I mentioned that my sister was a “chunker” when she was a kid... it was not an intentional omission, but in total fairness, I should have mentioned my own weight chronology and the differences between us, and it’s occurred to me that there is a lot more information to share on the topic:
One of the differences between us (in addition to the fact that she was “always” bigger, compared to me ) was that her weight gain was distributed across much of her body, while mine was primarily abdominal (also referred to as “visceral”) fat — one of the potential indicators of “Metabolic Syndrome X,” which is not pretty. From the Wikipedia article:
- Fasting hyperglycemia, diabetes mellitus type 2 or impaired fasting glucose, impaired glucose tolerance, or insulin resistance — bad news for me, right out of the gate. Not hugely elevated, but elevated. Yes, if your metabolism of carbs is like mine, you are at high risk of type-2 diabetes. Welcome to real life. I don’t have this, but I realized that I was on track to get it, if I didn’t straighten myself out, by getting my carb intake under control.
- High blood pressure — mine was only a little over borderline elevated, typically at 140/90.
- Central obesity (also known as visceral, male-pattern or apple-shaped adiposity), overweight with fat deposits mainly around the waist — Pot to kettle: come in kettle, this is pot... me again.
- Decreased HDL cholesterol — HDL is the “good” cholesterol. What is actually more important is the ratio of ”good” to “bad.” I don’ recall what this was.
- Elevated triglycerides — guess what, kids: triglycerides aren’t related to eating fat. Triglycerides are made from sugar.
- Associated diseases and signs are:
As you can see, if you put these warning signs together, I was boned.
- elevated uric acid levels — that’s gout. I never had that.
- fatty liver (especially in concurrent obesity) progressing to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease — yep, I had a mild fatty liver condition, which I had for years: my “live enzymes,” as measured by the typical group of generic blood tests, had been slightly elevated for 7 years or more, but not elevated enough to cause a doctor to do much about it. I wonder if that’s because they often don’t appreciate what it’s an indicator of. My mother blamed me taking NyQuil, but that wasn’t the case. Alcoholic fatty liver disease is the stage before cirrhosis. Surprise, surprise — once I started down this path, it did not take very long before my liver enzyme tests indicated that this condition had cleared up!
- polycystic ovarian syndrome — big girls can have a lot more trouble getting pregnant, ,and if they do, they appear to have a higher risk of miscarriage, because their body doesn’t properly manipulate its own hormones during implantation and gestation. PCOS is believed to be triggered by insulin resistance, which is caused by continuous exposure of your body cells to insulin. What do you suppose high insulin levels indicate? Too much blood glucose. Too many carbs. Naturally, doctors treat this by throwing pills at it. Metformin is apparently helpful, but like many medicines, the benefits are negligible compared to the repair that can be done by correcting your diet.
- hemochromatosis (iron overload) — don’t know if this ever happened to me, but I can tell you that for people like me, a common recommendation is to take a multivitamin that does not include iron. That’s what I do.
- acanthosis nigricans (a skin condition featuring dark patches) — I don’t have this.
My weight did’t start piling on until I was in my 20’s, when I started porking up from 135 to finally end up at 223, which was the point when a doctor gave me an ultimatim: lose weight, 0r go on high blood pressure medicine. He then sent me to a complete moron cardiologist who was one of the worst pill-pushers I’ve ever met (he added a diuretic, one of the stupidest drugs ever prescribed). When I complained that I was having to go “#1” very frequently every day, he advised me to quit complaining and drink less water. What a genius.
In one of life’s bitter ironies, I was also given a beta-blocker for my blood pressure. In the United States, the medical establishment considered this to be a good thing for a long time. What’s the irony? Beta-blockers may actually increase your risk of type-2 diabetes. Worse still, the “beta-3” receptors in your body are what triggers lipolysis, which is the release of fat from your fat cells — that’s your body’s natural response to a demand for energy when there isn’t enough blood glucose. If you’ve ever felt weak and shaky when your blood sugar was low, this is a contributing factor. Drinking a glass of orange juice or a Coke is a temporary fix, but inevitably leads to a rebound. So much for a fix.
Some beta-blockers such as metoprolol are alleged to be “selective” for which of the beta receptors they are believed to tweak, but I can tell you personally that they will block the release of fat, blocking your loss of weight, and also make you feel weak and jittery. The true fix for high blood pressure is to lose the weight, and this treatment makes it that much worse.
So I took myself off of the diuretic as well as the beta-blocker. I told my doctors outright that I was absolutely not going to take them, and I didn’t care about these being a temporary patch (however little good they actually did, only lowering my blood pressure by a tiny amount). The doctor has threatened to put me back on them, but it’s not going to happen. As I have gotten smaller, so have my blood pressure numbers. Go figure.
If you think about gastric bypass, the “lap band,” and the associated surgeries, what do they do? They force you to eat less. How much more healthy would it be to change your life by changing your appetite — which you can do by getting your carbohydrate metabolism in check, by correcting your diet to cancel out much of the harmful effects of the modern American diet... with none of the unpleasant side effects, and no forced, irreversible changes to your anatomy that will make you miserable, later? Never mind that with these surgeries, you can still ramp right back up to your pre-surgical size... but not if you correct your eating.
And what about “statins,” cholesterol-lowering drugs? Another example of pill-pushing of drugs with very serious potential side-effects, and relatively small benefits.
I should make it clear that I have zero objection to the idea of conventional medications. Sometimes they are very necessary. The important thing to remember is that medications, almost without exception, work by blocking some kind of natural action that occurs in your body. Correct the underlying cause of the problem, and the medication becomes not just unnecessary, but the actual cost/benefit ratio of the drug goes up!
Do I have to say this? I’ll say it anyway: This isn’t medical advice — it’s my opinion, and serves as documentation of my own progress and learning. I don’t go there, and you absolutely, positively, need to contact your doctor before you start following my path. You may not find their attitude helpful — doctors can be very entrenched. I don’t believe there is a conspiracy between doctors and the pharmaceutical companies; I do know, however, that they do tend to have a mindset that excludes simpler treatments for what ails you.
If you decide to follow me down this path, I’m here for you. Seriously. Encouragement, advice, anything I can do to help you reverse your track down this perilous path.
Recapping the fundamentals:
- Get a general blood chemistry work-up from your doctor. You’ll be glad you did, so that you can see your progress. Don’t get another one done until you’ve been eating like this for about 6 weeks.
- Do not be afraid of eating fat. Fat is necessary for health. This is one reason breast milk is so good for infants: it contains a lot of saturated fat. How much does that fly in the face of conventional wisdom? I make my case.
- Be very afraid of anything labeled “lite” or “diet.” Usually, that’s code for less fat, more sugar.
- Do be afraid of excess “bad carbs.” Fiber is a carbohydrate, so obviously you don’t want to avoid all carbohydrates: just the bad ones. “Bad” doesn’t mean they will kill you, it only means that it will slow down your weight loss.
- Eat all you want of good foods, but do try to stop before you are totally full. Stop at the “I could eat more, but I am truly satisfied by this food“ point. Eat at least one salad every day, preferably at the start of meals. Take some unsweetened metamucil — it’s pretty nasty, but if you gulp it down, it’s not bad — and it will help fill you up, and add fiber to your diet as a bonus.
- Pace yourself like this: Read the labels of what you buy and what you eat. For the first week or two, keep your bad carbs around 20 grams a day. When you look at a label, if there are 10 grams of carbs per serving, but 4 of them are fiber, only count 6. Similarly, if you find “sugar alcohol” grams under the carbs section of the label, subtract that number also — because sugar alcohol is still used by the body for energy, but doesn’t trigger your (probably-overworked) pancreas to shoot out a bunch of insulin. After two weeks, start increasing your daily total carbs by 5-10 grams. After your nice start of weight loss, you’ll eventually reach a point where you have increased your carbs to a point where your weight loss slows to a crawl or stops completely. Back off on the carbs a little, and take this as an important lesson: the lesson is, the carbs are what is keeping your weight on! You will have absolute proof of this.
- Don’t skip any meals, even if you aren’t hungry. “Not hungry?” you ask? “But I’m always hungry.” Not any more. Eating fat, and burning fat, will suppress your appetite. I promise you that with a good breakfast, which means very low carbs and something with some fat (bacon, sausage, butter) that you will work right through lunch and before you know it, it will be after 1:00 pm, and you’ll look at the clock, in shock, wondering how this is possible. Skipping meals triggers your metabolism to drop, which slows your weight loss. You don’t want that.
- Do not listen to skeptics of this type of eating. Many of them have never tried it, and many others don’t really understand it — there seems to be a perception that you’re eliminating “good carbs” and your meals are nutritionally unbalanced. Nonsense, as you will see.
- Despite the fact that I hate the “nanny state” mentality of banning this food or that food, trans-fats are very, very bad for you. You’ll usually find the secret language for this in the ingredients list: “hydrogenated” or “partially-hydrogenated” oil of some kind. The oil itself would be good for you; hydrogenating oils is an artificial process that makes them solid at room temperature (think of Crisco), making them not at all good for you.
- Temporarily stay away from bread, cookies, crackers, potatoes, corn, and anything with carbs that will take you over the daily limit.
- Remember that a McDonald’s Sausage Egg and Cheese biscuit contains 43 grams of carbs. Throw away the biscuit, and you only have 3 grams of carbs — a fantastic food, good for you, and will actually help you lose weight. If you hanker for a taste of the biscuit, eat just one bite, as “dessert.” I’m telling you — this works. (I usually immediately drop half the biscuit on the floor of the car, so there’s zero chance that I will pick it up and eat it. Even skipping half the biscuit is better than eating the whole thing.
- Cool-Whip and sugar-free Jello makes a fantastic and satisfying snack. Cool-Whip has a lot less sugar than you might expect. (Yes, Cool-Whip does have confusing information on the label — 0 grams of trans-fat, yet it lists hydrogenated oil in the ingredients. My best guess is that it’s less than 0.5 so they round it down. Not ideal, but if a craving hits you that you can shut down with some Cool-Whip, you will likely be better off than snarfing down a cinnamon roll.)
As of Sunday, I was at my lowest weight ever during this weight loss “project” of mine: 183. That‘s 40 pounds lost, with not an inch of surplus skin hanging around. They are not kidding when they say slower is better. But mine would be much faster if I didn’t succumb to the occastional Large Caramel Java Chiller, Chicken Club “toaster” sandwich, or “Island Fire Burger” from Sonic drive-in.
As an aside, I always weigh fully dressed, any time of day. That’s totally the opposite of conventional wisdom, which says you should weigh naked first thing in the morning. Doing it my way, you can weigh whenever it’s convenient, with the added bonus that if you do occasionally weigh without your clothes, you’ll be totally jazzed at what your actual weight really is. They also say to weigh only once a week — but I weigh almost every day. It’s perfectly normal to fluctuate from day to day, so two or three pounds of fluctuation is no problem: what you will notice is that the trend of your weights is downward. When you have an uptick, it can serve as additional motivation to stay on track, because you can always be confident that as long as you stay on the plan, your health will improve, and you will be losing weight, almost effortlessly.
Sounds too good to be true, but I can personally assure you that it is not. I also hope that you believe me that I am not selling vitamins, books, or anything else, and I have no selfish interest in your success at this — I want you to be healthy, with a longer life, and feel better about yourself, whoever you are.
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