Low Carb Confidential

It occurs to me that I’ve reached an impasse of sorts.  As I’m learning more each day about the truth of things nutritive, I find I’m having trouble letting go of some of my ingrained notions in practice.

I’d said the biggest barrier to acceptance of the truth regarding carbohydrates and the associated changes in society may well be wanting to believe the prevailing notions about diet as it relates to health.

According to the science of nutrition as explained in Gary Taubes’ book, Good Calories, Bad Calories:

• cholesterol and triglycerides can be controlled by restricting carbohydrates
• fiber plays no significant role in weight loss or disease prevention
• meat essentially contains nearly everything a body needs to survive
• eating fat does not make one fat
• vegetables and fruits are only required to provide nutrients missing from a high-carbohydrate, low-protein diet

I’ll relate some thoughts on these as they apply in my life and then I’ll stop beating this “belief” horse (for a while).

Cholesterol and triglycerides 

In 1995, at 230 pounds, my total cholesterol was 180 (HDL 37, LDL 106, VLDL 37).  In early 1997, at 243 pounds, my total cholesterol was up to 320 and my triglycerides measured over 1300.  I was put on Lopid immediately.  By the end of the year my total cholesterol was down to 225 and the triglycerides were under 300.  Nearly a year later, total cholesterol had risen to 245 and I was started on Lipitor; as a result, my total cholesterol dropped to 132 and the triglycerides to 148 by early 2000.  These figures again began to inch up as time went by: total cholesterol ranged between 172 and 190, HDL between 40 and 49, LDL from 83 to 105, triglycerides between 144 and 306.

When I started Atkins in July 2003, I weighed 238 pounds but my cholesterol was down (total 128, HDL 40, LDL 66, triglycerides 112).  Three months into the diet, my total cholesterol had remained level at 130, but my HDL had risen to 53, the LDL was 67, and my triglycerides had plummeted to 51!  Without my doctor’s knowledge, I slowly weaned myself off Lipitor following those results; according to the Atkins Institute, the first thing they’d do with new inductees is take them off statins, and I felt I’d learned why.  Within six months off the medication, my total cholesterol had risen to 235 but my HDL had increased to 55; LDL had increased to 144 and the triglycerides I’d been so proud of were back up to 181.  My doctor put me on Vytorin in 2006 since the readings were still continuing to be higher than he liked, but after three months, he put me back on Lipitor since I’d complained about Vytorin being double the cost and my readings were actually going up instead of down.  It was “under control” again by the end of 2006, but after a six month slide into the underworld of high carbs in late 2007, the total was again over 200, HDL was down to 38, and the triglycerides were nearly 400.

During all this, even now, my physician says he is not overly concerned because the ratio of HDL to the other components is tolerable in his opinion.  My next bloodwork will be in June, so it will be interesting to see what six months on low carb and taking Lipitor does to the readings again.  I’ll again have to decide whether I want to believe taking the medication is necessary or if I’m just as well off without.

Fiber

A year or so ago, my wife’s doctor told her to start getting more fiber in her diet.  After realizing the easiest way to do this was via supplements, I began buying tablet form fiber for her.  I don’t know the exact reason her doctor prescribed this, but even after reading how the general belief came about that fiber has anything to do with avoiding disease or helping one to lose weight, I continue to buy these for her.  She’d rather not take them as they produce gas, but I buy her the ones with calcium in them as well, because she doesn’t eat a lot of dairy.  (I wonder if the calcium hypothesis is factual?)

Meat

Meat is the miracle food of the carnivore according to science.  It contains all the building blocks of life and can sustain a being on its own merits.  Entire populations existing on a meat and animal product diet maintain healthy bodies and are relatively disease free, according to descriptions of studies in Taubes’ book.  I think I could manage it for a while; I have been eating nothing but eggs, meat, cheese and fish for breakfast for two months without a problem.  But at lunch and dinner, would I eventually get bored and succumb to the widely held belief that a “balanced” diet is better for me?

Fat

A low carb friend of mine has been passing information to me about research and studies indicating that dietary fat is not stored as fat, and that increasing one’s intake of fat while reducing protein and carbohydrates actually enhances weight loss.  A segment of Dr. Atkins’ book is supposed to prescribe a “fat fast” (1000 calories daily of only fat, no protein, no carbs) to break a weight loss stall.  Taubes’ book also makes mention in many places that eating fat is not responsible for our being fat.  Bacon and eggs contain the same healthful substances as in highly-praised olive oil.  With all this good press, why am I so concerned that my Tanita scale tells me 32% of my body is fat and that I’m “obese?”

Vegetables and fruits and grains

“Strive for five.”  Heard of it?  It’s plastered all over anything having to do with buying food.  Five servings daily (now described as “cups” because people apparently had no idea what a “serving” of anything was) are recommended, and NINE servings of grains (preferably whole) on top of THAT.  If you’ve read Good Calories, Bad Calories, you know that adding fruits and/or vegetables to the diet of those afflicted by certain maladies simply served to replace what was missing from their high carbohydrate, low protein diet.  It’s the same reason manufacturers had to start adding vitamins and minerals to their products: they’d stripped them of whatever goodness they contained during processing.  The whole point of grains being heavily promoted for the last 150 years is that the world’s population is growing at a break-neck pace, and you can feed a whole heck of a lot more people on bread and cereal than you can if you feed animals with the same amount of grain and then turn them into meat.  Vitamins and minerals?  If I’m getting everything I need from meat, why am I still taking a multivitamin every day?

Filed under: Atkins, Books, Food, general health, Induction, Megamas, Mindset, Starting on Low Carb, Uncategorized Tagged: | Atkins, believe, cheese, diet, eggs, fat, fish, fruits, Good Calories, grains, low carb, meat, minerals, Taubes, vegetables, vitamins, weight