The following scenario happens at least once a week. Have you experienced anything like this?
People who have known me for some time, seeing me now, will ask me; “You look great! You must be exercising a lot!”
“I’ve radically changed my diet, my way of eating. I’m high-fat, low carb now.”
“<belly laugh> Oh, you, always the jokester. (that is accurate) I bet your hitting the gym hard!”
“No more or less than the last time we saw each other. It really is because of my diet change.”
The look of disbelief crawls across his or her face. At this point, the conversation invariably, if uncomfortably, switches to a dramatically different topic.
Yup, I get this ALL the time, quite tired of it actually. Each time I hope/expect to have a vibrant conversation about the virtues of LCHF, instead I get disbelief and incredulity. The CW runs so deep on this culturally, your average friend just can’t see past all the information they’ve been fed in the last 40 years. Many of them show concern for my heart!!
I go back to that conference I was listening to last night… the policy makers were on the panels and they were “dyed in the wool”, “hard and fast” stuck in the position they knew was right ie LFHC. Their defence was just mumbling bollox, but they were defending absolutely. No possibility they could see that LFHC wasn’t right.
They also said the nutrition guidelines were absolutely based on rigorous science. Which we know is just another load of bollox. And Nina’s request for someone to reference the science it was based on was met with more mumbling that it was all listed in the websites. Nina asked why the biggest RCT on this subject was not included in the reviews, and no answer… Grrrrrrrrr…
I saw a fitness instructor and old friend of mine recently. 10 years ago, I lost 45 pounds on a CICO/LFHC/No-saturated-fats diet I did under her guidance. Yeah, I gained all that back, as the rest of her class did, years ago. Seeing me, the conversation, as above, happened. “You’d better be careful, get your blood checked!” "Oh, I did. My HDL is way up, and LDL is way down. Triglycerides? 34 (mg/DL) How’s your lipid panels?”
<blank stare, uncomfortable silence, and … > It’s good to see you again…“
I started keto on the advice of my young doctor, who was well aware that I had had a near fatal heart attack four years ago. The cardiac risk arguement is, as they say in the Vatican, bullshit.
Quite! The science seems crystal clear to me, yet the CW plods on regardless, along with the billions being made by the drug companies… yet more . I seem to be in a bad mood today…
To understand this response, it helps to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. The notion of intentionally eating high fat to improve your health and lose weight violates Conventional Wisdom and thus is treated as a fringe belief held by loons. You know how you awkwardly change the subject when someone starts raving about UFO’s, or chem trails, or conspiracy theories? That’s what’s going on here – you are a loon in that person’s mind, and truth is no defense.
The trigger word is “high fat”. If you say “Atkins”, it’s more acceptable because most people think Atkins is high protein. Or, if you explain you’ve eliminated sugars and processed carbs, people will accept that because Conventional Wisdom is those are bad.
Of course, I enjoy being the resident loon, so I stress that I’ve intentionally increased my saturated fat and sodium intake.
I was sitting at my desk yesterday eating butter out of the pack with a spoon and I drew quite a crowd of folks having a right old laugh. I think they can’t quite figure me out… here I am 30kg lighter than before eating neat butter with a spoon. Now that rhymes with loon, and I reckon that was what they were thinking. BUT, there is some cognitive disonance here for them… “eating butter, lose 30kg… what??”
I’m routinely lampooned for my tea + butter in the morning. I don’t being lampooned, in fact, I like the free-thinking implications. Meanwhile, those who tease me chow down on donuts someone, well-meaning, brings to the office.
I tend not to offer quite so much information. “I dropped the carbs and sugar way down.” I don’t offer the part about “high fat”.
For the most part, when they hear that I dropped the sugar, they’ll relate because most everybody knows that sugar is bad. They’ll likely latch on to the “sugar” rather than the “carbs” because I said sugar last.
If they want to go beyond that we can but most of the time, they’re not really all that interested in the details, they’re wanting the quick “10 words or less, all-inclusive Readers Digest version of the answer.”
Is it brevity they crave, or are they suffering from cognitive dissonance? Regardless, there’s something to be said to a more laconic; “I’d tell you, but you’ll never believe me.”
I was drinking coffee at women’s brunch months ago. One of the ladies had just joined slimgenics and was talking up all the bars, drinks, and supplements. I said I had lost weight too. She asked what I was drinking. I said coffee with heavy shipping cream and she said “,Oh, I’m sorry”. As though I was going to die in the spot, and might not understand how foolhardy it was to drink all that fat.
This is what I do too. And if anyone asks me what I’m eating, I’ll casually say “Well, I have to replace the lost calories from carbs with fat. Else it doesn’t work, right?” and then they just seem mildly confused, but kind of accepting and leave it at that.
I see quite a lot of talk on this forum about Ye Big Olde Conspiracy Theory about the food industry and health care industry making everyone overweight on purpose.
While I can understand the heartache of having been led down a needless path of obesity by society’s lack of knowledge, I do wonder if there’s truly as much conspiracy theory going on as some seem to think.
I’m pretty sure we’re all agreed that eating BOTH high fat and high carbs is a pretty deadly combination.
And I think conventional wisdom has always been “Well, you can’t just eat NO carbs…??” so it has seemed “easier” and “more logical” to cut down fat rather than to cut down carbs.
Sure - the food industry is making a killing out of this (both financially and literally, unfortunately) but I think that’s the chicken and egg thing.
I seriously doubt a fledgling food industry set out last century to conquer the world by killing everyone with DT2.
I think what probably played a bigger role is that carbs are CHEAP and post WWI and WWII, carbs were just an easy, cheap way of stopping people from starving (at least here, in Europe).
Once food consumption went up, society was faced with a high carbs and high fat situation and didn’t make the right choice.
The cheapness of carbs is what makes producing industrial carb-based food so highly lucrative.
When I was a kid, my dad would do the maths for me of what the cost of production was for Mc Donalds and what they were making selling their products.
He’d say that to make a large coke, it took them max 5 cents (maybe even only 3 or 4 cents) to produce it, and they were selling it for $2. Pretty “amazing” profit margin!
Same for the fries - the cost of the potatoes and cheap oil is like 10 cents max per serve, but they are selling it for $2. Again - very lucrative profit margin.
You CANNOT get the same profit margins from meat - no matter how cruely you treat the livestock and under which “cheap” conditions you decide to hold them.
So the profit margin on carbs, plus everyone’s willing and happy addiction to carbs are just all playing into our traits as flawed human beings.
Sure, the whole thing has gotten LUDICROUSLY out of hand, with an insane (guilt-tripping) diet industry and a large part of the medical system only dealing with the after effects of all this craziness…
But it is VERY hard to change thinking, once you’ve gone down a certain track.
I still think there’s way less “conspiracy theory” involved than many seem to think.
When faced with the “logical impossibility” (CW) of people eating “no carbs”, the “well, then if they’re eating carbs they should proably try and keep fat intake down” approach is kinda well-intentioned, even if misinformed…
I think it’s just so deep in people’s subconscious.
It’s like a person who believes in god and an atheist trying to argue religion.
Doesn’t work.
Yes, the fact that $$$ is involved, gives the whole thing a sinister touch.
Are there SOME evil creeps out there, making $$$ ALTHOUGH they know better? Sure. There always are. That’s just us humans being humans. We’re pretty good at being scumbags. But we’re also good at doing what is right and smart. All part of being human.
But this is these people’s jobs, they are intelligent people, and they are responsible for millions of people’s health. I just don’t buy that they don’t know exactly what they are doing. For example, why are they ignoring the largest RCT in the reviewing of the dietary guidelines? What justifies that?
