1. The hormones in food are the cause of children looking older and developing quicker.
Hormones are actually very expensive and usually not used in foods. There are certain foods like soy that mimic human sex hormones and can alter development but for the most part, sexual development is determined by body fat. The higher the body fat, the sooner you develop as the body believes the environment is abundant and offspring are more likely to survive. Body fat speeds things up including your own demise.
2. People who are doing everything right on "keto" still gain weight over time. A lot of doctors say that it works initially but then it creates "issues".
Okay there are several assumptions being made here.
First "doing everything right" is up for debate. I don't know what that means because I don't know what type of "keto" these people are following. If they are doing the fad "keto", found online, then it's wrong. Just because it's on Facebook, doesn't mean it's right. If you are on a "keto" protocol that allows you to eat astronomical amounts of fat, you are doing "keto" wrong and so therefore, you will gain weight.
What "issues" are being described? That these people regain weight? Well, I already explained before that if they are doing "keto" wrong, they will gain weight but if they are doing "keto" right and still gaining weight, that's not a "keto" issue, that's an obesity issue. That occurs with all diets, not just "keto". All diets cause weight regain with time.
You have to be careful when following diet promoting "doctors". You need to understand that all diets are only palliative treatments for obesity as overweight/obesity has no known cure. So, when you see a doctor talking down on other diets, it's because they are trying to sell their own as all diets have the same success rate for "treating" obesity.
3. Calorie advocates disagree that some medicines cause weight gain since it's all about calories.
"Calorie people" don't know what to think anymore. That's what happens when you try to serve two masters - calories and some other mysterious, unknown, agent. Of course, that "agent" are metabolic hormones, but they refuse to admit this so let's just call the agent elves instead. That should make them feel better.
Most calorie people will agree that some medicines come with elves which cause weight gain, but this is only because of the presences of calories. This is fundamentally, at its very basic level, true since if you were in a gulag, you wouldn't be gaining any weight regardless of what medicines you were on, but this doesn't help you in the real world. No one here is in a gulag.
Some medicines affect blood glucose homeostasis and so they end up causing overweight/obesity. This can be minimized by following an appropriate diet containing the correct macronutrient composition to prevent further blood glucose disruption. This should better help you not gain so much weight while on certain medications.
4. I have done all kinds of calorie restriction, low carb, "keto", carnivore, Paleo and fasting but I haven't lost a single pound. Actually, all I do is lose five or ten pounds and then regain them. I have been this way for years. Will I ever lose weight?
I don't know. I like to approach things with the mindset that the person can lose weight but that's never guaranteed. We can't be defeatists but we also have to be realists. The reality you have to face is that you, like everyone else, can only be as thin as how much leptin expression you can regain and most importantly sustain. Period. It's not the calories. It's not nitpicking diets. It's leptin.
People who have/had insulin dysfunction, like metabolic syndrome and/or diabetes, can’t seem to regain or sustain their leptin expression for long or at all. This is because leptin is a slave to insulin function and some people are just unable to regulate their blood glucose enough to normalize insulin expression.
So, all I can tell you is that at least you're not gaining weight. Even if you don't lose any, you are still managing your weight. Instead of hopping around from diet to diet, trying to figure out what works, stick to one because you will achieve the same results with all. Follow the diet you are most comfortable with so that you can continue on it for the long term.
5. My HbA1C has lowered with Metformin. It is no longer in the diabetes range and my doctor is very pleased by this. He tells me he wishes all of his diabetic patients can lower their HbA1C to my level of 5.2. I think that eating low carb has helped with this. I was told by low carb advocates that I am no longer diabetic.
No. You are still diabetic. You are still on Metformin.
I don't want to rain on your parade because sustaining an HbA1C level of 5.2 while being diabetic is a good thing, so you can be proud of that since most diabetics simply aim for an HbA1C below 9. Usually that is based on their doctor's advice.
Unfortunately, diabetes is not a disease of high HbA1C. It is also not a disease of any one isolated, blood glucose reading. Surprisingly, it is also not a disease of insulin, per say. At least, not directly. It is a syndrome of large disparities in blood glucose regulation which deteriorates insulin function over time, causing a high HbA1C. This causes metabolism is adapt to a "starvation mode" that is extraordinarily difficult to reverse as it affects multiple glucoregulatory systems in the body.
This is why diabetes medications, whose goal is to lower HbA1C, do not stop the progression and the ultimate complications of diabetes. The disease continues on. This lowering of HbA1C is not indicative of proper blood glucose regulation. Let me explain.
You can have very high postprandial readings and then the abnormal drop in blood glucose during fasting, creates a pseudo "lower HbA1C". Just because your HbA1C can indicate an "average blood glucose" does not mean that you actually sustain blood glucose at that average number. It's simply taking your highest and lowest blood glucose reading to determine the average. In other words, if your HbA1C indicates that your average blood glucose is 120 mg/dL, it doesn't mean that's your actual reading at any given time. You can be anywhere well above or below that consistently.
This is why patients on diabetes medications have to be very careful during fasting and they are recommended to never fast. This is because that's when the medications can cause a very low drop in blood glucose, much more so than it would ever drop normally. This is sort of like how diet lowers cholesterol. It does that through the lowering of HDL but the pathology of oxidized and dysfunctional LDL persists, and heart disease still occurs regardless of total cholesterol number. These interventions are just altering numbers, not the disease.
Diabetes medications are basically trying to prevent blood glucose from going so high that you end up in a diabetic coma. They are not treating the disease or normalizing blood glucose regulation. They are actually not helping it at all. In fact, and this is going to be controversial to say, if you take what the pathology of diabetes is, which is large disparities in blood glucose, you can say that the medications are making this worse. Medications drop blood glucose lower than it would ever drop during fasting causing an even greater disparity, since they never really halt blood glucose from rising above normal after meals.
I'm not suggesting a stop to medications, as they actually will keep you living longer with the condition than if you didn't take them. I am just saying that at least they aren't helping to achieve remission and at most, they are enabling its progression. Remember you are living longer with the condition. Not without it. After all, the body doesn't care what your "average blood glucose" is. It only cares about the 190 mg/dL after meals and the 60 mg/dL while fasting. That's all it sees.
So, keep this in mind and continue with an anti-diabetic lifestyle as these medications are only going to take you so far. You have been able to keep your HbA1C in check due to your diet as it would be much higher if you just lived life like you weren't a diabetic, which is what the American Diabetes Association (ADA) pushes for. That's really the most dangerous message that the ADA puts out, by the way. You can never live life like you aren't diabetic. Ever. At least, I wouldn't recommend it as that would be certain death.
6. Diet is more important than exercise.
I like to emphasize that both diet and exercise work in conjunction to achieve the best outcome but if I absolutely had to make a hard line choice, between one or the other, I would pick exercise.
Many people are surprised by this, especially the obese since they love to focus on anything that doesn't make them have to move an inch, so diet is always their main target. But the results are clear and have been proven over and over again - exercise is the most metabolically protective thing that you can follow even in lieu of diet.
This has been seen time and time again in metabolic studies. Diabetics have been able to improve their metabolic markers and even get off medications, through exercise alone, without an iota of diet change. Athletes also prove this daily. You can be an athlete with a piss poor diet and still remain protected from obesity and metabolic dysfunction for most of your life span. That's how protective and far reaching the effects of exercise are. Humans can adapt to just about any diet, but they cannot adapt to being sedentary.
This can even be seen in aging. Someone who was an athlete when young, has better outcomes as they age. You can tell, just by looking at them, that they were mostly active throughout their life. These people can delay their diabetes until they are age 80 rather than age 50. This is seen in overweight/obesity as well. Athletes may eventually succumb to diabetes in their older years, but they sure do never succumb to overweight/obesity. Exercise wards off body fat and keeps it off.
Why would this be important if they still succumb to metabolic dysfunction? Because it is much easier to achieve remission of diabetes if you are not overweight/obese.
Of course, eventually, your metabolism will cave under the strain of a bad diet, whether you exercise or not. Athletes have also proven this often as their health deteriorates with age, but you can certainly delay these outcomes significantly through exercise and if they do occur, you can reverse them easier. The same can't be said with a bad diet without exercise. That causes metabolism to rapidly fail.
So as far as metabolism is concerned - exercise is king as it addresses both insulin and leptin.
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