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.

I allow discussions in the comments section of each post, but be advised that any inappropriate or off-topic comment will not be approved.

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Apr 24, 2023

Six common beliefs addressed, Part 224

1. I have been fasting and I'm getting fatter. I don't understand why. When I do eat, I try to eat fatty foods.

Eating fat and fasting is the perfect recipe for getting fatter. You're perfecting your starvation response. This teaches the body to spare its fat mass and store much more dietary fat than it would otherwise. You are also preventing any fat burning through chronic leptin under expression. So, it shouldn't be surprising that you are getting fatter, and you will continue to, the more you fast and eat fat.

2. "Keto" people keep insisting that obesity can be "cured" if you just follow "keto".

What else do you expect them to tell you? Of course, they will tell you that, since that's what they are selling.

There is no cure for obesity, as of this post. None. It is only a manageable condition. Obesity can be managed multiple ways, through lifestyle modifications. "Keto" is just one of the many ways that can help you halt the progression of obesity and might cause a reduction.

3. Are most diseases genetic or epigenetic?

This blog is exclusively for the management of obesity and obesity related conditions.

As far as "diseases" go, believe it or not, most diseases are still enigmas except for the vast majority of infectious diseases. Some diseases are genetic, and others are epigenetic. Genetic meaning relating to genes or heredity and epigenetics meaning relating to or arising from non-genetic influences on gene expression.

There's no doubt that overweight/obesity/diabetes changes gene expression, both in the fat cells and the pancreas. This has even been seen while babies are still in the womb and the mothers are obese. The baby's fat cells will begin responding in the same way as the mother's and their pancreas are more apt at insulin release. This makes them more susceptible to being fat.

Gene expression can change with the environment and what we are exposed to so you can certainly reverse these conditions if the exposure changes.

4. I heard that the best new diet is "ketovore".

"Ketovore" is just another fad diet that's making its rounds and generating tons of money. Because "ketovore" is not a real word or even a real thing, there are different definitions for it depending on who you ask.

The common definition of "ketovore" is eating carnivore for a few days and then eating "keto" for the rest of the week. In other words, nothing but animal based foods for a few days and then adding vegetables, to your meals, for the rest of the week.

What this is supposed to accomplish is unknown. I guess it's for people who don't want to ditch plant foods from their diet but if that's the case, why are they trying to follow carnivore in the first place? Ah, so many questions, so little answers and so many still obese.

Don't follow any fad diet. You must find a legitimate, well formulated protocol that you can follow for the long term.

5. You should post recipes for "food alternatives".

Because this blog is for the serious treatment of overweight/obesity and its associated conditions we only recommend legitimate protocols that have an increased chance of being successful. This is not done by modifying your new diet to mimic your old one. The old diet is over and done with and a new one has to be implemented in order to achieve results.

6. The body can handle carbohydrates better in the morning or when they are accompanied with protein.

This is playing musical chairs in the Titanic. Now you can play this way, all you want, and have fun with your blood glucose meter, before the ship sinks, but keep in mind that metabolic syndrome/diabetes are chronic and progressive conditions when they aren't treated properly and chasing symptoms, in this manner, is not treating anything. You're just fooling around with different readings that are meaningless. Single, isolated blood glucose readings are completely irrelevant when it comes to metabolic syndrome/diabetes.

Metabolic syndrome/diabetes are syndromes caused by a metabolic adaptation towards starvation. Adaptation towards starvation means:

  • Sparing of fat mass through the chronic under expression of leptin in the brain. This can occur with or without high serum leptin levels.
  • Excessive storage and locking in of fat through hyper insulin sensitivity of fat cells while having insulin resistance in other cells. This can occur with or without high serum insulin levels.

This process occurs in the long term. This is why it can take decades to develop diabetes, even while tackling overweight/obesity. Overweight/obesity is the most common beginning stage of this process. Diabetes is the end stage.

This process is caused by a disruption of blood glucose regulation, causing high disparities between highs and lows, which eventually deteriorate insulin sensitivity and function, in different tissues to varying degrees and rates, except for fat tissue. That one always remains super insulin sensitive. It has been shown that even one single drop in blood glucose, from a high point, can begin developing this adaptive process. Once this process begins, it is extremely difficult to stop.

Adaptations cause epigenetic changes in the body which take time to reverse. If it takes decades to develop this, it takes decades to reverse it and you don't have decades to spare. For this reason, we speak about remission rather than reversal. Remission completely depends on how much leptin sensitivity you can sustain and how much insulin sensitivity you can regain.

All diets are only palliative for the treatment of overweight/obesity and its accompanying conditions, but it can be a very powerful first step in succeeding with its remission. This means that carbs need to be eliminated as they cause an adverse effect to blood glucose regulation, which is the root of the condition. It is very difficult to control your blood glucose while carbs are still in the diet. For this reason, they have to go.

Playing around with what causes the least blood glucose reaction, after you eat, is asinine and not a true way of tackling this very complicated process. You need to regulate your blood glucose long term, not just after meals.

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