Low-Carber Quietly Living A Healthy Life
Lost in the debate over the veracity of the low-carb lifestyle following the crash of the "low-carb craze" is the fact that millions of low-carbers just keep on plugging along quietly living their healthy lifestyle without any fanfare or desire for recognition. They are the real low-carb warriors because they are living the truth each and every day.
As a salute to all of you who make livin' la vida low-carb your preferred lifestyle choice for weight and health control, I'd like to share with you this remarkable e-mail I received from a woman who vastly improved her health after starting on the low-carb lifestyle in earnest a couple of years ago.
She's not there yet with her weight, but you'll never believe how she changed her health and her new doctor's mind about this way of eating.
Here's her story:
Jimmy,
I've been reading on your blog and everywhere else about low-carbing, health and cholesterol and want to give you an update on what's been happening with me.
I'm 57 years old, had a stroke 10 years ago, and weigh 207 pounds now. I have been following Atkins/Protein Power loosely for a couple of years and have lost some weight. My doctor retired and it's taken me a few years to find a doctor because there's a shortage where I live.
Finally found a new doctor who was taking new patients and went in to see him. He took one look at me (middle-aged and overweight), was very irritable with me and told me he would have to take some tests before he would consider taking me on as a new patient.
So two weeks later when all the tests came in, he was happier than I was because all my tests came back perfect. I had perfect cholesterol, perfect triglycerides, perfect liver function, perfect pancreas function, perfect ratios, perfect everything. I didn't tell him I ate a minimum 2 eggs per day, sometimes 4 or 6, ate slices of butter for snacks, ate meat drippings, full-fat dairy, etc along with a few green vegetables, onions, tomatos and red bell peppers. I just told him I didn't eat anything processed, out of a package or can, which was the truth, but not the entire truth, lol. That seemed to satisfy him.
All I can say is that I feel great and I'm not in a hurry to lose the weight quickly because I have cured almost all the illnesses I had before. Eating this way has cured my arthritis and I can now exercise moderately until I drop some more weight. My biggest obstacle is cheats every now and again and I'm working on it.
I think the biggest crock-of-doo-doo out there is the fat phobia. High cholesterol is caused by sugar/starch and all those foreign so-called-newly-invented-foods that man has never eaten in the past. Period.
But then, what do I know? I'm just a lay-person :P
And by the way, keep on blogging. You are providing a very meaningful service to mankind, whether they want to hear it or not.
All I can say is YOU GO GIRL! That's the kind of testimony that I'm sure many of us could share as well. Livin' la vida low-carb is not some quick-fix fad diet, it's a real, long-term solution that is helping people lose weight and get healthy. Sometimes the healthy part comes first and, for this reader, that was a VERY good thing!
Do you have a testimony of how livin' la vida low-carb has improved your health in some way? Share it with me anytime at livinlowcarbman@charter.net.
1-17-07 UPDATE: One of my readers was encouraged by this e-mail, but had one concern she wanted to share.
That's an excellent story. Just one thing though, its a shame that we think we have to lie to our doctors about what we are eating. I think we low carbers should all start telling our doctors exactly what we eat so that when the tests come back all perfectly normal it may get our doctor's thinking that there is definitely something in this low-carb eating!!
Great point! But I don't think she told a "lie" to her doctor when she described her way of eating. It's a good strategy to describe livin' la vida low-carb to these medical professionals in terms of the specifics rather than simply giving it a label like "low-carb" or "Atkins." It's all the same.
I told my doctor that I did the Atkins diet and he was mad at first. But when he started seeing my weight loss success and then improvements in my health coming off of every prescription medication, he came around. He's still not overzealous about the low-carb lifestyle, but he at least acknowledges it as a viable option.
Every single day I receive e-mails from readers who are frustrated by the negative response they get from their family doctor about their low-carb lifestyle. Is there anyone who can create an online search site for people to find low-carb friendly doctors in their area? We know they're out there, but how do we find them?
Please let me know if you are aware of such a resource.
As a salute to all of you who make livin' la vida low-carb your preferred lifestyle choice for weight and health control, I'd like to share with you this remarkable e-mail I received from a woman who vastly improved her health after starting on the low-carb lifestyle in earnest a couple of years ago.
She's not there yet with her weight, but you'll never believe how she changed her health and her new doctor's mind about this way of eating.
Here's her story:
Jimmy,
I've been reading on your blog and everywhere else about low-carbing, health and cholesterol and want to give you an update on what's been happening with me.
I'm 57 years old, had a stroke 10 years ago, and weigh 207 pounds now. I have been following Atkins/Protein Power loosely for a couple of years and have lost some weight. My doctor retired and it's taken me a few years to find a doctor because there's a shortage where I live.
Finally found a new doctor who was taking new patients and went in to see him. He took one look at me (middle-aged and overweight), was very irritable with me and told me he would have to take some tests before he would consider taking me on as a new patient.
So two weeks later when all the tests came in, he was happier than I was because all my tests came back perfect. I had perfect cholesterol, perfect triglycerides, perfect liver function, perfect pancreas function, perfect ratios, perfect everything. I didn't tell him I ate a minimum 2 eggs per day, sometimes 4 or 6, ate slices of butter for snacks, ate meat drippings, full-fat dairy, etc along with a few green vegetables, onions, tomatos and red bell peppers. I just told him I didn't eat anything processed, out of a package or can, which was the truth, but not the entire truth, lol. That seemed to satisfy him.
All I can say is that I feel great and I'm not in a hurry to lose the weight quickly because I have cured almost all the illnesses I had before. Eating this way has cured my arthritis and I can now exercise moderately until I drop some more weight. My biggest obstacle is cheats every now and again and I'm working on it.
I think the biggest crock-of-doo-doo out there is the fat phobia. High cholesterol is caused by sugar/starch and all those foreign so-called-newly-invented-foods that man has never eaten in the past. Period.
But then, what do I know? I'm just a lay-person :P
And by the way, keep on blogging. You are providing a very meaningful service to mankind, whether they want to hear it or not.
All I can say is YOU GO GIRL! That's the kind of testimony that I'm sure many of us could share as well. Livin' la vida low-carb is not some quick-fix fad diet, it's a real, long-term solution that is helping people lose weight and get healthy. Sometimes the healthy part comes first and, for this reader, that was a VERY good thing!
Do you have a testimony of how livin' la vida low-carb has improved your health in some way? Share it with me anytime at livinlowcarbman@charter.net.
1-17-07 UPDATE: One of my readers was encouraged by this e-mail, but had one concern she wanted to share.
That's an excellent story. Just one thing though, its a shame that we think we have to lie to our doctors about what we are eating. I think we low carbers should all start telling our doctors exactly what we eat so that when the tests come back all perfectly normal it may get our doctor's thinking that there is definitely something in this low-carb eating!!
Great point! But I don't think she told a "lie" to her doctor when she described her way of eating. It's a good strategy to describe livin' la vida low-carb to these medical professionals in terms of the specifics rather than simply giving it a label like "low-carb" or "Atkins." It's all the same.
I told my doctor that I did the Atkins diet and he was mad at first. But when he started seeing my weight loss success and then improvements in my health coming off of every prescription medication, he came around. He's still not overzealous about the low-carb lifestyle, but he at least acknowledges it as a viable option.
Every single day I receive e-mails from readers who are frustrated by the negative response they get from their family doctor about their low-carb lifestyle. Is there anyone who can create an online search site for people to find low-carb friendly doctors in their area? We know they're out there, but how do we find them?
Please let me know if you are aware of such a resource.
Labels: diet, health, inspiration, low-carb, motivation, weight loss
posted by Jimmy Moore at
1/16/2007 10:53:00 PM
3 Comments:
Holy smokes! That's awesome. I'm thinking if I just keep my loud mouth shut at work I can make it without 1,000 opinions. LOL to someone speaking up to you via email.
I agree. I've learened to just shut up and live my low-carb life on my own. On the rare occasion when I eat with others, like at company lunch functions, and someone notices what they think may be odd choices on my part (as in no bread or no ff's), I'll say I'm a low-carber. Sometimes that just gets rolled-eyes, sometimes it gets lectures about how unhealthy it is (*sigh*), but sometimes on rare occasions, I get an honest question about it that leads to an opportunity to explain how I eat and how much good it's done me. But mostly, I get tired of lectures so I just don't say anything.
My doc was pretty cool about the whole low-carb thing when I told him I had been on it for a few months, although he did succumb to looking at only my overall cholestoral number (not the HDL or LDL numbers, which were great) and saw it was a couple points higher than he thought best, so he actually mailed me a form letter about how I should cut fat and meat from my diet. LOL! I threw it out. My acid reflux is gone, my extra weight is gone, my triglycerides are amazing, etc etc etc. I can't think of any reason in the world to change this WOE, especially since I truly enjoy everything I get to eat while on it :)
Go, Jimmy!!!!
I tend to keep pretty quiet about it too.
When someone asked a few months ago what I was doing to lose the weight, I told her low carb, basically along the lines of Atkins, and her comment was that "you'll make a good looking corpse".
[And a healthy living person, in the meanwhile?]
In subsequent conversations, she came up with the "no vegetables, huh?" I had to explain that yes indeed, I eat lots of vegetables, and that the only real difference between what I eat and what everyone else eats is that I don't eat sugars and starches.
I went on to further explain (in the simplest terms possible) that a doctor put me on a "high protein" diet (which was the same as the low carb plan I"m on now) for my hypoglycemia decades ago, and it was only when I went off of it that I started gaining weight. Then I explained that I finally wised up and went back on it, and that's why I'm losing weight.
A couple months later, this same person told me that she'd been on South Beach a couple years ago and lost 26 lbs... which has all come back on since she went off of it!
So come to find out, not only is she a former low-carber, her husband is also a diabetic, and really shouldn't be eating all that starch and sugar. I tried to use the opportunity to explain to her that starch dumps sugars in the bloodstream even faster than sugar does (which she basically already knew), and that I'm primarily doing this to feel better, that the weight loss is just a nice side effect of eating the way that makes me feel best.
As of the last time I talked to her, I think she might be considering going back to South Beach again because she was asking me about things like substituting soy flour for wheat.
South Beach isn't low enough in carbs for me, but it may be low enough for her.
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