Well, about nine days ago I started a Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) diet. I had 33 Lbs. to lose, and as of today I've lost 6.5 Lbs. Let me start off by saying that I was a major skeptic of this kind of eating before I really understood it. All my exposure to this stuff had been from the name that everyone knows, Dr. Atkins. Rumours abound about the man, that he died of diet-inflicted heart disease, that he was morbidly obese when he died, etc. The truth is that he fell on some ice and hit his head, which sent him into a coma that he never recovered from. He did have a heart condition which caused a mild heart attack in 2002, but it was entirely unrelated to diet. Like many people, I didn't check my sources, and made a lot of assumptions about his diet. How could it be possible to live on bacon, eggs, steak, and butter and not end up with heart disease or be extremely unhealthy? And sure, people might lose weight on this diet, but it must be clogging their arteries and getting them ready for an early grave. I was firmly in that camp.
I've consistently struggled with carrying about 30-35 extra pounds since my late teens/early twenties, losing all of it once, only to gain it back in strides when I got married and started cooking meals that were too delicious. There was lots of fresh pasta, home made bread, potatoes, home made cookies and other baked goods...along with everything else, all good because it was home made, right? I very quickly gained all the weight back that I had lost two years earlier, and decided it was just my lot in life. I figured that since I was eating as much as my husband (IT guy, naturally lean and totally underweight when we got married), that must be the problem. I was just eating too much, so I would try occasionally limiting my calorie intake, but that never lasted long 'cause I was hungry! I would try, guns-blazing, to work out, but it always fizzled out pretty quickly (I'd be so sore that I couldn't work out again for days, and that doesn't make for a good exercise regimen).
Then I found and tried the South Beach diet. Twice. I figured since it was all about low-fat everything, it must be healthy. I lost 10 pounds very quickly both times, and then seemed to stall there. Eventually I gave up, because I was hungry all the time, and I figured I must be one of those people who just needs to exercise for 90 minutes a day in order to work off the fat. Then I decided, it must be a matter of all things in moderation. As long as my grains were whole, my fat intake was low, and I ate lots of veggies and fruit, with some moderate exercise, with only occasional junk food, that should do it. Well, much to my chagrin, the scales just kept going up until I was back to my highest weight again. What the heck? I was annoyed, and didn't really know what to do anymore. I was resigning myself to the idea that this is just where my body was going to stay, and I should just get used to it. As long as I didn't gain any more, it would be fine.
Then one day, two weeks ago, it was a slow day at the office. I was browsing a website looking for things for work, and stumbled upon a link to this video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth. I watched the whole thing, fascinated, and very aware that I was discovering something that could enact some real change in my weight. Just one tidbit from the video that made me just about jump up and down for joy, was when he explains that we cannot exercise enough to lose weight. The math is simple, and it's impossible! The guilt trips I has laid on myself all these years were finally vanquished!! Other teasers for the lecture are the fact that a calorie isn't a calorie, and that the first law of thermodynamics is being interpreted incorrectly as it pertains to "energy balance" in the body ie: the calories in calories out idea.
A subtle shift began in my thinking over the following few days. I immediately resolved to give up sugar. Then I watched everything I could find on You Tube by this sugar guy, which led to lectures by other guys who had written books on the whole subject. It expanded from just sugar and high fructose corn syrup to the whole topic of carbohydrates and what they do in and to our bodies. Things like, it's not gluttony and sloth that make us fat, it's fat that makes us gluttons and sloths. Overeating is an effect, not a cause. The science behind insulin and what it does to cause our bodies to store fat. The fact that once fat is in a fat cell, it is not inert, but that fat can flow in and out of our cells as needed for fuel. Exercise doesn't make us thin, just hungry!. A week into this stuff and I realized I was hearing the answer to my quest for successful weight loss. I got out some books from the library, and started Atkins right away. I was still thinking that I'd be doing a "diet". It might be a year before I reach my target weight, but then I'd be down and could allow for some indulgences here and there.
I started reading and really learning about this way of life, and discovered that this isn't new information. There has been a long history in the study of obesity and diabetes in particular, that has been more or less ignored by the mainstream, in favour of unscientific opinion by politicians, and junk science funded by the food and pharmaceutical industry. This whole way of eating was the prescription for weight loss pre WWII, much of it being done in Europe. After the war, much if not all of that research was forgotten or ignored by most American scientists, and the Europeans had much more important issues to deal with. One other major point of interest is that the obesity/diabetes epidemic coincided directly with the low-fat, high carbohydrate diet that is advocated by the health authorities. Well, many Doctors, Endocrinologists, Paediatric Obesity Specialists, and Cardiovascular Doctors who work with the victims of this bad information have been looking for solutions, and they're finding them in the low carb, high fat way of life.
So over the past week I've found that there's a whole Low Carb High Fat movement out there! It's extremely popular in Sweden, (to the point where they're in a butter shortage), and I started to read the blog of Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt who advocates this lifestyle. I also read the book "Why We Get Fat" by Gary Taubes, which you can get all the basic information from on You Tube in about 90 minutes. That's when I realized that I wasn't going on a diet. The fundamental way I thought about nutrition as a whole had changed, and I'd embarked on what I intend to be a change for life. Paradigm Shift.
I had to explain to a couple of people at church today why I wasn't having cookies, but had brought my own snack--they were more curious about what I was eating. Not wanting to drag anyone into a conversation they didn't want to have, I just answered that I was off carbs and sugar. The question from both people was, "Oh, for how long?". I paused for a split second as I contemplated the fact that I am not "on a diet", and I answered, smiling, "Indefinitely!". It was fun to see the response to that. The half stutter, but..what...you can't...how...really?
So, here I am, 9 days in, 6.5 Lbs. down, and loving it! I've been enjoying my meals immensely. Other than about two late evening major cravings, I haven't been missing carbs and sugar one bit! After a meal I'm satisfied for hours, only sometimes needing to snack, and I'm enjoying delicious food that I've always loved anyway.
One interesting thing of note, then I'll be signing off from this post. I asked my Doctor a few years ago about a particular digestive issue I was having. After we discussed some things, he thought that it was probably the high fat dairy I was consuming that was causing my issues, and that if I switch to low fat everything I should be fine. Well, I did, and for the past few years full fat dairy has been anathema to me. I've avoided it like the plague, and have eaten cheese (which is one of my favourite foods), that tastes like plastic and other anemic dairy products. The only problem is that the issue didn't really go away. It seemed to ebb and flow, but sometimes it was really bad. After something like Pizza, it was through the roof! Well, 9 days in, eating the highest fat dairy I can find, and that problem is nowhere to be found! Looks like it wasn't the culprit after all!
So, here's the start of my on-line blogging of my life in low carb!
