Thomas...you'll be glad to know then that on Wednesday I saw my doc to go over my latest A1c results and she wanted to put me back on a statin! I told her there is no way I'm going back on a statin and basically told her, you can prescribe it but I won't fill it.

Hi Debbie,

Thank you for your words. I think you're right about it's okay to listen to that inner voice because more often than not it turns out we should have listened to it. I think we often do want some "expert" to give us the answer to our problem(s) but I think the reality is that we have a responsibility to also try and find it on our own so we can understand it instead of blindly taking another person's advice all the time. We know ourselves better than anyone else.

Well in just a week's time I've come to agree with you. I don't want to spend my time defending myself to others just because what I'm choosing to do is not their cup of tea. I'm not out to convince anyone that what I'm doing is what they should be doing!

I also think it takes a certain type of person to be able to open their mind up to the possibility that there could be a different way other than the highway as they know it ...ya know what I mean?

So many people aren't even open to hearing about a possible alternative to their reality let alone learning about it.

I wrote this last month in a friend's journal and I thought you might like it...

Thanks for sharing the journal post. I like your analogy of the Matix movies and the choice of the red or blue pill. It's so true! Not only in relation to food choices but so many other things in life.

My analogy is this: I've heard anti-freeze tastes sweet as it has glycol in it which is deceiving because the sweetness masks the fact that it is poisonous. If you tasted a little of it you'd probably feel sick later but if you drank a little bit of it everyday, it would eventually kill you. So the fact that it tastes good is not a justification to put it in your body. We don't ingest anti-freeze because we know it can kill us because we have been EDUCATED of its toxicity and effect on the human body.

With all the reading and self-educating I've been doing lately about the effect of carbs and refined sugar on the human body (and especially my body), I have come to view them in the same light I view ingesting anti-freeze which is DON"T DO IT! Eating a lot of carbs every day makes me feel sick and eating a lot of them over time will be the end of me because of the toxicity they create in my body. And how do I know they are toxic for me even though they taste really good? Because I have a blood glucose meter I use several times a day that SHOWS me what ingesting carbs is doing to me.

Thinking this way keeps me in check and keeps carbs at bay. Now can you just see trying to explain all this to someone who already has their mind made up that it is just plain stupid to compare carbs to anti-freeze because they know anti-freeze is bad but they love their carbs?? Probably not going to be a good conversation so I've decided to just not go there and even try to explain it.

All I know is I am so glad that *I* am the type that is willing to continue learning and open to alternatives and points of view I may not initially agree with, not just regarding food but all sorts of things. How do we ever improve if we refuse to learn and change?

Wow Patina what a story!

First of all can I just say how much I haaaaate Weight Watchers? Really, I do! I know some people for whom it's worked well (like my bf's mom and his grandma, who both actually really get into all the point calculating, something I could never do!), and I know it's basically painted as 'the good diet' but they are still part of the diet industry, something which I am not a huge fan of. And of course I've been a WW member more than a few times! Nowadays I go out of my way not purchase any WW products. OK rant over!

I just wanted to say, and this is thirdhand advice, but I have a very good friend who is a doctor and believes low carb is 'the only thing that works' with weight loss. He has had people say to him 'but low carb is bad for your kidneys' and his response to that is it CAN be... but only if you are not really eating ANY fruits or vegetables.

I myself am no doctor but it is interesting that after a month of carb eating your kidney stopped bleeding. I wonder if perhaps for you, it's important to make sure you are getting enough vegetables and possibly even a little bit of fruit? I suspect there is a right amount of carbs for you that is low enough to continue your weight loss but high enough to keep your kidneys happy. Just my two cents of course.

Well on the kidney thing, in retrospect I wasn't eating enough veggies and most importantly, I wasn't drinking near enough plain water. I drank coffee as my primary thirst quencher and as we all know, that does not count as water. Also, my kidney bled two more times after I had gone back to eating carbs and I still wasn't drinking enough water but I still don't think carbs were the cause nor the cure.

It's good that your doctor friend realizes weightloss is not a "one size fits all" endeavor. I visited my doc last Wednesday and in a round about way let her know I was doing low carb. She finally admitted that "for reasons which we still don't understand, low carb does work for some people." That's all I got out of her on the subject and then she proceeded to tell me I need to go back on statins for my cholesterol which I respectfully declined.

Later, I realized that it's hard to get doctors to openly support patients on low carb living and I think the reason is because it is not yet accepted as a viable means of weightloss and weight management in the medical mainstream and therefore they cannot openly advocate it because they open themselves to lawsuits if anything goes wrong with the patient. So you have the patient saying "but my doctor told me low carb eating was okay!" and you have the doctor having to stand up in court and defend a not well accepted or understood approach to weightloss. Can you just imagine the parade of medical experts into the courtroom to testify against that doctor as practicing "unproven" or "junk" science? No wonder doctors advise us NOT to do low carb even if they happen to be well educated on the subject and believe in it!!

Well, I think part of this is down to the fact that money talks and quite a bit of the money in research for weight loss is behind the low fat/high carb plan. Plus the academics who research this stuff can get mightily attached to their theories even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Add to that the overwhelming belief that "all you need to do to lose weight is eat less and move more!" which not only the general public but many doctors (many of whom have never had weight issues I might add) believe in so strongly that many don't even CONSIDER that there might be another solution to weight loss. And of course those of us who have tried the 'eat less and move more!' plan many many times, as I have and you have, know that it's not quite that simple.

And that was what happened to me. Doc got the script pad out for a statin. I refused (not so respectfully, I might add). I asked what I had to do. Answer? Waaaaiiiiiit foooor iiiiiittttt .... "EAT LESS and EXERCISE MORE." Doc, of course, is athletic and wafer-thin. I told her that if, after 4 months, my numbers weren't better, I'd consider a statin. (Ha ha consider it stupid! )

I went home, angry and upset, and hit google. Everything that I was reading (that made sense) was low carb. I just did it. Four months later, I went back to the doc (to consider a statin?). Surprise! Numbers just fine ... "no reason to medicate".

Then she popped the big question: what had I been doing? The look on her face when I said "low carb"! At least she had the grace to concede: "Well whatever you're doing seems to be working, so keep doing it". That was as close as she got to an endorsement, but it was good enough for me.

Now what I tell everyone is that I eat a "balanced diet with plenty of vegetables". ... that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

Thank you for the kind words on my post Patina..I recently took Bob Dylan's song "Only a pawn in the game"..and I wrote the following lyrics in my Journal..

I'm glad u reversed ur "numbers" and are more healthy but I'm worried about people "hiding" the fact that they eat low-carb :P get it out there, the more people that see it works the more will question the conventional

I agree, all the above also play a huge role in the lack of support for low carbers in the medical community.

Especially the money part, can you imagine how fast WW's would change their message if the masses started moving towards a low-carb mentality. They don't have to believe in it to cash in on it.

I think I personnaly just get frustrated with is the complete refusal by people and health professionals to even try to learn more about it. I don't expect anyone to live it for themself but how can it hurt to just learn about it. But then I shouldn't forget that ignorance is bliss for many and especially for those making a profit off the low calorie-low-fat balanced eating theory.

I suspect next time I see the doc for my next A1c testing, I will have the same good results and the doc will wonder what happened. My doc kept telling me the same thing, eat less, low fat, more fruit and veggies, lean meats. Well I did all of that for the last 6 months and each time I'd go in and weigh pretty much the same and explain my frustration, I'd get a consoling pat on my shoulder and the perverbial "I know, it's very hard". My reply was "yes, it is very hard but I'm doing it and I'm not losing so what else can I try?". Guess what she would say? You guessed it..."eat less, low fat, more fruit and veggies"!!! It was absolutely maddening but I didn't know what else to try so I kept at it.

I love that part! I'm sounding anti-doctor these days but I'm really not. I've just been so frustrated with my own experience with my own doctor over the last year but only on this one issue of weightloss. It's clear what I had been doing wasn't working even though I was doing exactly what she told me the fix was.

But at the end of the day I was still fat, blood sugars still out of control, high LDL, low HDL, high triglycerides, high blood pressure... and everytime all I got from the doctor was more of the same. Not even a hint that I should try something else!! Drove me crazy!! Not to mention making it all that much harder to stick with the low-fat, eat less game when there was absolutely no measurable payoff for me.

Hey Patina !! where have you been??? 11 days since your last post!! Hope your doing well..we miss you!