Low Carb Confidential

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.