Low Carb Confidential

Update for September, 2011

As I begin my 9th year of low carb, I have to admit that, with all I have read and researched, discussed, written, experimented, tried and failed – I still can’t adequately explain low carb to my own satisfaction.

Here’s what I DO know.

I was about 265lbs in September of 2003. I went on low carb at the time and in 2 years got down to 180-185.

Over the years I put back on some of that weight, and took some off with low carb.

Even though I gained a lot back at times, I never ‘gained it all back’ – even at my worst, about a year ago, I was still about 30 lbs. under my 265.

Today, as I write this, I am 211.

Losing weight is very rare.

Keeping the weight off for 5 years for the rare people who lost weight – rare.

Being able to keep the weight off for 5 years without any regular exercise – rare.

Keeping it off with numerous cheats and not living like a monk – rare.

It seems I’ve violated some immutable law of the Universe. Certainly my doctor seems confused. I’m confused as well.

I’ve toyed with the idea of a book for a while, but as I reconsider this notion seriously, I ask myself: what the hell am I doing right?

I think I have the answer. It’s bits and pieces of the 380+ blog posts and innumerable comments written over the course of the past 4 years here. It’s in the hundreds of posts I never posted. It’s in my private writing and journals. And it’s in my head – unconscious things I do and don’t do that I don’t notice anymore.

It’s also in my failures. My worst weight gain was because of an experiment. As any scientist knows, you can learn a lot from a failed experiment.

I’ve begun the long process of trying to go through all this stuff and pull the gems from the dreck – and come up with an explanation I’m satisified with.

Wish me luck.

Update for September, 2010

I wrote the ‘About’ below some years ago. None of it is false, but I’ve changed. If you were to read this blog from the beginning to most current, you’d probably notice that the earlier posts have the tone: ‘I’ve got this one figured out.‘

I thought I did.

But I’ve kept reading and researching and experimenting with various things – and talking with people and gaining the benefit of their perspectives and their wisdom – even if their conclusions were different from mine.

Doing low carb for seven years while in my 40s has also led to the almost inevitable weight gain that just happens to most people – especially people who tend to gain weight easily.

At the 7-year mark, I’m still 40 lbs down from my starting weight, but 40 lbs above what I originally lost –  and feel as if I’m starting fresh.

So, seven years in, low carb is more complex a subject than it seemed when I lost the 80 lbs.

The more I learn, the less I seem to know.

So on my seventh anniversary since the day I went to the Rite Aid and picked up the Atkins book, sat myself down in a chair on a Saturday afternoon, and read straight through until I got to the recipes, I’d like to make a few things clear:

1. I’m not in the advice business. I heard a quote the other day: ‘Dieting is a treatment that doesn’t work for obesity, a disease that doesn’t exist.’ I have my doubts about that second part, but the first part is spot on. Fact is: dieting doesn’t work for the vast majority of people. I think that’s because we think about dieting wrong. How so? I’m not sure yet – I’m trying to figure that one out. Obviously, I can’t give advice when I don’t know what I’m talking about.
2. Don’t try this at home. This blog has evolved into a more personal one. I’ve probably lost some readers because of that – maybe gained some, too. The various experiments – some admittedly hare-brained – have left me wiser (at least I’d like to think that) in the sense that I’ve proven a number of things are hare-brained rather than speculating about them. Given my track record of the hare-brained (Irvingia and nicotine lozenges are 2 examples), I suggest finding some other blogger to emulate.
3. I definitely do not agree with many of my own posts. No one would accuse me of being consistent – but someone also said that consistency means you’re as stupid now as you were 6 months ago. Read at your own risk.
4. I have not redacted, expurgated, modified, deleted, or otherwise mangled any of my posts – ever. Even my most embarrassing posts remain untouched – I just hope you don’t find them in the 340 some-odd posts you’ll find here.
5. I’m still low carb – I’m just refining the definition. I don’t know what that is at present. Sorta Atkins, a bit Primal, a bit Paleo, sorta organic…I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

What Right Do I Have to Write About Low Carb?

It’s a valid question. Here’s my answer.

In September of 2003, I was working with a very good friend who just happened to be the owner of the company I then worked for, and I had noticed that he had lost some weight – he kept pulling up the pants of his pinstripe suit like a hobo. I asked him about it and he seemed reluctant to say, but eventually he admitted that he was on the Atkins’ diet.

This was at the height of the ‘low-carb diet craze’, where the message seemed to be that you can eat all the meat and saturated fat, butter and cream you can stuff in your gullet and the pounds would drop off – just make sure you stay away from things like sugar and bread, and don’t bother to count calories – count carbs. Doctors kept saying how dangerous it was but it was all the rage anyway.

So, being a good and supportive friend, I do what any good and supportive friend would do in a similar situation – I rip into him mercilessly.

“How can you be so stupid to think that a diet where you eat fat is going to help you lose weight? It’s absurd – absolutely absurd. Atkins was a quack – the Man is *dead* – it’s probably from a lack of carbs that he fell and cracked his head open.”

He took a lot of abuse from me on this, but we have that kind of relationship and I am a bit of a tease. These conversations continued through each work day. I would constantly throw these little barbs at him about his diet until one day, as he was walking out of my office, he made an offhand comment: “You know – my doctor just did my blood work and it’s a lot better.”

That was a turning point for me. In September of 2003, I was fat – 260 lbs. I’m now almost 80 lbs lighter. I took the weight off and have kept it off for over two years. This is considered so remarkable that I am a participant in the national weight control registry that tracks people successful in losing weight because it is so unusual for people to lose weight and keep it off. Even more frightening, to be eligible to join the registry, you just have to take 30 lbs off and kept it off for one year. That’s it. It is almost impossible to conceive that such a feat would warrant inclusion in a research program on losing weight, but it is.

As you’ve probably guessed, I tried Atkins – with some modifications – and it worked for me. That’s a whole other story, but in October 2006 I went to my doctor and had my blood work done, and I had my blood work done after a week where I had huge chunks of meat, low carb bread with butter so thick that it was like slices of cheese, and a coconut milk shake that the nutrient label stated had 54 grams of saturated fat. I was consciously going to an extreme because I wanted to see how it would impact my blood work.

When I called the nurse, she told me: “Your blood work is perfect. In fact, you have the blood work of a teenager.” My total cholesterol was 186 and all the constituent ratios and numbers were perfect. All the other numbers in my blood work profile were good as well.

Soon after I visited my doctor he told me how spectacular my weight loss has been and that I have added years to my life by losing the weight. I asked him: “since you measure cardiovascular health by a person’s blood work, and mine is perfect despite the fact that I eat enormous amounts of fat, am I hurting myself?”

My doctor looked at me, then at my chart, then at me, then the chart again. Then he said: “Science is in it’s infancy regarding nutrition and…” well it became clear he didn’t have an answer to my question. He didn’t really have a clue.

I did something that was not supposed to work and I lost the weight and have kept it off – and I don’t know why. I’ve read some of the anti-Atkins information out there and their arguments usually are: it doesn’t work. OK, I lost the weight so that one doesn’t fly. Then they say that if it does work the weight lost is water weight. I doubt I lost 80 lbs of water weight.

You would think that they could have stopped at ‘it doesn’t work’ if it really didn’t work but they continue. Next up is: the diet is so unpalatable that people restrict calories. Wrong again – when I went on low fat diets, even the dog wouldn’t eat some of the stuff I cooked. Now everyone likes what I cook – they just add a starch to it and its a normal meal to them. And portion control? I ate as much as I wanted, and sometimes it was a lot. I never starved.

Then they say that it’s bad for your blood work. Not mine, obviously. Then they say that if it does work though they say it doesn’t, that you are going to hurt your kidneys. I can’t find any studies on this one, but they keep saying it like it’s a fact instead of an urban legend.

Oh – and did I mention I lost 80 lbs and didn’t exercise? My blood pressure also went down to normal for the first time in 20 years, I have more energy and mental acuity than ever, a chronic heartburn I had since I was in my twenties went away and I sleep 2 hours less each night? Isn’t all this just slightly remarkable?

I’m puzzled at all of this and have been doing my own research on the subject. I am trying to understand exactly how I did it when so many others failed on Atkins – was there something in my approach that made the difference? I did modify the program and experiment, and I did lose the weight over three years. My other question is if I am really hurting myself or not, because every indication is that I’m not.

And that brings me to why I’m writing this. I want to be able to talk to people about this. I want to be able to tell them what’s worked for me, and maybe to help them find their own path to achieve what I’ve achieved.

It’s about giving back. Losing weight transformed my life, and I would like to think that writing about my experience could help other people.