LOL

I hear you. I've taken a bit of slack about it too. Poeple who know me aren't bad because they can see my health improving, online is a different story. LOL

EbonyDahlia wrote: »

People are idiots. I still remember the pimply 17yo at the checkout in the supermarket frowning and me and telling me "All that animal protein and fat is not good for you" (my trolley was full of meat, cheese, cream cheese, pate etc - no processed food). I bet he had cereal for breakfast.

Lol. I posted a steak with butter on it. My sister posted "that is going to kill you, Jess (sad face)"

Seriously, has no one been paying attention to the medical studies that have been published in the last 10 years?!

I have to be honest here. I'm a newbie, so this is all foreign to me. I understand the basics and tried to explain it to my boyfriend. I sent him some info off the launch pad to help him understand better what he could do for himself and to help me. I enjoy reading the post as each one teaches me something new.

bluefish86 wrote: »

Seriously, has no one been paying attention to the medical studies that have been published in the last 10 years?!

Considering they haven't been paying attention to the medical studies that have been published on the matter in the last 75 years and the lesser research of the past 150 years or so.... no, they haven't.

I think the medical community is catching up bit by bit though. I couldn't get my husband to go back on LC no matter how I begged, pleaded, and showed him all the good things about it. It took his Dr. telling him if he wanted to live past his 40's he had to do something and that LC was his best bet. This after 5 years ago same Dr. criticizing the both of us on the Atkins diet we were doing then.

He won't read any of the books himself and I pretty much have to answer a dozen or so, "Can I have this?' questions per day, but that's fine. He's sticking with it and doing well. I can't wait till they redo his blood tests again in a few months.

No honestly it really is the worst haha. I had to respond to this one myself:

"In fact, quite apart from its unpleasant side-effects, ketosis is by definition unsustainable, because eventually your body would run out of fat. You needed 2 diets, one to lose weight, then another to keep it off (because the first diet would eventually kill you)."

Ha. Hahaha. We should all be dead.

chaoticdreams wrote: »

I think the medical community is catching up bit by bit though. I couldn't get my husband to go back on LC no matter how I begged, pleaded, and showed him all the good things about it. It took his Dr. telling him if he wanted to live past his 40's he had to do something and that LC was his best bet. This after 5 years ago same Dr. criticizing the both of us on the Atkins diet we were doing then.

He won't read any of the books himself and I pretty much have to answer a dozen or so, "Can I have this?' questions per day, but that's fine. He's sticking with it and doing well. I can't wait till they redo his blood tests again in a few months.

My husband was like that. Even tho he's a nurse and he wanted me (a diabetic) to cut sugar and carbs, he couldn't wrap his brain around fat being good. He has some heart surgeon friends and they were always telling him half their patients have low fat diets and are "trim". The way I got through to him was watching Fathead in youtube (we have the ability to run it through the tv). My kids even passed through the room and sat down and watched the whole thing without me asking them to. The guy who did Fathead is a comedian so it's comedy too (yet clean), and entertaining. It sparked something in him to research it himself and now he's totally LCHF like me.

Dragonwolf wrote: »

:noway:

Because, you can't just...ya know...eat more food...

That one literally made my head hurt. You, deary, have won the internet for the day.

Oy! I told him to stop making statements about that which he doesn't understand.

chaoticdreams wrote: »

I think the medical community is catching up bit by bit though. I couldn't get my husband to go back on LC no matter how I begged, pleaded, and showed him all the good things about it. It took his Dr. telling him if he wanted to live past his 40's he had to do something and that LC was his best bet. This after 5 years ago same Dr. criticizing the both of us on the Atkins diet we were doing then.

He won't read any of the books himself and I pretty much have to answer a dozen or so, "Can I have this?' questions per day, but that's fine. He's sticking with it and doing well. I can't wait till they redo his blood tests again in a few months.

Lol you poor thing, you have a man child too? Does he make a pouty face when you tell him "no, you can't have that, it's got too many carbs"?

MiamiDawn wrote: »

I am always amazed by people that tell me that I won't be able to sustain a diet like keto. I have family members some of which are nurses and they constantly tell me that LCHF is not healthy nor sustainable. I'm getting pretty good at tuning them out.

Hubby is a why do you buy that cream cheese, peanut butter, herb cheese spread, fish spread, whatever, if you can't have crackers, bagel, bread to go with it kind of guy. He's finally starting to come around because he sees what I've accomplished with the changes I've made - he still cringes when we're at a steak restaurant and I ask for butter, butter, and extra butter on the side. Not to mention the look I get from the waiter - as if to say geez, you're fat enough you don't need butter. Most times I can ignore it, but sometimes I can get a little snarky.

I hear you! I get those looks too! Better watch it. You're affecting your tip.

MiamiDawn wrote: »

I am always amazed by people that tell me that I won't be able to sustain a diet like keto. I have family members some of which are nurses and they constantly tell me that LCHF is not healthy nor sustainable. I'm getting pretty good at tuning them out.

Hubby is a why do you buy that cream cheese, peanut butter, herb cheese spread, fish spread, whatever, if you can't have crackers, bagel, bread to go with it kind of guy. He's finally starting to come around because he sees what I've accomplished with the changes I've made - he still cringes when we're at a steak restaurant and I ask for butter, butter, and extra butter on the side. Not to mention the look I get from the waiter - as if to say geez, you're fat enough you don't need butter. Most times I can ignore it, but sometimes I can get a little snarky.

What always amazes me is when people (especially doctors) tell me that I won't be able to sustain it. Uh...hello? I've been doing it to one degree or another for around 3 years now... Am I 100% perfect with it? No. It's my way of eating, not some diet where I'll beat myself up for a week if I stray from it. Besides, my body makes it very clear that I've "done wrong" when I eat stuff I shouldn't, so it's self-reinforcing. Unfortunately, people don't seem to grasp that concept. :ohwell:

Let me play devil's advocate for the docs for a minute. Yes, I've been low carb roughly 18 months, and I've had several docs tell me "good job, you're losing weight, but Atkins is not sustainable" over and over. The reason they say that is so many ppl don't stick to it. And I think a huge part of that is our society is so procarb.

It's hard to find restaurants that have decent low carb food without hidden carbs. Every single thing you buy in the US with nutritional data defines normal as 300 carbs a day right on the packaging. Our entire dieting subculture is still relying on an outdated belief that fat makes you fat. It's prolly ten times (or more) easier to find "low fat" labeled items at the grocery store than "low carb" - even tho science is showing us sugar/carbs is the real enemy.

So, it's an uphill battle. On every front. Is it any wonder ppl get tired of fighting it and lapse? If you are standing up for low carb you are often standing out there alone. Eventually the science won't be able to be ignored.

jessicatroberts wrote: »

Let me play devil's advocate for the docs for a minute. Yes, I've been low carb roughly 18 months, and I've had several docs tell me "good job, you're losing weight, but Atkins is not sustainable" over and over. The reason they say that is so many ppl don't stick to it. And I think a huge part of that is our society is so procarb.

It's hard to find restaurants that have decent low carb food without hidden carbs. Every single thing you buy in the US with nutritional data defines normal as 300 carbs a day right on the packaging. Our entire dieting subculture is still relying on an outdated belief that fat makes you fat. It's prolly ten times (or more) easier to find "low fat" labeled items at the grocery store than "low carb" - even tho science is showing us sugar/carbs is the real enemy.

So, it's an uphill battle. On every front. Is it any wonder ppl get tired of fighting it and lapse? If you are standing up for low carb you are often standing out there alone. Eventually the science won't be able to be ignored.

Actually, I'd argue it's the inverse -- people don't stick to it, because they hear over and over and over that it's unsustainable. Tell someone often enough, from enough different directions, that they're going to fail and eventually they'll start to believe it.

There's certainly a learning curve to eating out, but it's really not that hard. Base your meals around grilled meat and grilled/steamed/raw non-starchy vegetables, and you'll do quite well, actually.

If people actually had some encouragement -- especially from their doctors -- then they probably wouldn't be so prone to lapsing.

newmeadow wrote: »

It's worth pointing out too that these alternative and nontraditional doctors almost never accept insurance and charge $300 an hour with follow up appointments, which last only 15 minutes, costing around $150. All diagnostic testing, labs and non traditional medication is also paid for out of pocket which cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Who can really afford that? This treatment is for the privileged, not the common folk.

These nontraditionalists practice alternative medicine for profit and they're making plenty of money. The well known ones have long waiting lists just to get an appointment. They live in the same neighborhoods, in the same big houses as traditional M.D.s and pay the full tuition to send their kids to the best schools. They offer something different but they're not exactly more altruistic in their business models.

I'm a nurse working in a very mainstream setting and it's my belief that the food eaten is the best predictor of health and disease that there is.

This....isn't really accurate...

Tests run through LabCorp, at least, are often covered under insurance (provided the insurance covers labs done through them), as long as they're prescribed by a licensed medical professional, regardless of who it is.

Also, the alternative/non-conventional medicine doctors spend far, far longer than 15 minutes with patients even at followups. Most spend half an hour or more, and the initial (non-followup) visits often spend an hour with their patients. Additionally, as long as the doctor is licensed in the state they're practicing in, their services can be covered by insurance, but you have to file the paperwork yourself. This is one of the keys to allowing them to spend 30-60 minutes with their patients. Even 15 minutes, though, is more than I've ever gotten with a conventional, non-specialist doctor, which has always averaged 7-10 minutes, at best.

Finally, the quality of care and attention to patient needs is often significantly higher in these offices, because the staff don't have to spend all of their time cramming as many patients into each day as humanly possible and dealing with the paperwork accordingly. This allows patients to stop/write/call in without appointments and ask questions if they have any.

Also, I don't think anyone said anything about altruism being higher among conventional vs non-conventional doctors. I've little doubt that the integrative doctor that my son sees lives in one of the $400k+ houses in one of the nicer neighborhoods here. You know what, though? He deserves it. Unlike the other two or three doctors my son has seen in his five years, the integrative one is the only one that's actually done more good than harm to him. The others have just pumped him full of antibiotics or, when they couldn't do that, just shrug their shoulders and basically tell me that I was crazy for insisting that something more was going on that was causing the issues we were seeing and I wanted more tests/investigation done. They didn't even so much as mention the idea of referring to a specialist (even when he really should have been referred to an ENT, especially the time when they put him on a different antibiotic, because it was too soon after the last one; unfortunately, it wasn't until the one after that that I found out about the ear infection referral rule of thumb, and after that one, he stopped having them altogether). That doesn't even get into the issues I've personally had with conventional doctors and trying to get more help than "join Weight Watchers."

Yes, I'm fortunate enough to have the money to make these kinds of fights and to not necessarily require insurance to pay for everything up front. The problem I have with the current system is that this shouldn't be a requirement for quality care. And yes, I consider not being decades behind a requirement for any professional I work with, especially when my life and my health are in their hands. I also expect them to be able to say "this is out of my league, here's a referral to someone who specializes in this," without me having to fight for it or go around them entirely.

The underlying problem isn't the doctors, though. For the most part, I do think most of them really do care. Their hands are tied by the system they're a part of, though. The system, itself, is broken.