Before we get to "Why the low-carb diet is the only one for me..."
About twenty years ago I first heard about the low-carb diet fad, generally only called the Atkins Diet back then. Dr. Atkins was touted as a quack and his diet was generally dismissed as dangerous and impractical. The diet seemed ridiculous even to me because I had grown up during the low-fat, low-protein, high-carb fad and everything I knew and had ever heard was completely contradictory to eating low-carb. At the age of 16 I started Weight Watchers for the first time when it was still all "grapefruit, cottage cheese, and baked fish with no oil" and I specifically remember hearing and repeating the phrase "fat makes you fat" over and over. I don't know what scientific evidence Weight Watchers, our government, and society had to go on to make that recommendation but eating low-fat carbs just made me eat more carbs and I spent the next 30 years becoming fatter and fatter, insulin resistant, and now pre-diabetic.
Don't get me wrong, I do not claim to have gotten fat and sick eating only a low-fat, high-carb diet. I can't say where I'd be if I'd just eaten low-fat and high-carbs this whole time. What I do know is that low-fat, high-carb has never worked for me. During every LFHC diet I have ever been on I have felt hungry, anxious, and nagged with constant bone-deep cravings. After a few months or weeks on a LFHC diet I would quickly begin feeling insane from the cravings, to the point that it was all I could think of, as if I were starving to death from not being able to eat the doughnuts or french bread or butter on my potato. Eventually I'd eat the doughnut or french bread or buttered potato and I would just stop trying because trying was way harder than being fat. Just like every weight loss story you hear, after ever failed diet I'd just gain the weight back and then gain some more. By the time I was 26 I weighed about 250, was newly divorced, and I saw no end in sight.
At that point it was the mid-90's and a doctor said to me something that has stuck with me ever since. He said that almost anything I do to lose weight would be healthier than the weight I was at. He was trying to sell me on fen-phen and I was desperate to try anything so I took the two bottles of pills and went home. Two weeks later I had lost 7 pounds and the next week the news was filled with reports of women turning up with fen-phen-related heart valve issues and the FDA took the drug off the market. That was about a gain of hundred pounds ago.
I frequently joke that I think that same doctor would say that ANYTHING I tried would be healthier than where I am now, including risking heart valve damage. This is not to say that I am so desperate that I will try anything, even something dangerous, to lose weight. On the contrary. After that experience I wasn't going to start a new diet, try a new pill, or get bariatric surgery because they all seemed like unhealthy fads to me and I felt like I was just stuck with an unhealthy appetite and a body that gained weight faster than my peers, even when we ate the same food. I had lost my motivation to lose weight because it just didn't seem like there was anything out there to help me. Enter the low-carb diet.
Don't get me wrong, I do not claim to have gotten fat and sick eating only a low-fat, high-carb diet. I can't say where I'd be if I'd just eaten low-fat and high-carbs this whole time. What I do know is that low-fat, high-carb has never worked for me. During every LFHC diet I have ever been on I have felt hungry, anxious, and nagged with constant bone-deep cravings. After a few months or weeks on a LFHC diet I would quickly begin feeling insane from the cravings, to the point that it was all I could think of, as if I were starving to death from not being able to eat the doughnuts or french bread or butter on my potato. Eventually I'd eat the doughnut or french bread or buttered potato and I would just stop trying because trying was way harder than being fat. Just like every weight loss story you hear, after ever failed diet I'd just gain the weight back and then gain some more. By the time I was 26 I weighed about 250, was newly divorced, and I saw no end in sight.
At that point it was the mid-90's and a doctor said to me something that has stuck with me ever since. He said that almost anything I do to lose weight would be healthier than the weight I was at. He was trying to sell me on fen-phen and I was desperate to try anything so I took the two bottles of pills and went home. Two weeks later I had lost 7 pounds and the next week the news was filled with reports of women turning up with fen-phen-related heart valve issues and the FDA took the drug off the market. That was about a gain of hundred pounds ago.
I frequently joke that I think that same doctor would say that ANYTHING I tried would be healthier than where I am now, including risking heart valve damage. This is not to say that I am so desperate that I will try anything, even something dangerous, to lose weight. On the contrary. After that experience I wasn't going to start a new diet, try a new pill, or get bariatric surgery because they all seemed like unhealthy fads to me and I felt like I was just stuck with an unhealthy appetite and a body that gained weight faster than my peers, even when we ate the same food. I had lost my motivation to lose weight because it just didn't seem like there was anything out there to help me. Enter the low-carb diet.
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