More kudos

"You know, you should know that something you said a while ago really stuck with me. I don't remember it verbatim, but you were talking about how some of us just can't eat simple carbs the way other people can, for some of us it's just terrible (like poison?) for our bodies. I wanted you to know that coming to terms with the fact that I'm just one of those people has really helped with this process.

"thanks."

Courtney Grace

(Courtney is on the South Beach Diet.)

A motto for low carbers to live by

Found this at Jimmy's blog.

OUR MOTTO AT LIVIN' LA VIDA LOW-CARB: "On the large scale, history shows that an uncritical and misinformed populace is a breeding ground for all manner of intolerant beliefs and practices. The discovery that truth has to fight for its survival is not a pleasant one, but is an essential realization in maintaining civilization. And in a society as open and susceptible to fraud as ours is, truth needs all the help it can get." -- Anthony Garrett

Amen! If only more people, especially so many Christians I meet, were more informed about low carb and not touting the PCRM (affiliated with the infamous PETA) as bastions of truth!

Truth does indeed need all the help it can get, so I guess I will be blogging about Atkins for a long time. I suspect more people will just stop reading though, rather than have their preconceptions challenged. Change is scary. Changing beliefs is even scarier (boy, do I know this one!), and for many people, too scary.

To all the low carbers out there - don't be afraid! If Dr. Atkins was so viciously attacked during his life, what makes us think we will escape the same treatment? If he could weather it than so can I. Ain't nobody gonna keep me from becoming healthy! My life and my health are way more important than what some uninformed person wrongly thinks is true.

Is low carb unhealthy?

Many people are still under the misconception that low carb means eating nothing but greasy meat and cheese and eggs and other stuff generally thought of as "bad." But have any of these people studied how many vegetables we eat? Well, one person did, and found that vegetable consumption tends to double on a low carb diet. Hmmm...doesn't sound very unhealthy to me.

When I started Atkins my vegetable consumption more than doubled. I went from hardly eating any to making them part of nearly every meal. On a typical day I will have 8-10 oz. of some kind of veggie with lunch, then a 5-8 oz. salad with dinner. Sometimes I'll chomp on some raw veggies if I'm still hungry. My diet is based on meat, veggies, and some dairy. I'm not sure what's unhealthy about that. And as previously mentioned, my cholesterol improved so my heart health is better than before Atkins.

So before you criticize Atkins, how many vegetables do you eat per day?

Finding my calling (long), take 2

[Bumping this to the top.]

And if I ever wonder if this IS my calling, I only have to log on to find comments like this (these are from the official Atkins forums):

"I am now doing the weight loss thing for the second time (actually I have been 'dieting' since I was 17 years old) because I didn't learn the lesson the first time. I knew too much be told anything by someone else. I learned the hard way. If you want to learn to do this the right way, the first time, my advice is to pay attention to suellen, Diane, Diana, Victoria, Mary (if she ever returns to us), and quite a number of others. Pay attention to the words and the message they are telling you and please don't be so quick to think that the remarks are written down with the intent of causing you hurt and suffering." --from Mike H.'s post

"Oh and I knew I had forgotten someone in my post - last but not least Victoria has also helped me. I spent half an hour trying to work out who I left off my list and couldn't do it. If I had taken 1 sec to look at the transcript from the last board, I would have gotten her...." --from Colleen's post

Finding my calling (long)

[I wrote most of this a few days ago, but am just getting around to posting it now. It was originally posted in a private folder at CHR.]

Still don't know what to say. Just trying to let my head (and the dust from the scuffle) settle. And I still can't put it into words yet.

Let's see. New Year's was good. Brad came over and we ate low carb pepperoni pizza (from a mix - very good). A few minutes before midnight we opened a bottle of champagne and toasted every living creature in the room (cats and humans). Then we watched the fireworks in San Francisco from my kitchen window. I wanted to go into the City, but I had to be up at 8 a.m. New Year's Day and staying home enabled me to kick Brad out the door by 12:30 or 12:45 so I could get to bed at a reasonable hour.

New Year's Day of course it all fell apart. I got banned at SAM, the ministry I helped start and name. The day after I was banned at the Moot for asking for help. I wrote and later nuked too many blog entries to count. I was allowed back at SAM stripped of all privs, which is just another way to punish me, so I declined.

Amid all this chaos, Kathi thought I was suicidal and sent the police to my house, then begged me to make amends with her for the fiasco at EW two years ago, not willing to take any blame for what happened of course. My silence was my answer. I didn't answer one of her queries and she tried to reach me in three different ways. I don't feel she's safe nor will ever be. She'll hurt me again and I'll have only myself to blame. Same for the people at SAM.

I trust easily, and don't lose trust easily, but if you manage to lose my trust it's nearly impossible to regain. I can't think of a single instance where someone was able to regain my trust after burning me.

I've wanted to be involved in ministry for so long. All my life, ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to serve God. My life has been a search as to who God is and how to serve Him/Her/It.

When I became an ex-Witch and got involved with Kathi's ministry, it felt so right. I have never felt more in the center of God's will as at that time. I was on such a high. I was being used by God, enjoying the work, and felt like I was really and finally living out that childhood dream of serving God. Life was great.

Of course, the dream turned into a nightmare and I won't go into the details. Many of you already know the gory details anyway. I felt like God had put me on the shelf and stopped using me. The dream was out of reach again.

When John-Luc came along I though here was my ticket, here was my way to serve God again. And we all know that dream became a nightmare because I very strongly believe in my diet.

When will I learn? When will I stop believing the sweet words people tell me and start asking God for His view? Why do I have to get hit with the clue-by-four because I'm too stupid to ask for His opinion to begin with? Maybe if I had asked about John-Luc I would have known that wasn't the way I was supposed to go.

Lately I've been reading a low carb blog (http://livinlavidalocarb.blogspot.com/). It is written by a man who is a committed Christian who also lost 180 pounds on Atkins.

(Stay with me. I have a point behind that seeming digression.)

Last Saturday I got to thinking about ministry and how I can serve God. I'll copy the following from this post as it will save me retyping it all:

After all my whining about God not using me (and indeed, being stopped at every effort to do so), I wonder if maybe He has different plans for me than what I think. Just because I'm an ex-Witch, does that mean God must use me to minister to Witches? Could I be looking at this all wrong?

Perhaps that's what I've been doing. I know I command a certain amount of respect at both the official Atkins forum and About.com's Weight Loss forum. Maybe my ministry is to help teach people better nutrition, to share the knowledge that has been so freely shared with me. What if God has been using me this whole time and I've simply been too blind to see?

Could it be that these health forums are exactly where I should be right now and I'm doing exactly what I should be doing?

---

So now I see that I have been ministering to people, just like the Christian man who runs the low carb blog.

I guess the only thing left to do is apologize to M. for posting where I wasn't wanted (I still feel he was wrong to ban me), apologize to D. for acting as bad as she was when I could have stopped it, and apologize to J-L for using some foul language. They may never realize the harm they have done, but God's answer to that has always been to let Him deal with that. I only need to worry about doing my part. Their part is between them and God.

Finally, I need to apologize to Brian for needlessly worrying him. I maintain that I did not break the agreement, but I should have e-mailed him and discussed my change of plans.

And oh...Brian posting the prayer request to CHR was totally okay, Greg. No worries there. Prayer can never hurt, right? You guys at CHR are the only online Christians who have stood by me through everything.

To tell the truth, I learned a lot about myself from this. For one, I learned from my experience two years ago when SHE showed up in my room asking me to come back. She didn't show up this time, but I was sorely tempted to call on her and ask her to come. The memory of what happened two years ago, along with the realization that I had no clue how it might pan out this time, nixed that idea.

The other thing I learned is that I still put too much stock in His children rather than in Him. I falsely equate their actions with His. I falsely equate their punishment with His.

I still feel out of place at Christian forums, even ones where I implicitely trust everyone, like CHR. I feel much more comfortable at the official Atkins forum and the weight loss forum. Everything has a time and season. I know this too will end. But it is for now. And that needs to be enough. Just as there were times for me to help at EW and the Depression forum, so now it is time to share the diet and health knowledge I've learned. I'm in my element when people are looking for information on losing weight or want to know how to do Atkins. Perhaps that's why it went over at SAM like alligators in a baptismal pit...I'm in health teaching mode right now; it's my charge from God. I can't NOT speak the truth. But I need to be in places where my teaching is honored and listened to. SAM can't do that. And that's why God got me out of there. I've entered a new era in my life. It's not better or worse than any other era. It's just the next step on this rocky path of life with the One who holds our lives in His hands.

One Golden Shot

For whatever reason - and there are many theories - we all (especially females) seem to have this One Golden Shot. The first time we ever embark on a low-carb eating plan if we do it RIGHT and if we don't cheat, we get some really amazing results without appreciable sacrifice or difficulty. I often see people who lose quickly and effortlessly while taking in around 35-55 grams of carbs per day and staying in ketosis. But should you falter and leave the diet for an appreciable amount of time - especially long enough to gain all or much of the weight back - the next time around takes more effort, weight loss is slower, and it takes more carb restriction to get results.

More here:
http://lowcarbluxury.com/goldenshot.html

Birthday dinner

Tonight I went to Eleanor's house for my birthday dinner. As we talked about various issues, including Atkins, she insisted to me that Atkins isn't "balanced" because you have to eat lots of carbs to have a balanced diet. She says that veggies won't fill me up, and wants me to see me eat more fruit, even though I explained to her that I can get in veggies all the nutrients that fruit has, and without the sugar. And yet she can't deny that Atkins has worked for me, right down to improved blood lipids. This from a woman who has never struggled with weight.

Keep in mind what I did eat tonight - salad, brussel sprouts, and fish. Just no starch. And because there's no starch, it must be unbalanced.

Some people are just so stuck in ancient science that they won't look at new research. Once people thought the world was flat, and many refused to believe that Galileo might be right.

Atkins Nutritionals out of bankruptcy

January 10, 2006

NEW YORK -- Atkins Nutritionals has emerged from bankruptcy with a revised business model that hinges less on the popularity of the low-carb diet espoused by its founder.

The company said it isn't abandoning the legacy of the late diet guru Dr. Robert C. Atkins, who taught that people should eat foods rich in protein and limit their intake of carbohydrates.

Full story here.

Does Atkins raise cholesterol?

We eat lots of fat, right? So doesn't it raise cholesterol and make us more likely to have a heart attack?

Actually, no.

Here's Janis again, with a long post on how her blood test results changed from normal eating to low fat to low carb.

---

The doc started out holding my papers in his hand and said, "If you make one complaint about any of these numbers I'll never show you your test results again!" EVERYTHING was fantastic.

For those of you who don't understand what cholesterol numbers mean in terms of genetics, let me explain. Some people, regardless of what they eat or what drugs they take, will not see improvement. My genetics SUCK! There's no other way to put it. Everyone in my family dies of heart attacks, strokes and artery problems. I suppose I should be glad we don't have any cancer, ever.

My overall cholesterol number may look a bit high to some of you but in terms of risk I couldn't be lower. It's the interaction between the types of cholesterol that matter.

Here's the history right up until today showing the impact of being overweight, then eating very low-fat/low-cholesterol and finally low-carb.

Here's the chart for risk factor for heart disease for those who aren't familiar with the numbers...

>5.6 high risk
4.3-5.5 average risk
3.5-4.2 low risk
<3.5 IDEAL

The numbers below each category show where you should be...

DATE TOTAL LDL HDL TRIG RISK GLUCOSE WEIGHT

<200 <130 >35 <135 <105

03/91 231 error 36 542 111

07/91 212 143 26 208 5.6

12/97 278 195 37 228 7.5 94

In 12/97 I began an extremely low fat regimen - 30g fat daily and 1200 calories. All butter/margarine was eliminated with the only added fat being olive oil. I ate practically no red meat and tons of fish and chicken. I never cheated, even once.

03/98 278 191 37 220 7.5

03/98: NO CHANGE... After working extremely hard and losing a lot of weight there was almost no change. The doc thought it was genetics all along but decided to let me try a little longer before putting me drugs. I also added strenuous exercise using a HealthRider recommended by my doctor for good non-impact strength and cardio because of the arthritis in my spine. I gave it everything I had and was very dedicated.

06/98 246 131 32 246 7.7 107 165

06/98: There was a very little change and my HDL even dropped! It's all about genetics. My doc agreed to high dose niacin instead of RX drugs.

10/98 198 120 38 202 5.2 145

10/98: The niacin is working but not doing nearly enough. There is still no noticeable change in my HDL and my risk factor is still too high. I'm feeling denied, hungry and generally miserable.

I'll skip all the results between this time and the beginning of Atkins because although there was improvement it wasn't that much. Later I gained all the weight back and more. I started Atkins 2/23/04 weighing in at a whopping 207.

07/04 178 109 47 108 3.8 120 170

07/04: I've been on Atkins for four months and the changes are already dramatic. I'm now LOW RISK for the first time in my adult life and weigh the same as our wedding day in 1970!

I'll skip over the improvements and jump right today. Know that my overall cholesterol jumps around but since 07/04 has always been over 200 but with a very low risk factor.

12/05 212 123 77 60 2.8 94 134

12/05: My numbers are incredible for my genetics! My risk factor is WAY down and my glucose is finally normal. It had always run a couple of point above the top of the normal range, sometimes worse. I weighed in at 134 on his scale WITH shoes on! My free T4 was VERY normal and in the last two weeks I'm finding I'm not as cold as often so we believe it's finally going away for good.

I forgot! My BP was 108/63. Not bad for an old bat, huh? He said I could stop taking my BP pill but he still wants me on it because it keeps my resting heart rate in the 60's. Without it I'm almost 90, at least I was before. I'll re-evaluate in several months. The dosage I take is less than half the lowest amount taken for BP treatment. Without it my BP doesn't go up. We've already tested that.

Think I'm happy? LOL!

You and I and a bunch of other people know it [that Atkins works] but so many people don't and are afraid of it. I didn't post all that to convert anyone but more to just inform people because it really hurts me when I hear people post about how hungry they are. I'd hate to see them do what I did, which was to lose the weight a couple of times and then gain it back. As you and I learned the VERY hard way... You can eat like that when you're highly motivated but after the weight is off it becomes boring and more difficult to maintain. Little treats now and then turn into eating all the wrong things again and then the fat comes back into the diet, raising the calories and damaging health. On top of that the low-fat eating wreaks havoc with triglycerides, etc.

Granted, low carbing won't appeal to everyone and thank G*d there are so many choices out there for those of us who suffer from weight issues. I just want to spread the word that it IS healthy and you can be happy. It's soooo badly misunderstood, the reason I keep saying I'm not a big meat eater. I'm NOT!

I truly believe that what scares most people off is what I always felt... How could I possibly live without my favorite food? POTATOES! You know I could have lived on them before. Except for rice and some forms of potatoes there is a subsitute for everything and what most people truly don't GET is that once you've been through induction you don't even care about those things. And what we can eat is truly delicious and filling. We're never hungry either.

From Janis in the thread Low Fat VS Low Carb on About.com's Weight Loss forum.

Goooooooooooooooal!, take 2

That's right! I am now at a healthy weight for the first time in my adult life! I actually hit goal last Friday, but I didn't want to get all happy about it until I could maintain it until my official weigh-in, which was this morning, which is ALSO my birthday (I'm 35). As of today I've lost 64 pounds and am pleased as punch! :)

Yay me, and yay Dr. Atkins!

Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday, happy birthday,
Happy birthday to me!

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.

---

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.

Janis' Success Story

Janis' Weight Loss Story

My story is much like that of so many others. I struggled with being overweight from childhood, trying and failing at every eating plan imaginable. By going hungry and denying myself I always found it easy to lose weight but could not permanently live in a constant state of hunger and denial. On February 23, 2004 I tried Atkins out of pure desperation and panic. I was leaving for vacation in three weeks and none of my summer clothes fit. I knew I could never stay on low carb long because I loved my potatoes, pasta, bread and rice too much and could never give them up permanently. Just thinking about going low carb made me freak out but I had to try something where I could lose quickly enough to get into my wardrobe. The rest is history. By the end of the first week I didn’t miss my "white" starches, no longer had cravings of any kind, loved what I was eating and knew I had found an eating plan I could stick with. Initially, my doctor wasn’t thrilled, saying I could stay on it only long enough to lose the weight but after my first blood work he started researching Atkins for himself. My cholesterol had been high for years and although I tried everything to bring it down I wasn’t successful enough. Atkins was the only answer. I now have IDEAL cholesterol, lost 70 lbs. by the end of 2004 and have maintained it for eight months, a record for me. The best part...I love what I’m eating, can now deal with food like a normal person, am far healthier then before and know I can stay on it successfully for life, which my doctor has recommended! I’ve never been so happy!

From:
Low Carb Central's Newsletter

One last note - as of the time of this writing Janis has maintained her weight loss for over a year.

See my other post about Janis.

Some random facts about Atkins

From the official Atkins Web site:

To begin, Atkins is not a diet, and that's not just marketing hype. It's called the Atkins Nutritional Approach (we'll be calling it the ANA for short), not the Atkins Diet. That's because there's more than weight loss at stake here: what really matters is your overall health and well-being. In fact, many people who don't need to lose weight choose to follow the ANA because of all the health benefits it provides.

When you give your body too many carbohydrates to metabolize, it burns them for energy. But if you carefully control your carb intake, your body burns fat instead. And that, in a nutshell, is the secret -- if there is one -- of the ANA.

BART raises fares again

I'm so pissed about this and SO not amused. BART fare used to be $1.25 for "base fare," the fare to get in the gates and go (usually) 1-2 stops. Of course, it goes up from there based on how far you're going and where you're going. Well, as of January 1 they raised fares yet again so that base fare is now $1.40. I don't want to think what my San Francisco trips will now cost me. :-p

So that's a $1.40 per ride, 2 rides per day, 5 days a week. That's $56 dollars a month, not counting trips into San Francisco (two trips per month). Plus $70 now for my monthly bus pass, and $1.50 for the Muni bus in San Francisco. I swear to God, driving can't be that much more expensive. *sigh* So $56 + $70 + $3 (for two Muni trips per month) = $129. And that still doesn't count the BART fare into the City. That's around $6 last I checked, so add another $12 (for two trips), subtract the two $1.40 rides saved, and you get $138.20. Just to get around on gosh darn public transit for one month!

What should I weigh?

Body Mass Index (BMI) has serious limitations and is of limited use when calculating a healthy weight. BMI does not take into account important factors such as gender, bone structure, and body fat percentage.

So when trying to find a healthy weight for myself, I use the Met Life tables, which at least take gender and bone structure into account. As a woman who is 5'7" with medium bones, I should weigh between 133 and 147. My goal is 142 to give me 5 pounds of wiggle room before going over my high. Going by BMI alone I'm allowed to weigh up to 159, which is way too much for a female with a medium frame. 159 is better for a large framed man.

Check out the Met Life tables.

Another Spotlight Review!

While looking for information on how to get the Anneliese Michel book (I got yet another e-mail last week requesting information), I came across the Amazon.com page. My review of the book got "Spotlight" status! Yay me! That's my second spotlight review (see other).

The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (with my review) :)

Hold that thought! I decided to go back through my reviews and discovered more Spotlight Reviews. :)

The Regime: Evil Advances (Before They Were Left Behind, Book 2)
Keeping the Sabbath Wholly

That's four Spotlight Reviews I have! :)

Been thinking about...ministry

I came to a realization last night. After all my whining about God not using me (and indeed, being stopped at every effort to do so), I wonder if maybe He has different plans for me than what I think. Just because I'm an ex-Witch, does that mean God must use me to minister to Witches? Could I be looking at this all wrong?

Perhaps that's what I've been doing. I know I command a certain amount of respect at both the official Atkins forum and About.com's Weight Loss forum. Maybe my ministry is to help teach people better nutrition, to share the knowledge that has been so freely shared with me. What if God has been using me this whole time and I've simply been too blind to see?

Could it be that these health forums are exactly where I should be right now and I'm doing exactly what I should be doing?

Abby's collar, take 2

Well, the collar came off. I noticed last night it was loose and it was on the floor by this morning. Stupid cat. This was a belt-type collar. How the hell did this houdini cat get it off?!? I swear this cat is smarter than every collar manufacturer out there! Grrr...