The First Article I Ever Wrote

Submitted by Dana on Sat, 2010-07-10 16:05

I've had another busy day. I went up to Indianapolis with my darling friend Virginia, to go to the consignment shops. I had a of clothes to get rid of. The trip was part success, part failure: On the one hand, the consignment shop only wanted about half my stuff, and they wanted me to take it all home, wash it all (it was clean to begin with) and iron it, then re-hang it, and drive the 90 minutes back there. I'm thinking eBay instead. On the other hand, I got a few really nice things, including a totally spiffy Panama hat I'm wearing this instant.

So here it is, 5 pm, and we have a pal coming over to watch a movie at 7, and the house is a wreck. I've got to clean!

All this, by way of explaining why you get a reprint today. But not just any reprint: This is the first article I ever wrote for Lowcarbezine!, in November 1999. I liked it then; I like it now. Hope you like it, too.

Surely you know the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, strength to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This is a very important prayer for
those of us seeking to improve our bodies.

On the one hand, I've heard people claim that since obese people don't necessarily eat more than slim ones, and the regain rate for diets is over 95%, changing your eating habits is useless, and you shouldn't even try. Nonsense! If what we ate had nothing to do with what we weigh, there wouldn't be varying obesity rates from state to state, and between socio-economic classes, and people from other countries wouldn't start getting fat when they moved here and adopted our sugar-and-white-flour saturated diet. And the regain rate is largely attributable to people going on a diet with the idea that they will lose the weight and then go off the diet. If you go back to eating the way you used to eat, you will go back to weighing what you used to weigh, no question about it.

On the other hand, it's important to know what you can change through diet and exercise, and what you cannot. I have lost 50 pounds, and I'm edging into a size 10! But I seriously doubt I will ever fit into a size 6; I'm simply not built for it. I'm short and stocky, with a big ribcage and The World's Shortest Waist (Thanks, Dad! ;-D ) All the diet and exercise in the world will not make me a tall, delicate, willowy girl. If I told myself, "It's all useless, since I'll never look like Cindy Crawford", I could let myself get back up to 190 pounds very, very fast. Instead, I'm thrilled with what I have been able to change!

Be the best you you can be, work on what you do have control over, and don't worry about what you can't change.

I'll add one more line: Be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what you can change and what you cannot -- and what's worth it to you.

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First article

Submitted by sandy lee on Mon, 2010-07-12 08:58.

Very wise words, then and now. Funny I started LC in 1999 and lost about 50 pounds, became a believer (and I subscribed to you and loved your book then), I had Healthy Cholesterol levels, normal blood pressure, started running, felt and looked the best I Ever Had (age 48)!!! Held it too for over 5 years, then foolish me, I started slipping back into the evil lure of the carb, got cocky, thought I could control it all - and now here I am - 20 pounds to lose Again - andI am doing it LC !!
Thnk GOD it is only 20 and Thank GOD you are still here for me!!

Most of the slim people just

Submitted by nonegiven on Sun, 2010-07-11 10:52.

Most of the slim people just burn up the excess carbs because their metabolisms work that way, the lucky ones will keep working that way as they get older.
It isn't realistic for me to expect I'll ever be 107 pounds again, I was underweight at the time and thought I was still fat. It isn't realistic that I'll ever weigh 133 lbs again which is where I started trying to lose weight and actually was on the slim side of normal. It probably isn't realistic that I'll ever be 'normal' weight again according to the BMI scale, which was changed and overnight I went from a few pounds overweight to dead center in the middle of overweight.
I hope it's realistic that if I ever get my hormones straightened out, I'll at least be able to lose a little more and not start gaining again. I did lose almost 90 pounds over a couple of years just by eating the amounts and stuff my blood sugar meter said I could after I was diagnosed with diabetes at an A1c of 12.3%. It dropped to 5.5% in 4 months. But after I cut carbs to a much lower level and dropped several pounds of mostly water in a few weeks people expressed concern about my weight loss even though I had just finally dropped below obese into the overweight category. I let them get to me and gained some back and yoyoed for several years. Now with my thyroid screwed up I don't see even getting back to where I was then. Right now I'm just grateful that I can get back into my 18w clothes. All this time when I have gained and lost weight my A1c has never gone higher than 6% and has been as low as 5.2% OTOH TSH went from 2.54 to 10.85 in the last 6 years.