It’s been quite a while since I have posted anything, but at last I think I have something worth writing about. Since my last post I have been busy doing research, and trying various diets, some have worked for a while and some didn’t. The conclusion I have arrived at is for me, as I can only discuss my own results here, diets are a complete waste of time and money, and I shall attempt to explain my findings. Ever since my first posting back in July 2013 Getting Started: First Steps, I have been on a weight loss rollercoaster, and in June last year I was basically back where I had started. The key word here is DIET, and it just congers up all the wrong images.

If you have been overweight for a long time like me, you have probably tried all sorts of diets, and some would have worked for a while, and you would feel really good until it all started going back on, plus a little more. We have to take SOME of the responsibility for being overweight, but it’s NOT totally our own faults. So how big is this problem, well figures in the UK for 2006 – 07 show that obesity cost the NHS £5.1 BILLION, compared to the £3.3 billion for smoking related health problems, and £3.1 billion for health problems caused by alcohol consumption, these figures are 11 years old and the projected forecast is not looking any better, because if nothing changes, by 2034 70% of the adult population in the UK could be overweight or obese, these are truly frightening figures. I think that one of the saddest statistics I have read recently puts 25% of children in the UK between the ages of 2 and 10 either overweight or obese, and some of these are already suffering from type 2 diabetes. So how have we got to the situation we find ourselves in today, well if you wanted to point the finger, it would have to come down to one man, the American physiologist Ancel Keys.

You need to go back to September 1955 in the USA when President Eisenhower had his first heart attack, and his personal physician Dr Paul Dudley White put this down to too much saturated fat in his diet, the fact he smoked four packets of cigarettes a day was never considered as possibly being part of the problem. This hypothesis was backed up by his friend Ancil Keys, and this is where today’s problems first began. It is said that Ancel Keys was a man with a very powerful personality, and he was able to convince others that his idea that heart attacks were caused by saturated dietary fat and cholesterol, and that all fat needed to be cut from our diet, and we needed to introduce a lot more carbohydrates. Although it is now well known that Keys research was not only very selective, but it was also seriously flawed, it was used in1961 by the American Heart Association for the first ever dietary advice telling everyone to avoid saturated fat and cholesterol in order to avoid heart attacks. That is the point where the thought behind the modern dietary advice food pyramid began, and where the slippery slope started that we still find ourselves on today.

Becoming overweight is usually a gradual process, I know it was for me, over several years, a couple of inches here a stone there, but I was always going to lose it before next summer, and well that’s a joke. When I look back now at the amount of times I saw a new diet and expected to undo all the damage or weight gain in just a few weeks, it makes me wonder where my head was. How many times have you lost weight, felt happy, and then gone back to eating the same things that you did before the diet, and then wondered why you have put the weight back on. The only answer is to make life changes, and to do this you don’t need diets, you need information, and you have to forget any type of quick fix. The important thing is to set yourself realistic goals, I have set mine at 1lb per week, and anything over that will be a happy bonus, but that still works out at nearly 4st per year. How many diets would you try in a year? You lose some and put some back, it’s like a Merry Go Round, you’re not going anywhere. Some people I know have said isn’t just 1lb a week a bit low, why not go for 4lb at least that is worthwhile, and as I say to them if you don’t make your target you can get despondent and feel it’s not worth it and give up, plus the fact if you lose weight too fast you can end up with too much loose skin flapping about!

When you are overweight there is always a reason, apart from the cases where it is caused by a medical condition, everyone else is doing something wrong and the key is to find what it is. Of cause we now know that the dietary advice we have been given over the last fiftry odd years has been wrong, there are still the obvious things, drinking too many bottles or cans of soda, eating too many ready meals and fast food, cakes, buiscits and eating bags of sweets and chocolates. There are a great number of things that are not so obvious, but very dangerious to our health and weight and one of the worst is high–fructose corn syrup. This is where information is far more important than a diet plan, because you need to fully understand what is in the food you are about to eat and how it can effect you. The easy answer is to only buy single ingredient fresh items, vegetables, fruit, fish and various meats, poultry, dairy products, and avoid all processed foods, but we know this is not always practical.

Even some vegetables are not always good for our heath depending on the way they are prepaired. Here is just one quick example because I am going to cover this in more detail later, potatoes, virtually everybody loves mashed potatoes, roast potatoes and chips (French Fries) all very bad, but boiled potatoes that are allowed to cool and put in the fridge overnight become resistant starch and they are very good, but as I have said more on that later. I know in the past when I have been dieting I have done the right thing and cut out potatoes, and replaced them with pasta or white rice, much healthier, well no it’s not, you would be better off having a small amount of plain boiled potato, again this is where you need information and not a diet. I still love potatoes but very rarely have them with a meal, but I have always got a bowl of boiled and chilled new or baby potatoes in the fridge, and if I fancy a snack (which these days is very rare) I will eat a couple and sometimes I even have butter on them, much healthier than a lot of these so called healthy snacks.

When I started this website The Weight Loss Path I really thought it would be easy to find a direction and lose weight, but it has taken me over five years but at last I know I am on the right path. At the end of this month July 2018 I am going to be 70 and for the first time in more than ten years I am not worried about my weight, the changes I have made are working, my health is improving and I am more positive than I have been for years. I am annoyed with myself for not finding the answer sooner, but I was too busy looking in the wrong direction, I was looking at diets instead of looking for the cause of my own obesity. Early last summer I realised that I was just going round in circles, and if I wanted to get anywhere I needed to make some serious changes. Whenever I have been on a diet I have always made notes, and these did prove to be of some benefit, it allowed me to compare what I was doing when I was losing the most weight, and all this information pointed towards low carbohydrate intake. This gave me a starting point for research, I had already read about the work of Dr Atkins, but I wanted to try and take a look at the latest research and the results were surprising.

Everything I have checked out is pointing towards a low carb high fat diet, but that doesn’t mean that every fat is good, or every carb is bad. White bread, grains, white rice and pasta are bad, but the carbs in green leafy vegetables are very good. It’s a similar story with the fat, natural fats are good, and they include Butter, Cheese, Avocado’s and animal fats, and one of my favourites Coconut Oil, bad fats include Trans Fats, all the vegetable oils that are heat extracted, and the margarine spreads, to name just a few. Statistics show that not everyone is suited to a high fat diet, but anyone intending to make changes to their diet, must first speak to their doctor or dietitian to make sure it is safe for you to try it. I think for me it was really important to fully understand what I had been eating, what was actually in it, and how it was affecting my overall health. Once you understand what has been bad for you most of your life, and you get over the rage as to why this has been allowed to happen, it will be easier to cut these things from your diet for ever.

I did mention earlier that some of the bad foods could be made into good foods by cooking and cooling then refrigerating, and converting them into Resistant Starch, this works for potatoes, pasta and rice, and another very good source are green bananas. I could go on for pages about Resistant Starch (RS) but to keep it short, it is not absorbed in the small intestine, but makes it way to the colon where it feeds the good intestinal bacteria. To finish off, in about four hours I am starting my first 5 Day Water fast, so nothing but water for five days, well I might have the odd mug of green tea to break things up, but apart from weight loss, it should help my insulin resistance, and blood pressure, it will be fully covered in my next article.

I wish you all the very best of health.