I’m re-reading “The Case for Keto”.
I re-read this one a lot. It has a great group feeling while reading, as in “some people just can’t eat carbs, and that includes you and me”, e.g. the author too.
“The message should be straightforward: Carbohydrate-rich foods are fattening. Or to complicate it slightly such that naturally lean people might more likely understand: For those of us who fatten and particularly those who fatten easily, it’s the carbohydrates that we eat—the quantity and the quality—that are responsible. The relevant mechanism appears to be simple, as well: Carbohydrate-rich foods—grains, starchy vegetables, and sugars—work to keep insulin elevated in our circulation, and that traps the fat we eat in our fat cells and inhibits the use of that fat for fuel.”
The answer: Abstinence
He has a whole chapters on it (chapters 13 and 14) and it’s the reminder I need the most.
Not just abstinence but Ridged Abstinence.
There’s no wiggle room. Wiggle room leads to falling off the wagon.
“For most of us who have struggled with our weight for years or decades, however, rigid abstinence would be ideal. Physicians who recommend LCHF/ketogenic eating say they will settle for the best their patients can do, but they believe that the benchmark for how healthy we can be comes only with rigid abstinence.”
It is best to pretend (believe?) that I’m sugar/cab addict, that it is “destroying” my life and to abstain. Just like tobacco and alcohol. None.
“Any other addiction field, that’s how we treat it. Alcohol: We say stop it altogether and don’t even have alcohol in the house. It’s the same with smoking. With diabetes and obesity, your body is essentially a sugar or carbohydrate addict.”
Re-reading this chapter I’m reminded of Gretchen Rubin “moderators” vs “abstainers”.
Says she is an “abstainer” and so am I, that’s why I remember her framework. I think fist read this in “Better Than Before”:
“I realized that one way to deprive myself without creating a feeling of deprivation is to deprive myself totally. Weirdly, when I deprive myself altogether, I feel as though I haven’t deprived myself at all. When we Abstainers deprive ourselves totally, we conserve energy and willpower, because there are no decisions to make and no self-control to muster.
“Abstainers” do better when they follow all-or-nothing habits. “Moderators,” by contrast, are people who do better when they indulge moderately.”
Taubes makes this connection too although mentions “The Happiness Project”:
“Using language from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, Cucuzzella divides his patients into “moderators” and “abstainers.” “A moderator can eat one little square of dark chocolate and walk away,” he says. “An abstainer has one bite, and it will not go well—he’ll eat the whole damn bar. One of the messages that has been a complete disaster for patients with obesity and diabetes is that we can do this in moderation. But if you’re really carb-addicted, telling you to go from ten doughnuts down to four is just telling you to think about eating the doughnuts all day.”
Nod.
There is no “one cookie”. It’s zero or the box.
Abstain and be free.