This is so true!


Lee

I like it!

Back in 2000, my usual board was the McDougall board and I was starving on 1100-1200 cals/day, exercising like a maniac, craving and thinking about food all the time, but my white-knuckle willpower was rewarded with a 6-month stall.

Luckily someone nicely suggested that maybe the McDougall approach wasn't right for my metabolism and that something like Protein Power might work better. She got bashed by others, but did me a world of good.

It's worth taking the bashing. I have so many times but over time I gained respect and hopefully helped many to develop healthy eating habits...If you save only 1 person it is worth the fight.

Yes, that's why I'll launch what I know is a "losing battle." The person throwing up ridiculous arguments doesn't consider them ridiculous; they will consider them obvious!

But lurkers are the enormous mass just under the water; and they have a more open mind/not formed an opinion yet. I argue for them.

FWIW (probably not much), I deactivated my myfitnesspal account today as I couldn't restrain myself from entering every low carb related thread on the forum as a defender of truth. The ignorance, stupidity, and even hate (someone wished Dr. Atkins would burn in hell on a thread) there was just too overwhelming. I needed to refocus on things that are important so that account had to go.

Well, we still have low carbers that believe saturated fat is bad for you. So you`ll get opposing views no matter where you are.

[QUOTE=jmh]To be honest, most people don't come to low carb until they've failed at the low fat calorie counting (CC) for a few years. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have listened a few years back. QUOTE]

It is late to be adding to this thread, but can't resist.
I also failed at LC and have had to move on from that....

And during my vegetarian/vegan years (decades) I would not and did not listen to other views either. And I've been paying for that for a long time.....
10 years after abandoning that belief system, I'm still in the process of healing...but to be perfectly honest, I never managed to be 100% vegan, always giving in and eating some animal protein, from time to time, because the cravings for it were so overwhelming.
sol

I now view my use of carbs as a controlled addiction. I know what I can handle and I try to stay under that, which is similar to how I treat alcohol.

The idiots who go on general nutrition-related forums and ignorantly but vehemently bash low carb diets are no different to me that idiots who go on alcoholics anonymous forums and bash 12 step programs. Both of them can burn in the hottest part of hell as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately it takes too much of my mental energy to try and debate and or address them all.

Admittedly I haven't done it much yet but this is exactly why I do it and I'll continue to do it. It is unlikely that you'll convince the dummy that toes the mainstream diet line and regurgitates the LC is bad dogma.

But the vast majority of readers that are lurking - you can reach them. You will reach them by tackling the mindless LC antagonist.

There is a side benefit. When you take on someone that disagrees with you you teach the lurkers how to do it too. You show them what is possible.

It is especially beneficial when the other person is a domineering egotistical know-it-all because they are the most difficult to confront for so many people. But taking them on and meeting their challenge both informs the unspoken lurkers and gives voice to the ones that agree with you but can't argue a point well.

In fact, I speak from personal experience. I used to lurk at a forum completely unrelated to diet or health but of great interest to me. Some of the people that posted there were extraordinarily good at arguing a point.

I'd read many of those brave souls wade in where I couldn't see any possible way of addressing what the other person was saying. They would not only succeed they'd completely devastate the unspoken assumptions made by the other person.

Sometimes it was as simple as exposing the skewed data that the other person was trying to pass off as a debate ending nuclear bomb 'fact'.

It was very eye opening.

Fight the good fight.

Sheeple, exactly! But also, people get very invested in their beliefs, whatever they may be, and it does become very religion like. Heck, I could even accuse myself of that with low carb. However, mostly I keep my mouth shut in discussions with those who don't understand low carb. The sheeple have closed ears and will keep them closed until somehow, somewhere, something breaks through about LC and makes sense to them. As soon as I get a comment such as "You can't eat BREAD? I can't give up BREAD!!", that's the end of it for me, I'm not going to waste my time arguing the point. I've seen quite a few people here who "came over" after years of thinking LC was crazy and stupid. They finally learned for themselves and saw the light, so to speak!

I knew I had Celiac...but I had 'another' problem that demanded I not only 'get on lowcarb' but 'stay on lowcarb'. My hunger. I'd never been able to 'assuage' that hunger I had, that addiction to carbs!

Celiac demanded no wheat, gluten, but my hunger demanded I go lowcarb and high fat (but I still am known to roll my eyes and sigh when I must explain: 'No, sigh...put rollyeyes here...Atkins is NOT a 'high protein' diet. One more time 'sighs' it's a high fat, low carbohydrate, just enough protein for ME way of eating'. Sigh, rolleyes again here.

I have to share this..

An obesity topic came up on another forum. A woman who looks at least 250lbs in her picture posted some bullshit about how some women have a slow metabolism and they're basically stuck fat for life. Nothing you can do about it.

For some reason I couldn't help but reply. I usually don't. I made a simple comment stating that what she said was ridiculous(felt bad if any other readers out there that might look like her and actually took her seriously so I had to point it out)and then I posted a link to some thread on this forum her statemnet reminded me of.. saying that there were plenty of people on here with similar back stories of being overweight most of their lives and have lost 100's of pounds and others are finally losing. I just suggested that she read some threads. I know I haven't lost much weight yet so maybe I shouldn't talk but I was talking about other people so my story is irrelevant.

A week or so later she responded to tell me that low carb is bad and she's actually an 18 year old learning to become a registered dietician. Well, now I feel bad if she's actually taken seriously in the nutrition area looking the way she does..and any future clients will go to her that are fat and she basically tells them they're stuck like that forever. I didn't even think she was that young.. she looks older or sounded older. 18 and already accepting being fat for life?

I can't even respond to that crap. I felt like telling her to enjoy her diabetes and breathing problems later on.