Once again, Dr. Ian K. Smith (we all know him as simply Dr. Ian) is back on top.
The New York Times bestselling author has another success with his latest, Shred: The Revolutionary Diet, which is the No. 1 book in the country right now.
His newest diet promises to help people shred four inches and two sizes in as little as six weeks, and Dr. Ian tells EBONY.com that this diet is the one to stick with. He’s seen an average weight loss of 20 pounds in six weeks from devotees of this new diet, and he says it’s fitting for those who have 10 pounds or over 100 to lose. Pretty impressive.
On Monday, Steve Harvey announced he’s joining Dr. Ian’s Shredder Nation. The beloved multimedia comedian will be going on the plan for six weeks, documenting his weight loss on his nationally syndicated Steve Harvey Morning Show. Dr. Ian will appear on the show every Monday at 8:29 EST to talk about Harvey’s progress while doling out diet tips to the listeners.
We talk with the celebrity physician about Shred, weight loss and how we can best make good on those annual New Year’s resolutions.
EBONY: How did you come up with the Shred diet?
Ian K. Smith: I started customizing a plan that I only sent to my personal friends, to help them push through the plateau so they could reach their weight-loss goal. I never planned on publishing this. I wasn’t even thinking about publishing it, it was just something I used sort of as a secret weapon for my friends.
Fast forward: I open my Twitter account and this summer I decided I wanted to send my followers some good diet tips to lose some weight during the summer and in anticipation of the New Year. Because my philosophy this year was, “Don’t wait until the New Year to lose weight, let’s lose it early.” So I started tweeting them just little snippets of this diet that I had called Shred. I called it that because I wanted my friends to visualize that they were shredding fat as they were on the program.
And so my Twitter followers and people on Facebook, they lost so much weight in such a short period of time—they were losing four pounds in five days, five pounds in seven days; the results were outrageous—they kept asking me for more. And so I kept tweeting them more and emailing them. Before I knew it we had 5,000 people across the country, [and] as far away as the UK, who were on Shred. And they were losing weight hand over fist.
EBONY: That sounds amazing, Dr. Ian.
IKS: It was! People said, “Well, when is this gonna be a book?” Once again, no intention of being a book, but I called my editor and I said, “Listen, something’s going on here. These people are losing a ton of weight, they love it, they tell me they don’t feel like it’s a diet, it’s like just eating regular food.” And voila! Here is Shred, and it’s number one in the country right now.
EBONY: So how does this work?
IKS: Let me just tell you the two major principles of Shred. One is called meal spacing. You space your meals out so you’re eating about every three to four hours. The critical part with meal spacing is that you stabilize your hormones so that you do not have those spikes in insulin that occur when you eat large meals. With meal spacing, we keep those hormones stable and the stability of those hormones prevent weight gain.
The second concept I coined is called “diet confusion.” And I name it after the similar concept in weight lifting called muscle confusion. The idea behind diet confusion is, you have to keep your body off-kilter. So by changing the type of foods that you eat, the frequency of the foods that you eat, you can keep your metabolism revved up. Instead of eating the same food all the time and your body gets adjusted to that same food and your metabolism no longer is challenged. Those two principles are really the driving principles of Shred and why people are finding such success.
EBONY: So millions of us have a 2013 resolution to shed some pounds, maybe even using your new book. What’s your personal resolution?
IKS: I don’t make resolutions, because resolutions seem so ephemeral and transient to go away. But one of my commitments this year is that I want to be even more benevolent and generous of my intellectual assets to help people, to inspire and encourage people. I want to be even more giving this year. I find a tremendous amount of return and reward when I give, and I want to do more of it.
