More wisdom from Janis

This is from a post on About.com's Weight Loss forum. The part in italics are from Lewis' original post, which Janis is responding to.

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I agree with everything that has already been said so won't bother repeating all of it.

I chose low carb for all the wrong reasons but it turned out to be the best possible choice for me.

Low carb works best for the following issues...

*Diabetes/insulin resistance
*RX drugs that cause weight gain or carb cravings
*Feeling hungry, deprived and bored when on low fat
*High cholesterol and/or triglycerides
*Craving food when not even hungry

I disagree that low-carb is hard to stay on. Most of the people who have difficulty following the plan do so because they haven't read the book and aren't eating properly. Some say that low carb only works for people who love meat. Well... I'm not a big meat eater and I love low carbing.

From what I've learned low carbing is the only eating plan where you're never hungry and all cravings disappear. Many of us had to practically force feed ourselves at times. Hunger is now hunger and not just cravings. It puts you in complete control of food as long as you stick with it.

For many of us the decision to go low carb had more to do with getting healthy and being in control. There is no other eating plan that could do that for us. Many doctors, including my own, have started understanding low carb and are all for it. There is a growing number of doctors who are putting their Type 2 diabetics on it as it's far healthier than the traditional diabetic diet.

Everyone I know who is on atkins {sic} or on some form of lower carb diet never seems to lose the weight. Or they lose it but are incredibly miserable, or lose it but just put it back on. But the food they put in their bodies is terrible.

If you read the posts here you'll see that there are many of us who have lost large amounts of weight by low carbing. I've kept mine off for over a year now. Miserable? Never. It's more like thrilled with what I'm eating for the first time in years. And you say the food is terrible. The main rule of eating is that you can eat high fat IF you aren't eating high carb. It's the combination of high carb and high fat that will kill you. We burn that fat for energy and our blood work improved dramatically. I went from high risk with triglycerides too high to read! I'm now well into IDEAL category. The longer I stayed on low fat the higher my triglycerides soared because carbs are the reason people have high triglycerides. When you cut out all the fat you have to replace it with something and that something is always carbs. The only other way I could have lowered my cholesterol would have been with drugs, an option I wasn't interested in. So know that doctors who take patients off low carb because of high cholesterol are badly informed and making a HUGE mistake! There is a tiny percentage of people who do run into cholesterol issues with low carbing but everyone on it needs to be tested.

It's very unfortunate that the diets most doctors put their patients on are killing them. My own doctor was very negative about low carbing until he saw my first test results. He's now done his own research and has completely changed his mind. He's even asked me if I'd be willing to stay on it for life. Yes, it does work if you follow it properly. I'd bet the people you know who got bored and didn't lose weren't following it properly. True low carb is for life. You can't take weekends and vacations off.