So you're fat and you know it. Don't sweat it dear readers, I was too. I was a fatty fat fatso and I didn't really care about it. Sure, I was spending a couple hours a week at night with ice bags on my knees for the pain, but who doesn't have problems? Right? Then, one night in December a couple of years ago, I was sitting on my couch with the aforementioned ice bags strapped (actually, I think they were Duct Taped) to my knees and I decided that I didn't want to live like this. I was tired of being in pain and of being tired.
My name is Daniel, and at 6'2" and 248 lbs, I was wearing pants with a 46 inch waist. Those figures make for a BMI of almost 32 which put me in the "Obese" category. Frankly, I think BMI alone is bullshit scientifically. But there is no getting around that 46 inch waist measurement. I could barely see my toes, much less anything else below my belly. So I decided to make a massive change in my life, which brought me to my current weight of 190, and a 35 inch waist.
It was diet and exercise.
But it wasn't just dumb luck that I stumbled into following the right diet. My exercise was simply a mix of resistance (weight) and aerobic activities. You need this, but the type really doesn't matter. If it makes you breath hard and sweat for about 30 minutes a day, it's fine. Crossfit, Piyo, P90x, heavy yard work, anything that gets your heart rate up and taxes your muscles will do the job.
Your diet, however, is another matter. Until you get that under control, you can do all the exercise you want, but you'll barely lose a pound. If you're still eating the massive amounts of sugar and processed carbs that is in the typical Western diet, there's really no reason to get off your couch.
Yes, it's sugar. That's the reason you're fat, sick, and tired. The problem is that sugar is everywhere, and only in 2016 has the Government decided to suggest that sugar is "semi-bad". What's worse is that you're most likely, unknowingly addicted to it
By the way, all of these books are Amazon Associates links. I get a few cents if you use these links to buy these books. It doesn't cost you anything. Whether you use these links or not, get these books. Your diet, the food you eat, can change your life!
FAT IS GOOD
Ancel Keys nearly single-handedly gave us the diet that has promoted more disease and obesity than the diet it replaced ever would have. He convinced just about everyone, including federal authorities, that it was "dietary fat" and cholesterol that were causing heart disease. He advanced this idea using egregiously poor science, cherry picking his data, and force of his personality. It was the diet demanded by Keys that drove the substitution of trans-fats for "bad" saturated fats, and created the high carbohydrate, diet that expanded the American obese population from 13% in the 50's to 34% today. Thanks for the crappy science and all the diabetes Ancel!
You'll learn what happened to populations who once ate almost nothing but animal fat (and had no incidence of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, et al), but were then introduced to the new, "Heart Health Diet". Teicholz pulls back the pretty gown covering the junk science of of the "Heart Health Diet" revealing the disease ridden death sentence that it truly is.
Once a disciple of the over $30 billion statin drug industry, Dr. Stephen Sinatra started doubting the necessity, efficacy and especially the safety of the entire class of statin drugs. As he and Jonny Bowden explain in extreme detail in their book, "The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease-and the Statin-Free Plan That Will" only one specific type of cholesterol (LDL type B) is hazardous to your health. For 99.9 % of us, cholesterol, including LDL (type A) is completely harmless. It is NOT the culprit in coronary artery disease.
Lowering your total cholesterol will not do squat to prevent heart disease. However, lowering your Triglycerides will. In fact, if you divide your triglycerides by your HDL cholesterol, you'll get a better picture of your risk for heart disease than any measure of LDL. And what do you suppose contributes massively to higher triglycerides? You guessed it, it's sugar. While sugar is busy increasing your triglycerides, it's also hard at work helping you to become insulin resistant. When you're "insulin resistant" your body produces greater and greater quantities of insulin as it attempts to deal with the fructose liberated during digestion of sugar. In these large doses, insulin goes from inflammation reducer, to an inflammation powerhouse. Inflammation, and Glycation (Sugar), are two of the Four Horsemen of aging.
High Fructose Corn Syrup, table sugar, Agave Nector, maple syrup, dextrose, honey, beet sugar, are ALL THE SAME. Your body cannot distinguish one from the other, and they are all processed identically. Anyone who tells you differently is selling one of them as "better sugar."
ADDICTED TO THE ENEMY
Each of the books so far has laid out the grave flaws with popular nutritional thinking, and the agendized hucksters of the "No Fat, High Carbs (sugar)" diets. It's not fat and cholesterol that are making you fat, sick, and tired, it's sugar. Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease lays out in devastating detail, what sugar and the processed food that you eat is doing to you, and how you're damn near helpless you are to stop it. You might as well face it, you're addicted to processed food and all the sugar it delivers to your body.
In case after case, Dr. Robert Lustig documents the factors that demonstrate the addictive power of sugar. He clearly lays out how the body's response to ever increasing doses of sugar change to make you feel that you need more. The myth that "A calorie is a calorie" also is put out of its erroneous misery in Dr. Lustig's analysis. A medium pear has 102 calories, while a homemade chocolate chip cookie has only 78. But the calories from the pear come with the secret that changes completely how sugar is processed in the body.
That secret is FIBER. The more fiber in the food item, the less negative effects its sugar has on your body. But fiber is destroyed as the original food ingredients are processed into bagged and boxed products. The longer the shelf-life, the more highly processed the product. Higher processing almost always translates to more added sugar and lower overall nutritional value. Dr. Lustig takes you on a tour of food labels, their hidden information, and the steps you MUST take if you want a chance to escape the sugar addiction and its virtually inevitable path to disease.
