I never thought I would be fat. I was too smart for that to happen to me. As a teenager in the 1990’s I had taken it upon myself to learn about nutrition, diet and exercise. We received very little education on the subject in school and I took it many steps further for personal reasons. Once I left high school, I was leagues beyond most people my age in regard to the knowledge of how to maintain a healthy weight. Success in this area might as well have been guaranteed.
Or so I thought.
By the time I was 46 years old, my health was a mess. I was obese, had high blood pressure, poor kidney function and a cancer diagnosis.
Over the past two years I have essentially knocked out three out of those four problems. I’ve dropped sixty pounds, my blood pressure has stabilized, and my kidney function has returned to normal. I’m still working on the other one, but I believe my chances have improved by taking care of the first three.
What I have learned is that EVERYTHING I thought I knew about diet was wrong. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that I had been lied to my entire life about proper nutrition, what was good and what was bad for me, and how to lose weight (spoiler alert, it has little to do with calories in/calories out and cardio exercise and much more about how much and when to eat.)
What follows is a journey that I believe many people can relate to regarding what we’ve been taught and where it led us. To be clear, I am not a doctor, or someone qualified to give medical advice. My intention is not to tell you what to do, but to hopefully encourage you to do your own research on these subjects and get on the right track towards health and wellness.
I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s with two separate ingrained philosophies on nutrition. The first was The Four Food Groups – Fruits and Vegetables, Meat, Dairy, Breads and Cereals. While I was in my teens, that gave way to the Food Pyramid. With the pyramid, we were told that bread, rice, pasta and potatoes should be the biggest part of our diet, followed by fruits and vegetables. Then to a lesser extent, meat and dairy (animal products) and finally, fats, oils and sweets. We were also told to limit red meat and things like egg yolks due to saturated fat and cholesterol.
Due to my participation in athletics in my mid to late teens, I jumped on the low fat, high carbohydrate diet and was able to experience what was at the time, a considerable amount of weight loss (over 15% of my total body weight). I should also mention that the amount of physical activity I was doing at the time was borderline insane. In retrospect, this experience created a huge problem that will be explained later.
Like so many others in America, I spent my twenties and thirties packing on the pounds. It happened gradually. It was a vicious cycle that looked a little something like this:
- Clothes start feeling a little tight
- Start watching what I eat a bit more and start exercising
- Join a gym
- Clothes start fitting better again
- Slack off on the healthy eating and exercising
- Realize I’m paying for a gym membership I don’t use – Cancel it
- Clothes start feeling a little tight
- Use money saved from canceled gym membership to buy bigger clothes
- Repeat from step 1 when the bigger clothes get tight
This cycle repeated several times over the next twenty-five years. By the time I was 45 years old, my weight had exceeded the 200-pound mark and was staying there. For reference, I am 5’4”. As a high school athlete, when I stopped growing taller, my healthy weight was in the 145-pound range. It would stand to reason that is still where my healthy weight should be now.
What I’ve Learned
Like so many others, I believed that weight management was about calories in/calories out. Unlike so many others, I had put this to the test (at seventeen years old) and it had worked. So, in my mind, it must be true. Nothing confirms a theory better than experiencing it firsthand. This is why my teenage success was a huge problem. I would spend the next three decades believing that I knew what to do to get the weight off while having no idea how wrong I was.
What I’ve learned is that weight management, in my opinion, is simple because it comes down to one thing: Understanding insulin and how it works inside your body.
Let’s start with a few assumptions. The first is that people that are overweight or obese have excess fat in their bodies. The second is that weight loss means decreasing the amount of excess fat. I feel it is safe to say that those are standards that can be agreed upon.
Insulin is the main character because it is a fat storage hormone. When insulin is high, it creates and stores fat. How does insulin get high? That happens when your blood sugar goes up. How does blood sugar go up? While not exclusive, the main culprit is consumption of carbohydrates. Good carbs, bad carbs (all sugars are carbs)– they all send your blood sugar up causing your body to release insulin.
If what I’ve just stated is true, and I encourage you to look it up, then the food pyramid, by way of saying carbohydrates should be the biggest part of our diet, was encouraging us to store more fat.
But doesn’t this go against everything we’ve been told and what our doctors recommend? In a word, yes. However, ask yourself this: Does the United States of America have an obesity problem? You can look it up here, or you can look around. You don’t need statistics to tell you what your eyes can see. If you go to a place where there are a lot of people, you will see that many are carrying extra weight. Even if you go to the gym, you’ll see a fair share of people that are on step 3 from the cycle I mentioned earlier. On a side note, I admire those people because they are trying and doing something about it. I can only hope that information like this finds them and can help them achieve their goals.
I’m moving forward with the assumption that it can be agreed upon that our society has an obesity problem. Based on that, here’s what we now know. It’s been ingrained in us for over thirty years that we should follow a diet high in carbohydrates and low in fat. High levels of carbohydrates will increase blood sugar levels. Increased blood sugar levels cause our bodies to release insulin. Insulin will take the blood sugar not used for energy and store if for later use as fat.
Moving on, let’s discuss energy. Keeping it short and simple, our bodies need energy to function. We get this energy by consuming food. There are two primary sources our bodies utilize for energy. Those are glucose (sugar and carbs) and ketones (produced by breaking down fat that is either consumed or stored). To keep this simple we’ll stay away from the role of protein for now. That is not to diminish its importance.
In essence, our bodies are like hybrid vehicles with multiple options for fuel sources. The important thing to know here is that glucose is the first option for the body and fat breakdown will not occur until the glucose levels cannot supply the body’s energy needs. The key point here is that to reduce the amount of stored fat on the body, your blood sugar and insulin must be low.
A quick note regarding my teenage weight loss experience. Even though I ate a diet where a vast majority of my calories came from carbohydrates, my activity levels caused my body to easily (and obviously) use up all available glucose. That meant it had no choice but to switch to fat as a fuel source. In my situation, calories in/calories out worked, but I would guess my daily deficit was on average over 2000 calories per day. I was likely consuming roughly 1500 calories and burning over 3500.
Moving on, the next obvious question is how to create an environment where you are using your stored fat for energy and dropping those pounds. Creating a massive calorie deficit is not logical for most people. My experience revolves around two impactful methods. The first is fasting. The second is a low carbohydrate diet such as Keto, Atkins, or Carnivore.
Fasting
Fasting, if done correctly, entails consuming nothing other than water, black coffee, or tea (white, green or black) with nothing added to it. The benefits of fasting that go beyond weight loss are countless. Don’t take my word for it, look it up. There are different types of fasting. There are situations where people will fast for multiple days. It is a great way to reset your body’s systems. As you can imagine, this is not easy to do and if you are going to try it, do lots of research and talk to people you trust that have knowledge of the subject.
Intermittent fasting is a much easier way to get started. This is where you have a fasting window (see above definition) and an eating window. A 12-hour fasting window is the minimum amount recommended. That means 12 hours of nothing consumed but water, black coffee or plain tea followed by 12 hours where you can eat. For example, you start your fasting window at 8pm. That means no calories until 8am the next day. From experience, it’s tough at first, but gets easier as you go. Once you can get to 8am consistently, it might be time to shoot for 9 or 10am. For me, I was making it until noon within a few weeks.
From a weight loss perspective, fasting works because you stop giving your body food for energy. It takes about 12 hours from your last meal for your body to use up the food for energy. After the 12-hour mark, is when fat burning can begin. Obviously, if you can go 16 or 18 hours, that means your body is running off stored fat for longer periods of time. The longer you go, the more fat you burn. It’s science! As discussed earlier, the key is to get those blood sugar and insulin levels down so that the burning of fat is possible in the first place. The book Fast, Feast, Repeat by Gin Stephens is a great resource on this topic.
Low Carbohydrate Diet
Most people, when presented with the idea of a low-carb diet think a few different things. One, there is no way they could do it. Two, it can’t be safe because of the “Food Pyramid”. I was like most people. That’s why I chose intermittent fasting to lose the first 25 pounds. Over a year later, I decided to cut the carbs for reasons involving my health. While it was not my intention to lose weight, it did lead to another 35 pounds falling off.
What Do You Eat If You Don’t Eat Carbs?
When you cut carbs, the calories need to be replaced. Most people know there are three macro-nutrients where calories come from: Carbohydrates, protein and fat. By nature, when the carbs go down, the other two must go up for you to have enough energy to function.
Personally, I eat a lot of eggs and meat. With meat, my preference is red meat, but chicken and pork get mixed in. I am not a fish person, no matter how many times I try, so there is not much coming from there. I will also eat cheese and green vegetables with salt and butter.
But Aren’t Red Meat And Eggs In Excess Bad For You?
Again, I’m going to encourage you to do your own digging. I must caution you to look beyond anything published by the government, big food companies or pharmaceutical companies. Don’t get me started, but I don’t believe any of them have your heath in their best interests. Remember, you can look around and see what their “recommendations” have done to us. What I’ve read and believe (because it makes sense) is that saturated fat and cholesterol causing heart disease and health problems is a myth. The book, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong In A Healthy Diet by Nina Tiecholz is a great resource on these topics and more
It should be obvious at this point that by consuming minimal carbohydrates, you would be keeping both your blood sugar and insulin levels low. As I’ve stated and encouraged you to look up, that is the first requirement to get your body to start burning fat for fuel creating the desired effect of getting rid of the excess fat in your body.
Other things I’ve noticed by following this way of eating, I never feel like I’m starving. I’ll get hungry, but I don’t feel the need to start wolfing down food. Second, I don’t feel over-stuffed. I’ll feel full, but never to the level of the dreaded food coma. I believe that by eating mostly protein and fat, my body gets the nutrients it needs so I don’t get the “hunger signals” to eat more.
My low-carb experience does not follow any particular diet or system. I don’t count calories, I don’t count carbs and I don’t track my food. I just say no. Here are the things I say no to (most of the time):
- Chips and crackers
- Bread
- Rice and potatoes
- Pasta
- Sweets (candy, cake, pie, cookies, soda)
I do allow myself a cheat day (or two) per month, to indulge in a few slices of my favorite pizza. Or I’ll eat something like chicken parmesan and just eat the chicken, cheese and sauce and avoid the pasta and bread. I’m also not afraid of drinking a glass of red wine at night. (Fun fact, red wine has a lowering effect on your blood sugar).
Once again, don’t just take my word for it. Look this stuff up. If you’ve struggled with excess weight and you have health problems, this could be a difference maker for you. If you are overweight and on medication for blood pressure or high cholesterol, this can be your ticket to ditch the meds.
I am happy to share my experiences further if anyone has any questions. You can reach me via email or through the other contact methods on the website. Thank you for taking the time to read this and best of luck with your health.
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