Michel Montignak French nutritionist, author of methods for losing excess weight Country: France

Biography of Michel Montignac

Michel Montignac was born in 1944 in the small French town of Angouleme, located in the center of the Charente department. He came from a family where excess weight was a common issue among the males. Even his mother, who was a wonderful cook, couldn't avoid this fate.

During his school years, Michel rarely spoke about his experiences. Being an overweight teenager was not easy, especially among his slim peers. He also suffered from a lack of attention from the opposite sex. Nevertheless, Michel managed to excel academically and in 1962, he enrolled in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bordeaux, intending to follow in his father's footsteps.

As he indulged in social gatherings and snacks during his university years, Michel's weight problem worsened. By the time he finished university, he weighed 100 kilograms, and the weight continued to increase. Trying to understand his problem, Michel attended the faculty of pharmacology at the university. He tried various popular diets and weight loss medications, but the scale stubbornly moved in the wrong direction. Michel had a love for good food, and all the diets he tried required strict food restrictions, which left him feeling deeply frustrated.

In the mid-1970s, tired of the endless battle with his own body, Michel set himself the task of finding his own eating regimen. He wanted to find a way to eat without restricting himself in the amount of food consumed, while still losing weight instead of gaining it. Inspired by the work of Felicia Crapo, a leading specialist in diabetes management, Michel turned to a diet developed for diabetics. The main goal of this diet was to change the structure of meals by incorporating foods that do not cause a rapid increase in blood sugar. Although Michel was not diabetic, he noticed a common problem among diabetics - unhealthy weight gain. And a miracle happened. In just three months, without starving himself, Michel lost 15 kilograms!

Montignac conducted extensive research on weight loss. Starting in 1986, he published more than 20 books in 42 countries, translated into 25 languages. His principles of healthy eating were based on the separation of foods containing lipids and carbohydrates during one meal. Unfortunately, Michel Montignac passed away before reaching the average life expectancy by eleven years. He died on August 22, 2010, at the age of 66, in Anmas, a town in southeastern France.