they don’t have time for calo- rie counting and measuring food intake.
Yet she still developed a diet plan that helps people lose at least 10 percent of their body weight without altering the kinds of foods they eat.
If anything, people on Feigan’s diet, detailed on her Web site www.headtohealth.com, end up eating more.
“When we spend four to five hours with no food in our stomach, our metabolic switch shuts off,” Feigan said.“Frequency of eating is directly related to how fast the metabolism is functioning. It’s like stoking a fire.”
Feigan recommends eating three meals a day, plus two to three snacks. The key to eat- ing at that schedule and still losing weight is all in the proportions of carbohydrates, pro- tein and fat, three elements that Feigan ensures are in every meal and every snack.
A master cook who has worked in restaurants, Feigan sets up the kind of food her clients need to eat, but she realizes that with takeout and dining out so omnipresent,adhering to a strict plan isn’t practical. With Feigan’s diet, a person can eyeball a plate of food and know what to eat. If there is too much of one type of food — fats, carbs or protein — the person can simply not eat it all.
“A person can eat out five nights a week and still lose weight,” she said.
|
One of the non-intimidating parts of Feigan’s diet is that it doesn’t restrict how much food a person eats.
“If someone wants to eat four chicken breasts and a portion of veggies slightly smaller than four chicken breasts, then that’s right for that person,” Feigan said.
Feigan made sure that her diet is high in fiber, which not only fills people up to stave off hunger, but shortens the amount of time the body takes to process food.
“I’ve tried to volume the amount of food people can actually consume so they never experience hunger or feel deprived,” Feigan said.
Feigan, who earned a degree as a nutritionist from Queens College in 1983 and has also studied herbology and naturopathy, designed the diet in 1997 when she earned a degree in lifestyle and weight management from the American Council on Exercise.
As part of that degree, she designed a controlled study to test the diet on 100 volunteers spanning 18 months. Feigan said that 72 percent were able to lose 10 percent of their body weight after six weeks and keep it off for a year. Between 1999 and 2002, Feigan worked with more than 500 clients at a large Manhattan health club. More than 80 percent of those kept 10 percent or more of their body weight off after a year’s time.
|
Feigan has been in private practice since 2002. Her office is on East 32nd Street. Part of the reason she is successful is that she screens her clients, finding out how often they exercise,if they have been on any diets previously and, if so, why they left those diets. The answers allow Feigan to custom fit her formula for each specific person. For example, someone who only exercises once a week eats less carbohydrates and more protein. Someone who exercises several times a week eats equal proportions of carbs and protein.
The individual attention is what Feigan believes sets her diet apart from the popular Atkins or South Beach diets. “I don’t believe in those programs, they’re one-size-fits-all,” Feigan said. “We’re all unique, individual and have different metabolic rates.Why are we all going to do the same diets?”
Dana Reed,a nutritionist for eight years with an office on East 12th Street, said that though she’s unfamiliar with Feigan’s diet plan, it is sound. One of the key parts that Reed also uses is encouraging dieters to eat regularly.
“Eating does trigger metabolism,”she said. “One of the biggest mistakes dieters make is not eating in the morning, eating only a little at lunch and then piling on calories at night before they go to bed, which in essence, slows down your metabolism all day.”
|
 |
Carly Feigan says her diet plan helps people lose at least 10 percent of their body weight and keep it off.
|
Linda Abrams, an Upper West Side resident, lost 40 pounds working with Feigan. She said that until she began working with Feigan, she had been on “every diet,” and that her weight had “yo-yoed” up and down.
“This is the first food program I feel like I can live on for the rest of my life and not feel like I’m on a diet,”she said. Abrams said she recommended eight people to work with Feigan, and “all of them have lost weight.” Feigan’s rates start at $90 for a private 60-minute session and go up to $600 for six private sessions in a client’s home or office, according to information posted on her Web site.
To schedule an appointment, call 646-226-1745 |