What if I told you, everything you knew about a healthy diet
was wrong? What if I told you that if you followed a mystery diet, that it
would solve all your weight problems, health issues and allow you boost your
athletic performance? What if I could "prove" it with science and
studies?
If you're like me, you would probably hail it as blasphemy, a fad diet at best, and fueled by "studies" that you're supposed to believe on faith are true (I was a grad student... not only do i have little faith in the validity of studies, but I also know for every study proving your point, there is usually an equal amount disproving it). But surely everything you learned in health classes (both in schooling and in wellness classes at gyms) was the truth. Right?
But if you're like me, you'd probably also spend alot of time afterward silently asking, "well....what if?" What if this diet really was the nutrition secret above all secrets? What if I could finally get those last 10 lbs off? What if I didn't have to be so meticulous about calories and counting. What if I didn't feel hungry all the time?
My name is Vanna and that's pretty much the story of my life (or part of it). Confession: I spent alot of my childhood being horizontally challenged....ok ok... I was a fat kid (my dad called me his "little fat patty").
When I was little, I thought weight was out of someone's control. Good metabolism was something you were blessed with and if you didn't get that gene, you needed to learn to love and accept yourself the way you were.....even if it was overweight. I learned the summer before college that this wasn't the case (i know... this lesson came woefully late). But health and good weight regulation seemed to be a game that no one really knew the rules to. There was contradicting information everywhere and supposed "secrets" to get you to your goal. (I, however, really liked to keep my goals vague because honestly, I wasn't sure I could be thinner. I was happy with the idea of becoming "healthier").
Luckily, I am an engineer (very analytical and inquisitive person) by profession and nature. My freshman year of college, I started a personal initiative to learn as much about health and fitness as I could. Everything i learned, I applied and attempted to validate through "self tests". It started off pretty slow and snowballed into 7 years of experience and nutrition information....all the way to today when I finished my latest nuitrition book, Why we get fat and what to do about it by Gary Taubes. Upon finishing this book, I found myself lost in a earth shaking "aha" moment.
I have been independently "studying and experimenting" with nuition and exercise for 7 years and still had quite a bit of unknowns and unanswered questions. There were just alot of missing pieces and things that didn't make sense, both when they were explained to me and in the results of my self experiments. Gary Taubes seemed to be my missing link.
Gary's message is simple (and intuitive in hindsight). He says weightgain, like all forms of growth, is a result of horemones. In the case of horizontal growth, the hormone in question is insulin. The short version of the story is that the more insulin that you excrete and the more insulin insensitive your body becomes, the more fat your body stores. Insulin secretion is a natural and necessary bodily function. However, insulin insensitivity (also called insulin resistance) is a result of repeated spikes in insulin secretion caused by eating carbs and sugar. Gary's arguement and simple perscription for weight loss is
AVOID CARBOHYDRATES AND SUGAR AT ALL COSTS!!!!
Ok they sold me on the science... sounds like it's time for a new experiment....thus I present to you, The great diet experiment.
Tomorrow 9/25/2012, I start a diet following Gary's advice. I'll be aiming to report the progress. and share some insights not only about Gary's work but also on a lot of the things I've learned in my health knowledge initiative.
