Welcome


My name is Gina and I would like to welcome you to my blog!

On this blog, I not only share the dietary and lifestyle approach which reversed my metabolic disease and achieved my weight loss, but I also debunk many misconceptions surrounding obesity and its treatment.

I am 5'5" and was weighing 300 lbs., at my heaviest. I lost a total of 180 lbs. I went through several phases of low carbohydrate dieting, until I found what worked best and that is what I share on this blog. Once on a carbohydrate restricted diet, along with intermittent fasting, I dropped all of the weight in a little over two years time.

My weight loss was achieved without any kind of surgery, bariatric or cosmetic. I also did not take any weight loss medications or supplements. I did not use any weight loss program. This weight loss was solely the result of a very low carbohydrate, whole foods based diet, along with daily intermittent fasting and exercise.

There are years worth of content on this blog, so I suggest you use Labels to easily find the information you are looking for. If what you are looking for is not under Labels, enter it into the Search Bar.

Six common beliefs addressed, Part 121

1. You do not need to count calories if you eat to satiety. 

If you have to eat beyond your macros in order to achieve satiety, then you are eating in excess and your satiety point is set too high. In this case, you either scrap eating to satiety and follow your macros diligently or you can also include calories, along with your macros, to make sure you are keeping to them. 

Calories are great for monitoring overall nutrient intake, which is useless for addressing obesity and body fat in particular, as different nutrients affect body composition in different ways. But calories can be included, to macronutrient tracking, if the person has absolutely no satiety signaling and/or certain 'disordered eating' habits, which cause them to veer off their macros. This can go both ways, by the way. They can be eating to excess, but they also may not be eating enough. Tracking calories would help you know if you are eating too little, which a lot of obese people tend to do. 

2. If you do One Meal A Day (OMAD) and can get about 1K calories, then you are okay if you have no symptoms of metabolic slowdown. 

We never advise OMAD, on this blog, especially if you are overweight/obese. It is very difficult to get enough food in one meal, particularly protein, and trying to do so will only cause you to overeat in one sitting, aggravating glucagon to insulin ratios. OMADs also push you into too long of a fast, increasing your time in hypoglycemia, which only reinforces the starvation adaptation.
 
You should be having two to three meals a day. The number of calories needed a day, varies by individual and metabolic state. OMADs might not have an immediate negative effect. In fact, they might have a temporary beneficial one, but treating obesity is not temporary. Temporary solutions do not reverse this condition. Obesity only responds to long term treatments and OMAD is not a proper, long term treatment. 

3. There is no way to tell if you are temporarily stalled or have just stopped losing weight.

If you are still overweight/obese and stopped losing weight, you are stalled. If you are of normal weight, then you simply stopped losing weight. Overweight/obese people have a very high weight set point, so they will lose up to that set point and then won't lose anymore. This is why, though they lose weight, they remain overweight/obese. This is all caused by leptin. I recommend you read my article on leptin.

4. "Keto" is the correct diet for children.

The advice we provide, on this blog, is solely for adults with obesity/metabolic syndrome/diabetes. We do not provide advice for children, pets, athletes, pregnant women or breastfeeding women. Our advice also is not for any other condition or disease that is not metabolic in nature. 
 
Talk to your healthcare provider or seek alternative, licensed dietitians/nutritionists for advice on low carb children’s diets. 

5. The only cannabidiol (CBD) available is in gummy form, but its still okay to take.  

I recommend you start smoking it or using it in oil form, as gummies are not recommended. It's best to take your CBD without the added sugar or sweetness. 

6. Your diet should be working, even if you use artificial sweeteners. 

Artificial sweeteners interfere with fat loss, by adversely affecting hypothalamic dopamine/leptin cross talk. 
 
Even though artificial sweeteners do not have calories, they cause for the body to store everything else that does. This is why calories are such an incomplete way of addressing obesity, as many other things influence the body's storage and burning of fuel besides its amount. The taste of sweet is one of those things. You have to stop tasting sweet things or your body will continue storing for winter.