Long Post: About Diets And What Works For Real

I recommend the bok "Why We Get Fat". Very very strongly. It works.

 The author, a doctor, did a survey on -all- literature worldwide which he could find concerning diets in the 20th century, then summarized it. It's a slimmed down, easy to read (no Medicalese) version of in a far larger book he did where he wrote up each diet he found and whether or not it worked.

 He determined that a diet that worked quite well was in pre-WWII Germany. It was a very low carb, very high protein diet. Use as much oil and butter as you want. And people could stay on that diet!

 Alas, after WWII, no one wanted to listen to German doctors (big surprise there) or for that matter anything German.

 The author also traced back the "healthy diet" (food pyramid; restrict oils, eat rabbit food, and so forth) to -ONE- fanatical guy who preached it from a governmental pulpit starting in the 1950's. Doctors who objected to this idiocy were attacked something like scientists involved on (either) side of the Climate Change political food-fight.

 The “Food Pyramid” became The Conventional Wisdom because, I think, the whole thing was just too much fun. People could look at a fat person and say, "They're just lazy. If they wanted to, they'd be slim." (People just -love- that feeling of superiority.)

But many people are skinny because of their genetics. They can eat what they want and they just don't get fat. It's really easy for them to feel superior to fat people. No one told the genetically skinny people that it's more complex than that, and that the government, like it does for most things, was giving out bad information.

 (I privately think that many trendy diet books, like "Grapefruit Diet", "Suzanne Somers Does Another Diet Book", and such are written by authors who truly hate fat people and are determined to keep their readers fat. Or perhaps they're truly being clever and know if their readers stay fat they can sell them another book a year later.)

The author makes his case that the "balanced" food pyramid and the usual diets here in America these days *simply do not work*. They didn't work in Germany in the 1920's-1930's, either, and he backs it up with compelling, hard evidence. 

 *Modern American diets don't fucking work!* And that's why people have problems with dieting: You go day after day and see zero results and this gradually deprograms you from dieting. It sandpapers down your will.

 Another factor is when your blood sugar drops, your brain panics: It Is Starving! The brain pretty much runs on blood sugar, and when that drops, your brain panics. A brain doesn't screw around on survival oriented stuff. It wants food right now. It hits you strongly and dumps panic signals into your lower brain that cannot be ignored. Usually it demands some carbos which are mostly sugar (and stuff like bread, which turns into sugar in your mouth).

However, eating sugar is putting out the fire with gasoline.

 Sugar dumps fast carbos into the blood. That causes something like an allergic reaction.  The body reacts with a surge of insulin to burn the carbs. It's so effective the carbs are burned in ~~ 30 minutes.   In fact, the body is so good at this that you end up with a blood sugar level lower than where you started. 

Body doesn't clean out the sugar: diabetes. Body cleans out too much sugar: Low Blood Sugar.

  This turns the blood sugar levels into a rollercoaster ride.  This also applies to "complex carbs", which are supposed to be absorbed more slowly because they're complex, but it doesn't work out that way.

 Trust me, when your blood sugar is low, you feel like crap. You can't think, you're nauseous and shaky, your ears hiss with tinnitus, and you have zero energy or motivation. Your body is literally in insulin shock. Shock is defined as "low blood pressure", and we treat shock aggressively in health emergencies because often it's the shock that kills the patient. (This is also why an IV goes into the arm and starts adding fluids to replace those lost in bleeding. This is one of the most successful medical ideas of the 20th century.)

 The author strongly recommends a high protein, low to zero carb diet. Eat pretty much what you want in terms of protein, drink water, add as much butter as you want, and as much oil as you want.

 This is preaching heresy to many people but the guy's diet works. I know. I lost 40 pounds using it and only went back up because of the We Must Eat factor from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve dinner & parties. I'm back on it now. I'm aiming for 180 pounds @ 6 feet height, then we'll see.

I truly hope this helps someone else. Word of mouth is just about the only way to get this information out.

Thanks, -- D