The Results of my Fat Fest Are In

If I listened long enough to you, I'd find a way to believe it's all true. From "Reason to Believe"

At the end of January, I saw my doctor for pain in my shoulder. He examined me and assured me it wasn't injured. Since he rarely sees me, he ordered a blood workup while he had me there. This was about the time I cut out wheat; a month later, I started a low-carb diet. I've read a lot about a low-carb diet not ruining your cholesterol or your waistline, so a few weeks ago, I asked my doctor to order another workup. Here are the before and after results.

BEFORE

January 28, 2010

Typical daily menu:

banana protein shake

cup of caramel corn

one-half baked sweet potato and cottage cheese

turkey sandwich

small salad

one-half apple and low-fat cheese sticks

meatloaf and mashed potatoes

several chocolate candies

Exercise:

Daily workout of either 20-minute high-intensity aerobics or 50-minute weightlifting session (Body for Life)

Weight: 140

Triglycerides: 46

HDL: 42

Total cholesterol: 135

(LDL was calculated, not measured; therefore, I'm not including it because I don't know how accurate the figure is)

Eos (absolute): 0.2

Eos: 4

AFTER

August 20, 2010

Typical daily menu:

nut butter protein shake

chef's salad with 2 boiled eggs, a strip of bacon and full-fat dressing

low-carb protein bar

diet soda

"pizza" (pepperoni, mozzarella, garlic, a little tomato and spices--no crust)

low-carb ice cream

a few chocolate candies

Exercise:

High-intensity, 30-minute weightlifting sessions twice a week (Slow Burn)

Weight: 119

Triglycerides: 46

HDL: 57

Total cholesterol: 140

(Again, LDL was calculated, not measured; therefore, I'm not including it because I don't know how accurate the figure is)

Eos (absolute): .5

Eos: 10

Comments:

On my six-month fat fest, I ate fat and protein until I was full, cut way back on the carbs and the workouts, lost 21 pounds and raised my "good" cholesterol by 15 points. (Cutting down on the sweets had nothing to do with willpower--I'm just not as hungry as often on the low-carb plan.) I feel good, too--my original shoulder complaint is gone.

I wasn't familiar with Eos, but at August 20, they were high. Eos stands for eosinophil. According to the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, they're white blood cells "believed to function in allergic responses and in resisting some infections." My doctor remarked that the high level was probably from allergies, but if I had allergies, I didn't notice it.

Conclusion:

The old saw that eating fat makes you fat and raises cholesterol turned out to be partly true: it raised my good cholesterol (HDL). My effortless 21-pound weight loss speaks for itself.

Comments I've read on other low-carb blogs suggest that I'm not metabolically unique. So why do dieticians and most doctors and nurses keep telling us to eat a starchy, sugary diet and avoid fat? I think it's like the Rod Stewart song quoted above: they've listened to the fat-is-bad message so long they've come to believe it.

Comments

Erica Gott, aka Erratica said…

Lori, way to go! I stopped eating grains on May 19 of this year and, while I don't know how much weight I've lost, my clothes are now falling off me and I've lost the bloated belly. The pain in my thumb joints is almost gone, and I have very little hip joint pain any more.

Some day the medical community will admit that low carb/high fat is valid. The evidence is mounting up fast; soon that hundredth monkey will present itself and LCHF will become the norm instead of the devil. I'm sure of it.

June 30, 2011

Lori Miller said…

Erica, that's great. I know how hard it is to avoid grains.

There's a term from dancing that I like to apply to the bottom-up low-carb movement: highjacking the lead.

June 30, 2011

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh. Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good. I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds. Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Infrared Light: How much is too much?

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it. I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote, My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...

Gym Influencer Doubles Down and Should Have Regretted It

Jennifer Picone isn't the most abusive gym influencer--far from it--but she may be the most annoying. In a video she posted that went viral, she was working out in a gym when another member appeared in the background by the free weights. The member was minding her own business, not looking in Picone's direction, when Picone got up and told her to move. After filming, Picone edited the video with a note about "Gym etiquette lesson #47" and accused the other gym member of "[doing] that 💩 on purpose." Shaming other gym members has gotten to be such a big genre that Joey Swoll has a YouTube channel, with half a million subscribers, dedicated to calling out these content creators. Just for Picone, he took a break from his vacation to tell her to mind her own business. This may be the first time that Joey Swoll has taken one of his followers to task. The fact that she follows him and still doesn't know better than to treat the gym like her personal studio sh...

Stay in your car!

If there's ever a lunatic outside your vehicle, do not engage. Stay in your vehicle. Drive away or call the police. Drive over the curb, lawn or median if necessary; just avoid putting innocent bystanders at risk.* Save yourself from lunatics like a boss. Screen grab from video by Fredrik Sørlie on Youtube . That advice might have saved a 69-year-old delivery driver from being attacked by former NFL player Mark Sanchez, who for unknown reasons was in an alley after midnight in downtown Indianapolis and decided to pick a fight over a parking space. I say might have because I haven't seen any video of the attack. But other incidents over the years bear out the safety of staying in your car. A neighbor was assaulted and robbed after she got out of her car after someone followed her home and blocked her driveway. And remember Reginald Denny from the LA riots? The victim maced and stabbed Sanchez, but suffered a bad cut to his face and tongue and looks like he was badly beaten. Bo...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog