Only Results Count

I'm Russell, a 63 years old from Western Massachusetts. Throughout my adult life, until I was 50, about the only thing I struggled with was my weight. As a high school and college athlete, putting ON weight was more of a problem than ever keeping it off, but once I graduated and my exercise level went down (I was still very active) I started putting on the pounds. Diets (capital "D") worked, but like 95% of us, the effects did not last. My college weight was 145 pounds (I'm 6 feet tall, so that was pretty skinny) but it got as high as 214 in my 40s. The reason I say "Diet" (capital "D"), is that this embodies the very reason that such an approach doesn't work: we think of it as a temporary change, a bit of self-sacrifice that we can get off once we reach our goal. Then what do we do? We go back to eating the way that got us into trouble in the first place. Looked at this way, it becomes obvious why we fail. Nevertheless, I had convinced myself that because I once lost 30 pounds on the Weight-Watchers point-counting diet, I could always do it again, when I felt the need. In my 50s, my health quickly began to deteriorate. I was sent to specialist after specialist for neuropathy, earaches, heart rate irregularities, and shortness of breath. I was told that my mental lapses, memory problems, mental fog, and depression were all products of aging. I couldn't finish hikes my son and I started on. After a few days, and perhaps 50 miles, I was done. My son had to insist we stop because I clearly was struggling. I tried the WW diet again, and nothing budged. A friend kept on telling me about going Low-Carb, but I saw that as a ridiculous fad. I figured, while not all current science is correct, the conventional wisdom was the safest way to go until better information came along. It took me 10 years to realize it, but statin drugs were part of what was ruining my life. My doctor who practiced medication rather than medicine tried sending me down the prescription rabbit hole, with each new drug introducing side effects, to be treated with other drugs. I got off the statins, without her "permission" of course, and most of my medical problems went away. I took on the mantra "results count." It opened my eyes to the concept that not everything we are told is correct. I can listen to a youtube video explaining why LCHF is good and be convinced. Then I can listen to a video telling me why LCHF is dangerous, and be similarly convinced. Or why T2 Diabetes is chronic and progressive, and why it isn't. Or why low-fat diets are best to lower cholesterol, or why "high cholesterol" is a silly, pharma-invented concept. Like most of us, I don't have the medical background or expertise to know what to believe. But as an engineer who specialized in resolving intermittent system failures, I decided to apply this approach to my health. When debugging systems, I had learned that all the theorizing and explanations in the world didn't mean a thing if, armed with said theories, I tested the theory and it failed in real life. My health was still failing following the conventional wisdom. For all I knew, so would LCHF. But at least with LCHF, if it worked, I knew it would not have the shortcoming of being temporary. It seemed like something that could be maintained. The whole conventional wisdom that LCHF is unsustainable I knew on the face of it made no sense, since it is not a diet of deprivation, but rather a lifestyle choice, Atkins to veganism in the sense that it meant avoiding certain foods, but choosing from literally thousands of others. So it was time to measure and test. When I saw a video predicting that if I cut out sugars, I would likely lose about 14 pounds, I cut out sugars. At first, keeping sugars to under 50 gms/day was tough, until I learned better how to do it. Now my sugar consumption, from all sources, is under 10 gms/day, usually around 5 from natural sources such as carrot slices in a salad. I lost 14 lbs. Then it stalled. But at least I had a successful data point. A Doctor on youtube explained the science, made a prediction, I tested it, and it happened. I learned more about LCHF diet, and next cut out starches. I bought an Elliptical machine (affectionately called my "Hamster Machine") during the pandemic so I could still exercise regularly even when my employer (at my urging) shut down the exercise center. My weight continued to drop, though by this time, that was not my primary goal. Even so, it was a welcome result. My weight stabilized at 174 pounds, down 32 from when I started the experiment. And after three years, I was having no problem sticking with the lifestyle. I would ask on websites and youtube comments, partly facetiously, when the "not sustainable" part of LCHF would kick in. I was accused of lying about staying on it by some. I was warned of all the dire health consequences. In one comment war, I mentioned that I really didn't do it for weight loss, I did it to avoid Type 2 diabetes. (I was "prediabetic" when I started.) I was told that was the wrong way to go about avoiding diabetes. I should instead eat brown rice and whole-grain bread. By this time, I knew enough that the only advantages those items held over their "white" counterparts were micronutrients, while it was the macronutrient content that was of concern. One person insisted that a non-diabetic person could easily handle "healthy sugars." I would like to have asked what the chemical formula for a healthy sugar was, as opposed to an unhealthy sugar, but the forum did not lend itself to that. Clearly, another person is confusing micro and macro nutrients, and thinking that the micronutrient content of an item could overcome an unhealthy macronutrient content. (Don't get me wrong, I, of course, appreciate the importance of proper micronutrients.) At age 63, 2 months before I wrote this, I embarked on a 566-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail, carrying a pack between 25 and 40 pounds (depending on the state of my food and water supplies - it was a dry season and I often had to haul 15 pounds of water over several miles), averaging 100 miles/week. I took only 3 days off (out of 40), one to visit a friend and 2 to recover from ankle injuries. Compare this to my experience in my 50s when I couldn't even hike 50 miles. I believe it was a result of getting these 4 S's out of my life: sugar, starch, statins, and stress. How much was due to the "Keto" diet and how much from dropping statins? I really don't know. Honestly, I've never been concerned about whether I was in ketosis or not. I simply live this way now and look at the results. My 566 mile hike was 3.5 times as long as any I had done on a single trip before. My Trigs/HDL ratio dropped from a whopping 7.4 to a reasonable 2.1 (so far.) My hba1c dropped from 5.9 to 5.1. My sugar, which was at 160 an hour after breakfast, was last measured at 120 during an OGTT. All these things can improve and I believe they will do so with time. So people can tell me all they want (and they have) how LCHF is not sustainable, will have no impact on T2D, will ruin my health, will clog my arteries, and will leave me unable to exercise. I have found none of this to be true. Only results count.