From the DietDoctor.com website — Dr Andreas Eenfeldt interviews Dr Jason Fung, a Canadian nephrologist who treats obese and diabetic patients. In addition to LCHF, Dr Fung often recommends fasting as an effective part of the intervention.
CategoryWeight Loss
My 15 year old son is a big boy, about 6-1. As of June 20, 2016 he weighed 233 lbs, and he was carrying some excess weight that he wanted to lose. He loved eating all the usual carb-rich foods like pizza, chips, and sugary soft drinks.
He decided he wanted to do the keto diet along with me and his mom, so on June 20 he got on board with us, ditched the carbs, and started eating what we were eating. We check his weight every Monday morning to see how things are going.
Here is his progress so far. The first week usually shows the greatest weight loss as some of this is water.
Updated: November 1
| Date | Weight | Weekly Loss (lbs) |
Total Loss |
| June 20 | 233 | ||
| June 27 | 225 | 8 | 8 |
| July 4 | 220 | 5 | 13 |
| July 11 | 216 | 4 | 17 |
| July 18 | 215 | 1 | 18 |
| July 25 | 213 | 2 | 20 |
| Aug 1 | 212 | 1 | 21 |
| Aug 8 | 211 | 1 | 22 |
| Aug 15 | 207 | 4 | 26 |
| Aug 22 | 202 | 5 | 31 |
| Aug 29 | 200 | 2 | 33 |
| Sep 5 | 200 | 0 | 33 |
| Sep 12 | 196 | 4 | 37 |
| Sep 19 | 192 | 4 | 41 |
| Sep 26 | 194 | -2 | 39 |
| Oct 3 | 188 | 6 | 45 |
| Oct 10 | 188 | 0 | 45 |
| Oct 17 | 187 | 1 | 46 |
| Oct 24 | 184 | 3 | 49 |
| Oct 31 | 182 | 2 | 51 |
Aside from the weight loss he is feeling much more energetic. We can tell from his behavior too—he is just happier and more animated than he was before. He also told us that he feels awake more quickly when he gets up in the morning. It used to take him a while before he would talk to anyone in the morning.
This is the spreadsheet where we enter the data every Monday morning.
If you are considering a LCHF / keto approach, a good resource to start with is “A Ketogenic Diet for Beginners” on the DietDoctor.com website.
Introduction to keto, benefits, what to eat, ketosis, side effects, and much more are there for you to become acquainted with a lifestyle that is transforming the health of many people.
Scroll down the linked page and read up on the benefits of Ketosis: weight loss, improved mental focus, T2 diabetes reversal, increased physical endurance, and improved metabolic syndrome.
Great article at the New York Times by Dr Sarah Hallberg and Osama Hamdy.
Rather than cutting on perfectly healthy organs to deal with weight loss, why not use a dietary approach on a dietary problem: cut out the foods that contribute to obesity.
Excerpt from the article:
It is nonsensical that we’re expected to prescribe these techniques to our patients while the medical guidelines don’t include another better, safer and far cheaper method: a diet low in carbohydrates.
Once a fad diet, the safety and efficacy of the low-carb diet have now been verified in more than 40 clinical trials on thousands of subjects. Given that the government projects that one in three Americans (and one in two of those of Hispanic origin) will be given a diagnosis of diabetes by 2050, it’s time to give this diet a closer look.
When someone has diabetes, he can no longer produce sufficient insulin to process glucose (sugar) in the blood. To lower glucose levels, diabetics need to increase insulin, either by taking medication that increases their own endogenous production or by injecting insulin directly. A patient with diabetes can be on four or five different medications to control blood glucose, with an annual price tag of thousands of dollars.
Yet there’s another, more effective way to lower glucose levels: Eat less of it.
From DietDoctor.com — a look at the change of macronutrient composition in our diet from 1971 to 2000. As we transitioned to the recommended low fat approach our carbohydrate intake increased dramatically. It had to, because there are only three macronutrients: carbs, protein, and fat. If you restrict fat you will by default consume more carbohydrate-rich foods.
The LCHF approach flips this to reduce carbs (sugars, starches, grains) and increase the fat content. The typical result of this is healthy weight loss as well as improvements in several metabolic markers like HDL, triglycerides, blood pressure, and insulin sensitivity.
Another look at macronutrients and associated effects from this study.
This is one of many LCHF success stories on the DietDoctor.com website.
Linda Vikström was 40 years old when she started LCHF in 2012, and by August 2014 she cut her weight in half, going from 309 pounds to 154 pounds. Her husband dropped 88 pounds. See the rest of her story here.
A couple of excerpts from the article:
I started eating LCHF in March/April 2012, and have lost 154 lbs. (70 kg) and my husband 88 lbs. (40 kg). The weight loss took 18 months, and we have kept the weight off since then without any effort, and we feel great and we don’t need to go hungry. I got my life back, and have so much energy and am able to be active with my children in a completely different way than I could be before.
I remember when in my job as an assistant nurse, I had to take a lady in her 80’s out for a walk; an alert and healthy lady for her age, but she had poor vision, so my job was to join her so she wouldn’t risk falling. When I walked with her, she was the one who had to adapt her pace to mine as I couldn’t keep up with her. I was in my 30’s and she in her 80’s. Not even then did my warning bells sound.
Neil lives in England. The NHS (National Health Service, UK’s health care system) failed him with the old dietary guidelines, just like many U.S. docs are doing with their patients.
You can read Neil’s story below, here’s a summary.
- Losing weight in 2013 on a “healthy low fat diet”
- Despite the weight loss he discovered he was T1 diabetic, learned he would likely die early from a coronary event
- Doctors said he should further reduce consumption of fat, dairy, meat, etc — and eat more starches/carbs
- Started taking insulin (and statins for cholesterol), weight started coming back, muscle aches
- Following the NHS diet, he was eating 120-200 grams of carbs and injecting up to 40 units of insulin per day
- Started researching online, found the work of DietDoctor.com, Zoe Harcombe, Ivor Cummins, Trudi Deakin, Tim Noakes, Dr Richard Bernstein — realized he should not be eating what was recommended
- Cut the carbs from his diet, started eating about 70% fat, stopped taking statins, muscle aches gone, glucose numbers stabilizing
- Lost 145 lbs, no longer needs insulin, has lots more energy, healthy BMI of 23.5
There are many good reasons to exercise. Muscle strength, improved bone density, cardiovascular health, optimal metabolic function, reducing risk of stroke and heart disease and T2 diabetes and dementia — the list is long. Exercise energizes and makes you feel great. But exercise is not a great weight loss strategy. You can lose weight with exercise, but (1) you have to work really hard at it, and (2) the weight tends to come off very slowly.
The best way to burn off excess body fat is by reducing consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates. The reason is that carbohydrates drive up blood sugar (glucose), which stimulates the secretion of insulin. Insulin is the fat storage hormone. If the excess glucose is not used for energy, insulin moves it into the fat cells to be used for energy later. But if we keep eating the carbs and glucose levels remain high, the stored fat is never metabolized for energy — so the fat cells remain. You cannot outrun a bad diet.
A low carb / ketogenic diet causes the body to transform from burning sugar for energy to burning fat. It works.
The traditional “balanced diet” may be way out of whack. To fight obesity and diabetes, doctors and nutritionists are embracing diets that were once called fads.
“PEOPLE have told me what I do is dangerous. They have walked away from me at meetings,” says David Unwin, a doctor practicing in Southport, UK. Unwin suggests to his patients with type 2 diabetes or who want to lose weight that they do the opposite of what official health advice recommends. He advises them to stop counting calories, eat high-fat foods – including saturated fats – and avoid carbohydrates, namely sugar and starch. Telling people to avoid sugar is uncontroversial; the rest is medical heresy.
But crazy as it sounds, Unwin has found that most of his diabetes patients who follow this advice are getting their blood sugar back under control, and that some are coming off medication they have relied on for years. Those who are overweight are slimming down.
This might seem like just another controversial fad diet, but a growing number of researchers, doctors and nutritionists around the world are backing it, and reporting their findings in peer-reviewed medical journals. Last month, the National Obesity Forum, a UK body for health professionals involved in weight management, made headlines when it overhauled its advice, telling people to ditch calorie-counting, low-fat foods and carbs in favor of fats.
Source: New Scientist
In 1917 Rebecca Oppenheimer published “Diabetic cookery; recipes and menus” which described what was already known about the optimal diet for diabetics — more butter, olive oil, meats, cheeses, eggs, and healthy fats (low in carbohydrates), and less sugar, starch, bread, pasta, and other foods that raise blood sugar (due to high carbohydrate content).
This is essentially a low carb / high fat (LCHF) diet, which not only helps diabetics to reduce their blood glucose, but is also effective for weight loss and other metabolic conditions.
The book can be found online at Archive.org and you can download it in PDF format here.
Here are pages 12 and 13 from the book.
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