Remember the old nursery rhyme about how Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean?

While the historical roots of that rhyme are misty, it does suggest that people are metabolically different, something that apparently has been recognized for a long time.

So let's talk about it.

The dumbest weight loss advice I have ever heard was just find a thin person and eat what they're eating.

When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine, there was a girl in my grade named Gail. Gail was skinny. Not just slim skinny. She got as much razzing for being so skinny as I did for being chubby. Lots of jokes about how if you could just melt us down and stir us together, we'd both come out the right size. Can you hear me rolling my eyes?

Gail just couldn't gain weight. It wasn't in her physiology so far as I could see. Just like any other kid, she wasn't turning down cookies or avoiding the ice cream truck. Her body just burned it off at a great rate.

In the 1980s, I had a boyfriend named Tom. Tom was six seven and weighed 150 pounds. For those of you in the civilized world, that's 200.7 centimeters and 68 kilos. Tom was very tall. Very thin. Yes, skinny. We were once out shopping for jeans for him when a strange woman took advantage of his being in the dressing room to come over and whisper. How can you be with someone like that? I'd hate him for being able to eat all the time.

Charming, but Tom could eat all the time. Indeed. He needed to eat all the time. I used to think he'd gotten a shrew gene patched in somehow, and had to eat his own body weight every 12 hours or starve.

This is not a character flaw

It is a fundamental difference in the way our bodies work. That doesn't mean we can't fight it, and we should, but it does mean that the societal judgment of us as weak-willed. It's oversimplified to the point of being just plain bigotry. Who knows how many more physiological differences we will discover?

But for now, the takeaway message is that this is not a character issue. We really are biochemically different than naturally slim people. 

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Links and Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-31-people-who-gain-weight-easily.html

Website CarbSmart.com

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Episode 31 Featured Recipe

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast31recipe

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-31-people-who-gain-weight-easily.html

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Welcome to the CarbSmart Podcast, where your decision to embrace low-carb nutrition becomes a fun and delicious lifestyle! I’m your host, Dana Carpender, here to guide you through the ins and outs of everything low carb – or talk to the people who do!

My sister Kim is asthmatic. Between not getting enough oxygen and having taken prednisone way too often, she has had an even harder time with her weight than I. It’s not for lack of exercise; she’s a middle school teacher on a spread-out one-story campus that has her walking fifteen to twenty thousand steps every work day; on her days off she walks around the lake at a local park. She’s worked with a trainer. She eats zero junk. It’s just hellishly hard.

(When she signed up with the trainer, Kim was told, “You know, you’ll have to stop drinking soda and eating fast food and chips and stuff, right?.” When Kim told the trainer she didn’t consume any of that junk, the trainer was distinctly at a loss. After all, we all “know” that obesity is due to bad diet, right? Right?)

Then last year Kim heard about a new program called LORE in San Diego, where she lives. Dr. James LaBelle, Medical Director of Lore Health, was offering free treatment to teachers needing to lose weight, including a free continuous glucose monitor, dietary advice, support groups, and free Wegovy, a GLP-1 drug. Kim was in.

(Interestingly, Kim discovered that her breakfast of plain yogurt with vanilla extract and Splenda was spiking her blood sugar. Who knew?) So far, Kim has lost 22 pounds.

Do you or anyone you know have a medical condition that makes weight loss near impossible? Sometimes these are obvious, like Kim’s asthma, but others are hidden – and it seems there are many left to be discovered and diagnosed. Do you keep close track of your blood sugar with a monitor? What do you think of using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss? Let us know in the comments below.

It was clear I needed to talk to Dr. LaBelle! So here he is.

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Links and Show Notes

Website CarbSmart.com

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Episode 30 Featured Recipe

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast30recipe

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/three-question-interview-with-dr-james-labelle-carbsmart-podcast-episode-30.html

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This show, we have something a little different. This show. Features something I did not write myself that has not happened before.

But let's start with this. How old is a low-carb diet?

If you look at the traditional diets of various peoples, including the seal, fish, and Blubber diet of the Inuit, several North American native peoples who flourished on pemmican. And the African Messiah herding people who thrived on milk, meat, and cows blood.

Very old indeed. But how about low-carb diet books?

So far as I know, the oldest in the English language at least, is Banting's Letter on Corpulence. Having lost weight and dramatically improved his health on a low-carbohydrate diet. Banting wrote and self-published the book back in the mid-Victorian era, and he distributed it for free.

By the third printing, he had distributed 63,000 copies and banting have become synonymous with dieting. So here it is, Banting's Letter on Corpulence.

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Links and Show Notes

Website CarbSmart.com

https://CarbSmart.com

Episode 29 Featured Recipe

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast29recipe

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

Coming Soon.

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You may be confused regarding net carbs versus total carbs. So let’s demystify it. Shall we. Keep listening.

I see it online all the time. Total carbs or net carbs. I also see are you strict keto, lazy keto, dirty keto? What’s your daily carb limit? What are your macros? But particularly Total carbs or net carbs.

I am all for anything that works for the individual, but I fear that this kind of focus on micromanagement may scare some people off.

Total Carbs or Net Carbs

The first commercially successful low-carb diet book was Banting’s Letter on Corpulence first published in 1863 at William Banting’s own expense. It was such a success that Banting became a synonym for dieting and Professor Tim Noakes has revived the term in South Africa.

Banting stated, “My kind and valued medical advisor is not a doctor for obesity, but stands on the pinnacle of fame in the treatment of another malady, which as he well knows is frequently induced by Corpulence.”

Banting’s diet was four meals per day consisting of meat, greens, fruits and dry wine. The emphasis was on avoiding sugar, starch, beer, milk, butter, and saccharin matter. Here, saccharin matter refers to anything that turns to sugar in the bloodstream. The artificial sweetener we call saccharin had yet to be invented.

Notice something, no mention of counting carbs, much less total versus net carbs. Just eat meat, green vegetables, fruits and dry wine. The diet worked for Banting and for many others.

I have on my shelf a book I found when I was cleaning out my late great-Aunt Betty’s house called Eat and Grow Thin; the Mahdah Menus published in 1914. It too outlined a low carbohydrate diet. It too calls for no counting. When I was growing up, everyone knew that if you wanted to lose weight, you gave up potatoes, spaghetti, bread, and sweets, and focused on animal protein and green vegetables. Every diner and coffee shop offered a diet plate consisting of a bunless hamburger patty, a scoop of cottage cheese and either sliced tomatoes or a half a canned peach.

Enter the Stillman Diet

In 1967, Dr. Irwin Stillman’s diet was both very low carb and low fat calling for almost nothing but very lean meat, plus at least eight glasses of water per day. Having tried it as a kid, I can attest to it being effective, but too limited for continued use.

Enter Dr. Atkins and Counting Carbs

I trust we can take it as read that the Atkins diet works by liberalizing fat and including some vegetables and those in increasing quantities. As the diet progressed, the Atkins diet was and remains far more livable than Stillman’s.

Links and Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-28-understanding-net-carbs-vs-total-carbs.html

Website CarbSmart.com

https://CarbSmart.com

Episode 28 Featured Recipe

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast28recipe

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-28-understanding-net-carbs-vs-total-carbs.html

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Eat It Again! How Repetition Rewires Your Taste

If you’ve just recently gone low-carb, say as a New Year’s resolution, you may be overwhelmed by the sheer difference from your old diet.

Faux-tatoes instead of mashed potatoes. Lunches that don’t include sandwiches, heavy cream and flavored stevia in your coffee instead of creamer. I am here to cheer you on and give you good reason to stick it out. A reason that doesn’t have to do with the scale or your health.

Many years ago, when my sister was a private school teacher, her pay was painfully low. She had to scramble each spring to find a summer job. For a few years, she worked for a company that brought over French foreign exchange students. She had to find them host families, and then during the week, she drove them around the San Diego area in a van, showing them the sites and giving them a taste of American culture.

Speaking of taste, every single French teenager she worked with simply adored liver pate, but found peanut butter revolting. From this, it becomes clear every taste is an acquired taste. If you’re just starting your low-carb journey, you may find that some things taste…funny. Not bad, just different from what you’re used to, different from what you grew up on. Please remember that all tastes are acquired tastes.

Do you know how old I am?

“How old are you?” I hear you cry. I’m so old. I walked home for lunch every day. Through elementary school, mom largely relied on simple stuff for our lunches, canned soup, frozen pot pies, or macaroni and cheese, or frozen pizza and wagon wheel shaped noodles with jarred spaghetti sauce and Parmesan.

The jarred sauce she used back in the 1960s was Ragu Old World Style. I don’t know if the recipe has changed over the past 50 odd years, but it currently contains tomato puree, which is water and tomato paste, salt, olive oil, sugar, dehydrated onions, dehydrated garlic spices, garlic powder, onion powder.

That was the jarred spaghetti sauce of my childhood, and I often had it at lunch. My mother did make awesome homemade spaghetti sauce for family dinners. I wish I had that recipe.

Then at 19, I quit sugar and white flour. I started eating whole wheat noodles and I switched over to a jarred sauce that had no sugar.

It tasted… funny. Not bad, mind you, I was willing to eat it. It just tasted different. It wasn’t what I’d grown up on, but I wasn’t going back to eating sauce with sugar and it, so I stuck with it. Pretty soon, that sauce was what my taste buds expected, and it tasted great.

Links and Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-27-eat-it-again-how-repetition-rewires-your-taste.html

Website CarbSmart.com

https://CarbSmart.com

Episode 27 Featured Recipe

Low-Carb Cocoa-Peanut Porkies

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast27recipe

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-27-eat-it-again-how-repetition-rewires-your-taste.html

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If your nutritional program is so good, why do you still take drugs?

There’s no question that good nutrition improves our health. Heck, many type 2 diabetics do away with all need for medication by eating low-carb. But can proper nutrition prevent all illness and do away with all need for drugs? Let’s talk about it.

I got this question years ago, back when I was blogging. The fellow who posed it clearly thought that if one’s nutrition was all it should be, there should never be a need for medication. In particular, the Wellbutrin I take for ADHD and seasonal affective disorder, and the sleep medication I take for a diagnosed sleep disorder.

Does ideal nutrition do away with the need for medicine?

I can only suppose that those who feel this way are ignorant of history. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 1900, fully 30 percent of deaths in the US were of children five and under. Some of them would have been trauma victims, and of course, trauma medicine has improved dramatically.

But many of them were killed by infectious diseases, diphtheria, pertussis, tuberculosis, pneumonia and flu. Between vaccination and antibiotics, the rate of death from these diseases has plummeted. This is the main reason that average lifespan has increased so dramatically. But was the American diet ideal in 1900?

Not by our standards. The American rate of sugar consumption was 90 pounds per capita per year, about half of what it is today, but still higher than it had historically been. Certainly, people ate bread, potatoes, and other concentrated carbs. However, soda intake was 12 bottles per year, and the bottles were far smaller than the 20 ouncers common today.

How old am I? I’m so old I can remember 6 ounce bottles of Coca Cola in Coke machines. Processed food was far less common. Home cooking was the standard. Frozen food and fast food didn’t exist. Highly processed seed oils were not a thing. Home gardening was more common, especially during the Great War, when victory gardens were urged.

Yet, people were dying young. So, let’s go back further. Let’s go back to the Middle Ages. In 14th century Europe, sugar consumption was limited to the wealthy. Interestingly, grain consumption among the peasants, so the vast majority of people, was rarely wheat, but rather barley, oats, and rye. All of which are easier on blood sugar than wheat flour.

Links and Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-26-why-do-you-still-take-drugs.html

Website CarbSmart.com

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Episode 26 Featured Recipe

Low-Carb Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan-Bacon Cream Sauce

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast26recipe

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-26-why-do-you-still-take-drugs.html

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Isn't it important to eat a balanced diet?

How many times have you been told it's important to eat a balanced diet? Doctors, mom, health class, magazine articles, everywhere.

Remember to eat a balanced diet. It's been repeated so often that it's accepted without a thought. Except, of course, by me, you, and our low-carb ilk. Let's talk about it. 

Like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell because you don't want to miss a single episode. 

Isn't it important to eat a balanced diet?

Well, maybe. The big question is, what the heck is a balanced diet? The phrase doesn't seem to have any concrete meaning. Certainly, it varies from species to species. A balanced diet for a tiger would be very different from a balanced diet for a rabbit. Similarly, historically, human diets would have varied dramatically from region to region and from season to season.

Is the government, my plate, successor to the food pyramid, a balanced diet? 

It suggests more of some kinds of foods, particularly grains, than others. Is it balanced to eat six to ten one-ounce servings of grains a day, but only five or six one-ounce portions of protein foods? Is it balanced to omit fats entirely as a food group and recommend low-fat or fat-free dairy, restricting saturated fat to 10 percent of calories?

Remember that there are essential fats, but the essential level of grain intake, and of carbs in general, is zero. 

Remember hardcore low-fat diets, some as low as 10 percent of calories from fat, Ornish, Pritikin, those guys? I never heard “not balanced” thrown at them. Many of the same people are now pushing a plant-based diet, i.e. vegetarian or vegan diet, nearly devoid of saturated fat and cholesterol.

I find it incredible that we could increase our intake of any highly concentrated substance by over 2,000 percent in 200 years time, the increase in American sugar consumption between 1800 and 2000, and not have it be a health threat. Heck, if we drank that much more water, it might be a danger. 

Two better questions would be:

What diet comes closest to that on which the human race evolved?

And, What diet makes my own personal body work best? 

Links and Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-25-isnt-it-important-to-eat-a-balanced-diet.html

Website CarbSmart.com

https://CarbSmart.com

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-25-isnt-it-important-to-eat-a-balanced-diet.html

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Welcome to the Wonderful World of Low-Carb – CarbSmart Podcast Episode 24

Carb restriction is, of course, a great way to achieve weight loss & health. So, let's talk about it.

Links and Show Notes

Welcome to the CarbSmart Podcast, where your decision to embrace low-carb nutrition becomes a fun and delicious lifestyle. I’m your host, Dana Carpender, here to guide you through the ins and outs of everything low-carb. With the new year comes diet season with people resolving to improve their nutrition, whether for weight loss, health, or both.

Carb restriction is, of course, a great way to achieve both. So, let’s talk about it. Like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell because you don't want to miss a single episode. 

I’ve been eating this way since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Okay, since 1995. Clearly, I have never regretted it. I have fielded questions about low-carb nutrition all these years.

The question I most commonly get is: “How many grams of carbohydrate should I eat in a day?”

My reply is always, “How the hell should I know?”

More recently, I also get “What are your macros?

The answer is, “I have no clue.”

This journey started with a nutrition book from the 1950s. I bought it a used book sale. It asserted that obesity was not a matter of eating too much, but rather a carbohydrate intolerance disorder.

CarbSmart Podcast on YouTube

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Website

https://CarbSmart.com

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/welcome-to-the-wonderful-world-of-low-carb-podcast-episode-24.html

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Read the Full Transcript

https://www.carbsmart.com/welcome-to-the-wonderful-world-of-low-carb-podcast-episode-24.html

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Refusing Holiday Food and Staying Low-Carb

CarbSmart Podcast Episode 23

Dealing with the holiday food pushers

Welcome to the Encore Edition of Refusing Holiday Food and Staying Low-Carb!

We’re revisiting some of our earliest and most popular episodes to celebrate our journey and your incredible support. These fan favorites are packed with timeless insights, expert advice, and practical tips to help you thrive on your low-carb lifestyle. Whether you’re tuning in for the first time or reliving the classics, these encore episodes are here to inspire, educate, and entertain all over again. Enjoy!

The holidays are straight ahead, with piles and piles of carby junk and, worse, people nagging you to eat the stuff. Why do so many people think that saying things like, “But you have to eat it; it’s a tradition,” and “I worked all afternoon making it just for you” constitutes an expression of holiday goodwill? I have no idea.

But sadly, this behavior is all too common. You need to think ahead about how to respond to this sort of thing. You have absolutely no obligation to eat anything you do not want to eat.

You have absolutely no obligation to eat anything you do not want to eat.

If you had a terrible allergy, the sort that would throw you into anaphylaxis at the merest taste, you would not hesitate to refuse that food, nor would you apologize for doing so.

Similarly, If you were a recovering alcoholic, you would feel free to say no thanks to a drink and would consider rude anyone who pressed you. Carbohydrate addiction and hyperinsulinemia don’t kill as quickly as allergic reactions, but they kill vastly more people. And a case can be made that dying quickly of anaphylaxis is preferable to the long, drawn-out years of deteriorating health and increasing debility that carb addiction can wreak on your body.

So, no feeling apologetic when offered food or drink one does not care to consume. No thank you is always the polite thing to say. Conversely, nagging people to eat foods they have politely refused is rude-rude-rude. You are in the right here, no matter how people try to browbeat you into thinking that you’re the unmannerly one.

Links and Show Notes

Visit our website with over 3,000 Free Articles and Low-Carb Recipes

https://CarbSmart.com

Our Featured Recipe

Dana’s Best & Easiest Sugar-Free Ketchup Recipe – New for 2024!

Check out our CarbSmart Low-Carb Cookbooks

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Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-23-encore-refusing-holiday-food-and-staying-low-carb.html

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Staying Well While You're Getting Well Low-Carb Tips for Cold & Flu Relief
Links and Show Notes

Ah, yes. Autumn. The cool, crisp air. The brilliant leaves. The cozy sweaters. And the advent of cold and flu season. Achoo! What does this have to do with our low-carb diets? More than you might think at first glance. Between cough syrup and cough drops, multi-symptom cold relievers like NyQuil. And the oft-recommended tea with honey and chicken noodle soup, there are pitfalls here.

So, let's talk about them. Like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell because you don't want to miss a single episode. 

Cough syrup and cough drops are easy. Virtually any pharmacy will have sugar-free cough syrup, probably labeled diabetic formula, and sugar-free cough drops. Keep in mind that the cough drops are probably made with sugar alcohols.

If sugar alcohols give you gut problems, you'll want to go easy. Hall's Sugar-Free cough drops, for example, are made with isomalt, which has very little effect on blood sugar. But can cause gut trouble in large doses. What about multi symptom cold relievers? I was finding mixed information online, so I went to the source.

CarbSmart Podcast on YouTube

https://youtu.be/gK6XaqCKix8

Website

https://CarbSmart.com

Find Hundreds of Articles and Delicious and Easy-to-Make Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender

https://www.carbsmart.com/author/dana

Show Notes

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-22-low-carb-tips-for-cold-and-flu-relief.html

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Check out more CarbSmart Podcast Episodes.

Read the Full Transcript

https://www.carbsmart.com/podcast-22-low-carb-tips-for-cold-and-flu-relief.html

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Check out more CarbSmart Podcast Episodes.

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