I just returned from my doctor's office, half a year after blood tests revealed I had high triglycerides, low testosterone, and medium (but not awful) cholesterol levels. I also had "fatty intrusions" in my liver, which can lead to metabolic syndrome and diabetes. My doctor said to come back in six months and see if the problems persisted, and if they did, we would have to consider prescriptions or worse. But it turns out, all of those problems were fixable.
Sparky and I decided we were getting way too out of shape anyway, and that we should try to fix things naturally first. As a joke we decided to target "Bear Week" on Cape Cod as our target date to be in better shape. That gave us about four months.
I thought we would just be eating less and exercising more. Yes, we did those things with varying success. But two things happened at about the same time: first we stumbled across the New York Times Magazine article Is Sugar Toxic? which goes into great detail about how some nutritionists now think eating sugar, not eating fat, may be the real culprit in causing weight gain, diabetes, heart attacks – even some types of cancer. Read it, it's worth the time.
Then, about a week later on a Saturday afternoon, we stumbled into our friend Paul at the El Toro taqueria in the Mission. He had clearly lost at least twenty pounds, so we picked his brain while we ate together. At first it seemed strange watching him eat at a Mexican taqueria — surely horrible for a diet! — but he left out the rice, didn't eat the tortilla, and doubled up on the meat, the black beans, and the veggies. The secret? Cut out all the sugar, and most of the white carbs from his diet. He pointed us to a Tim Ferriss book which we never bought and never read, but poking around the web we were able to put together most of what it suggested anyway.
For several months, six days a week, we cut out as much sugar and white carbs as humanly possible from our diets. No cereal, no chinese food dripping in candy "spicy" sauce, no noodles, no rice, no bread. Beans are OK since they're high in protein. Meat, veggies, fine. No fruit! No sodas. Not even diet sodas. Then one day a week, we had "off day" and ate whatever we wanted, from ice-cream and pineapple waffles to pork fried rice and back again. By binging once a week, we never felt like we were suffering or skipping things we wanted. I actually kept a list all week of things I wanted to eat on Saturday. It was brilliant.
So the end result? As of today, my cholesterol ratio (<5.0 is good) went down from 4.5 to 3.7; my triglycerides (<150 is good) down from 183 to 146, and my testosterone (>350 good) up from the high 200s to 375. All of them are now in their normal ranges. I also lost fifteen pounds, despite stuffing myself with steak and eggs for six months.
I know this is only one data point, and everyone is different. But I am now convinced that the food industry has been shoveling low-fat propaganda down our throats for so many decades that we can't even think straight about what's healthy to eat and what isn't. It's not the fat that makes you fat. It's the sugar.
