My first exposure to the benefits of low carb eating goes all the way back to the late 1990’s when I discovered the Atkins Diet. After being relatively fit and never too far overweight until after getting out the Army and starting a Sandwich and Frozen Yogurt shop in the late 80’s, I managed to get overweight pretty quickly in my late 20’s and early 30’s. We all know yogurt is supposed to be healthy, right? It tasted like ice cream but was made from yogurt, how could that be bad?

I was also eating a lot of pizza, hamburgers, submarine sandwiches, or maybe Subs, Hoagies, or Grinders, depending on where you’re from, and of course a lot of the other foods from the typical American diet. That should be good for you too, right? 4 Food groups being in there and all, what could be wrong with that? In those days, the meal also involved a soda of some type, usually Coca Cola, chips, pasta, bread, other starches, etc. and usually dessert. It’s amazing what you can eat when you are young and active, it seems to have no effect, at least for a while.

Fast forward to the mid-90’s where I’d made some career and business changes and was now focused on information technology. i still hadn’t lost any weight and was gradually putting on the pounds. That’s when I discovered the Atkins diet, lost about 35 lbs in a reasonably short time and verified that low carb works. However, at this point, there were still many conflicting theories, FDA guidelines, artificial sweeteners, and a lot of information that works but isn’t consistent and eating the Atkins way adds carbs back gradually at first but to the point where ketosis is no longer in play and doesn’t really address other dietary changes regarding healthier oils, sweeteners, GMOs, grains, how eating anything affects insulin, and much more and eventually without much guidance, I looked at the also low carb South Beach Diet which was really just Atkins with lower fat and recipes made from all kinds of artificial and unhealthy but lower carb food.

The basic premise of the Atkins, South Beach, and Ketogenic diets seems similar in that they are low carb but the Ketogenic diet is much more advanced in that it takes more scientific and health factors into account and doesn’t just focus on weight loss, but long term health. While the keto diet will certainly help you lose weight, it’s much more than a diet, it’s a way of life that you can continue that will bring benefits far beyond just losing weight. I’ll be talking about some of those here and later on in other posts but wanted to give a little detail for those unfamiliar with low carb eating.

So to get back on track with my journey, my wife and I have adjusted periodically to lower carb eating since the late 90’s whenever we reached a weight level that got us to re-evaluate how far off the mark we had gotten with our diets. The problem was that we didn’t stay on track long enough to reach the finish line and get to our optimal weight because of the various things that come up in life and that put unhealthy food in front of you and that sometimes just can’t be avoided, or so it seemed.

Among the permanent changes we had made were replacing most of our liquids with unsweetened coffee or tea, plain old water, and sparkling water, often of the flavored but unsweetened kind. I like my fresh squeezed orange juice but I’ve even given that as well, I think I’ve had only 2 glasses in the last year. We also were eating very few desserts, sweet breakfast items, or other sweets. The reason I point this out is that stopping those usually creates a quick result for people starting out on some type of low carb diet but if you aren’t eating those, you’ll probably see a little less immediate drop in weight than the folk still consuming all of that high carb low nutrition diet.

Sweets are not the only high carb things we all like to eat. There are fruits, even some vegetables along with all beans, grains, cereals, and bread products that really increase your carb intake and your body treats those more savory foods the same as the other carbs.

So now we get down to the parts that are really important. The FDA and the medical community has been lying to us for years. They’ve been promoting guidelines and products created or sponsored by the folks producing the carb laden and highly processed or genetically modified products and telling us that they are good for us and telling us that fats are bad. But now the truth is beginning to get out. The only fats that are bad are the highly processed fats created by the same folks that that are telling you to eat those over the natural healthy fats. Do you remember hearing that butter is bad and margarine is good? That’s a lie. What about the fact that you shouldn’t eat eggs but if you do, only eat egg whites? Yeah, that’s a lie too.

More to come…