Interested in Learning to Live
an Atkins/Keto Lifestyle?
I lost 45.8 lbs in just 8 months and have kept it off!
Email me at [email protected] if you’re interested in Keto seminars. I will offer these at my business in Erin, Ontario, but also on Zoom so you can learn this information from the comfort of your own home. I also offer private, one-on-one consultations, which can be done in person, over the phone, by video call, etc. With follow-up email support as well.
The Background
As many of you know, I run a business called “Passion for Food”. I run cooking classes and also cook for private dinner parties. Yes, this means that I have to taste food all the time while I’m cooking. But truthfully, tasting food while I’m working is the least of my worries. The truth is that I had a sugar addiction. Coke, chocolate bars, 2 teaspoons of sugar in every coffee. It all adds up! You can add other high carb foods to the list such as bread, pasta, rice and potatoes (including potato chips and french fries), and it doesn’t take long to see dozens of pounds added to your body. In high school I weighed about 170 lbs. and after just a couple of university years I was up around 190 to 195. That later became 200, which I said I’d never go past. Then 202, 204 . . . creeping past 200. I hit 212.3 and said “Enough!” That was in 2019.
Well before making the decision to start eating a low carb, high fat diet, I studied the science behind it. I read thousands of pages about it, read about various studies and experiments, watched documentaries and, in the end, it seemed reasonable that substituting fats for carbs as the primary fuel source for the body, might work. Well I lost weight so fast, with no exercise, it was remarkable. Within only a few months, I lost almost 40 lbs. Then I went on to lose close to 46 lbs. So I eventually hit just above 166 lbs., or slightly under my weight when I left high school.
How did I do it? Was it by running 10 kms. per day? No. Did I starve myself and eat very little? No. Did I go on a diet where I could only eat one thing over and over again? No! I did it by eating delicious meats like chicken wings, ribs and steaks. I did it by eating delicious salads and more vegetables than ever before. I did it by eating avocados instead of french fries, cheese instead of rice, zucchini noodles instead of pasta and pork rinds instead of croutons. I also virtually eliminated sweets and ate only very selective low carb fruits.
And no, this is not a carnivore diet or an all meat diet. My typical day involves eating only 15% of my calories from protein. But here’s the difference: only 5% carbs. That means 80% of my diet comes from fat. And that doesn’t mean bacon and chicken wings all day long. It means olives and olive oil, eggs, butter, nuts, avocados, cheese and heavy cream. Fats from a wide variety of sources.
Benefits of Keto for Me
Within a very short time of eating this way, my acid reflux disappeared (the first night!). Then my high blood pressure became normal or better than normal within about three weeks. Joint pain I had had for years in one elbow and one knee was gone within a couple of months, as Keto reduces inflammation throughout the body. My eye sight got crisper, I increased my energy to the point I wanted to exercise. 9 months into the diet, my CPAP specialist hold me that about half of CPAP users can stop using their machines after losing 10% of their body weight. I lost over 21%! So under his supervision, I’m no longer using my CPAP machine. So far my snoring has virtually disappeared and I’m sleeping better than I did on the machine! The machine did its job, but having a hose and mask on your face all night long can also wake you up. If I can get rid of the machine for good, what an amazing thing!
What Came First? Overeating or Obesity?
This is a chicken and egg thing. What came first, the overeating, or the obesity? Based on a lot of scientific research I’ve done I’m starting to see that obesity came first and overeating came second. Lack of exercise (or lack of motivation to do it) also came second. So what caused the obesity in the first place? Wasn’t it overeating? But no. The answer is “high carb eating”, but not necessarily super high in calories.
We’ve all seen people who are very overweight yet truthfully eat less calories per day than another person who is slim but eats like a horse. How can this happen? Our bodies are different, of course, but there has to be more to it. I believe it is based on a metabolic defect where high carb eating packs fat into the adipose tissue of your body and will not release it. So dieting the traditional way, which means calorie restriction, will only leave you starving because your body no longer knows how to burn the fat on your body. And we all know that a diet that makes you hungry all the time will never last. Nobody can live that way.
So I believe the correct order of events is that high carb eating causes obesity, particularly as we age. Then the obesity leads to something known as “internal starvation”. It means that even though your body has plenty of fat on it to sustain you, your body is unable to burn that fat. So now we have a big person with lots of fat stores who is starving all the time! So the result is constant eating. And that eating involves more carbs because carbs are addictive. Sugar especially, but you can’t tell me that potato chips and french fries aren’t also just as hard to stop eating.
So to summarize, high carb eating causes obesity. Obesity causes two things: 1) constant eating and snacking of more carbs and 2) sedentary behaviour, or lack of exercise. We don’t exercise because we don’t have the energy to do it. We simply don’t feel well. And carrying an extra 30 lbs. around on your body (or 50 lbs) sure doesn’t help.
The cure? Low carb eating (which necessitates high fat eating!) reverses your body’s problem of not being able to burn fat from the adipose tissue. Now, in ketosis, your body is happy to burn the fat you eat as well as to burn off the excess fat stores on your body! Your body doesn’t care where the fat comes from once you’re “fat adapted”. So you feel that burn in the belly button between meals and the fat starts to melt off. So low carb eating leads to weight loss. That leads to what? Exercise!!! Not only because once you have less weight and higher energy now you CAN exercise, but you actually want to! Can you imagine that? Wanting to exercise because you actually feel like it!?
I’ve mentioned at my Keto seminars that when I’m in an airport and there’s a very long escalator ride up, as well as stairs on the side, not only do I use the stairs but I run up them two stairs at a time. Not because I’m trying to impress anybody but because I actually feel like I need to burn off some excess energy and it feels good. And when I’m working in my workshop sometimes I work much faster than necessary just because I feel like “rushing around”. And sometimes when I need to go across the grocery store instead of just walking I run across because I feel like I need to. Think about an adult cow just lumbering around slowly, but the calves are so full of energy they are running around like puppies. This is what it’s like. Excess energy and then you just want to move.
Life Changing
Eating low carb high fat (Atkins/Keto) has completely changed my life. I lost over 21% of my body weight, increased my energy level and improved health problems I’d had for decades. Best of all, I feel better in my early 50s than I did in my mid-20s! And the best part? I only had to eat in a super strict Keto way for a few months to get the weight off. I also experimented with intermittent fasting and that also worked wonders. But once I got to a weight range I was happy with, I can now eat some carbs again! Now let’s not be crazy here. I’m not eating a large order of french fries, a large Coke and a huge bowl of ice cream. But I’ll enjoy a nice pastry or slice of cake a couple of times per week now. I’ll have two tacos with the corn tortillas, whereas I used to eat only the filling. I’ll eat a small chocolate once in awhile, like a Ferrero Rocher, but not an entire chocolate bar. And I’m still drinking my low carb beer, as well as hard liquor like bourbon and tequila, as I wish. And when I’m running cooking classes, I’m still tasting everything even if it’s mashed potatoes and rice. I have to taste it. But a little bite here and there is nothing compared to the way I used to eat. I’m no longer addicted to sugar and I’m no longer addicted to carbs. Life is good eating this way.
