IT IS THE CARBS THAT ARE KILLING YOU.

[Bill T]

I have been on the Atkins diet for 17 months and feel it has saved my life. I'm 6'-0", 57 years old and weighted 255 at the start of Atkins. More important, I was terribly unhealthy and did not really know it. Just knew I was feeling terrible and had been for years. Getting worse all the time.

Finally went to the doctor and learned I have diabetes. Got no help from the medical profession except for a heavy prescription of pills (glucophage). Began intense research, which continues to this day.

Started Atkins and weight began flying off. Lost 35 Pounds in 3 months. Lost 50 pounds in 9 months. Have stayed exactly there ever since.

All lab numbers vastly improved. All blood, cholesterol, respiration . . . everything far better now. I was in a bad downward health spiral. Now I am more engerized than I have been in decades. Walk the golf course 3 times a week. Resting heart rated down from 90s to 60s. Look 20 years younger, and not just from the weight loss but also because what I call the carb pallor is gone.

My research has gone far beyond Atkins and low-carb life styles. It has encompassed the carb-selling industry (far more profitable than protein sales), the medical and pharmaceutical industries (American indulgence in carbs enriches these two industries to an astonishing degree.), and what I call the anti-Atkins commandos, whose informal membership includes virtually all medical professionals and media members. This group can be counted on to routinely bash Atkins, usually using scare tactics -- all of them untrue -- because the healtier you are the less money the carb industries make. Atkins is a threat to large economic sectors which are currently generating fabulous revenues and profits because Americans are in a full blown obesity epidemic, and that is a result of our love affair with carbs. Not fat, not protein . . . carbs!

Incidentially, I am a classic entrepreneurial capitalist type, who has spent my life in the business world. So my comments are not those of some radical anti-establishment firebrand. I'm red, white and blue all the way.

Do this Atkins thing. It will save your life. I have no interest in Atkins. Just want to spread the word. And remember, IT IS THE CARBS THAT ARE KILLING YOU.

[Desertthorn]

This is a great post and I congratulate you for taking your health into your own hands and not pushing little pills or big needles to do what needs to be done. I hope that by pushing this post up again, folks who need to read it will find it. Welcome to the board, and please stay around and help those who had gotten the same diagnosis and want to do something about it.

[Bill T]

Thanks, Desertthorn.

My personal experience with Atkins is not unusual, and that is the message. Everyone I run into who has lost a lot of weight and kept it off has done it on Atkins, or an Atkins-like regime.

Anyone on this website who has not read the first 93 pages of Atkins New Diet Revolution, should do so immediately. The book costs $5.97 in paperback and the first 93 pages will open your eyes like nothing else every has. Everyone you know, including yourself, has failed miserably on low-fat, low-protein diets, yet the world in general keeps taking shots at low-carb life styles -- the only approach that has worked for millions. How ridiculous that the anti-Atkins commandos constantly screech about Atkins weight losses not being permanent. First, in the majority of cases Atkins weight losses are permanent, but secondly, and here's where it REALLY gets hilarious, NO ONE EVER KEEPS IT OFF ON ANY OTHER PLAN, yet they criticize Atkins as if the other plans work!

Atkins is the natural way, that's why your body responds so favorably. Only in the last hundred years has America -- and now a good portion of the world -- had this incredible abundance of carb crops covering the entire midwest and much of the rest of the country. That is concentrated-calorie, insulin-producing food, all of which causes fat to blossom on you like nothing else.

Primitive humans always had an easier time acquiring protein and fat than they did the occassional carb. There were no Kansas wheat fields or orchards or sugar cane plantations. For a few weeks each year, primitive tribes could gather wild berries or acorns or such . . . in a few places on the planet. But this and similiar faire was rare indeed. The diet was almost all protein and fat: bugs, birds, meat on the hoof, fish.

Saw the doctor yesterday. He has asked me to speak to patients of his who are in dire straights with weight and diabetes, just as I used to be. While he doesn't say it, I believe the reason he wants me to speak with them is he can't! The low-carb approach is so reviled by the medical profession and the carb industries, he likely would face professional castigation, maybe lawsuits, if he advocated Atkins. He is incredulous at not just my weight loss, but the fact that my good and bad cholestrol, my blood sugar, ALL MY LAB numbers are now well within normal ranges and I am healthy as a horse. I eat 6 ounces of cheese a day, bacon and eggs every morning, and so on, and my bad cholesterol has gone from through the roof to normal. My good cholesterol has gone through the roof, which is good. Blood sugar has gone from mid-200's after overnight fasting (undoubtedly it had at times been over 300, maybe 400) to 90's without fasting. Stopped taking glucophage. But let me tell you . . . if I overindulge in carbs, it comes back to bite me with a vengeance. This should be a lesson to nondiabetics as to the power of the carb.

Please read those 90 pages and join the living.

IT'S THE CARBS THAT ARE KILLING YOU.

[Bren]

Wow Bill!!

So happy you posted! Please join in on the posts. You are a walking success story with wealth of information! I would love to hear more!!!!

[Amichailov]

Well said Bill,

I for one am very happy to have been introduced to this WOL, And am even happier that my parents were the one's who introduced me to this. I honestly think that were it not for this WOL both my parents and I would be looking at a earlier than normal retirement from life.

[Bill T]

Amichailov,

You're right, if you live a normal American carb-based lifestyle, you will die early. And the years you do have will be spent somewhere between fat and miserable and obese and incredibly miserable.

Two days -- and I do mean only TWO DAYS -- after going on Atkins I woke up and for the first time in years did not have a raking headache and for the first time in years I had the old energy back and WANTED to get out of bed and take on the world.

For you nondiabetics, you don't have any idea how bad the "crushing fatigue" of diabetes is, but it is bad. Worse than you can imagine. And it was killing me. But crushing fatigue and all, I was still putting in 80 - 100 weeks as an entrepreneur. Still do. "Killing me" is no figure of speech. It was killing me young. But since diabetes was taking over at a rate of only a fraction of a degree at a time over a period of, I believe, about 10 years, I didn't notice the change. Oh, I knew I felt like life was over and there was no way I could push through another work day, but I always did push through, and that just worsened the problem.

I was in very bad shape, and the badness was piling up at an accelerating rate. You nondiabetics are making a huge mistake if you think you won't get diabetes. Some of you who read this already have it but don't yet know it. In some other post I will explain why after much research I have concluded there is really no difference between Type I and Type II diabetes except that Type I onsets earlier and, by definition requires insulin injections from the start. Here is a summary: I believe that with Type II, the disease symptoms are not noticable until later in life because the cell receptors do have the ability to handle, to some degree, insulin, for some period of time.

But eventually the carb-rich American diet, which causes a vast overproduction of insulin, the number 1 fat-producing hormone, causes diabetic symptoms to manifest in all their cruelty. Obesity, amputations, organ and blood-vessel atrophy, blindness, eventual insulin-dependence . . . all of can follow, and after a few amputations you die a miserable death, as was the case with my cousin and best friend. They both tried their best to follow the AMA and the ADA (American Diabetes Association) dietary guidelines. That, of course, killed them. In their forties.

I shake my head in utter fascination and total disbelief every time I think of the fact that the AMA and the ADA both, still today, recommend that diabetics consume 60% of their calories in carbs! It's a death sentence for diabetics. I believe they know this. I see no reason for a typically sedentary American to consume more than 150 grams of carbs a day. The rest should be protein and fat, in my opinion. I consume 30 - 40 grams of carbs a day and feel great. Better than ever.

I have pointed out to anyone who will listen that you nondiabetics had better pay attention to what carbs do to diabetics because there is a good chance you will end up there. Already we have 17 million diabetics in this country, and you ain't seen nothin' yet. Have you seen the overweight kids that make up the majority of our high school populations? High School kids use to be rail thin. Carbs, in my opinion, eventually cause diabetes to bloom. In a single 48 oz. fast-food soft drink, a kid gets as many carbs as I now consume in total in 4 days! And that 16 year old high school kid is chubby and I've lost 50 pounds and am in great shape, and just two years ago I was a mess. Our house has 10 steps up to get to the front door. I used to walk around to the back door for the last couple years before the diabetes diagnosis because it was a gradual sidewalk with no steps. Couldn't make it up the front steps. Now I walk the golf course with the clubs on my back. Fast food makes you fat alright, but it's not the beef. The beef makes you thin. It's the soft drinks, buns (which have lots of sugar), french fries (and not the fat they're cooked in -- the fat makes you thin), pastries, breading, candy and so on. IT'S THE CARBS!

Can you imagine the fortunes the carb-sellers, medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies are going to be making when these fat teens are 10 years older? And that's nothing . . . wait until their kids are 30. Want a fail-safe get-rich-quick scheme? Invest in companies "servicing" the "needs" of diabetics. The whole thing is about to explode.

There's another reason for you nondiabetics to pay close attention to how carbs affect diabetics: It is an absolutely accurate measure of the effect carbs have on the human system, and the effect is disasterous. With diabetics it is only more pronounced, but the effects are the same for all. And it has already affected you so badly that you are on an Atkins board reading this.

Don't think one more day about whether Atkins works. It works. Do it.

Remember, IT'S THE CARBS THAT ARE KILLING YOU.

[MarthaM]

Thanks so much Bill for writing all of this. I know instinctively that everything you are saying is true. I've been re-reading my dog-eared copy of Atkins and it's all in there. I agree with you that everyone on this board needs to read and re-read it.

My weight has continued to creep upward over the past ten years. A couple of times I've done Atkins, and then the Zone after a couple of weeks, and done well. But old habits die hard. However, something snapped when I realized how many of my friends had been diagnosed with Diabetes, and not elderly people by any means!! And I can't count the friends and family members who have had some kind of medical intervention for cardiovascular disease. (I'm talking people in their fifties, none older than that!!!)

My determination has always been to take care of my own health and not get trapped in the medical system. So here I am, making a very big promise to myself to do the right thing and get the carbs out of my life and get back on my exercise routine.

I agree with you about the diets these people have been given by their doctors. I just shake my head in disbelief when my friends tell me the amount of carbs they're "allowed" to have. Amazing. And scary.

[Desertthorn]

Thanks Bill, All I can say is Amen. Unfortunately, we lose a lot of folks because a few weeks go by and they don't lose, so they think its not working and they quit. They need to be doing it for their health and as you get healthy one of the by-products is weight loss, at least with this way of eating. Please stay around an help those folks who also have diabetis. They will thank you.

[Weasie20]

Bill, what a powerful message you wrote! I know so well the damage that diabetes does not only to an individual but to a family.

I am very lucky that I have not developed it yet myself because my family is overrun with it. My grandmother died of kidney failure due to diabetes and so did my mother. My grandfather had to have his leg amputated due to it and my cousin had both legs amputated before she died at 48. My sister also passed away from the complications of diabetes at 45.

My doctor actually recommended Atkins for my husband and myself. I know I am very lucky in that he has an open mind and is not afraid to spread the word about it.

I agree with your idea that the people who slander the Atkins WOL the most are those with the most to lose. Money! The billion dollar industry of weight loss pills, supplements, exercise gimmicks, foods, etc have plenty to be scared about. If everyone went to a low carb way of eating, they'd be out of business.

Thank you for your post and your opinions. It was wonderful!

[bykerdruid]

Thanks for these words of wisdom and encouragement. I came to this board this morning looking for some form of 'comfort' for my impending doctor's appointment tomorrow, and you gave it to me.

I'm going to have my heart checked tomorrow as I'm suffering some rather 'scary' symptoms and have, in fact, become almost tearful to what it might be. I know my cholesterol is (was?) sky high, and my blood pressure was usually borderline high, even spent some time on hbp meds as many on this board have. I could have diabetes for all I know, but I've never had myself tested, just suffer some general symptoms. I mentioned it to my doctor once and he just scoffed...he's not my pcp anymore....

Well, tomorrow I'm consulting the doc about the possibility of heart disease, and when/if she says Atkins is killing me I will tell her (a) these symptoms have reared their ugly head before I started Atkins and I ended up in the coronary unit overnight for observations, so it didn't START with Atkins (they diagnosed reflux) and (b) Atkins was a cardiologist...don't you think he'd have SOME clue about his diet vs heart disease? I will have her look at the numbers from previous blood tests to the ones she'll probably run tomorrow and I'll let you know the improvements. I hate to think the doctor is going to put me on the same "heart healthy", high carb, flavor void diet they put my husband on after his heart attack. He wouldn't eat it.

I'll be anxious, afraid and depressed until tomorrow, but for now, you helped me have faith in this WOE and my desire to continue in this WOL. I know my life depends on it, literally.