Why I started yet another nutrition/diet blog (nequals1heatlh.com)
This is what my wife and I looked like in 2000. I recall that I was wearing a shirt with a 20-inch neck at the time that photo was taken -- with two collar extenders. I could not button that suit jacket.
Back in 1999, my wife was diagnosed with T2 Diabetes. She went from one oral med to 3, and still was not able to get good blood sugar control, even with strict adherence to her doctor's recommended low-fat diet. She was told that she would need to start insulin injections.
At the time, I also followed the low-fat diet, based on the books by McDougall and Ornish, and I was rapidly gaining weight -- and was always hungry. At the urging of my wife, I tested my blood sugar, which turned out to be around 170 two hours after a meal. A meal that consisted of a salad with low-fat dressing, and a "dry" baked potato.
We were getting desperate.
One day, my wife came home with a book by Dr. Robert Aktins, and announced that she was going to give that a try. At that point, we were both over 300 lbs. I was over 350 lbs, but I don't really know how much over, because the weight scale we had access to only went up to 350.
Since I wanted to be the supportive husband, I tried it along with her. Even though I knew "for sure" that in 6 months, we would be even worse off, because that had been my experience with dieting.
Well, it did not turn out that way this time. We had discovered a way of eating that was actually satisfying, and allowed us to lose weight without feeling deprived. My wife went from 3 oral DM meds and poor blood sugar control to ZERO DM meds and good blood sugar control. I noticed that I was fairly rapidly losing weight, and my 2-hour postprandial blood sugars were under 110. So I started posting my experience on UseNet.
The support I got from UseNet was nonexistent. I got nonstop lectures on how bad a low-carb diet was for my health (compared to what? Uncontrolled BG? Poor night vision? Crippling arthritis? Constant heartburn? Being >350 lbs?). When I countered that I had experienced substantial health improvements, I was told that my experience was just an "N=1" experiment, and was not really "valid".
I read several "studies" in nutrition, and discovered that nearly all of them were so severely flawed that my "N=1" was MORE valid than any of them. That was primarily because I was looking for what actually worked, and not what would get me more grant money.
So, I started a blog, and I gave it the name nequals1health, a name I chose to thumb my nose at the naysayers. I reported on the progress, and the occasional setbacks, of my low-carb journey. I have lost over 125 lbs, and I continue to lose excess fat, although the loss is currently very slow (that last 50 lbs is harder to lose than the first 100 was!).
Here is the link to my first blog entry there: https://nequals1health.com/the-beginning-of-our-low-carb-journey/