Skip to main content

Ripping Away the Veil, or Think and Grow Thin

Have you ever had the wrong idea about something, then saw the truth and wondered how you could have been so blind? Most of the common sense people have about weight gain is an illusion.

My mother has been overweight most of her life. She's been sedentary since middle age (she started getting arthritis around age 40), but pictures of her in her 20s and 30s from before my time show her on horseback when she and my father went hunting together. She also took care of my brothers and sisters with few modern conveniences. In other words, she was overweight but pretty active.

My parents and I always ate dinner together, almost always steak or chicken, potatoes, gravy, bread, corn and green beans. My mom never seemed to overeat. She wasn't a drinker, either.

I was an average thin kid (I didn't like my mom's cooking) and a little on the fleshy side as an adult until age 34 when I started Body for Life. After three years on this program, which includes lots of protein, carbs and hard workouts, I started gaining back the weight I'd lost. At age 41, I weighed 140 pounds--over 20 pounds more than I weighed at age 18.

What made me think that gaining weight was caused simply by overeating and lack of exercise? I had forty-one years' observations to the contrary. My mom was active (in her younger days, at least) and a moderate eater. I was eating a low-fat diet, doing a lot of workouts and gaining weight and didn't know why. It was only when I started thinking about how and when my weight gain started and I began to read other points of view and put them to the test that I began to tear away the veil.

But sometimes even seeing isn't believing. When I visited my best friend in May, I had dropped 20 pounds since the last time she saw me, and I told her how I did it: a very low-carb diet. Yet she still had a hard time believing I was eating a fatty diet and losing weight--even though she cooked the bacon herself.

This is my challenge to you: set aside common knowledge for a moment and consider what you've seen with your own eyes or felt in your own body. If it doesn't square with what you've been told, then what you've been told needs to be modified. Confusing and uncomfortable? Yes, but it's the first step to getting to the truth.

If you're confused about what causes weight gain (and how to lose weight), others have made progress on this front. Recently, others have written some terrific blog entries on this subject. Read them, and see if they make sense to you.

However, I’ve seen a lot of people who have found that aerobic exercise is not the weight loss holy grail it’s often claimed to be. These individuals generally do well to know that when they fail to get the results they’re seeking, they are not the problem – the approach is.

I like watching the reactions of people who see me for the first time since last winter. That is, if they even recognize me.
Read the rest of Sami's mini-autobiography, with before and after pictures, here: The How and Why of Weight Loss by Sami Paju

In this first part I'll focus more on the conventional wisdom and its shortcomings in explaining why people become overweight.


One thing missing from the conventional hypothesis (Change in weight = Calories IN - Calories OUT) is the arrow of causality. Even if we'd believe this formula to be correct, it doesn't tell us anything about what causes people to eat too much and expend too little of their energy.

Now it’s time to put it all together and discuss what you can do to lose weight, gain better body composition, better health, and feel more energetic.


In a nutshell, this is what the [government] committee concluded:

  • We’re fat because we consume too many calories and don’t move around enough, period, end of story, so would everyone please shut up about macronutrient balances and just go on a low-calorie diet for Pete’s sake, and then maybe go jogging.
  • We consume too many calories because we eat too much fat … uh, and sugar too.
  • We eat too much fat (uh, and sugar too) because there are too many fast-food establishments and not enough grocery stores and produce markets.
Read the rest of this funny take on USDA dietary guidelines here: 2010 Dietary Guidelines: Fat Made us Fat by Tom "Fat Head" Naughton

Keeping blood sugar to 100 mg/dl or less after eating teaches you how to avoid provocation of insulin. A shrinking tummy will follow.

Read the rest of this unusual weight-loss approach here: To Lose Weight, Prick your Finger by Dr. William Davis
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HHS Doctor on Hidden Camera: "The Vaccine is Full of Sh!t"

Jodi O'Malley, a registered nurse at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center (part of the Department of Health and Human Services), teamed up with Project Veritas to expose severe COVID vaccine reactions occurring but not being reported to VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, even though medical professionals are legally required to report such injuries. During the filming, a man in his thirties with congestive heart failure was being treated; the doctor believed the cause was his COVID vaccination. O'Malley says she's seen dozens of adverse reactions. "The vaccine is full of shit" and the government wants to "sweep it under the mat," the doctor says on hidden camera. We finally know what's in the vaccine. Screen grab from Project Veritas video . The video also shows a pharmacist stating that off-label medications such as ivermectin were forbidden to be prescribed on pain of termination.  Project Veritas is a nonprofit organization that does ...
Post a Comment
Read more

COVID Test Result is In

I don't have COVID.  On the one hand, it would have been a relief to have finally caught COVID and gotten natural antibodies, especially from having a mild case of it. On the other hand, I was concerned about my dog catching it from me (he's healthy, but nine years old) and it might have interfered with Thanksgiving plans.  Until I'm well, I'll stay home.
2 comments
Read more

Gaining Strength, But...

I had a pleasant surprise when I got out the sawzall today to finish repairs on the front door. Not the way it cut the new door sweep--I probably should have used the jigsaw. It was how easy it was to put the blade in. You have to turn a part on the saw, which I could barely do two months ago when I had nails to cut off . Today--probably thanks to spending my spare time since August working saws, sanders and paintbrushes--it was no harder than turning a knob on the stove.  So I've built up some strength in my hands and probably elsewhere, but my adrenals aren't keeping up with cortisol production. After a day's work (well, three or four hours, to be honest), my neck, back, jaws, and sinuses all hurt and they don't feel better until use a dab of hydrocortisone. Other pain relievers don't help much. This isn't normal muscle stiffness--the kind you get from working out--it feels like I'm inflamed. Last weekend in particular, after a flu shot and a few days of p...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Under-the-Radar Ointment for Hard-to-Heal Wounds

Imagine looking in the mirror one morning and finding the side of your head black and your ear twice its normal size. That's what happened to Brad Burnam, who caught a deadly superbug at the hospital where he worked. Sometime after having emergency surgery--one of 21 surgeries over the next five years--he set out to cure himself.  The result he created was a fusion of PHMB, an antibiotic common in Europe but little known in the US, in a petroleum jelly base (like Vaseline), held together with a stabilizer/emulsifier. It sticks to wounds, keeps them moist, and provides a barrier. It cured his antibiotic resistant superbug. After getting FDA clearance, he formed Turn Therapeutics, and Hexagen is now available by prescription.  Screen shot from https://turntherapeutics.com/about/ Millions of Americans suffer from open wounds--chronic issues like diabetic foot ulcers. Readers probably have their blood sugar under control and avoid this condition, but might have parents, partners o...
Post a Comment
Read more

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...
21 comments
Read more