One Rule to ...eh... Rule Them All

The bad news...

No carbs? What do you mean, no carbs? To be fair, eating zero carbs is nearly impossible without resorting to extreme measures. That said, if you're doing it right, most of your carbs will be coming from green vegetables. That's right, spinach has carbs. Not many, but if your goal is a maximum of 30 grams per day -- and yes that is your goal -- they add up pretty quickly.

The good news...

It really is easier than it sounds. The first week will require some willpower, but after that sticking to the one rule should be mostly an issue of keeping the sugar pushers at bay. Repeatedly explaining to people that they're not helping by offering whole grain bread and sugared-up low-fat alternatives can be more harrowing than resisting strolling down the cookie aisle at the supermarket.

Here it is...

One simple rule: Don't eat sugary foods!

What is a "sugary" food? It's anything that you would think of as sweet, starchy (starch is basically sugar by another name), or glutenous* (anything containing grain or flour).

You can do it!

*Gluten itself is actually a protein, I'm describing the general class of food products. Most gluten-free products will contain just as many carbs as their traditionally prepared counterparts. It's the grain that you're really trying to avoid.

Keester into Ketones (Fat into Fuel)

NOTE: Be smart, read this disclaimer before doing anything based on what you read here.

It all started when, Security Now host, Steve Gibson's urine began smelling like nail polish remover. Strange as it might sound, that was one of the surest signs that a fundamental shift had taken place in Steve's metabolism. A shift I would experience myself a few weeks after watching him explain his experience. That shift is something very different from the traditionally desired speeding up of one's metabolism. It's a change not in how fast your body burns calories, but in the source of the calories burned. After all, if you're looking to get rid of fat, burning glucose (sugar) as your primary fuel is (at best) inefficient.

"A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips." Sounds logical, doesn't it? The problem is it's completely wrong from a biochemical standpoint. Fat does not go directly from mouth to muffin top. Where does it go? Right where all nutrients absorbed from food go first, your bloodstream. The important part is what happens with the fat from there. If your body is conditioned to use that fat immediately as fuel, it gets burned. On the other hand, if carbs are your main source of energy it will be stored.

But wait, there's more!

If you're reading this, chances are you're interested in losing weight. Well you've come to the right place. The wonderful thing about a ketogenic diet -- the extreme end of the low-carb diet spectrum, in which this metabolic change takes place -- is that fat doesn't hang around in the blood stream for very long. Once you've burned what you've eaten, your body starts converting your keester into ketones which are then burned by your cells instead of sugar. All you have to do to keep the process going is avoid letting your cells take the easy way out by reverting to burning sugar. 

Gary Taubes explains the biology and nutrition better than anyone I've heard, without getting needlessly technical. If you're interested in the details (which you should be) or simply don't want to take my word for it (which you shouldn't), I suggest you watch this presentation. If you still want to know more, read his book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It. If you're still not convinced, try the more information than you could possibly require version: Good Calories, Bad Calories

More definite advice on where to get started is on it's way. While I work on that, try replacing that pasta with a salad, just be careful of the added sugar in low-fat dressing.

You can do it!

Post by That was me, but it never will be again.

Yes, that was me...

...less than two years ago. I was at my highest (known) weight of a frightening 520 pounds. I'd actually been near (possibly above) that weight for a year or more at that point. Now that I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel -- and confirmed that it's most likely not an oncoming train -- I've decided to share my experiences. I've waited until now to share much of this in detail because, it seems to me, explaining the sausage making process can be even more difficult that watching it; especially when you're the sausage.

So what happened two years ago? Why did a 29 year old man (who'd been fat since preschool) suddenly decide to fix something that had been broken for a quarter-century? In a word: love. For those who know me and know the situation, you'll understand. For the rest, sorry but it's not entirely my story to tell. Suffice it to say that knowing that I would likely die young took on a new significance when I found a reason to live.

Extraordinary accomplishment requires extraordinary motivation. I had been killing myself (slowly) for decades. Fixing the damage was going to either require many years of slow weight loss, requiring steady motivation year after year, or an even more concerted effort for a shorter period. Frankly, I think the former would have been harder.

Fortunately, most people don't need to lose more than half their body weight. Those of you who do, I hope you're able to find sufficient motivation to do what's necessary. In either case, I am here to testify that it can be done; no surgery, no starvation. It isn't easy, but it is possible.

I'll detail the choices I made along my journey in future posts. To get you started, here's where my research began: