I went to get a physical three months ago today. I’ve been a little overweight most of my adulthood. I’m in my mid-40s and I’ve mostly eaten whatever I want my whole life without much consideration. I’ve always been very healthy with very few medical problems and not taking any prescription medication.
At the physical, my blood pressure was a little high. The doctor recommended the DASH diet, which involves eating low salt, whole grains, limiting egg yolks and deep fried food. They wanted me to come back in a month, and I did. During that month, by just trying to eat less and eliminate Pepsi, I lost about 12 pounds. I hoped that would drop my blood pressure, but it didn’t, and the doctor prescribed blood pressure medicine. I don’t want to be on a prescription, so I never filled it, and was going to lose more weight.
A week or two after that appointment, we met with a family friend who has lost some weight and I mentioned my high blood pressure. She was adamant that I start doing the keto diet. She said the doctors’ diet is wrong (no surprise). She gave me several Youtube videos and channels to watch.
Keto is nearly the opposite of what the doctors, and probably your mother recommended. You can eat lots of eggs, fatty meat, deep fried (but in the correct oil without flour breading) meat. I’ve lost an additional 20 pounds or so on keto. They also recommend intermittent fasting, which means skipping breakfast. (You don’t have to skip breakfast necessarily, you can eat whatever times you want as long as you eat within an eight-hour window.) But you can eat until you’re full for two meals a day. Eating meat seems to help you stay satisfied longer and not feeling a need to constantly snack.
It took a week or two to really get into it for me. It was hard for a while to skip breakfast, and not have bread and some sugary sauces. But so far, I’d say it’s been fairly easy to get used to. I would have thought I was addicted to sugar or at least Pepsi, and I was able to stop that nearly cold turkey. It took about a month or six weeks, but my blood pressure has gone back to the healthy range of about 120/70 down from about 143/90.
Things I like to eat are deep fried buffalo chicken wings in coconut oil, ribeye with butter on it. I like chicken thighs deep fried, baked or grilled. One thing I’ve realized lately that I’m looking forward to trying is making salad dressing at home. You can’t have store-bought dressing because they all seem to use soybean oil. But you can pretty much have as much dressing as you want as long as it’s made with the proper oil.
Sometimes if there are doubts about whether I will be able to get full on the meat that has been prepared for a family meal, I can add some pepperoni or quickly cook up some sausage or hard-boiled eggs.
This is a diet that I think I can stick with for a long time. I’m not hungry all the time. Even though I’ve lost 35 pounds, and some girth, I don’t think I look that different. Originally, I thought I’d need to get from 310 pounds to 250 pounds, and I’d be good, but I’m more than half way to my goal. So maybe the goal will have to be lowered, I don’t know.
I’ll give some links to some of my favorite youtube channels, but this diet helps with so many different issues, including blood pressure, gout, prostate problems, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, arthritis, metabolic syndrome, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cancer, skin problems, plantar fasciitis, mental problems, etc.
Here are the links I recommend.
This is a good entry-level primer on what the plan is. The channel is called “Butter Makes Your Pants Fall Off.”
This guy is good. He’s a doctor and you can search his channel for whatever specific thing you might be wondering about, and he probably has more than one video on it: Dr. Ken Berry.
I’ll keep you up to date on my weight loss progress. I’m excited to continue the diet rather than craving the old things. I still somewhat tempted on occasion to eat some of those things, but my health is more important and I’m certainly not dying with out them.
My dad had gout for about the last 20 years of his life. He tried all kinds of things to treat it and nothing seemed to work. I’m a little bit sad that he was never able to try this diet. I’m also a little bit frustrated that doctors are still recommending the exact wrong diet for high blood pressure. That frustrates me, but I’m not surprised.
I’m so thankful my friend spoke up and told me about all of this. I hope it helps you as well. You might be able to get away with eating junk for a while, but as you get older, there will be consequences. I think this is part of the dominion mandate.