On May 1, 2011 an unexpected package came from Amazon Books.
“Hmmm, I didn’t order a book?”
When I opened it, I really knew I hadn’t ordered it! The title was, “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About it,” by Gary Taubes an award-winning science writer for the New York Times. Why would I buy a book with that title? I wasn’t fat anymore! My first thought when I saw the bright red cover was, ‘Thank God, for once I don’t need to lose weight.’ That thought came from the fact that I had spent the previous two years losing weight so I could launch this book The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! By May, 1, 2011 it had been out for 5 months. I had made a promise to myself and my readers that until I lost 35 pounds going by my own advice in that book, it would not be released. I gradually lost the weight over a two-year period, (I thought it would take a year) and on January 17, 2010 I stepped on the scale and it said, “It’s a go!” We released the book the next day.
What happened in the next four months will be a confession.
Once the excitement of the book launch set in and sales were doing very well, Nelly began to fuss. By following the calories-in-calories-out theory whereby 3,500 calories equals a pound, my guess is I ate an extra 7000 calories a month after the book release. That’s approximately 233 calories every day more than I should have eaten to maintain my weight. By the end of April, 2011, I’d gained 10 pounds and Nelly was feeling trapped and nasty!
“Why’d you go and write that dumb book anyway? Now we HAVE to diet the whole rest of our life and I’ll NEVER, NEVER, NEVER get a cinnamon roll or cake and ice cream or candy canes at Christmas, or ….”
“Nelly, calm down, you know we can lose this ten pounds, we just have to start paying more attention and using all the wonderful tools you and I developed! You know they work and we really had fun, remember?”
“No I don’t want to play prison anymore, or pretend I’m at a Fat Camp and Oprah’s there to play with and I don’t want to keep track of all the calories I turn down. I want ice cream now.”
Following Weight Watcher’s advice I burned approximately 500 calories six days a week walking religiously around the high hills in my neighborhood and I kept my calorie intake to 1800 a day. If I’d get sick and didn’t walk, every seven days I was off the streets, I gained a pound, unless I cut back my calorie intake to 1200 calories.
I couldn’t blame Nelly. I felt trapped by my own advice and by relaxing just a few rules here and there, skipping my walk once in a while, I was gradually gaining again and I did NOT want to be a hypocrite. There’s nothing enlightening about touting a weight-loss book when you’re over-weight. I was in serious trouble and that feeling of being a hypocrite was hanging on my back like a python squeezing every ounce of joy out of me. I felt stuck, but determined to read my own advice again and re-remember what kept me inspired through the two years I had lost the weight.
For 45 years I tried to live by Weight Watcher’s weight loss program and it worked for me . . . for a while. I would usually let myself get about ten pounds over my healthy weight and re-up at the local WW meeting place, the Methodist Church up on the hill. I’d lose the ten pounds after a couple months of weekly meetings, careful weighing of food, accountant-like focus on calorie tallying and religious exercise. Then as time drifted by, my resolve would gradually dissolve and I’d quit paying attention. Over time, usually about five years, I’d put my foot down and go back to WW, up ten pounds plus a few more.
By the time I was 50, I was returning to WW with 20 pounds to lose. At 65 I had not been to WW in seven years and I had 35 pounds to lose!
I’ve always had a stubborn streak but it takes more than stubbornness to stick to a Weight Watcher life-style for life, and I couldn’t do it. But I’m not alone, I’ve watched WW leaders (including Jean Nidetch the founder) roller coaster their weight. Kirstie Alley couldn’t do it. Oprah couldn’t do it. I have many friends who couldn’t do it. How’s that Weight Watcher diet doing for you? You probably wouldn’t be reading this book if it were working.
I was 68 years old when I found out why the Weight Watchers calories-in-calories-out theory does not work over time. It all has to do with what it considers a healthy diet. When I wrote The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! I followed Weight Watchers guidelines, from portion control to going along with WW’s food recommendations, along with major behavioral changes I’ll tell you about later. I was as loyal to Weight Watchers as a student is to his mentor when it came to believing it was right. Now I know it’s all wrong! You’ll see as you read on, why very few of us can stay with a Weight Watcher’s calories-in-calories out lifestyle.
Marla Cilley is who had sent Why We Get Fat to me. She had really embraced The Mouth Trap and I wondered why she’d sent this to me. Then, I read it! The first few chapters went exactly against everything I’ve ever believed about dieting. As I said, I always went to Weight Watchers whenever I wanted to lose weight. Weight Watchers is built on a supposed “balanced” low fat, high carbohydrate diet recommended by the supposed health experts and medical community. As you will find out in my book, I went by that theory and diet plan to lose the weight. It works if you want to live a life always hungry and increasing your amount of exercise and decreasing your calorie intake as you get older. (I’ll explain later by paraphrasing Gary’s words.)
I couldn’t put the book down! When I was finished with it I gave it to Terry to read, saying I was going to totally change the way I ate and I hoped he would too. Terry is a very skeptical person and being a journalist by trade, he wants all the facts void of emotion. He read the book in a couple of days and when he said he’d go along with me on changing our diet (and lifestyle as far as eating was concerned) I was so excited! Nelly was very quiet.
The Change
Gary’s research is absolutely flawless! The way he presented research over the last 80 years is compelling and I would challenge anyone to find his opinion or emotion between the pages of Why We Get Fat and What To Do About it. I want you to read his book so you can be comfortable about the science that backs up his findings. Did you know that high cholesterol is not a determiner of heart disease and that there is no scientific proof that it is? Did you know that animal fat is not only extremely good for you, it’s essential for healthy brain function? Did you know that fat doesn’t make you fat? Did you know that the epidemic of auto-immune diseases is caused by the diet we’ve been told by our health experts and government is healthy?
Unlike Gary Taube’s book, this book is filled with emotion and opinion as I tell you what has happened to Terry and me in the year that we’ve been on a restricted carbohydrate, high fat diet and lifestyle. I’m going to share with you my unscientific thoughts as a result of just living for more than a year of pure joy and extreme energy and well-being with this new way to eat.
What we learned from Gary’s book in that first week in May 2011 was that carbohydrates (sugars, starches, grains) are what make us fat. They make us fat because they spike our insulin levels and our beautiful bodies don’t know what to make of that so they go into what I’ve termed STUNTS mode. (Survival Threatened Urgent Need To Stockpile). In other words when you eat carbohydrates your body thinks it’s in trouble (which it is) and it goes into survival mode.
What is a restricted carbohydrate diet? The number of carbohydrates you can healthfully consume daily is an individual matter that you will need to figure out for yourself. (It’s somewhere between five and 100 grams of carbohydrates.) I have discovered I can have no more than 20 carbs a day. Terry can have 50. Today’s medical wisdom (if you can call it that) insists that 300 grams of carbs a day is healthy! Unlike Gary Taubes I get to speak my mind on this. 300 carbs a day is insane. The medical experts have their heads up their assets to tell us we should consume 300 carbs a day. I don’t think they are guilty of pre-meditated murder but certainly it’s manslaughter. I know some nice doctors and I’m sure they haven’t purposely told us to eat wrong so they have work, but that is exactly what they’ve done. And boy do they have work! Have you seen the statistics! There’s an epidemic of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease, MS, Cancer and obesity. How’s that physician induced diet doing for us? We’ve been victims of this physician induced eating disorder and we don’t have to be. People are sick because they’ve been told to eat wrong. We’ve been told what’s wrong to eat for so long that what’s right to eat sounds wrong. Read this next paragraph and see if your mind goes a little wonky.
Eat the skin on chicken, the fat on your steak, pork, lamb and fish, as many eggs as you want, butter, sour cream, mayonnaise, cheese, and stay away from anything with the word low-cal or low fat on its label. Cook with lard and don’t eat grains. How does that sound to you? Using my body as a lab for over a year, that’s what I’ve adhered to every day and I’ve never been happier or healthier.
Unless you are blessed to already have an enlightened doctor who advocates a restricted carbohydrate/high fat diet, make it a priority to find one in your area who can support you in this major decision you’ll be making. Jimmy Moore is an excellent resource and it was through his website http://www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/ that I was able to find Dr. Ann Childers in Portland, Oregon. Ann is also a psychiatrist who has expanded her medical practice to include helping people like me who want to be encouraged by a medical expert when going against the authority of our government and what they tell us we should eat, to most of the men and women in white coats with stethoscopes slung over their shoulders who are ignorant of the science and too arrogant to learn the truth and admit they’ve goofed BIG TIME.
I remember when I made my first appointment with Dr. Childers. I told her that I belonged to Kaiser (an HMO) and my physician (I’ll call him Dr. Wrong) was a low-fat-three-eggs-a-week (and then only the whites) high-carbohydrate-type-guy and I wanted her to be my low-carb-two-eggs-a-day-skin-on-my-chicken doctor. I added that I was so angry with doctors who push the low fat, high carbohydrate diet and pills to lower cholesterol, that I just might need her as a shrink for anger management issues! (Sometimes I’ve come real close to needing her psychiatrically.) Embarking on this lifestyle, I took my health and life into my own hands and I thumbed my nose at Dr. Wrong’s opinion of my restricted carbohydrate, high fat diet. It takes courage to go against authority and I’ll be ever indebted to Dr. Childers for helping me make the leap.
After my first appointment with Ann, I felt such great relief and confidence that Terry and I were on the right path. She ordered blood work and also recommended I have a VAP cholesterol test which not only shows HDL and LDL, but shows the particle size of LDL which the standard, run-of-the-mill cholesterol test does not. Since I pay a lot of money to Kaiser for my health care ($400 a month) I decided to contact Dr. Wrong to at least get the tests done at Kaiser.
I emailed him and said, “Dear Dr. Wrong, I am currently seeing a psychiatrist outside of Kaiser, for an eating disorder.” (I know I wasn’t being totally honest, but Nelly loved having the slight stretch of the truth; and besides I did have an eating disorder—it just happened to be physician induced.) I went on to say in the email, “My psychiatrist has ordered some blood work and a special cholesterol test that’s not the standard one Kaiser does. It’s called a VAP test.”
Dr. Wrong ordered the blood work, but questioned the VAP test. His email to me said, “I’m vaguely familiar with the VAP test, but I’m questioning why your psychiatrist wants this test, so I won’t order it.”
I answered, “Do you mean to tell me, unless you know my psychiatrist’s motive, you won’t order the test? If I have to go outside Kaiser for it, the cost to me will be $107!”
His answer, “Yes, I won’t order it.”
This is the arrogance we face with doctors who somehow come to think that MD stands for Minor Deity. (This was probably the closest I’ve come to needing Dr. Childers as a psychiatrist on my low carb journey.) But I really wasn’t surprised at Wrong’s response. For me it was just another sign I was on my own in this.
I did have the VAP blood test and the results brought rave reviews from Dr. Childers. If I hadn’t had it I would not have known that my raised LDL count consisted of innocuous, fluffy particles as opposed to the dense particles that cause inflammation and can cause heart disease.
As I wrote that last chapter, I felt as if there were an elephant in the room, so I’m going to address it. The elephant’s name is Cholesterol. This elephant is no more a marker for heart disease than red hair is. Let me explain in very unscientific terms.
When you read Gary Taubes’ book, Why We Get Fat and What to do About it, you’ll find out that just as many people have heart attacks with low cholesterol as those with high cholesterol, NO DIFFERENCE. No studies have ever proven otherwise. Somehow (and you’ll find out how in the book) we’ve been lead to believe we have to lower our cholesterol to avoid heart disease, and get this, at that same time drug companies came up with a drug that lowers cholesterol (they’re called statins). Why would we take a cholesterol lowering drug if our cholesterol doesn’t need to be lowered? We wouldn’t. Somebody had to get us to think we needed to take it so they could push the drug. It’s that simple! And push it they certainly do; to the tune of two billion dollars a year!
It would be like a company that makes red hair dye and wants to sell billions of bottles of it, so it starts a rumor that red heads don’t have heart disease, so buy our dye and you won’t die. Then they take out expensive ads in big deal medical journals and persuade doctors to recommend (prescribe) the dye to their patients, promising more ads if the physicians keep creating a demand. The red dye will no more prevent heart disease than the cholesterol lowering drugs will and yet most physicians prescribe them liberally.
I was one of those victims. After I read Gary’s book I dumped my statins just like I did hormone therapy drugs way before it became public knowledge they caused breast cancer and heart attacks! If you are currently taking a statin, please don’t dump them just because I did. Do your research and tell your low carb doctor what you want to do. Whatever you do, don’t get into a big argument with the doctor who has prescribed them to you. You don’t want to run up your blood pressure!
Just an aside, when I told Dr. Wrong via his nurse when I called to cancel a pap test (I don’t have any more pap left to test) that I no longer take statins I stirred up a big fuss! I got a call from Wrong’s PA (physician’s assistant) Wrong Too asking me why I quit them statins. I told him no woman over 50 should be taking statins and if he didn’t know that he was living in the dark ages. That didn’t go over well with him. He also did not like hearing how healthy I am and kept acting like I was an exception to the rule. I ended up telling him to just write in my records “patient refuses prescribed drug” so he and Dr. Wrong can be off the hook for not making another sale.
Having to deal with a prejudiced physician is a waste of your time, money and health. Over the years it has cost me more money than I care to calculate and of course the good health I could have been enjoying. I’m very angry about this, because the truth has been known for a long time and it has been covered up.
One other thing about the elephant; we need cholesterol and the older we get (especially women) our cholesterol should naturally go up. Over the last 40 years our population is getting fatter and fatter and sicker and sicker because we are starving our bodies by trying to follow what we’ve been told is a healthy diet. When we take our health into our own hands and back it up with help from a low carb doctor and lots of study on this subject, we can turn things around one body at a time.
Here’s what has happened to my body in just 15 months into my new lifestyle.
No achiness (The achiness quit when I quit taking the statins. I had thought all along the achiness was just old-lady pains.)
The pockets in my gums closed up (When you get older your gums can begin to recede and my dentist measures the depth of the recession to determine whether treatment is necessary to stop the recession. My last exam revealed my gums have not only stopped receding, they’ve repaired themselves. My dentist was blown away and asked me what I’d been doing differently. I told him I was on a high fat, restricted carbohydrate diet that must have given my body the fuel it needed to heal itself.)
Increased well-being
Eczema disappeared and hasn’t returned seasonally
No sensitivity to heat (I used to be extremely sensitive to heat and had real problems in the summer and on vacation in the tropics. Not anymore!)
Regular bowel movements (I used to have a bowel movement every three or four days).
Energy level high (I never need a nap and I used to require one every day.)
Nails are considerably stronger
Triglycerides (one of the real markers for heart disease) have plunged from 155 to 62
Weight loss and maintenance (My weight no longer fluctuates.)
Never hungry
A growth in my left hand dissolved
Down four dress sizes
No more bladder infections (I used to have two or three a year and was told by Dr. Wrong to stop taking baths and swimming in pools. Today I enjoy baths and swimming in pools.)
Have not had a cold or flu (I didn’t have a flu shot this year and in the past I averaged five colds a year.)
When I made this list it struck me that this lifestyle has literally slashed my need for medical services! Wow, what would happen if we all could cut out most of the need for them! I’ll bet we wouldn’t be hassling over healthcare issues because most of us would be healthy.
If I’ve convinced you that living a low-carb lifestyle is what you want to do, you’ll want to start cooking low-carb. On my website www.makeitfunanditwillgetdone.com I have a low-carb cooking video segment every Monday. All of my low-carb recipes are archived on the website, just click on the Recipe tab. As I play in my kitchen and xperiment with slashing carbs while still making tasty meals, I will continue to share my latest recipes.
Also on the website, you can watch top experts, doctors and researchers in the field of carbohydrate restriction. While on a low-carb cruise organized by Jimmy Moore and his fantastic staff, we listened to these men and women share their wisdom and knowledge with those of us who paid to go on the cruise with them and they were so gracious in allowing us to film their speeches for you, for free. Just go on the website and click on the Lose Weight tab.
Assignment for Chapter Three:
Watch Fat Head the documentary by Tom Naughton.
Read Why We Get Fat and What do to About it by Gary Taubes, before you embark on this path.