Keeping up with an update to my journey. I had my three-month doctor visit a couple weeks back. I was very interested in seeing my blood panel results, including HbA1c, and other tests to compare to how very poor my numbers were back in October.

The doctor called me, and said my blood tests looked really really good.

Two reallys – I’m happy. Let’s dig into some numbers

	Then	Now
HGA1c	12.2	6.8 (
Glucose	439	112
Triglycerides	150	91

During the 90 days I devoured a lot of books:

The Diabetes Code – Dr. Jason Fung
Good Calories – Bad Calories – Gary Taubes
The Diabetes Solution – Dr. Richard K. Bernstein
The Case for Keto – Gary Taubes

I read a lot of Gary Taubes, the Case for Keto is probably the best summary of most of his works. Largely a critique of the “Standard American Diet” (SAD) which is embodied by Dietary Guidelines with the food pyramid recommend little fats, and lots of grains. Keto flips the pyramid on it’s point, and recommends the opposite – or Low Carb, High Fat (LCHF).

The premise of the most of Taubes writing on the topic is that the Dietary Guidelines hypothesis was that by reducing the amount of dietary fat, and saturated fat specifically, it would reduce the cholesterol levels and in doing so reduce the risk of heart disease. The other hypothesis of the dietary guidelines is that obesity is caused by excessive calories or not enough exercise or some combination of where an excess energy balance causes our body to store fat.

Taubes looked back at the history of obesity and leaned that there wasn’t a lot of evidence to support either hypothesis. And looked at a different – or alternate – hypothesis to explain obesity. A metabolic malfunction in – those that tend to fatten. The culprit in his mind isn’t dietary fat, but excessive carbohydrates, simple starches, and sugar.

So my 90 day experience in trying the Keto way (or LCHF, aka Atkins) was to eliminate sugars and starches, and reduce carbohydrates as a percentage of calories below 20% while increase fat percentage towards 70%. In other words, I rejected the dietary guidelines, and embrace the reverse food pyramid.

Everything I read on the topic, predicted the results. Lower blood glucose, lower triglycerides, better LDL/HDL ratio. (My HDL stayed steady, my LDL dropped 35 points to 75). The SAD or Dietary Guidelines don’t work for me. Keto or LCHF helped in every measure.

I also lost 40 pounds, without a whole lot of exercise.