You’ve Been Lied to About What it Means to Be Healthy

Part 3 of “What’s in Your Life Script?”

Dr. Jason Fung is kind of the weight-loss-whisperer. He’s challenging the status quo of what it means to actually be healthy and how to really lose weight.

Things like intermittent fasting. Things like a low-carb diet to limit the production of insulin, which is basically a weight-gain hormone (in addition to keeping me alive as a Type 1 Diabetic, I mean).

Things like how your diet actually makes a difference.

100 calories from a cookie is very different from 100 calories from a meat source.

Has anyone else noticed that the Standard American Diet — full of pastries, burgers (you want fries with that?), and sweets — is abbreviated as SAD?

As in, isn’t it such a sad diet?

There’s an epidemic of obesity in this country.

Over 30% of Americans are obese, and we’ve lost sight of what it means to be at a normal weight.

In fact, over 50 years ago, the sugar industry quietly paid scientists to lie to the general public about the true cost of sugar.

Thus began a generation demonizing fat.

What Were You Taught?

I grew up on toast, potatoes, starchy soups, and pasta. That’s not to say my diet consisted entirely of carbohydrates, but it turned into a guessing game on how much insulin I’d have to give at each meal for the carbs.

I learned, from registered dieticians, that to be a healthy diabetic (and a healthy person, I guess) I’d need to strictly follow the food pyramid, and then later the MyPlate initiative.

Two out of the five are straight up carbs, while a lot of vegetables are starchy — which just means they’re carby too.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Now, this proportionality of food might work for some people.

But for me and a lot of others, it doesn’t.

I struggled for over fourteen years trying to lose weight.

It was only after learning about the keto diet and subsequently going low carb that my weight began to drop and my blood sugars began to stabilize.

What’s Your Life Script?

When I look back on my teenage years and early 20’s, I feel this kind of righteous irritation that everything I’d been told about losing weight and being healthy was wrong.

Wrong for me.

Unfortunately, registered dieticians are still required to teach what the FDA puts out, so my efforts to teach my fellow diabetics about low carb (at least at camp) is going slowly.

My script changed on January 9th, 2016, when I reached my highest weight and knew I needed to find something that actually worked.

That thing happened to be low carb.

What did you grow up believing about health and diet?