Which Is Better?

It seems that almost every week a new diet book is released telling us that if we eat one way or the other we will lose weight, gain washboard ab’s, the perfect partner… You kind of know where I am going with this.

There seems to be two camps. Low fat diet vs Low carb diets.

Low fat diets have been around for ever, well at least since it was discovered that fats can be the bad thing that causes heart attacks and strokes.

Low carb diets were never really popular till Dr Robert Atkins came onto the scene in 1970.
Vogue magazine did an article on how Dr Atkins had dropped from over 100kg (220lbs) to a healthy weight simply by eliminating starch (carbs) from his diet. Dr Atkins became the “king of low carb” and quickly gained a strong following.

Not that he did not have his detractors. There was also a strong group that reported his diet as dangerous and even deadly.

When Dr Atkins died in 2003 many of his fellow doctors were quick to report that he was overweight with high blood pressure and had even had a heart attack, the very thing his diet was reported to prevent. (out of interest sake he actually died of bleeding around the brain after slipping on ice and hitting his head, at the time of his death at 77 he was still playing regular tennis and weighed in at 88kg!)

While I’m not here to talk about Dr Atkins, there still lingers the question about his low carb diet. Did it really match the hype around it?

To cut to the chase there was a study done in 2010 and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that put low fat diets and low carb diets head to head.

More then 300 overweight men and women were allocated to either a low fat diet or a low carb diet.

Those on the low fat diet where put on restricted calories and eliminated sources of fat. The people on the low carb diet did not have to count calories and where allowed to eat as much fat and protein as they wished but carbohydrates were limited to 20g or 2/3 of an ounce per day for the first 12 weeks.

After one year both groups had lost around the same amount of weight, about 10kg, but there was one very important difference.

Those that were in the low carb diet group were shown to have a quicker reduction in blood pressure and bad fats in the blood dropped to safe levels. Interestingly there was increase in fats that protected the heart. All while eating as much as they wanted including the “so called evil” fats that people have been told to avoid for so many years!

So I can imagine you may be thinking, “well that’s great but how the hell does this apply to me”?

I know, I felt the same when this research paper was slipped onto my desk at work by one of my “caring” work mates.

Me weighing 108kg

You see only six months ago I was 108kg, I was actually embarassed to be a family doctor at times.

There I was telling my patients they had to lose weight and I was sitting there with my belly hanging over my belt.

I felt like a total hypocrite.

I had tried every diet under the sun, sure I lost a bit of weight but it all came back quickly the minute I stopped the diet. I hated the whole diet and weight loss merry-go-round.

I hated feeling hungry all the time, I hated going to the gym, I hated having to order special food when I went out to dinner.

Pissed off I just gave up and resigned myself that it was all to bloody hard. When my back and knees started to get sore, well I pulled out that article again. I was getting desperate.

When I read that study it all actually made sense. Even better it did not seem that complex at all.

I was able to eat as much as I wanted, I just needed to make a few better choices. Once I got into the swing of it it wasn’t that hard. I was still able to eat most of the foods I loved and going out to dinner was dead easy.

You see all I did was follow some pretty simple rules.

First was to avoid starchy carbs. Things like fries, baked potatoes and too much things like bread.

At first this was a bit tricky but I quickly learned some easy ways to get around that and I can share some really cool ways to do it a bit later.

The second was that I changed the way that I actually ate my meals. Nothing major, more that I ate things in a different order.

I started to eat the stuff that was filled with health and vitality first. As it happens to be this is the stuff that is normally quite filling as well.

Something as simple as eating all my salad or vegs first *before* I got stuck into the fries. After about a week I found that by the time I got to the “bad” things on the plate I was already full and able to push the plate away.

Just these two simple changes made a huge difference.

me 20kg lighter, and yes I still get to enjoy chocolate!

In the inital phases I was dropping about 1kg a week. I’m sure you can imagine how good it feels to be able to finally fit back into a pair of jean and have some breathing space.

You can imagine how awesome I felt when I finally got to the smallest hole on my belt and I had to punch a new hole to stop my pants slipping down my butt!

Best thing was all my friends started asking what the hell I was doing. My patients started asking me what I was doing.

Given my success I thought it would probably be a good idea to actually sit down and write out what I did step by step to lose the weight.

This was quite fun, I never realized how little the changes I had made were. Man they added up tho. Getting it written down also made it much easier to explain and share with people when they asked.

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