What a long strange trip it's been...

 A 62-year-old father of five, now a grandfather of five as well. Married forever, spent up until 78 years ago chasing dollar bills, which typically entailed me either working 16 hours a day for myself or someone else. The result was a lifestyle that quickly devolved into fast, cheap, calories of sugary crap and carry-out. At our worst, my wife and I were ordering delivery or picking up dinner 4 or 5 times a week, and fresh vegetables were generally relegated to whatever could be added to a deli sandwich. I had been an athlete all through school, then a SERE Instructor in the Air Force, where (and this is the ultimate irony/ignominy as it relates to my recent head slap moment ) we routinely subjected ourselves to extended fasts in the field - 'cuz real hunter-gathering existence, in the bush not of our own choosing, is not quite as simple as Bear Grylis's fake ass show would have you believe, but I digress. Several joint traumas conspired to continue decreasing my flexibility as I got older and basically just worked myself to a physical nub ('cuz we gotta make da money, and there's never enough). Eventually, I became a self-employed small business consultant, and my last client, a company that fabricated all sorts of custom casework, exhibits, and all sorts of interesting stuff, inadvertently poisoned me. I was working 16-18 hours a day, 6-7 days a week in an environment where I was exposed to a toxic soup of VOC's, and several heavy metals (lead, mercury & cadmium), the latter primarily from plastics that were routinely routed, ground, and sawed right outside of my workspace. Meanwhile, eating more and more like a goat (McDonald's or Arbie's drive-thru in the morning, and again on the way home at night), I continued adding to an already developing layer of visceral fat and aggravating all of my assorted joint issues. Oh, plus I was still smoking at the time, about a half pack a day (made all of the VOC's taste better I suppose). By the time I got my final wake-up call, I was 6'1, 270 lbs., and I'd run out of breath just climbing a half flight of stairs in our split-level to go to bed. Of course, I also relied on a double Scotch or three, or maybe a few bottles of IPA to take the edge off once I got home and tried to go to sleep. One fine day my peripheral nerves had died off to a point where I couldn't tell how hard I was squeezing a tool or a pen, and so I started just dropping stuff for no good reason. Then the cough started, and finally chest pains and trouble breathing with that elephant that was always sitting on my chest. All of that still wasn't enough to chase me out of work and off to the doctor until I was coughing up blood and literally couldn't remember my name, at which point someone finally made the decision for me and hauled me off to an urgent care center. Their original diagnosis was lung cancer (based on an X-ray reading by a jackass P.A. who had zero business interpreting my X-ray) but they referred me to a local E.R. At the E.R. (one where one of my sons-in-law is now employed) I discovered that they knew nothing of environmental toxins or heavy metals beyond lead, and more importantly, they had no idea or kit to test for things like cadmium poisoning, but again, I digress. My condition continued worsening even after leaving the place where I was exposed. Turns out our bodies will only take so much, and when we finally reach a point where they can't take anymore, they just quit. My total symptom package included Alzheimer's-like working memory fail, balance, and vertigo issues (I would just fall over for no reason without warning - I discovered one day as I crashed into a stack of aquariums). I had a Parkinson's-like tremor that manifested in my arms and legs, and my sensory nerves were all pretty much kaput. Couldn't taste or smell much of anything, but my already diminished hearing had gotten considerably worse, and my vision had begun to deteriorate beyond the usual getting older stuff. Sleep was fitful, appetite was still there, but the food's no fun when you can't taste it, so I stayed home and started cooking again. Almost forgot, I was also consuming probably a two-liter bottle of diet Pepsi a day as well, and along the way had begun to experience terrible foot pain from what my PCP diagnosed as plantar fasciitis. Custom orthotics helped, but not enough, so the good doctor prescribed Viox. When that didn't work, he doubled the dose to twice the recommended therapeutic level (I believe 200 mg), and yet, still no demonstrable relief. Just before my body had reached its toxic limit a relative with Type 2 Diabetes (now deceased as a result of death by food, but that's another story) shared an article that outed the sweetener as a likely culprit. Quit the soda and within days I experienced the last foot pain. So, the occupational medicine, neurology, hematology, cardiovascular, and I can't even remember what else specialists all managed to remain stumped in their diagnoses, but that didn't stop them from prescribing more pills for me. I don't recall the entire regimen, but the process is all the same. One was an Alzheimer's protocol, another was some sort of blood thinner, a statin, of course, and the more I took, the worse my back pain, and when they first started treating me THAT was one of the only things that weren't bothering me!. Then my gut (mainly right side just above my belt) started giving me pain, and all of my old joint injuries continued to worsen, swell, and just become a general cacophony of rotating pains. One day one would feel better, but then something else would be worse, but not to worry - those and all of my new drug complications all had another pill to be had. Eventually, I realized that the only thing they were accomplishing was killing whatever was left of my liver and kidneys, so I quit everything all at once and began to focus exclusively on eliminating everything I could from my diet and my environment, which I thought could be making me sick. Everything that is except for carbs. I did cut out all fast food and carry-out or delivery crud, and I no longer allowed any kind of soda in the house, but that was quickly replaced with homemade iced tea. My uber skinny wife insisted on a full cup of sugar in a gallon of tea, which even I couldn't drink, so we eventually compromised on a third of a cup, which she then would add more to anytime I wasn't looking, so I finally resorted to nothing but black coffee (my preference since the service) and water. We had an organic garden and orchard where we raised pretty much everything; from blueberries, raspberries, currants, grapes, and kiwi, to enough apples, pears, and stone fruits to feed half the neighborhood. We bought a couple of ducks and some Rhode Island Reds and soon began to enjoy the most marvelous eggs that we'd ever dreamed of. Meanwhile, I bought a used stepper treadmill (a stair machine that is also a treadmill) and cut my caloric intake to less than 800 calories a day. I worked up to 45 minutes a day on the stair/treadmill at its highest setting and then began lifting free weights on alternating days. Then I added a recumbent cycle machine and a rowing machine for some variety in my aerobics. At the height of my insanity, I was dropping over two pounds a day, and that in and of itself became a sick sort of addiction/obsessive-compulsive disorder. My wife loved the new me at first, as I dropped from a 38 waist to a 36, then a 34, but when I hit 32 she began to refer to me as "the death camp survivor" (with all apologies to anyone who's family members actually experienced that). I still fell over for no good reason, and I was still turning on a pot of water to boil and then going outside to mow the lawn, or putting my house keys in the microwave and tossing my dirty socks in the toilet, but damn it - I was lookin' good (or so I thought). Anyway, it didn't last too long. I bought my wife a cruise vacation that she had been wanting, and I can't really think of a worse place to spend ten days, especially if you don't like to gamble but your partner does. There was literally nothing to do but eat, get drunk watching my wife blow lots of money that I had just about killed myself trying to earn or well, eat some more. I mean what the hell, isn't that what vacations are for? Yeah, so by the time we got home the old eating habits had been reborn, I had regained about 15 pounds, wasn't smoking or drinking soda, but beer, wine, and Scotch were still on the menu. Along the way, kids were growing up and leaving home, getting married, and starting out on their own adventure, so when it was just down to us and one of our youngest, we decided to move to a more rural setting near some of my wife's family to further scratch our agricultural itch and put a little more distance between us and the maddening crowds of outer fringe suburbia. We ended up two left turns past the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, my cognitive issues improved slightly, but the dropping of all of the prescriptive poisons almost immediately relieved my back pain (kidneys). I still had all sorts of other issues, but the tremors began to abate somewhat, and my lungs improved dramatically. We also began opting out of more and more processed foods, but holidays were always a backslide, complete with me baking too many pies and cookies - 'cuz that's what ya do for the ones ya love - poison them with sugar. Also during this time, I continued to pile on the pounds, and while my joints kept worsening, I had stopped taking all meds except for an occasional Ibuprofen (but that at 800 mg, so it didn't take many). I am in the VA medical system, so when I finally decided to visit them for the first time on my 60th birthday, they informed me that my pre-diabetes had evolved into full-blown Type 2, and that my A1C was a horrific 6.3, and that I was going to die of a heart attack or stroke before I left the building if I didn't begin an immediate regimen of Metformin and the ubiquitous statin. That day was the first of many where I and the VA medical system experienced divergence of views. Semi-fortunately, my team doctor was a very reticent Asian man whose religious beliefs have kept him a practicing vegetarian, so he was bizarrely prescribing crap that he himself would never take, but such was his job, and I guess everybody has a mortgage to pay (but not me, thankfully). I plead my case against taking his magic beans, insisting that I could and would whip this with diet and nutrition, and we agreed that if my efforts failed that I would then consider taking his snake oil. I made it clear that I wasn't going to take the pills, but that I was interested in the glucose monitoring kit. Problem is, the VA will only provide that (and resupply the test strips) if you submit to their pharmaceutical regimen. So they basically blackmail you into taking their drugs. I agreed just to get the test kit. Three months later I return for another set of fasting labs and a few days later we meet to review. I had dropped about ten pounds (from 275lbs to 265lbs, through caloric intake reduction, but then I plateaued for some reason - lol). The doctor was ecstatic because he had sent me a three-month supply of Metformin through the mail along with the test kit, and he wrongly assumed right from the start that I had taken them, and well, I hadn't. I let him talk for a few moments before pulling the giant bottle of pills out and setting it down before him, label intact and still unopened. He refused to believe me that I had managed to bring my A1C down at all, much less by more than a full point. Looking back now, it was ludicrously idiotic, but I was happy to take the wind out of his sails all the same. He congratulated me, I promised that I was gonna lose more weight, and we scheduled a follow-up for 6 months down the road. Then the virus hit. We raise even more of our own food now, plus I was making beer and homemade soft drinks (ginger beer, birch beer, etc., all with sugar of course), and I was now developing a juicing habit with all of our new orchard's fruit. Dried fruit, juiced fruit, it's all good 'cuz I licked Type 2 Diabetes, so now it's time to celebrate, but in a good and healthy way, because whoever died from having too much organic fruit? Yeah... This was made all the worse by the fact that having a background in survival training, COVID had me in immediate Armageddon mode. Back when the orange chimp was telling everyone that it was all a hoax and it was going to just disappear, like a miracle, I was already out buying masks and fresh air respirators, Tyvek suits, and gloves. Not to the extent of stripping shelves bare and hoarding, but I was a man with a plan. We had long ago gotten big into canning, dehydrating, and fermenting our surplus harvest, and we keep two freezers pretty full with dead animal parts, and everything was spotlessly organic, right down to our ancient wheat and rye berries. Along with all of the other self-sustainability, I had become quite the accomplished home baker, and my affliction is that if you're gonna bake, do it right or not at all. So I had added a set of grain mills and early on in the pandemic, had my organic feed grain supplier provide me with a couple of barrels of his best corn, spelt, wheat, rye, and I can't even remember the rest, but one thing was for sure; this might be the end of days, but I'm going out eating pizza, or homemade pasta... or maybe just a big old baguette in one hand and some pastured pork BBQ on a Kaiser roll in the other. My next doctor's appointment came and went as the nearest VA clinic shut down and the next closest was two hours away where I'd be surrounded by developmentally disabled idiots who won't wear a mask as some weird sort of "Hey, I'm a moron" political statement. We had everything that we needed to survive whatever may come, so I was just focused on maintaining our bubble. The only problem was that throughout the process, and up until recently, when I finally was able to get vaccinated, I resolved the ensuing boredom and isolation by eating everything in sight, because nothing could go to waste. Yup, I had a million rationalizations for all of the crap that I shoved in my pie hole, for over a year. And then, in the month before going in for a new set of labs, I decided that maybe I should make a few changes, just in case that Diabetes thing wasn't quite dead. Well, it turns out that in a contest of will and persistence, Type 2 Diabetes and my pancreas will whoop me every time. It was like I was going for the record. My 5,0 A1C had blossomed into a delightful 10.3. My weight was up to 279lbs (I wish, but it sounds better than the 282lbs that it really was). and I could barely walk, my hip was so inflamed. I had taken a long, long drive during the pandemic (1,200 miles straight through) to help a sick friend - spent three sleepless days and nights caring for him, then straight back home and into the emergency room with DVT. They gave me a new drug that I took half the prescribed dose of for three days and the clot resolved, so I stopped taking it. My Doctor at the VA wanted to see me, but I put him off until I could get fully vaccinated, and that brings me up to the day when I got his email showing me the results, along with a note that he wanted to see me ASAP, and that I WOULD be going on his prescribed drugs. Sorry, that's just not me. Stupid got me into this mess, so stupid will surely get me out of it - so I immediately went to Doctor Google to see what I could see. By coincidence, a young couple who lives nearby had begun Keto dieting to help with their Type 2 Diabetes, along with the wife's MS. They knew a lot about it, but when pressed about how they were doing, they admitted that their results had been less than stellar (which was pretty obvious just looking at them). They were still very positive about the diet despite this, and eventually let on that they had been kinda-sorta cheating just a little bit, but that then led to them trying to explain that they were doing something that I'd never heard of, something called "hybrid keto". Yeah, I was new to all of this, but I ain't that dumb. I called them on their equivocating BS and we moved on, me with their encouragement and wish for success, they make promises that they had no intentions of keeping, but hey, they ain't my kids... Back to doctor Google where I stumbled upon a lecture by Dr. Jason Fung, and it was as if a unicorn had farted out a double rainbow and somehow the whole world suddenly made sense. YES, I grew up in a house where we always had plenty to eat, BUT IT WAS ONLY AVAILABLE THREE TIMES A DAY! And yes if you got hungry in between, you just had to tough it out till the next meal. That or we'd go collect deposit pop bottles off of the side of the road and cash them in to raid the local candy store, but that was the only candy we might occasionally see until Halloween, or Easter, or Christmas, and then there was always Valentines Day, or on vacation, or when visiting relatives, or, oh my god, they've been sneaking more and more of this crap into my diet my entire life! Of course, the sugary too sweet cereals (what kid ever said no more sugar, please?) and the fast food that used to be at most a once a month treat, but once out on my own, I could eat all of the McDonalds and Doritos I ever wanted, because I'm a big boy now, all grown up. lol Right. Anywho, from Doctor Fung's lecture I meandered through a couple more good folk who were earnestly trying to spread the good news; that we didn't all have to spend our remaining days on dialysis, and eventually discovered Dr. Berg's YouTube channel. Now I'm not a YouTube consultant wizard, but the guy just does it right. Watching an interview with Dr. Nadir Ali helped crystalize it all for me, in terms of why he is so effective at presenting his information to a blank, unblinking lens. First, he's just a good lookin' guy, and more importantly, like a handful of others, he actually looks like he practices what he preaches. Secondly (or thirdly I guess) he tone and sarcasm are right in my wheelhouse, and beyond that, just in case he actually reads these, I love the big whiteboard presentations because I can take screen shots to share and refer back to, like the gallery that I'm talking to the doctor's in a few weeks to help me dismantle his whole gambit for putting me on his poisons. Every question that I've had about Keto, and most importantly, fasting, the guy has already posted at least a couple of videos on. The cholesterol question he completely dunked on (along with guests like Dr. Ali), and then I see him interviewing Dr. Fung, just to close the loop for me. Dr. Berg may not have created any of this, but he is without a doubt the easiest way for me to educate my many fat friends and family members who are similarly afflicted. Oh, and the not quite end of my current story? Well, over the past four weeks I went from dropping carbs to less than 20 grams a day (I was already onto the good fats program thanks to our pastured animals) and eating just once a day, to first fasting for three and a half days. I broke that fast with a feast of Brussels sprouts, cabbage with bacon, half of a rib steak, four eggs, and an avocado (like I was girding myself to cross the Serengeti on foot). I gained a whole pound and a half for that effort, felt like an idiot, and so began another fast immediately. That one lasted 6 and a half days, and my break of fast that time was a Macadamia nut appetizer followed by Joseph's bakery Lavash flatbread (6 net grams of carbs) Po'Boy. wrap. I make mayo out of our organic free-range eggs and some extra virgin organic olive oil w/ a little organic lemon juice squeeze. The meat was fresh picked Lion's Mane mushrooms, sweated with finely chopped yellow onion, red bell pepper, a little cayenne, and garlic, then combined with a couple of whipped duck eggs, Old Bay, pepper, some mustard, a dash of Worchestershire, and a little onion powder I think. Refrigerated for about a half-hour and then formed balls with an ice cream scooper that I flattened in my cast iron skillet of almost smoking butter. They held together perfectly, and when I served one to my adult, blue crab-loving son - he didn't even realize that he wasn't eating real lump crab meat. It is an unnatural marvel that anyone and everyone should enjoy. That and they are just about $20 a pound cheaper, and infinitely cleaner, than the real thing. I had ballooned up to where a size 40 waist in jeans was getting a little snug, but as I sit here typing now, my size 36 waist pants have gone from hard to button to comfortably loose, and my weight this morning was 245lbs. Wait - had to go weigh me again... now 243lbs (had to put up a bunch of hay in 90+ degree hot and humid heat before the rains came), but not quite fully hydrated from earlier today, but I'm somewhere near there. The next doctor's appointment is July 1, which is still 3 full weeks away, so even if I let off of the gas a little bit I still expect to drop another 25 pounds by then, which is just a one-week fast away from my goal of 205lbs. Now that I can walk again and actually climb stairs without crying, I got down the basement and dusted off my Bowflex and free weights (although I don't think my hip is quite up to the stepper treadmill, rower, or bike just yet) so I'm going to add some more muscle training to hopefully take up some of the protein that I still crave. I could die a happy man eating nothing but our grass-fed beef and eggs, so breaking fast for a Keto meal is for me, about as perfect a diet as I've ever dreamed. I have spoken to anyone and everyone who will listen since starting this, and when they actually see me, even not quite halfway to my goal, they can't believe how much better I look and how quickly it's happened. And here's back to my opening comment about ignominy and irony... I was a frigging Survival Instructor for Pete's sake! We came home to a couple of days of R&R and ate like savage pigs to replenish our fat supplies and to allow us to keep building muscle. At no time did I ever see anyone, or personally experience, any loss of muscle. We just used our fat reserves like we would an expandable water bladder, and we'd go weeks at a time with no food beyond the occasional fiddlehead fern or unfortunate grouse. Probably the best shape of my life, and certainly the best I ever felt, but right now, I'm better than I've been for a very long time, so call me a new apostle, because I believe! :) Thank you, Dr. Berg! You have been my virtual nutrition guru, which reminds me of one more thing about this journey. Something that just downright pisses me off. At the VA, when I was first told that I was a diabetic, I immediately tried to avail myself of whatever help and direction that they could provide (other than their pills and potions). The foot doctor gave me a look over, and then I had a video conference with one of their "nutritionists" (another rant for another day on that situation). I signed up for their living with diabetes class, thinking, what the hell. Well, that was a waste of an hour of my life that I'll never get back, and not to bore any reader of this, but let me give you the short of it. I waited in a room with about a dozen other Vets, several of whom were in wheelchairs, thanks to their recent losses at the diabetic treatment center and whittling competition, where necrotic feet, legs, and genitalia are surgically removed on the march to good health. I am not exaggerating in the least when I say that half of them were sipping on not just fountain sodas, but the honking huge summertime baby bath-sized drinks, while several talked fondly about their favorite Tasty Cakes that they buy at the local convenience store for breakfast every morning. It was stunning, to say the least, but then the classroom opened and the real show began. An LPN passed out a copied sheet that told everybody that the first thing they had to learn was to switch from drinking high fructose-sweetened soft drinks to diet soda, or to come Crystal Lite crap, that I am sure is sweetened with the same poisonous crap. I immediately objected, wadding my copy up in a ball and throwing it to her from the opposite end of the table. I then began to look through the syllabus for what was meant to be a succession of several weeks of "learning" to live with diabetes. The class was only scheduled to last an hour, and I took up every minute of it arguing with her about the garbage information that she was presenting, and repeatedly challenging her with the question; "Your a goddamn nurse, you know this is BS and dangerously wrong! Why are you telling these guys this!?" And her answer was unwavering - "It's what the VA has approved, so that's what we teach", nothing more, nothing less, other than that she asked me a half dozen times if I wanted to leave, which I eventually did, but only to go to the patient advocate's office to lodge my displeasure. There was literally an organic farmers' market not one hundred yards as a crow flies from the door of the clinic, and yet not one word was said about diet except to stop eating sugar and high fructose corn syrup. It was amazing, and not at all in a good way. The patient advocate, by the way, expressed the same crap that the patient killing nurse Ratchet had said - "it's what the VA has approved..." Remember when the VA facilities were exposed for having obscenely long wait times that were killing people? (like they keep claiming all of those "socialist" countries like Canada and France suffer, because of free medical care for all). Well, I'm convinced that it was all by design because what better way to shorten those lines than to simply kill every third person waiting in it. Of course, since then we've gone through the Trump virus (at least the first wave), so I expect service times by now should remain at historic lows. This is the biggest health care system in the U.S., and they seem absolutely dedicated to killing as many people as possible, which sounds like hyperbole, but ya really can't appreciate just how through the looking glass it is until you experience it firsthand. I am still denied test strips for my glucose monitor precisely because I have refused to take their pills, and because I stopped lying about it. They are all insane. Sorry, didn't mean to end on a sour note, real as it may be, so let me just reiterate; Dr. Berg's information and inspiration have provided me with just the motivation I needed to get up off of my ass and get busy living again, and the fact that it'll also let me rub it in the VA doctor's face just makes it all that much sweeter. Can't wait for that next class reunion. Sorry, no pictures right now. Closed the hood of my truck on my phone the other day...