That's not a statement of aspiration or another one of those new year's resolutions that everybody has. It's a fact. I understand it so clearly now that there is no way that it cannot happen. I'm marking this so that I have a log of when I started (well, shortly after I started anyway) and partly as a way to keep myself accountable for it, in case anybody besides me does actually still read this blog.
As people who know me well enough know very well, I was quite successful at losing weight in 2004. This was due to many things: the science of the diet, the fact that my dad was the one buying the groceries and he went on it, and the encouragement from him and the rest of my friends and family when they noticed the results. Sadly enough, 2004 and 2005 came with a couple of hard hits that made me lose sight of what I was doing. I was traumatized and responded by reckless abandonment of all that I had lost. I fell off the bandwagon, so to speak.
There's no proof better than what I could see with my own eyes and feel with my own body, so I never stopped believing that it could work. The specific diet (Atkins) just came at a high price tag from the branding and marketing, and I always feared I'd never be able to afford to eat healthy due to financial dumbfuckery. I didn't understand the science behind it all too well and thought that since I'd need the branded diet specifically, it was unattainable in my current state of mind and income. I slowly ballooned up over time, and at one point not too long ago, I stepped on the scale and it said 340 lbs. You fat fuck, I said in my head. How could you let it come to this?
Now, after a recommendation by Paul Thurrott on Windows Weekly, I read (well, listened to) a book called "Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It" (Amazon, Audible). It has made all of that much more clear to me. Why it happened in the first place. Why it dropped while doing the Atkins thing. Why it eventually came back. It explained the science behind it all so well (including the shortcomings in the Atkins diet itself, why it might not have worked optimally). I now see how and why it will work better than it ever could before, and why there is without a doubt no possibility of failure.
Before you throw the "brainwash" card, let me explain a few things. Paul Thurrott is a regular old geek like the rest of us. He's not out to sell any particular book (except the ones he writes, of course). Audible is an advertiser on his podcast, and as a part of that deal (anyone who has Audible advertisers will know), he makes an Audible pick every time they're an advertiser. So he recommends books that he himself is actually listening/reading/whatever you want to call it. This is normally a part where I tune out, but the subject hit me so hard because the evidence was right there in my memory. It had worked for me before. I just didn't understand why, and decided to give the book a try. What could it hurt to know more about a diet that worked for me?
As I listened, it became clear the author was not out to sell me any more books, any protein bars or shakes as Atkins is. He took all the knowledge that has been gathered about the calories-in-calories-out myth, carbohydrates and their effect on blood sugar, blood sugar's effect on insulin, and insulin's effect on both the storing of fat and the prohibition of the burning of fat, and presented it concisely and with studies that back it up. Plus tied up the few loose ends about "aren't carbs required for the brain to operate?" * and "don't foods high in fat increase your cholesterol and risk of heart disease?" **
*: (hint: no -- it synthesizes what it needs from fat, which is how brains operated before man was introduced to bread sugar and pasta)
**: (hint: no, again, but the explanation really is too lengthy to summarize here)
I have nothing to gain from telling you to read this book. I am sharing it with you as a genuine recommendation to open your mind and listen to the facts and science presented in the book. For me, it only confirmed everything I kind of knew already, from having had such a good experience cutting carbs before. If you've never had that experience, I can understand how skeptical you'd be. Make no mistake. Diets in the conventional sense do not work for two basic reasons: temporary, making you think that you can just go back to your old ways after you've lost weight, and scientifically wrong, meaning the common opinion of counting calories, increasing physical activity, and reducing eating of fat has been wrong to start with. This is a radical lifestyle change that is about as much like swimming against the current as a weight loss/eating approach can get. But the evidence presented is solid. The science behind why it works is sound. No matter what book you read about it.
Sure, there are people who have had success with these other, more conventional methods as well. Congrats, you won, despite your body working against you. I'm taking the easy way out and going to eat the way that will cause my body to burn fat off, instead of killing myself at the gym and eating the way I'm told by some misinformed expert (who's learned it from other experts who learned from other experts, and so on and so forth) who learned the least efficient way to do it. Dieting in the way that most people are told is correct will cause you to constantly fight against your body as the carbohydrates inhibit your ability to burn fat, and your exercise routine causes your body to need more and more energy. My fight will instead be on the outside, taking the heat from all the people who tell me I am wrong and I'm going to fail, have a heart attack, gain all my weight back, die, etc.
We'll see who's right soon enough.
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Friday, July 8, 2011 at 10:04AM