Sara Ost Brilliantly Refutes Fat-Phobia

Fat is bad. Fat is so bad. Eating fat is so very, very, very bad for you.

Or so goes the song and dance that we've been led to believe for decades by the perpetrators of the low-fat lie. Fat-phobia in 2007 is in full force and groups like the American Heart Association are only adding gasoline to that raging fire with their absurd ad campaign against saturated fat.

Although all the latest scientific evidence has shown that a high-fat diet is only unhealthy in tandem with a high-carb diet, the prevailing line of reasoning is to blame the dietary fat rather than the dietary carbohydrate as the culprit in obesity and related diseases. Can't somebody get this message across in clear and concise language that expresses this point?

Ask and you shall receive!

The awesome and amazing Sara Ost from Mark's Daily Apple has written a brilliant column for CalorieLab called "The lipid-phobe’s guide to dietary fat: 11 ways fat can help you (and 4 ways it can’t hurt you)."

Written specifically for women who need to "lose the fear of fat," Sara talks about a recent conversation she had with her best friend over the role of dietary fat in a healthy diet. Going against the grain of modern thinking towards fat, Sara patiently explained how she used to be afraid of fat, too, until she educated herself about the detrimental role of excessive carbohydrate in her diet. More importantly, she talked about how she eats now that her fear of fat has finally fizzled.

"I began living on a deliciously greasy menu of green vegetables, salads and fish—greasy because these vittles were smothered in all the eggs, butter, cream, nuts, and cheese I could possibly want. After working out, I drank half-and-half from the carton. I soaked my veggies in walnut oil. I dunked figs in mascarpone and ate criminal amounts of avocados."

Mmm, that sounds so yummy (while I'm sure Dr. Dean Ornish is having a cardiac arrest somewhere thinking about all that fat Sara is stuffing in her mouth! LOL!) and is extremely healthy when she simultaneously removed the refined carbs from her diet. Not surprisingly, Sara said she "began to feel wonderful."

She lost weight, her acne cleared, she was buying new clothes, her body fat dropped dramatically, her personality improved, trips to the bathroom were normal again (EWW!), and so much more than she could have ever imagined eating this way!

"I was so revitalized and healthy, it created a happy ripple effect."

Sara's unbelievable health turnaround started rubbing off on her circle of friends who ended their fat-phobia and started watching their carbs, too. Same results as Sara. WOO HOO!

The bottom line, Sara says, is "women need fat."

"Fat is nutritious and essential. There are cultures that subsist on 40, 50 and 60 percent fat and enjoy slim figures and great health. The story you’ve been told—that fat gives you heart disease and makes you fat—is baloney. Low-fat baloney."

Oh, I love this girl! She's a fat-loving health freak who knows from whence she speaks. CLICK HERE to see Sara's list of what things fat does for you and doesn't do for you based on all the evidence and facts we know about it scientifically-speaking.

Sara Ost is a regular reader at my blog and I'm happy to know there are people like her in this world promoting the truth about diet and health. You keep tellin' it to 'em straight, girl! There's nothing more comforting than having facts on your side.

Say it with me now: Fat is good. Fat is so good. Eating fat is so very, very, very good for you! :D

Atkins Hater Says He's Sorta Sorry...Er, Maybe

Columnist Robert St. John says he enjoys tormenting Atkins dieters

One of the things I like to do here at my "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" blog is to point out columnists who write articles in the media that I find are either outright lies or a gross display of ignorance about livin' la vida low-carb. I suppose since I have been so successful on a low-carb diet losing nearly 200 pounds on it that I feel like it is one of my duties to defend it and gladly so.

I've done it many times over the past two years that this blog has been around and I'll keep doing it every chance I can get because people deserve to know the truth rather than the almost-always jaded opinions of these so-called journalists. If these people would simply take a few hours and just read a low-carb book for once in their life, then I don't think we would see all the constant negativity that pops up in the media so much. Don't hold your breath, though.

You might recall a syndicated food columnist by the name of Robert St. John who I featured not once, but twice in blog posts last month after he proved to the entire world what a complete numbskull he is about the Atkins diet. In this blog post, I noted how St. John described Atkins as a "sadistic slow torture method of carbohydrate deprivation."

Here's what I wrote about St. John's column at the time:

"The only 'sadistic slow torture method' that I've ever been on is when I went on a low-fat diet in 1999. The FAT 'deprivation' I experienced during those ten months that I willed myself into losing 170 pounds was just too much to take and I gained every bit of that weight back within five months! But with livin' la vida low-carb, this has literally been the easiest way to eat and lose weight for good in my entire life. St. John doesn't know what he's missing!"

Not to be outdone by himself, St. John again tried to be cute seeing himself write about his version of low-carb living in this blog post where I featured him slamming the Atkins diet yet again:

"I once tried Dr. Atkins' torturous method of carbohydrate deprivation, and three weeks into the diet wrote this paragraph in my journal: 'Everyday I get an afternoon craving for a Milky Way bar. 'Just eat some pork rinds or beef jerky,' they say. I tried that. Pork rinds are smelly and greasy, and it takes approximately 37 hours to chew one single piece of beef jerky. Note to future Atkins dieters: 50 pounds of dried beef or fried pig skins can't come close to one tiny bite of a chocolaty, silky, heavenly, wonderfully delicious Milky Way bar - Pure joy in a brown wrapper."

Pure unadulterated idiocy is all this was and I called him on it! Take every myth you've ever heard about low-carb and hyperbolize it. That's precisely what this dolt St. John apparently enjoys doing in his columns with no concept of discovering what the facts really are. What he doesn't realize is just how retarded that makes him look to people educated about livin' la vida low-carb when he pretends to know what this way of eating is all about when in reality he hasn't got the first clue!

But in his latest column this week, we catch a glimpse of what appears to be an apology of sorts while he reveals that supporters of the Atkins diet (translation: READERS OF MY LIVIN' LA VIDA LOW-CARB BLOG!) often call his bluff and contact him directly when he criticizes our healthy lifestyle change.

Talking about the "hate mail" he gets from various groups when he has "stirred up controversy," St. John did have something pretty funny to say about the mail he gets from those radical vegetarian members of PETA.

"PETA sends e-mail frequently. It is an easy target, especially in this part of the country that hosts more hunters per capita than any other region. I never have been intentionally cruel to a domesticated animal, but my love for foie gras and veal has filled my inbox with some of the more hilarious hate mail a columnist could ever receive. Vegetarians send e-mail quite frequently. But what they don't understand is: I like vegetables, too. I just prefer that they taste more like meat."

HA! Now that's just TOO funny! Not a bad wit for someone who doesn't understand what the Atkins diet is all about. Speaking of that, here's what St. John had to say about those of us who support low-carb.

"The Atkins Diet people must remain on alert 24 hours a day scanning the Internet for journalists who dare contradict or make fun of the late doctor's tortuous carbohydrate deprivation methods. They fill their e-mails with a lot of medical mumbo-jumbo and technical jargon. On the occasions that I do reply, I go into great detail extolling the joy and beauty of bread, rice and potatoes."

Hardy-har-har...yuck yuck yuck! I'm sure St. John just gets one big ole belly laugh out of doing that. Yippee freakin' skippy! You bet I scan the Internet looking for lamebrained idiocy like yours, Mr. St. John, because you are the exact epitome of what's wrong with our society these days. While you are off typing away thinking you are being smart and funny about all these negative stereotypes of low-carb, the obesity and diabetes twin epidemics just keep getting worse and worse and we scratch our heads wondering why. I mean DUH!

If honest journalists (not pretenders like this St. John fool!) would simply crack open a copy of Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution for themselves and actually read it, absorb the REAL message, and share what they have learned with their readers, then perhaps we could curtail the downward spiral that has happened with the rising weight and declining health of tens of millions of Americans. No thanks to the Robert St. Johns of this world, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon!

Where's your journalistic responsibility to your readers, Mr. St. John, hmm? Grow some kahunas and try exhibiting a little bit of testicular fortitude for once rather than simply repeating what you heard about the Atkins diet from a friend of a cousin's friend who went on it and hated it. Perhaps you should actually read some of that "medical mumbo-jumbo and technical jargon" that my readers have sent you about livin' la vida low-carb. You might actually learn something for a change!

Keep on eating all that bread, rice and potatoes, too! When you get sick and obese from overloading your body with garbage carbs, then don't come crying to us that you didn't know any better. You've been exposed to what is right and now you are just choosing to foolishly ignore it. That's certainly your choice, but the truth is out there for everyone to see. It's no secret anymore because the positive and uplifting low-carb message is getting out there whether you like it or not.

While St. John said e-mails from people responding to his anti-Atkins columns "don't bother me in the least," I think we should all give him a nice resounding shower of e-mail contact today thanking him for at least attempting to apologize and say he is sorry...er, maybe.

E-mail Robert St. John anytime 24 hours a day while you are on watch for negative columns about low-carb at Robert@robertstjohn.com. I know his sadistic and self-absorbed self would just LOVE to hear from you today. Let's give him feedback today that he'll NEVER forget!

Educated Ignorance Is Holding Back Society

Citizens of modern society have instant access to all the latest technology providing news and information that they can absorb to learn about virtually any subject they want. For instance, hundreds of thousands of books, web sites, and articles have been written about diet and health with so many facts and opinions spliced together almost as interchangable entities that people don't even know what to think about them. They get frustrated and simply rely on what they "know" is true.

Perhaps this explains why obesity is still such a growing problem...LITERALLY! We are potentially the most educated culture in the history of mankind with all the information we have available to us. But what if the very principles and ideas that we have long held as facts were not as true as once thought.

That lays the groundwork for what I describe as "educated ignorance."

Take livin' la vida low-carb, for example. How is it viewed by society as a whole? It's a fad diet that requires you to cut out all carbs, including shunning all fruits and vegetables, while loading up on fat and protein as a means for losing weight. Why do people belief such nonsense about low-carb diets? Because that's what they have been taught through their sources of information such as newspaper columns, television broadcasts, and the Internet.

What about low-fat diets? Do they have such a negative perception as low-carb ones do? Not hardly. It's considered healthy, balanced, and the best way to shed the pounds because eating fat makes you fat, everyone knows that. We all grew up believing this to be factually true, undisputed information, right? Unfortunately, many STILL believe this even now, despite very clear scientific evidence that has proven and will continue to show fat consumption is NOT why obesity persists.

It's educated ignorance plain and simple. People have been taught what they want to hear, not what they need to hear for a wide variety of reasons. Protecting the economic interests of businesses that profit from the "fat is bad" message is one while refusing to admit the reality about fat is that it is not the great evil it has been made out to be. Why haven't we changed our thinking about it already since the information is staring us right in the face?

Educated ignorance strikes again!

At the same time, the lack of concern for excessive sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption is just as much a part of an unhealthy lifestyle, too. But where's the outrage? While trans fats and saturated fats are constantly hammered as universally "bad" for your health, that same distinction is never given to the damaging impact that these nasty carbs are playing on obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and worse. Why is sugar given so little attention while fat is of the devil?

This educated ignorance is precisely why I wanted to start this blog to begin truly educating people with information they can rely on that will not seek to keep you in the dark as you are learning about livin' la vida low-carb. A lot of what you read here won't show up in other outlets because there is an underlying message to keep people in the dark about some things while also spreading rumor and innuendo about other things. This can be incredibly frustrating to overcome the ignorance.

I don't fault the general public for falling for these underhanded tactics to prevent them from knowing the truth, but it is their responsibility at some point to realize what they thought they "knew" has been wrong all along. Recognizing educated ignorance is the first step to being freed from the bondage of the lies and distortions that have dominated our lives. That is quickly followed by a dose of self-realization and self-enlightenment that comes from being exposed to the truth.

Without a doubt, this educated ignorance concept I have described is as real as the nose on your face. You can choose to reject it as conspiratorial with no basis whasoever to believe it. Or, instead you can decide to accept the idea that educated ignorance does exist and is holding back society in so many ways, including keep us fat by prohibiting the truth from being heard about what "healthy" living is really all about.

The more people acknowledge educated ignorance and do their part to overcome it, the faster the citizens of modern society will be able to take their blinders off and discover perhaps for the first time in their lives how to think, evaluate, and process information on their own without having it filtered through the many channels of censorship that now exists.

Release your mind to a whole new level of discovery. End educated ignorance NOW!