Did People Magazine Intentionally Omit Low-Carb Weight Loss Success Story?

People magazine features weight loss success stories -- but NO low-carb?!

I was standing in line today at Wal-Mart buying some stuff using a gift card I got for Christmas when I noticed the front cover of the January 9, 2006 issue of People magazine with a picture of two beautiful women on with a blaring all caps caption that read "Half Their Size!"

Of course, that immediately caught my attention and I started reading the article about all of these amazing weight loss transformations featuring 10 people who cumulatively lost over 2,000 pounds. WOW! What an inspiring message just in time for the new year. I was reliving some of my own pain and struggles losing weight in the stories of these weight loss champions.

But as I was looking through the front cover feature story, I couldn't help but notice something rather peculiar about these weight loss success stories -- NONE of them lose weight using the low-carb lifestyle. There were ones who had success on Jenny Craig, low-fat, Metabolife, low-calorie, portion control and others. But not even ONE of them had lost their weight by livin' la vida low-carb.

Really? You're kidding me, right? Of all the weight loss success stories they could find out in the United States of America, they couldn't even locate ONE low-carber to feature in their story? That sounds a little fishy if you ask me.

Why wouldn't People magazine want to feature a low-carb weight loss success story in an article about people who are now "Half Their Size?" There are plenty of examples of low-carb weight loss success stories from this past year that they could have chosen from, including John Smith who lose 300 pounds, Kent Altena who lost 189 pounds, or Karen Kimball who lost 148 pounds -- ALL of them on a low-carb program.

While it is admirable for People magazine to share such inspiring messages of hope and inspiration to their readers about the weight loss success of average, everyday Americans to help encourage people who need to lose weight to do it for themselves, it is blatantly dishonest to completely ignore a weight loss method that millions upon millions of people are still using to effective shed the pounds and get healthy.

I have lost nearly half of my original weight of 410 pounds thanks to the low-carb lifestyle and have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love, support and admiration for what I am doing here at my blog and with my book. To deny that genuine weight loss has happened to people like me, John, Kent, and Karen is unfairly skewing the numbers against low-carb living. That is also denying the general public the whole truth about the best methods for weight loss available to them.

If I was your average Joe reading this People magazine article, then I would conclude that NOBODY is doing low-carb to lose weight anymore or else they would have shown at least a singular example. But it wasn't in there. Was it a simple act of omission by the People magazine editor or did they purposely avoid any and all low-carb weight loss successes for whatever reason?

Why don't we ask the editor of People magazine that question for ourselves? You can write to them at Editor@people.com. If they simply forgot and are willing to print a follow-up story with low-carb weight loss stories, then all can be forgiven for the oversight. But if they choose to ignore our request for them to acknowledge low-carb weight loss successes, then we can only conclude that they intentionally did it to express their personal disgust for this way of eating.

Which is it People magazine?

1-1-06 UPDATE: Well, we have an interesting twist in this story now because I heard from one of the low-carb weight loss champions I listed in this post was actually contacted by People magazine for possible inclusion in this article.

Kent Altena has a strikingly similar story of incredible weight loss on low-carb as I do and looks great:


Here is what he wrote to me in an e-mail today:

Hey Jimmy,

It's funny you should mention this article because I was actually contacted by a People magazine writer presumably to do a story about my weight loss. She found my name and e-mail address off another website and their weight loss success stories. I am not sure if the contact by People was for this particular issue, but I assume it was.

I had a long discourse with the People reporter and I actually know of her through another person on the Atkins Diet Bulletin Board that I run. I forwarded before and after pictures as well as a magazine-ready article about my success story.

Guess what? I never heard back from People magazine at all. So not only did they not highlight a low-carb weight loss success story, but they intentionally ignored an article that was already written for them. I am not the conspiratorial type and could certainly believe it was due to my nonphotogenic look, but the editors of People magazine certainly had at least one low-carb success story to choose from for their article.

Is this an intriguing turn of events or what? So it does appear the eidtors of People magazine purposefully passed over an amazing low-carb weight loss success story despite the fact that he had provided everything they needed to run his story. Now I REALLY think we should all send an e-mail to the editor of People to express our concerns.

What will they have to say for themselves about this blatant act of omission?!