For my recent birthday, my daughter gave me a copy of Gary Taubes' new book, Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It.
There are people who would be insulted to receive a book with that title. Not me.
I've spent most of my life in the "grossly obese" category, with occasional trips to the "morbidly obese" world.
I've made it 52 years without a heart attack, stroke or other bad things that come with obesity. But I recognize that I'm a ticking time bomb. I'm looking for some help.
If you count up my time in weight loss programs, I am far ahead of Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan's total trips to rehab, combined.
Some years I gain, some years I lose, but I ultimately come back to the same category.
Grossly obese.
As Taubes noted, some people are just suckers for diet books. I am one of them. I've read them all and still get fatter. I've gotten pretty jaded. Only my daughter's enthusiasm got me interested in Why We Get Fat.
I'm glad I read it. It is ground-breaking in that it goes against the conventional wisdom of counting calories, semi-starvation diets, exercising like crazy and focusing on a fat-free diet.
He makes a point that really hits home. In our parents' and grandparents' days, dieting meant that you cut out desserts, breads and potatoes.
In other words, you went on a low carb diet. He gives the history of how we went away from low carb and made the switch to low fat in the 1960's, with disastrous results.
We are far fatter and unhealthier than we have ever been.
Taubes stresses the control of insulin, not the control of calories, as the concept to focus on.
People who are diabetic or pre-diabetic understand this well. Going to a low carb diet can be an effective way to battle the disease.
Taubes makes a case for why the idea of a "low fat" diet doesn't work. He notes that the concept didn't exist until the 1960's and it was the work of one devoted and well-connected medical researcher that made low fat a universally accepted principle.
Even more controversial, Taubes doesn't see exercise an effective way to lose weight.
Taubes is not a medical professional, but a well respected science writer.
I run into people at all time who are looking for the latest gimmick to make money. Day trading stocks, flipping houses and subprime mortgages all stem from people wanting to take shortcuts to get to the top.
Just like all of us who try gimmick diets.
Why We Get Fat is not a diet book. It is a well-documented insight into how a move back to "old fashioned values" might make us healthier.
My grandmother was a single mother who worked in a potato chip factory. She never had great wealth but she had no debt and had savings in the bank.
That's the money philosophy I preach to clients.
She also told me to cut out deserts and potatoes when I wanted to lose weight.
It could be that grandmother was onto something.
And maybe Gary Taubes is, too.
Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC of Richmond, Kentucky is the Chairman of the Board for McNay Settlement Group, a structured settlement and claims organization.
He is the author of the book, Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win the Lottery.
Follow Don McNay on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Donmcnay
I stay away from fast food restaurants and other junk food.
A well balanced home cooked meal & excersise, is how this 63 year old woman stays in shape !
I would suggest that the word, rebellious, is more appropriate. The European's correct theory, which is carbs drive insulin drives fat accumulation, was highjacked by bad scientists in the 1970's or so. (I'm not sure wether they were bad because they were stupid/lazy or greedy/corrupt. But they were definitely like Fox news!) So, currently, the wrong theory, which is overeating or under-exercising makes people fatten, has almost total sway. In the late 1990's, Gary did his own research of the nutritional history and found very bad science being practiced. So he rebelled. In his first book about metabolism, Good Calories, Bad Calories, he said that he did not consider the current leaders in nutrition were true scientist because of all of the bad science since the 1970's onward. Of course, he became an outcast to them and they would not review his book, which is another sign of a bad scientist. (I think in this case it was greed/pride that made them bad scientists.)
Prepare yourself for extra energy, fewer cravings, longer satiation, and delicious flavor! All while watching your body become the best it can be.
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
I owe some of this to the pharmaceutical companies for anti-hypertension drugs and for drugs for diabetes; but I also think some of it was my "luck" in getting the right genes from the right parent, so far.
I have noticed the same effects you mention in your article; so I quit dieting in 2001. Since then my weight went down about 25 pounds, but it has remained there; and I am no longer morbidly obese.
I also make it a point not to weight myself often, but to pay more attention to how my clothing fits.
I (and probably you, too) do need to be exercising more. I do very little deliberate exercise. Fortunately I can still shovel snow for an hour or so without any symptoms but sweating.
Anyway, I appreciated this article; and I hope to meet you F2F someday.
The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos
Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata
Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon (Try to get past the fact that her last name is bacon.)
There were no preprocessed foods or frozen dinners. They cooked everything from scratch. And when they cooked, they used quality ingredients. Their beef wasn't corn fed, pumped with antibiotics and hormones. Cows roamed freely and ate grass. Their flour and rice wasn't stripped of nutrients and bleached. There was no high fructose corn syrup. They used lard, not vegetable shortening. Chickens roamed around and ate whatever they found and their eggs were high in Omega3s. They had plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables that weren't genetically modified or sprayed with insecticides.
In short, your Grandparents ate real food. In moderation. They didn't have meat every day. They didn't have deserts at every meal.
And they drank a lot of water rather than soda. That cut down on their sugar intake.
I'm doing my best to try to go back to the same diet our grandparents ate. It isn't easy since I have to work AND take care of a house, shop and cook from scratch. But I'm getting better organized. And I have something our Grandparents didn't. I have a freezer.
In early 2003, my husband and I started low carb. I lost 40 pounds. My husband lost 80 pounds within 9 months, came off of 43 units of insulin a night, had significant reduction in pain from neuropathy in his feet so much so that he came off of strong pain medications 7 years ago. He has never gained the weight back. His doctors were utterly amazed at the transformation.
If you learn all you can about carbohydrates, how they effect your body/insulin (and a good way is by reading Dr. B's book and Gary Taubes books), you can change your life dramatically for the good. I urge you to begin. Learn and then implement a low carb lifestyle.
We now give presentations on how to beat diabetes. Check us out: http://www.liveabetterlife.org
You can do this! You will be so happy you did.
But I notice that you did not say that you are diabetic, but only that you have a family history of it. Well, as Dr. Bernstein has found with his patients, the sooner you get your metabolism under control the sooner you will reduce your chances of getting diabetes. Then, as you will read in Gary Taubes book, you will also reduce your chances of getting heart disease, hypertension, cancer, cavities, arthritis, asthma, gout, sleep apnea and the biggy dementia and many more diseases of civilization.
Then, as a bonus, you will get to stop feeling guilty or lazy or whatever about your weight, which will most likely disapear. Fat accumulation is due to a hormonal imbalance and is not due to overeating or under-exercising. The true reason why you have that extra 60 pounds is that carbs drive insulin and insulin drives fat accumulation. You can get control of your metabolism and your health by eating fewer carbs, especially sugars and refined carbs.
Insulin will prove to be the key to unlocking most of the "diseases of modern civilization."