Low Carbs Quotes

Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after us. He jumped on the centaur's back. 'Dude!' the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson's weight. 'Do the words "low-carb diet" mean anything to you?

Who is your famous crush? If a super-hot Hollywood actor who also happened to be a great person wanted to take you home—and the lights stayed on during the deed—what would you do? I mean, not in theory. Honestly, what would you do?” Claire looked at me for a long moment then asked, “Would I get a heads up a few months ahead of time? So I could eat low carb and start working out?” “No.” “Then, honestly, I’d run the other way.

All diets that result in weight loss do so on one basis and one basis only: They reduce circulating levels of insulin; they create and prolong the negative stimulus of insulin deficiency.

Ketones are an efficient and effective fuel for human physiology without increasing the production of damaging free radicals. Ketosis allows a person to experience nonfluctuating energy throughout the day as well as enhanced brain function and possibly resistance to malignancy. – Dr. David Perlmutter

When absurdities get repeated often enough, they start sounding like truth.

Dude!” the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson’s weight. “Do the words ‘low-carb diet’ mean anything to you?

Plant- and animal-based foods are hugely different in terms of their nutrient contents, and watching what foods you consume is far more important than obsessing over calorie-counting without respect to where those calories come from.

Carbohydrate-rich foods—grains, starchy vegetables, and sugars—work to keep insulin elevated in our circulation, and that traps the fat we eat in our fat cells and inhibits the use of that fat for fuel. That’s what the obesity research community should have been trying rigorously to resolve or refute for the past sixty years.

A low-carb, ketogenic diet needs to be high in fat, not protein, to produce adequate ketones.

if a lie is repeated often enough, people will begin to believe it.

Aldous Huxley said: “Medical science has made such fantastic progress that there are barely any healthy people left.

Good and slimming exercise is primarily strength and interval training whilst on a low carb diet. Bad and ineffective exercise is doing any exercise on a  low fat diet.

Hey, Jerry, you got a minute?” He grunts. “What’s up, buttercup?” “So, it’s looking like we might end up with double the people we planned for the fundraiser,” she says. “We should probably talk pancake logistics again.” “Shit,” he swears, “that’s gonna be at least thirty gallons of batter.” “I know. But we don’t have to make a pancake for every guest—I mean, there have gotta be people who are gluten-free, or low carb, or whatever—” “So, let’s say twenty gallons of batter, then. That’s still a lot, and I don’t even know how we’d transport that many pancakes.

To achieve a ketotic state, I ask people to begin with grain and sugar elimination. Grains are, by the way, the worst offenders for triggering high blood sugar, even worse than simple sugars, such as sucrose. So grain elimination—not reduction—is key for getting into ketosis. – Dr. William Davis

I knew I should go low carb, but I have a loyalty problem. Carbs are my friends and have gotten me through some really tough times. I feel that I need to support them in this cruel, low–carb world we live in.

But today, the AHA is saying something quite different. In their massive 2015 report Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, they buried a bombshell in the text.8 It says that five huge randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that total fat consumption does not affect rates of coronary heart disease or stroke.

If the conventional thinking and advice worked, if eating less and exercising more were a meaningful solution to the problem of obesity and excess weight, we wouldn’t be here. If the true explanation for why we get fat were that we take in more calories than we expend and the excess is stored as fat, we wouldn’t be here.

Many chronic symptoms and health conditions—such as fatigue, sleepiness, mood disorders, insomnia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, lipid disorders, high blood pressure, headaches (including migraines), gas, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, joint inflammation, acne, and difficulty concentrating, to name a few—will improve on a ketogenic diet. Treating lifestyle conditions with lifestyle change such as this can make us a healthier and less drug-dependent country. – Jackie Eberstein

Astwood’s belief that those who fatten easily are fundamentally, physiologically and metabolically different from those who don’t. This implies that those of us who fatten easily can get fat on precisely the same food and even the same amount on which lean people stay lean. We can’t be told to eat like lean and healthy people eat and expect that advice to work, because we get fat eating like lean and healthy people. Indeed, we get fat and hungry eating like lean and healthy people do.

Feeling Faint Issue: I’m happy losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet, but I’m always tired, get light headed when I stand up, and if I exercise for more than 10 minutes I feel like I’m going to pass out. Response: Congratulations on your weight loss success, and with just a small adjustment to your diet, you can say goodbye to your weakness and fatigue. The solution is salt…a bit more salt to be specific. This may sound like we’re crazy when many experts argue that we should all eat less salt, however these are the same experts who tell us that eating lots of carbohydrates and sugar is OK. But what they don’t tell you is that your body functions very differently when you are keto-adapted. When you restrict carbs for a week or two, your kidneys switch from retaining salt to rapidly excreting it, along with a fair amount of stored water. This salt and water loss explains why many people experience rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks on a low carbohydrate diet. Ridding your body of this excess salt and water is a good thing, but only up to a point. After that, if you don’t replace some of the ongoing sodium excretion, the associated water loss can compromise your circulation The end result is lightheadedness when you stand up quickly or fatigue if you exercise enough to get ‘warmed up’. Other common side effects of carbohydrate restriction that go away with a pinch of added salt include headache and constipation; and over the long term it also helps the body maintain its muscles. The best solution is to include 1 or 2 cups of bouillon or broth in your daily schedule. This adds only 1-2 grams of sodium to your daily intake, and your ketoadapted metabolism insures that you pass it right on through within a matter of hours (allaying any fears you might have of salt buildup in your system). This rapid clearance also means that on days that you exercise, take one dose of broth or bouillon within the hour before you start.

And as a nutritional researcher, I was surprised at first by the popularity and commercial success of the low-carb diet, especially given its serious flaws. The research on high-protein, high-fat diets has consistently demonstrated that they have disastrous health effects and fail to secure compliance and long-term weight loss.

Sunday night is my personal weekly Halloween. I walk along slowly and drag my fingertips along the bars of chocolate. Goddamn, you sexy little squares. Dark, milk, white, I do not discriminate. I eat it all. Those fluorescent sour candies that only obnoxious little boys like. I suck candy apples clean. If an envelope seal is sweet, I’ll lick it twice. Growing up, I was that kid who would easily get lured into a van with the promise of a lollipop. Sometimes, I let the retail seduction last for twenty minutes, ignoring Marco and feeling up the merchandise, but I’m so tired of male voices. “Five bags of marshmallows,” Marco says in a resigned tone. “Wine. And a can of cat food.” “Cat food is low carb.” He makes no move to scan anything, so I scan each item myself and unroll a few notes from my tips. “Your job involves selling things. Sell them. Change, please.” “I just don’t know why you do this to yourself.” Marco looks at the register with a moral dilemma in his eyes. “Every week you come and do this.” He hesitates and looks over his shoulder where his sugar book sits under a layer of dust. He knows not to try to slip it into my bag with my purchases. “I don’t know why you care, dude. Just serve me. I don’t need your help.” He’s not entirely wrong about my being an addict. I would lick a line of icing sugar off this counter right now if no one were around. I would walk into a cane plantation and bite right in... “Give me my change or I swear to God …” I squeeze my eyes shut and try to tamp down my temper. “Just treat me like any other customer.” He gives me a few coins’ change and bags my sweet, spongy drugs.

These studies all came to the same startling conclusion: the low-carb diet was significantly better for weight loss than the low-fat diet. Even more stunning was that all the important risk factors for cardiovascular disease—including cholesterol, blood sugar level, and blood pressure—were also much improved on the low-carb diet.

Most processed foods and ingredients are low in protein, high in carbs, high in fat, and engineered to increase palatability. They’re literally designed by scientists to make you overeat because you’re not getting enough protein for satiety, no micronutrients, and way too many over-stimulating sugars and other ingredients that make you lose your sanity.

Years of poor eating habits will catch up to you,

Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival,

There are three reasons why people fail to reach a ketogenic state: too many carbohydrates, too much protein, or not enough fat.

Steer clear of sugars in any form (including starchy carbohydrates) because they can be disruptive to the way you process and metabolize foods.

During periods of starvation or fasting, the human brain can very easily switch over to using ketones as an alternative to glucose.

So if ketosis is so desirable, then why has there been such deafening silence or even fierce negativity on the subject from health authorities?

Eating carbohydrates makes you hungry. If you don’t eat carbohydrates, there is no hunger.

To simply pick out the statistics that fit one’s theory is a fatal scientific sin.

Ketogenic therapy shows promise for autism, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and migraines.

in the chopped spinach. Stir until well wilted and evenly distributed. (Takes about 2 minutes) Your beef and spinach combo

But eating carbohydrates is like eating hungry pills.

There’s a good reason, as Miller said to me, why alcoholics don’t celebrate the successful completion of a twenty-eight-day rehab program with a champagne toast.

To cut to the chase, we are a carbohydrate substance abuse program, not a weight loss program.

I find I have much better drive and focus when in a state of ketosis. I have a lot more mental clarity and productivity. Bryan Barksdale

Carbohydrate overconsumption has created the walking dead. – Stephanie Person

There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. . . . Anyone who tells you to start eating carbohydrates in order to fix a health problem is totally missing the point. – Nora Gedgaudas

Mahatma Gandhi’s classic quote describes how a shift can take place from the perspective of the early adopters: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life.

Even if a calorie is a calorie when it comes to weight loss then carbohydrate restricted diets are better anyway. The main criticism from these folks is that the only reason people lose weight on low carb diets is because of the decrease in calories. Indeed, eat as much as you want low carb dieters often reduce the amount of calories they eat to similar amounts as calorie counting low fat dieters.

So let’s consider an alternative diet, say 1200 kcal consisting of 30% protein, 15% carbs (i.e., 180 kcal or 45 grams), and 55% fat. After a week or two of getting adapted (during which you may experience some of the fuel limitation symptoms discussed above), your serum ketones rise up in the range (1-2 millimolar) where they meet at least half of the brain’s fuel supply. Now if you go for that 5 mile run, almost all of your body’s muscle fuel comes from fat, leaving your dietary carb intake plus gluconeogenesis from protein to meet the minor fraction of your brain’s energy need not provided from ketones. And, oh yes, after your run while on the low carb diet, your ketone levels actually go up a bit (not dangerously so), further improving fuel flow to your brain. So what does this mean for the rest of us who are not compulsive runners? Well, this illustrates that the keto-adapted state allows your body more flexibility in meeting its critical organ energy needs than a ‘balanced’ but energy-restricted diet. And in particular, this also means that your brain is a “carbohydrate dependent organ” (as claimed by the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as noted in Chapter 3) ONLY when you are eating a high carbohydrate diet. When carbohydrate is restricted as in the example above, your body’s appropriate production of ketones frees the brain from this supposed state of ‘carbohydrate dependency’. And because exercise stimulates ketone production, your brain’s fuel supply is better supported during and after intense exercise when on a low carbohydrate diet than when your carbohydrate intake is high (see below).

Low-fat had become the new mantra of the times, something we like to call the “Snackwell Phenomenon.” Food companies rushed to create low-fat versions of every food imaginable, all marketed as “heart-healthy,” with no cholesterol. (No one seemed to notice that manufacturers replaced the missing fat with tons of sugar and processed carbs, both of which are far more dangerous to our hearts than fat ever was.)

Looking at obesity without preconceived ideas,” she wrote, “one would assume that the main trend of research should be directed toward an examination of abnormalities of the fat metabolism, since by definition excessive accumulation of fat is the underlying abnormality. It so happens that this is the area in which the least work has been done.” She added, “As long as it was not known how the body builds up and breaks down its fat deposit, the ignorance was glossed over by simply stating that food taken in excess of body needs was stored and deposited in the fat cells, the way potatoes are put into a bag. Obviously, this is not so.

It's unrealistic to expect to not eat the types of foods you really enjoy, so when you restrict what you can eat too much, it often leads to binge eating and then giving up completely and ending back up at square one.

High-GI carbs include potatoes, white bread, and white rice. Honey, orange juice, and whole-meal breads are medium-GI foods. Low-GI foods include green vegetables, most fruits, raw carrots, kidney beans, chickpeas, and lentils.

First, when you try to restrict calories and exercise more, your body is hardwired to perceive a starvation situation. That makes you tired (so you move less and conserve energy) and hungry (so you eat more), and it slows down your metabolism (so you don’t die!). This “eat less, exercise more” formula is not too successful for most people. It can work for a short time, certainly, but less than 10 percent of people lose weight and keep it off for a year;4 you will almost always rebound and gain back the weight. Second, when you eat carbs and sugar, insulin spikes and your blood sugar drops. The insulin drives most of the available fuel in your bloodstream into fat cells, especially the fat cells around your middle, otherwise known as belly fat. So your body is starved of fuel, and this stimulates your brain5 to make you eat more.6 You could have a year’s worth of stored energy in your fat tissue and yet feel like you are starving. The only thing that can stop this vicious cycle is eating a lot of fat and cutting out the refined carbs and sugar. A high-fat, low-carb diet leads to a faster metabolism and sustained weight loss.

Despite decades of obesity research, and billions of dollars spent in the laboratory and on clinical trials, the bedrock fundamental concept underlying all nutrition and dietary advice is that fat and lean people are effectively identical physiologically, and that our bodies respond to what we eat the same way, except that the fat people at some point in their lives ate too much and expended too little energy and so became fat, while the lean people didn’t.

The patients who succeed, these physicians agreed, tended to be those who could be induced to read at least some of the copious literature on LCHF/ketogenic eating that’s now available. They had to become people who cared enough to do the work.

As self-help and management advice books will often say, setting a goal and committing to it are vitally important. Without the commitment, we never get to find out if the goal is achievable. By diluting the commitment and allowing us to compromise, we never know.

To get fat out of those fat cells, as Yalow and Berson described it, the absolute fundamental requirement was not eating less or exercising more, but lowering the amount of insulin in the circulation. (Eating less and exercising, as I’ll discuss, can be inefficient ways of lowering insulin levels.)

The Tree of Life was an ancient symbol of interconnection, fertility, and eternal life—precisely because of this legendary tree’s fruit. Fruit is part of our essence, a basic element of who we are. We cannot survive without fruit on this planet. It outweighs the nutrition of any other food. Yet the current “health” movement toward low-carb diets has put fruit on the endangered species list, with the goal of making it extinct. Is this denial? Ignorance? Foolishness? We’re not talking about uneducated people who are driving the trend. We’re talking about smart, highly intelligent professionals with advanced degrees in medicine and nutrition. If they’re advising patients to shun fruit, it must be because of their training, the misinformation out there, or their own selective interests. Have you heard of book burning? If the anti-sugar war keeps up its momentum, fruit trees will be next to go up in flames.

For me, without question and despite certain Oracle of Delphi moments concerning my own thighs, it was my belly. The belly that refused to turn into abs no matter how many crunches I performed or how few carbs I ate. (This obviously led to alternating phases wherin there were no crunches and only carbs, to soothe the pain.) Either way, the belly hung there over the edge of my otherwise fabulous low-slung jeans, rounded and spiteful, despite my best efforts. I was convinced the belly made me a troll. That it was disfiguring. That it was the outward evidence of my true inner unlovableness. No one could convince me otherwise.

eating a ketogenic diet lowers inflammation naturally, without the use of prescription medications such as statins. It’s this inflammation that is the true culprit in heart disease, and the fact that ketosis reduces systemic inflammation is further evidence supporting the use of a low-carb, high-fat diet for improving heart health.

How many high-quality studies of the like do you think they have shown in order to be able to recommend a “healthy” low-fat diet to the entire population? Hundreds? Ten? Do you think there is a single one? Astonishingly enough, the correct answer is zero. There is not one high-quality study verifying that saturated fat is dangerous.

Peter M. Nilsson, professor of cardiovascular research, recently spoke in front of five hundred doctors at a big conference in Stockholm. He summarized it like this: “This means we have to put an end to this. There is no correlation between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular disease.” Could it be clearer? Perhaps like this: game over.

In just the past few decades, the rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses have gotten considerably worse. And do you know what’s most shocking about that? The spike in all of these ailments coincides almost perfectly with the implementation of the government’s Dietary Guidelines in 1980. Coincidence? I think not.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN AN ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT KIND OF PERSON. HAVING BEEN A PART OF THE HARD CORE PUNK SCENE AS A KID AND LIVING MY WHOLE LIFE IN VARIOUS UNDERGROUND OR OUTSIDER SCENES, I’VE LONG BEEN EXPOSED TO “QUESTION AUTHORITY” TYPES OF THINKING. IT’S REALLY MORE THAT I FELT THIS WAY TOWARDS SOCIETY THAT DROVE ME TO VEGANISM THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

Carbohydrates First off, you don’t have to have them. That doesn’t mean I’m telling you to go on a low-carb diet. Rather, the evidence base to date suggests that low-carb diets are safe. So if you’ve enjoyed low-carb living in the past, but stopped because you were worried it wasn’t good for you, feel free to consider going back to a low-carb lifestyle.

The three rules for getting control of your diet. Rule 1. If you’re OK, you’re OK. Rule 2. If you want to lose weight: Don’t eat. If you have to eat, don’t eat carbs. If you have to eat carbs, eat low-glycemic index carbs. Rule 3. If you have diabetes or metabolic syndrome, carbohydrate restriction is the “default” approach, that is, the one to try first.

Virtually every person who uses the WFPB diet loses weight, reduces their blood sugar and insulin levels, and resolves diabetes and related diseases. A plant protein–based diet (as in the high-carb WFPB diet) also decreases total blood cholesterol and the formation of plaques that lead to heart disease, effects not seen from a low-carb, animal protein–based diet.

if you are led to believe carbs are bad then you fear them, and you try to cut out potatoes, yams, rice, whatever. These become your ‘fear foods’ and it can get pretty ridiculous. For example, people who buy into the notion of high vs. low glycemic carbs are told to cut out carrots for example, so that a completely healthy and useful food becomes a ‘fear food.’ When

the ketogenic diet was originally designed in the 1920s to help treat epilepsy, according to a report published in Epilepsia. It was proven to be an effective form of treatment, particularly for childhood epilepsy. Scientists soon discovered that its benefits extended beyond epilepsy treatment. It has also been found helpful in weight loss and the prevention of other diseases.

The authorities who insist that abstaining from carbohydrates is an unsustainable lifestyle once again typically do so from the perspective of lean people whose primary fuel happens to be carbohydrates and whose bodies can tolerate carbohydrates without accumulating excess fat. From their perspective, a program that requires living without carbohydrates appears doomed to fail. Why would anyone do it, if another way existed that allowed for the occasional consumption of cinnamon buns and pasta (in moderation, not too much)? But for many of us, there may be no other way. Lean folks aren’t like us. They don’t get fat when they eat carbohydrates; they may not hunger for them just by thinking about them. They have a choice to live with carbohydrates or not. We don’t. Not if we want to be lean and as healthy as we can be.

blood sugar values go down, blood pressure drops, chronic pain decreases or disappears, lipid profiles improve, inflammatory markers improve, energy increases, weight decreases, sleep is improved, IBS [irritable bowel syndrome] symptoms are lessened, etc. Medication is adjusted downward, or even eliminated, which reduces the side-effects for patients and the costs to society. The results we achieve with our patients are impressive and durable.

Perhaps the most telling report on the low-carb diet and health is the recent summary of 17 studies published in January 2013 involving 272,216 subjects,59 in which a low-carb diet showed a statistically significant 31 percent increase in total deaths. This finding is even more telling than the statistics suggest because this 31 percent increase is in comparison to the already high mortality typically observed for the SAD, when compared to a whole food, plant-based diet.

I have seen mood stabilization, reduced or eliminated depression, reduced or eliminated anxiety, improved cognitive functioning, greatly enhanced and evened-out energy levels, cessation of seizures, improved overall neurological stability, cessation of migraines, improved sleep, improvement in autistic symptoms, improvements with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), improved gastrointestinal functioning, healthy weight loss, cancer remissions and tumor shrinkage, much better management of underlying previous health issues, improved symptoms and quality of life in those struggling with various forms of autoimmunity (including many with type 1 and 1.5 diabetes), fewer colds and flus, total reversal of chronic fatigue, improved memory, sharpened cognitive functioning, and significantly stabilized temperament. And there is quality evidence to support the beneficial impact of a fat-based ketogenic approach in all these types of issues. – Nora Gedgaudas

Without carbohydrates, the body will use protein and fat as fuel—this is called ketosis. When your body is in the metabolic state of ketosis, it turns fat into ketones in the liver, which will supply energy instead of glucose, as if you were fasting. You may have heard of the ketogenic diet, in fact, which focuses on protein and fat intake, while maintaining a very low carbohydrate intake. This diet, newly trendy, may have benefits such as weight loss and improved blood sugar levels. However, it is very restrictive; eliminating healthy fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other nutritious complex carbohydrates seems unnecessary and no fun. Also, we don’t know the long-term effects of ketosis (though if you do go too long without any carbs, it can lead to heart or kidney disease). What I do know, after years of studying nutrition, is that any diet that is very restrictive or eliminates entire food groups can be unrealistic and difficult to sustain. That’s why Zero Sugar Diet eliminates added sugars—but allows natural ones. Pretty sweet deal.

There’s a saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And that’s precisely what has happened to national nutritional policy in the United States in recent years. The government ignores studies that don’t fit within a preconceived template of a low-fat, low-salt, calorie-restricted, high-carb, plant-based diet. But this one-size-fits-all approach to eating does not work for the large segment of the population that is dealing with obesity and other metabolic chronic health issues.

In other words, carbs can be seen as a far dirtier fuel than fats. When you adopt a high-fat, low-carb diet and make the switch to burning fat and ketones for fuel instead of glucose, your mitochondria’s exposure to oxidative damage drops by as much as 30 to 40 percent compared to when your primary source of fuel is sugar, as is typical in American diets today. This means that when you are “fat adapted”—that is, when you have made the transition to burning fat for fuel—your mitochondrial DNA, cell membranes, and protein can remain stronger, healthier, and more resilient. In order

Vern did not trust humans was the long and short of it. Not a single one. He had known many in his life, even liked a few, but in the end they all sold him out to the angry mob. Which was why he holed up in Honey Island Swamp out of harm's way. Vern liked the swamp okay. As much as he liked anything after all these years. Goddamn, so many years just stretching out behind him like bricks in that road old King Darius put down back in who gives a shit BC. Funny how things came back out of the blue. Like that ancient Persian road. He couldn't remember last week, and now he was flashing back a couple thousand years, give or take. Vern had baked half those bricks his own self, back when he still did a little blue-collar. Nearly wore out the internal combustion engine. Shed his skin two seasons early because of that bitch of a job. That and diet. No one had a clue about nutrition in those days. Vern was mostly ketogenic now, high fat, low carbs, apart from his beloved breakfast cereals. Keto made perfect sense for a dragon, especially with his core temperature. Unfortunately, it meant that beer had to go, but he got by on vodka. Absolut was his preferred brand. A little high on alcohol but easiest on the system.

My friend David Kritchevsky, who was probably the leading researcher in this area until his death, found40 that “protein of animal origin is more cholesterolemic [leading to higher cholesterol in the bloodstream] and atherogenic [contributing to heart disease] than protein of plant origin for rabbits,” citing several studies41—a distinction between types of protein that was first noted in regard to atherosclerosis more than sixty years ago.42 He found the same to be true for humans, as well.43 We observed a similar distinction between soy and casein protein (the principle protein in milk) in my lab when they were compared in our studies on experimental cancer with rats.

The takeaway is that you should build habits that work for your personality.* People can get ripped working out like a bodybuilder, but if you prefer rock climbing or cycling or rowing, then shape your exercise habit around your interests. If your friend follows a low-carb diet but you find that low-fat works for you, then more power to you. If you want to read more, don’t be embarrassed if you prefer steamy romance novels over nonfiction. Read whatever fascinates you.* You don’t have to build the habits everyone tells you to build. Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular. There is a version of every habit that can bring you joy and satisfaction.

How specialized do restaurants get in Japan? Every weekday at lunchtime, people queue up on a side street just south of Ningyōchō Station, in an old Tokyo neighborhood. They're waiting to get into Tamahide, a restaurant that (at lunchtime) serves one dish, oyakodon. Written with the characters for "parent" and "child," oyakodon is a runny chicken omelet (get it?) served over rice. There are very few ingredients to this dish: chicken, egg, and rice, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. There is no vegetarian version, no low-carb salad version, no side dishes other than a tiny dish of pickles perched atop the lid of your bowl. If you're not in the mood for diced chicken meat, however, you can order the dish with chicken liver or ground chicken.

A meta-analysis of four cohort studies following the diets, diseases, and deaths of more than a quarter million people found that those who eat lower-carb diets suffer a significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality, meaning they live, on average, significantly shorter lives.4188 The risk of cardiovascular disease specifically appears to depend on the source of fat. In a Harvard study of heart attack survivors, those who adhered more to a lower-carb diet based on animal sources of fat and protein had a 50 percent higher risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke, but no such association was found for lower-carb diets based on plant sources.4189 These studies were based on low-carb scoring systems, though, so they speak more to the risks of lower-carb eating rather than a truly low-carb ketogenic diet.

The only veggies allowed when trying to become keto-adapted are: red leaf lettuce, cabbage, celery, zucchini and cucumbers. I know this sounds crazy, but even non-starchy vegetables may hold you back while trying to become keto-adapted. I used to be more passive in my office and tell clients to take “baby steps” but not anymore. People want results. Rip that band-aid off! Whether you are dealing with inflammation showing externally where people can see it (weight gain, acne, eczema, and rosacea) or internally (heart disease, joint pain, nerve damage, high blood sugar), the faster you can get to be keto-adapted the better. Once adapted or near your weight loss and healing goals, you can begin to re-introduce other low starch veggies. When in maintenance, you can find your bodies threshold for carbs by introducing psyllium breads and nut flours and monitoring your weight (typically 30-50 grams of total carbs per day).

We have witnessed hundreds of clients and patients damage their metabolic and hormonal health through low-carb diets. It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is an epidemic of metabolic and hormonal dysfunction emerging in the hordes of people who have been following low-carb diets. This is particularly impactful for women—and especially physically active women—who commonly suffer side effects from their low-carb diets, including: A stopped or irregular menstrual cycle (amenorrhea)418 419 420 421 422 Decreased fertility423 424 425 Hypoglycemic episodes and blood sugar swings426 Depression, anxiety, and irritability427 428 429 Poor libido430 431 432 Disrupted sleep/insomnia433 434 Dysfunctional relationship with food and fear about eating either fat or carbohydrate435 436 Cycles of restriction and binges437 438 Chronic fatigue 439 440 441 442 Poor thyroid function (and a slow metabolism)443 444 445 446 447 448

But a day later, it was ‘Prof Tim says low fat is a fraud,’ when he was eating a tub of yoghurt at his desk for breakfast. He let that slide too. Until the following morning, when he and a packet of Simba salt-and-vinegar crisps walked out of the morning parade, and Mbali said, ‘Prof Tim says it’s the carbs that make you fat, you know,’ and he couldn’t take it any more and snapped: ‘Prof Tim who?’ And so she told him. Everything. About this Prof Tim Noakes who once got the whole fokken world eating pasta, and then he did an about face and said, no, carbs are what’s making everyone obese, and he wrote a book of recipes, and now he was Mbali’s big hero, ‘Because it takes a great man to admit that he was wrong’, and she had already lost so much weight and she had so much more energy, and it wasn’t all that hard, she didn’t miss the carbs because now she ate cauliflower rice and cauliflower mash and flax seed bread. Flax seed bread, for fuck’s sake.

Eat either three regular-size meals a day or four or five smaller meals. Do not skip meals or go more than six waking hours without eating. 2. Eat liberally of combinations of fat and protein in the form of poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs and red meat, as well as of pure, natural fat in the form of butter, mayonnaise, olive oil, safflower, sunflower and other vegetable oils (preferably expeller-pressed or cold-pressed). 3. Eat no more than 20 grams a day of carbohydrate, most of which must come in the form of salad greens and other vegetables. You can eat approximately three cups-loosely packed-of salad, or two cups of salad plus one cup of other vegetables (see the list of acceptable vegetables on page 110). 4. Eat absolutely no fruit, bread, pasta, grains, starchy vegetables or dairy products other than cheese, cream or butter. Do not eat nuts or seeds in the first two weeks. Foods that combine protein and carbohydrates, such as chickpeas, kidney beans and other legumes, are not permitted at this time. 5. Eat nothing that is not on the acceptable foods list. And that means absolutely nothing! Your "just this one taste won't hurt" rationalization is the kiss of failure during this phase of Atkins. 6. Adjust the quantity you eat to suit your appetite, especially as it decreases. When hungry, eat the amount that makes you feel satisfied but not stuffed. When not hungry, eat a small controlled carbohydrate snack to accompany your nutritional supplements. 7. Don't assume any food is low in carbohydrate-instead read labels! Check the carb count (it's on every package) or use the carbohydrate gram counter in this book. 8. Eat out as often as you wish but be on guard for hidden carbs in gravies, sauces and dressings. Gravy is often made with flour or cornstarch, and sugar is sometimes an ingredient in salad dressing. 9. Avoid foods or drinks sweetened with aspartame. Instead, use sucralose or saccharin. Be sure to count each packet of any of these as 1 gram of carbs. 10. Avoid coffee, tea and soft drinks that contain caffeine. Excessive caffeine has been shown to cause low blood sugar, which can make you crave sugar. 11. Drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day to hydrate your body, avoid constipation and flush out the by-products of burning fat. 12. If you are constipated, mix a tablespoon or more of psyllium husks in a cup or more of water and drink daily. Or mix ground flaxseed into a shake or sprinkle wheat bran on a salad or vegetables.

Small Change Snack Tips 1. Limit a snack to approximately 200 calories maximum. 2. Turn coffee or a tea into a snack by adding a cup of low-fat milk or soymilk. 3. Do not have a carbohydrate alone (such as an apple or a serving of crackers); you will still be hungry. Instead, pair a carb with a lean protein or healthy fat. Have low-fat cheese with your apple, or some peanut butter on your whole grain crackers. 4. It’s okay to have carbs alone before bed (such as a piece of fruit) because it doesn’t need to keep you full—you’re about to go to sleep. 5. Don’t double dip. For instance, don’t do string cheese and nuts, or string cheese and yogurt. Instead, choose one high-fiber carb and one lean protein or healthy fat; otherwise your calories (and fat) can add up. 6. When you eat straight from the bag, box, or can, you’ll consume more. Preportion items like nuts in resealable snack-size bags. 7. Try to keep snacktime to three hours after you have eaten. If you eat it too close to your last meal, it won’t do its job for the next meal. 8. If buying an energy bar, read the label and look for more fiber and protein, less calories and fat. 9. Just because it’s a “100-calorie pack” doesn’t mean it is a healthy snack. Make sure it offers some fiber and protein or healthy fat—and if not, skip it.

Foods to Embrace: Probiotics: Yogurt with active cultures, tempeh, miso, natto, sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, kombucha, buttermilk, and certain cheeses. Prebiotics: Beans, oats, bananas, berries, garlic, onions, dandelion greens, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, and leeks. Low-GI carbohydrates: Brown rice, quinoa, steel-cut oatmeal, and chia seeds. Medium-GI foods, in moderation: Honey, orange juice, and whole-grain bread. Healthy fats: Monounsaturated fats like olive oil, nuts, nut butters, and avocados. Omega-3 fatty acids: Fish, especially fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, tuna, herring, and sardines. Vitamins B9, B12, B1, B6, A, and C. Minerals and micronutrients: Iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc, and selenium. Spices: Saffron and turmeric. Herbs: Oregano, lavender, passionflower, and chamomile. Foods to Avoid: Sugar: Baked goods, candy, soda, or anything sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. High-GI carbs: White bread, white rice, potatoes, pasta, and anything else made from refined flour. Artificial sweeteners: Aspartame is particularly harmful, but also saccharin, sucralose, and stevia in moderation and with caution. Fried foods: French fries, fried chicken, fried seafood, or anything else deep-fried in oil. Bad fats: Trans fats such as margarine, shortening, and hydrogenated oils are to be avoided totally; omega-6 fats such as vegetable, corn, sunflower, and safflower oil should only be consumed in moderation. Nitrates: An additive used in bacon, salami, sausage, and other cured meats.

THE DIET-GO-ROUND LOW-CALORIE DIETS Diets began by limiting the number of calories consumed in a day. But restricting calories depleted energy, so people craved high-calorie fat and sugar as energizing emergency fuel. LOW-FAT DIETS High-calorie fats were targeted. Restricting fat left people hungry, however, and they again craved more fats and sugars. FAKE FAT Synthetic low-cal fats were invented. People could now replace butter with margarine, but without calories it didn’t deliver the energy and satisfaction people needed. They still craved real fat and sugar. THE DIET GO-ROUND GRAPEFRUIT DIETS Banking on the antioxidant and fat-emulsifying properties of grapefruit, dieters could eat real fat again, as long as they ate a grapefruit first. But even grapefruits were no match for the high-fat American diet. SUGAR BLUES The more America restricted fat in any way to lose weight, the more the body rebounded by storing fat, and craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. Sugar was now to blame! SUGAR FREE High-calorie sugars were replaced with no-calorie synthetic sweeteners. The mind was happy but the body was starving as diet drinks replaced meals. People eventually binged on excess calories from other sources, such as protein. HIGH-PROTEIN DIETS The new diet let people eat all the protein they wanted without noticing the restriction of carbs and sugar. Energy came from fat stores and dieters lost weight. But without carbs, they soon experienced low energy and craved and binged on carbs. HIGH-CARB DIETS Carb-craving America was ripe for high-carb diets. You could now lose weight and eat up to 80 percent carbs—but they had to be slow-burning, complex carbs. Fast-paced America was addicted to fast energy, however, and high-carb diets soon became high-sugar diets. LOW CHOLESTEROL The combination of sugar, fat, and stress raised cholesterol to dangerous levels. The solution: Reemphasize complex carbs and reduce all animal fats. Once again, dieters felt restricted and began craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. EXERCISE Diets weren’t working, so exercise became the cholesterol cure-all. It worked for a time, but people didn’t like to “work out.” Within 25 years, no more than 20 percent of Americans would do it regularly. VEGETARIANISM With heart disease and cancers on the rise, red meat was targeted. Vegetarianism came into fashion but was rarely followed correctly. People lived on pasta and bread, and blood sugars and energy levels went out of control. GRAZING High-carb diets were causing energy and blood sugar problems. If you ate every 2 hours, energy was propped up and fast-paced America could keep speeding. Fatigue became chronic fatigue, however, with depression and anxiety to follow. FOOD COMBINING By eating fats, proteins, and carbs separately, digestion improved and a host of digestive, energy, and weight problems were helped temporarily. But the rules for what you could eat together led to more frequent small meals. People eventually slipped back to their old ways and old problems. THE ZONE Aimed at fixing blood sugar levels, this diet balanced intake of proteins, fats, and carbs. It worked, but again restricted certain kinds of carbs, so it didn’t last, and America was again craving emergency fuel. COFFEE TO THE RESCUE Exhausted and with a million things to do, America turned to legal stimulants like coffee for energy. But borrowed energy must be paid back, and many are still living in debt. FULL CIRCLE Frustrated, America is turning to new crash diets and a wave of high-protein diets. It is time to break this man-made cycle with the simplicity of nature’s own 3-Season Diet. If you let nature feed you, you will not starve or crave anything.

Dear Jon, A real Dear Jon let­ter, how per­fect is that?! Who knew you’d get dumped twice in the same amount of months. See, I’m one para­graph in and I’ve al­ready fucked this. I’m writ­ing this be­cause I can’t say any of this to you face-to-face. I’ve spent the last few months ques­tion­ing a lot of my friend­ships and won­der­ing what their pur­pose is, if not to work through big emo­tional things to­gether. But I now re­al­ize: I don’t want that. And I know you’ve all been there for me in other ways. Maybe not in the lit­eral sense, but I know you all would have done any­thing to fix me other than lis­ten­ing to me talk and al­low­ing me to be sad with­out so­lu­tions. And now I am writ­ing this let­ter rather than pick­ing up the phone and talk­ing to you be­cause, de­spite every thing I know, I just don’t want to, and I don’t think you want me to ei­ther. I lost my mind when Jen broke up with me. I’m pretty sure it’s been the sub­ject of a few of your What­sApp con­ver­sa­tions and more power to you, be­cause I would need to vent about me if I’d been friends with me for the last six months. I don’t want it to have been in vain, and I wanted to tell you what I’ve learnt. If you do a high-fat, high-pro­tein, low-carb diet and join a gym, it will be a good dis­trac­tion for a while and you will lose fat and gain mus­cle, but you will run out of steam and eat nor­mally again and put all the weight back on. So maybe don’t bother. Drunk­en­ness is an­other idea. I was in black­out for most of the first two months and I think that’s fine, it got me through the evenings (and the oc­ca­sional af­ter­noon). You’ll have to do a lot of it on your own, though, be­cause no one is free to meet up any more. I think that’s fine for a bit. It was for me un­til some­one walked past me drink­ing from a whisky minia­ture while I waited for a night bus, put five quid in my hand and told me to keep warm. You’re the only per­son I’ve ever told this story. None of your mates will be ex­cited that you’re sin­gle again. I’m prob­a­bly your only sin­gle mate and even I’m not that ex­cited. Gen­er­ally the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing sin­gle at thirty-five will feel dif­fer­ent to any other time you’ve been sin­gle and that’s no bad thing. When your ex moves on, you might be­come ob­sessed with the bloke in a way that is al­most sex­ual. Don’t worry, you don’t want to fuck him, even though it will feel a bit like you do some­times. If you open up to me or one of the other boys, it will feel good in the mo­ment and then you’ll get an emo­tional hang­over the next day. You’ll wish you could take it all back. You may even feel like we’ve en­joyed see­ing you so low. Or that we feel smug be­cause we’re win­ning at some­thing and you’re los­ing. Re­member that none of us feel that. You may be­come ob­sessed with work­ing out why ex­actly she broke up with you and you are likely to go fully, fully nuts in your bid to find a sat­is­fy­ing an­swer. I can save you a lot of time by let­ting you know that you may well never work it out. And even if you did work it out, what’s the pur­pose of it? Soon enough, some girl is go­ing to be crazy about you for some un­de­fin­able rea­son and you’re not go­ing to be in­ter­ested in her for some un­de­fin­able rea­son. It’s all so ran­dom and un­fair – the peo­ple we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the peo­ple who want to be with us are not the peo­ple we want to be with. Re­ally, the thing that’s go­ing to hurt a lot is the fact that some­one doesn’t want to be with you any more. Feel­ing the ab­sence of some­one’s com­pany and the ab­sence of their love are two dif­fer­ent things. I wish I’d known that ear­lier. I wish I’d known that it isn’t any­body’s job to stay in a re­la­tion­ship they don’t want to be in just so some­one else doesn’t feel bad about them­selves. Any­way. That’s all. You’re go­ing to be okay, mate. Andy

The biggest challenge with a ketogenic diet is reducing the carbohydrate and protein intake sufficiently to get into and maintain ketosis. If you eat too much protein, your body will convert the amino acids into glucose. If you eat too many carbs, your blood sugar will be too high to have ketones. It takes fat to make the ketone bodies. – Dr. Terry Wahls

Saturated fats, like those in butter, coconut oil, and red meat, and monounsaturated fats, such as those found in avocados, olive oil, and macadamia nuts, are basically safe for consumption in terms of your health.

Fat is not the enemy in your diet. Fat is your friend.

you need to eat fat in order to burn fat.

A high-fat diet in the presence of carbohydrate is different than a high-fat diet in the presence of low carbohydrate. – Dr. Richard Feinman

There is only about one teaspoon of sugar in your entire bloodstream.

Dr. Pescatore sees the ketogenic diet as a way to “enjoy life to the fullest and eat really well along the way.

Australian adults, concluded that each hour spent watching television after the age of 25 reduces your life expectancy by nearly 22 minutes.

Worry about the macros and let the calories look after themselves.

the ADA makes no mention of the therapeutic use of ketogenic diets in controlling blood sugar and improving health—including

the major protective effect of ketosis is a significant reduction in glucose metabolism. This is the opposite of diabetes. – Dr. Charles Mobbs

Confusion about the difference between ketosis and ketoacidosis is a major issue.

Unfortunately, conventional nutritional guidelines continue to support the concept that carbohydrates are required for life and health.

Who says your health doesn’t improve on the low-carb lifestyle?

Humans went into ketosis every winter for thousands of generations. Being in a low level of ketosis is the more natural state for our metabolism. We do have metabolic flexibility and can operate on amino acids, glucose, or fat. – Dr. Terry Wahls