I leave the sugar and carbohydrates and accidentally dropped 10 kg

A few weeks ago, I was at a reception and a friend that I had not seen in person for some time and said: "I hope you go ask, but have you lost? "

" Um, yes, I have a little bit. "I said.

"Oh," she said. "I hope it was OK to ask."

"No, it's good!" I said. "It's not like I had cancer, and as far as I know, I do not have cancer, I just changed my diet."

READ MORE
* What sugar does to the brain
* The moral argument to stop sugar
* Follow a ketogenic diet
* What's wrong? you need to know about a low carb diet

Late at night, after spending an hour or so wondering if I actually had cancer, I thought a little more to this interaction. I had lost weight; In recent months, I had lost almost 10 pounds. I had not been fat before I changed my diet – well, let me clarify that; I had not been * noticeably * fat before starting my diet. But I was much heavier than before. I had spent my twenties lean, stuck apparently permanently on 75 kilos. At 187cm tall, I told myself that it was a license to eat everything I liked, so I did, taking mainly food groups based on sugar and cold cuts. Once I reached 30, the ladder started climbing, and by the time I started a diet, I weighed 87 kilos. It's really not that heavy, in the plan of things, but it's enough to make me feel not quite myself.

That was not why I started the diet.

My wife has migraine headaches, and she has done so ever since she was a teenager. They have varied in intensity and frequency, but in recent years they have worsened in all measurements.

A migraine, for anyone who has never had one, or does not know one, is almost a slow movement crisis rather than a simple headache. A regularly afflicted person – a migraineur – may experience a number of symptoms ranging from relatively simple excruciating pain to fun things like blindness, loss of sensation, loss of speaking ability and even partial mimicry. Migraines are cruel things and the people who live with them (18 percent of women, 6 percent of men) while working and raising children and all the other things that include spending the day should receive a medal for their bravery .

At worst, Louise received migraines every other day.

There are not enough medals to do it like that.

I wanted to help, more than anything, but I felt useless. The neck frictions and ibuprofen late at night were as much as I could handle. When she had a headache in Paris at the Louvre, the best I could do was sit in a cafe with her and caress her back while doing my best to learn the sentence, "I'm sorry I do not speak French, but my "If you help me find a doctor", from Google Translate.

It's after our return from overseas that curiosity and a random recommendation from the Kindle's have read a book titled The Case Against Sugar, by medical journalist Gary Taubes.The book's thesis was, by and large, that a large part of the "diseases of civilization" – heart disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes – could more likely be related to sugar consumption than other lifestyle factors (often fat consumption) .d traditionally been linked to.

At the same time, Louise's neurologist had just recommended a new medicine for migraine, which had unfortunate side effects. She was worried about taking it, as other preventive measures quickly became ineffective. When I looked for it online, I realized that it was an anti-epileptic drug.

A combination of reading that I had made had to chart a new path in my brain, and the word "crisis" was distinguishable, as it was surrounded by a slight aura arc -wavering sky.

I remembered something I had read a long time ago: there was a treatment for epilepsy called a ketogenic diet. It had been commonly used before the development of effective drugs against epilepsy. If a diet can help control seizures, could it be the same for migraines?

I did some research on Google, and I found several research papers suggesting that this might be the case.

The problem was that I was not really sure if what I was reading was true or not. I was raised in an anti-science diet, seasoned with creationism and anti-vaccination rhetoric. The effect was the opposite of that expected and now I am deeply, deeply suspicious of anything that seems to conflict with medical orthodoxy. Now, I was reading a tip that I had never heard from a doctor – that a diet rich in "good" fat and low carb could possibly help what I thought to be a completely insoluble problem – and I did not like that. I was at the bottom of a sea of ​​information that I was not at all qualified to evaluate. How different was an infamous anti-vax absorbent from Natural News? * Not really, said a voice in my head.

Then again, says another voice, it has long been established that migraines are related to diet. Food and drink triggers are well known among migraineurs. Other things were lining up. I had found a Reddit forum for ketogenic dieters, called r / keto. People there used it to lose weight. Many had started obese or diabetic and reported on the effectiveness of diet with incredible attention to detail, including blood tests before and after.

A number of them had also reported the disappearance of their migraines.

I still felt unskilled, because I was, but I spoke to Louise, and we went with our instinct. We would try one month to see if it would make a difference.

That's right.

This was not a cure. But the first time in years, my wife started going up to a week, or more, without a severe headache. She even decreased her existing anti-migraine medication. When a headache appeared, he responded better than ever to over-the-counter pain medications. We kept a strict journal for a month, to make sure we were not prey to wishful thinking. We were not there. The diet helped more than anything else has ever had.

What I did not expect, that 's what happened to me.

After a few days of depression we expected, called "keto-flu", I started to feel good. The 15h slowdowns that I had since I was a teenager, where I could barely stay awake most afternoons, have disappeared. The gas and bloating after the meal disappeared. I did not really miss what I ate before. It was hard not to eat bread when I could still have bacon and eggs.

Eating more fat and less carbohydrate had the seemingly paradoxical effect of melting my own fat. I did not go to the gym or exercise more often than I had, but it was gone. And he continued, even when we finished the strict keto diet and continued on a much lenient diet, but still low in carbohydrates.

Societal ideals aside, I like being slimmer. It seems very obvious, but I feel lighter, more myself.

I learned that New Zealand's low carbohydrate load was led by Professor Grant Schofield, professor of public health at the AUT. He, along with a dietician and a chef, had co-authored a book with the excellent title of WTF: What The Fat; How to live the ultimate Low-Carb, HEALTH-Fat lifestyle, and it's turned out that he was one of the strongest voices calling for a reduction in sugar consumption at home. National scale. I've also picked up "Low Carb Every Day", a book published by CSIRO, the acclaimed Australian scientific research institute, which was less optimistic about fat intake, but which still advocated strongly to reduce carbohydrate consumption.

All this enlightenment was great, and it made me angry, mainly on behalf of 1 in 3 adults in New Zealand who are medically obese. It's a little shit, is not it, if the currently available consulting firm was able to manage to maintain a "healthy weight" – just eat less, the sugar is OK in moderation, the other carbohydrates are good, avoid fats, do more exercise – is not just fake, but crazily counterproductive? Because, for all that I have not had a lot of trouble for more than 80 percent of the time, the diet we did is not so easy. This amounts to eating mostly fresh vegetables and meat, and this is not cheap in terms of money or time. When we were in Keto, I spent almost all my free hours in the kitchen. Many families could not afford this luxury.

We act as if eating "properly" was only a matter of will, whereas it is actually a confluence of education and privileges. If you put aside the scientific discussion on fat that is slowly resolving, almost all health authorities are in agreement on one thing; that in the quantities we consume, sugar is almost poisonous. New Zealanders consume an impressive 37 teaspoons of added sugar per person * per day *, more than six times the limit recommended by the World Health Organization.

The problem is that this sugary junk food is not just a takeaway; it's damn close to everything that comes in a package. Foods that scream "98 percent fat free!" on the label are, almost always, full of added sugar. Not knowing it, many of us are turning to settings controlled by the food industry as "health stars" that ultimately mean worse than nothing. The only way to evaluate the safety of a processed food or its lack is to read the label; the small fine print table on the back. A family that is struggling to find money to feed the children will probably not have the time to do it. They will buy what is cheap, or practical, and these are mostly carbohydrates.

For years, people have maintained the cruel myth that people are obese because they are not exercising, or that they are just lazy, and it is safe. proves that this is just not true. The real problem is that we have somehow built a society where changing your diet for the most part cutting out junk food and sugar is considered almost impossible.

My wife and I are happy to have changed our eating habits. Many people do not have this privilege. What started as a good story to help reduce chronic pain while losing weight turned into a hidden system discovery that cruelly weighed against time and / or money poor, as well as uneducated people.

We lost weight, but we became aware.

I would have just liked to know what to do with it.

Josh's Dietary Tips

Wanting to give a boost to a low-carbohydrate diet? The principle is easy, even if the execution is not: avoid sugar and processed foods; instead, eat fresh vegetables, meat and fruits. Vegetarians can do it too. Vegans are probably going to have more trouble. If you give it a try, avoid supermarkets like the plague because they sell everything you want to avoid and they overload for the basics. Instead, try to attend local grocers and butchers. The night I wrote this, my local supermarket was selling zucchini for a ridiculous price of $ 12.99 per pound. I was able to get them in Fresho for half of that. This rule also seems to apply to regions.

Josh's Reading List

• The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes
  Academic, long, overwhelming.
• What The Fat by Grand Schofield, Dr. Caryn Zinn and Craig Rodger
  Well presented information, and some of the best recipes I've ever tried
• CSIRO Low-Carb Everyday ] by Professor Grant Brinkworth and Pennie Taylor
  More good information, but the recipes are not so delicious

                
                     – Sunday Magazine