Since receiving her medical degree from Yale in 1994, Christine Lydon, MD has made it her life’s work to educate people about sound nutrition, effective training techniques, and lasting approaches to weight loss. A fitness personality and physique model with a long list of television and print credits, Dr. Lydon has served as a nutrition consultant to large corporations, as well as a personal fitness consultant to a diverse clientele ranging from housewives and firefighters to celebrities like supermodel Carre Otis, Quentin Tarantino, and the late Richard Pryor. Dr. Lydon, author of Ten Years Thinner, currently devotes herself to writing and speaking about weight management, disease prevention, and nonpharmaceutical alternatives for increased longevity. 

Guest Blogger Christine Lydon--

Although the fruits that bore the Ten Years Thinner program began to ripen within the venerable corridors of the Yale University School of Medicine, the seeds of my revolutionary weight loss program actually germinated many years later beneath the leaky roof of the local fire hall. At the time, I was a volunteer fire fighter with Pemberton Fire Rescue and my crew was in the process of gearing down after a house fire. We were all standing in our underwear when the only other female member of our 30-man department, a devoted, 23-year-old gym-goer named Cheryl who earned her living as a utilities technician, turned to me and said, ‘No matter how many hours I spend on that damn treadmill, I still can’t get rid of these ugly saddlebags. And no matter how many crunches I do, I still have this layer of flab on my tummy. Your thighs and butt are so toned-- and your stomach is always flat. I just don’t get it. Aren’t you like forty years old? How do you do it?!’

I told Cheryl that I had a revolutionary new diet and exercise program in the works that would promote fat loss faster than if she were to continue spending all her spare time on a human hamster wheel. I warned her that she would have to give up her cardio addiction-- no more treadmill or StairMaster or LifeCycle-- or she would short-circuit the physiological mechanisms that my program was intended to harness.

Faced with the delicious prospect of never having to do another boring cardio workout ever again, Cheryl leaped at the opportunity to try my program. So, I grabbed a clipboard from Engine 13 and, on the back of a blank rig check form, I jotted down a brief, simple to follow exercise routine. I told Cheryl that the entire workout probably wouldn’t take her more than 20 minutes to do and recommended that she do it religiously, five or six days per week. I also made a list of ten dietary guidelines that conformed to my nutritional theories.

Six days later, Cheryl and I were again gathered in the fire hall gearing down after attending an emergency involving an overturned propane truck. Cheryl slid her suspenders off her shoulders and, as her turnout trousers dropped around her ankles, she stepped out of her boots and proudly announced, ‘I can already see a difference!’

In less than a month, Cheryl went on to shed what remained of her saddlebags and belly fat and her success spawned a series of informal clinical trials. To date, the Ten Years Thinner program has helped dozens of women (and a handful of men) of all ages and fitness backgrounds shed hundreds of pounds of unwanted fat. In just six weeks, my program firms hips and thighs, elevates rear ends, defines shoulders and arms, flattens tummies, diminishes the appearance of cellulite, boosts energy levels, and may help reduce symptoms of IBS, acne, asthma, and migraine headaches. Moreover, even three and four years later, graduates of the Ten Years Thinner program trials have, by and large, maintained not just their weight loss, but their healthy eating habits and active lifestyles.

By combining the most time-efficient workout for inducing the most rapid changes in body composition with a simple, easy-to-follow eating plan that neither eliminates food groups nor places upper limits on caloric consumption, the Ten Years Thinner program is founded both on the immutable natural laws, as well as our cultural proclivity for magic bullets and our distaste for tedium. It is the only weight loss plan in existence that appeals to our emotional make-up without attempting to bypass our physiology, and it does so by harnessing a novel, biological mechanism that has only recently attracted the attention of exercise physiologists. Although the science behind the Ten Years Thinner program is only beginning to emerge, the logic behind my revolutionary approach has been right in front of our noses for millions of years.

I have always maintained that, when it comes to matters of health, an understanding of our own evolutionary history is perhaps the most powerful reality check we have at our disposal. I suspect that much of the current research pertaining to weight loss could be taken up a notch if investigators would bare that fact in mind when designing their experimental approaches. Rather than view the human genome as a stagnant entity, set in stone and divested of temporality, what if researchers were to remind themselves that our DNA tells a story spanning millions of years? A story that remains meticulously catalogued within our genes-- if only we remember to look there!

The more I learned about human evolution, the more I began to question why so many physicians, nutritionists, and self-proclaimed ‘weight loss experts,’ including such esteemed organizations as the American Heart Association, advocated walking for 30 to 60 minutes per day for fat burning and good health. Existing anthropological data seemed to indicate that such an approach would be like fighting a house fire with a garden hose. I started to wonder if the experts had it backwards: Perhaps the best way to burn unwanted body fat was NOT through lengthy sessions of low intensity aerobic activity after all, but through brief bouts of high intensity anaerobic activity instead.

I began to form a novel hypothesis about exercise and fat burning. I suspected that cardiovascular exercise performed within the so-called ‘fat-burning zone’ was not just a waste of time, but that it might actually be counterproductive to fat loss. Given our evolutionary history, it seemed possible that extended duration, low-intensity aerobic exercise might somehow create hormonal signals that would enhance our body’s ability to conserve energy by conserving fat stores. By the same token, I began to wonder if brief bursts of anaerobic exercise, which do not burn much fat during the actual activity, might have some yet-to-be discovered influence on overall metabolic rate, perhaps elevating it for several hours after the conclusion of the activity.

To test my emerging theories, I designed a brief exercise routine that was a slightly revised version of Cheryl’s 20-minute workout. The routine included movements to stimulate muscle toning throughout the body, with extra emphasis on larger muscle groups like the thighs, glutes, chest, and back. In addition, the exercises were meticulously organized so that intense movements, intended to periodically elevate your heart rate into the out-of-breath anaerobic zone for 30 to 60 seconds, were interspersed between less intense movements that allowed for cardiovascular recovery. Next, I distilled the nutrition tutorial I used for my private weight loss clients into a single page of bullet point guidelines plus several pages of healthy choice food lists.

Cheryl the former cardio queen wasn’t shy about giving me credit for her new look. Pretty soon all the firemen’s girlfriends and wives wanted to try my ‘miracle’ exercise routine, so it wasn’t hard recruiting volunteers. By all accounts, the results I observed during my informal clinical trials were dramatic to say the least. I was convinced I was on to something, and the timing couldn’t have been better!

Sure enough, a serendipitous collection of peer-reviewed academic research was beginning to appear in the literature, and it supported my weight loss theories to a tee. Thanks to ongoing work in the areas of human metabolism and exercise physiology, scientists are just now discovering that lengthy, monotonous, aerobic sessions performed within the so-called ‘fat-burning zone’ may actually be far less efficient for promoting fat loss and good health than previously believed. In fact, there is evidence that lengthy aerobic sessions may actually induce a temporary dip in metabolic rate! Not only are short, dynamic ‘power’ workouts proving tremendously effective for burning unwanted fat, but they appear to offer equivalent-- or greater-- health benefits without the tedium. Perhaps even more exciting, related investigation indicates that the specific hormonal modifications engendered by this approach to training may actually combat the aging process!

Although the fundamental principles have not changed, the Ten Years Thinner program has undergone considerable fine-tuning since its inception. Thanks to feedback from dozens of volunteer test subjects, the current diet and exercise protocols are even easier to follow than the original versions. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, Ten Years Thinner represents the most versatile, efficient and sustainable approach to permanent weight loss, optimal health, and naturally extended longevity-- period.

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