August 30, 2012, around 1 am. Lying in the dark on a bunk bed in a spider -infested summer cabin, thinking “I am going to die a fat man.”
The water diet. The zero saturated fat lifestyle. The vegetarian lifestyle.
The low saturated fat / Mediterranean lifestyle. The immense exercise routine (triathlons, biking across America multiple times.) Nothing worked for more than a year or two. I was still going to die a fat man.
A recent checkup at Mayo revealed I was pretty much a goner — bad artery calcium score, cholesterol over 300, triglycerides over 350, fasting glucose pushing 107. The doctor said ‘What’s probably saving you is your high HDL from all that exercise,” but he seemed dejected as he went over my charts.
Lying in the dark I knew in the morning I should cut portions and suffer celery sticks & carrots for the next year. . I just didn’t have the energy or willpower anymore. I really was going to die a fat man. I was kaput.
For some reason I turned on my iPad and came across a book titled “Metabolism Miracle,” by Diane Kress. Here we go again, I thought as I downloaded it and began reading. But Kress’s own story was compelling. For years as a nutritional counselor she had had great success using the conventional food pyramid. Yet a certain percentage of clients did not do well on it. “Cheaters,” she thought. Not following the diet as prescribed, she thought. Then she began putting on pounds herself. And one day she was diagnosed with diabetes 2. How can this be on the blessed food pyramid she had been trained on?
She developed a temporary, 8-week diet consisting of low-carb foods (ketogenic, really, although she didn’t use that term.) Kress wrote it would “reset” my metabolism — cure me! But warned it wasn’t safe after 8 weeks.
Given that my favorite food on earth is bread (often in the form of pizza dough, with soy cheese on it) it looked difficult. But on the other hand, I could eat steaks! Butter. Mayo! Bacon!! Things I hadn’t had in decades. Real cheese! At least it would be a welcome break. So I began.
As the 8 weeks came to a close I had lost 12 pounds and was feeling good. And I was now reading Taubes, and Volek & Phinney, Davis, Perlmutter. I remember thinking “You know what, Pal? I think you can keep going on this diet.”
Oh, I was scared. Kress’s book said it was unhealthy to continue. How could eating fat, especially saturated fat, not double or triple all my bad lipids? I imagined my doctor freaking out at my next blood test. “What have you done to yourself?!”
But I stubbornly continued on this dangerous, toxic diet, and at six months had my blood drawn. I couldn’t believe it. Not only had my lipids improved, they had improved vastly. My triglycerides were now 53. My fasting glucose was 77. The various cholesterol ratios had changed from high cardiovascular disease risk to ideal!
Over the next 6 years, so long as I followed keto I kept a healthy weight. Alas, keto is not necessarily an easy diet to maintain dining out with friends and family (I often got eye-rolling looks when I refused to share birthday cakes or holiday treats) and last year I relaxed a bit. Oh, those delicious French-style baguettes! Weight crept on again.
So in August (yet another August) I returned to strict keto diet, which continues today. The extra weight chiseled off — much more slowly, it is true. (The low carb diet is most effective with those who are insulin resistant, and I had become insulin sensitive again, as recent blood tests show. So naturally it is not quite as effective as it was at first.)
I am not cured, though, as my flirtation with French bread showed. And while my lipids show a low risk of cardiovascular disease, I do not know what my Coronary Artery Calcium ( CAC score) is now. I have to assume I am still in danger.
The keto lifestyle is for the rest of my life. I will die, I hope later not sooner, but, dammit, not as a fat man.
Hope this over long tale gives inspiration for those just starting out!