I still work a regular job, despite being retired from my former career as a civil and structural engineer. One of my colleagues, who suffers from diabetes, recently stopped taking Metformin, a drug that the FDA no longer recommends, and started Ozempic. I was vaguely aware of this new drug because of commercials with a portly woman dancing around and singing the praises of Ozempic. Now, my friend eats a tremendous amount of junk food, no doubt because of his diabetes and the fact that he needs to eat every two hours or more to function. But that same junk food is why he has diabetes in the first place, and why he continues with the disease.
I was reminded of all this when I read a story today, at the American Thinker entitled 'Miracle' weight loss drug manufacturers hauled into court by Ben Bartee. The issue is that in addition to diabetes, Ozempic and other "miracle" drugs do supposedly also cause some weight loss. But that weight loss comes at a price that many would rather not pay.
I get a veritable avalanche of breathless complaints from (probably obese) individuals when I write about semaglutide (marketed as Wegovy and Ozempic in the United States). Their objections tend to go along the lines of: "but muh pharma. How else am I supposed to lose weight?"
The obeses call me a fascist – exercise and eating right now being apparently "right-wing." They say I'm unempathetic and don't understand their plight for even suggesting they don't turn to expensive pharmaceutical products as their first-resort solution to their problems.
I sympathize with the people who write in asking "how else am I supposed to lose weight." They have been lied to. Now, I am no doctor, so I am only repeating here what I learned from someone who is a doctor, and from personal experience, which is admittedly a N = 1 situation. What I learned was that exercise, while good for you, has nothing to do with weight loss. You tend to eat as many calories as you burn, and our bodies are so efficient that you really don't burn all that much, unless you are a marathoner. Meanwhile eating less and essentially starving yourself only works for so long. Eventually, you will become so starved you will overeat and gain the weight back plus more. You need change your diet. And by change, I do mean radically change it.
The issue is something called insulin resistance. All the grains you eat (think bread, cereals, pasta, bagels, donuts, muffins, and many junk snacks) and many vegetables like potatoes are turned into sugar in your system. In addition, we eat pure sugar to boot in the form of soft drinks, syrup on pancakes and waffles, which are themselves just more sugar. Honeybees are designed to eat this way; we are not. The intake of sugar spikes your insulin levels. Over time, your body becomes resistant to insulin, which makes you hungrier, so you eat more, which spikes your insulin levels and...it becomes a vicious cycle. You get fat. Keep that up, and you will also get Type II diabetes because your poor pancreas just wears out. Then there is research that suggests cancer may well be fed by sugars.
So, what is the solution? Carbohydrates, those things that turn into sugar in your digestive track, spike your insulin big time. And, as it turns out, you don't need carbohydrates at all. The Inuit live on a diet of fats and proteins (think fish, seals, whales) their entire lives, never eat vegetables, and are just fine, thank you. Other cultures have lived on mostly meat and saturated fats (not vegetable oils) with few of the diseases of civilization such as diabetes, heart attacks, being overweight and similar diseases.
I now eat a diet that is pretty much meat, especially beef with 50% being fats. I don't trim any fat off, and I like it well marbled. I eat other meats as well such as lamb, pork, and some poultry. I cook in lard and butter with the occasional tallow. I eat eggs cooked in butter. Eggs after all are complete kits to build a chick including all the vitamins and minerals necessary for that operation. What could be more perfect? Red meat, by the way, has all the vitamins and minerals you need in bioavailable form, unlike many supplements.
Being fat since I was 12, I have studied the weight loss field going way back. My first real breakthrough was reading Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution. But I have also studied the highly researched book by Nina Teicholz entitled Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Heathy Diet. Teicholz is a journalist but is also a featured speaker at professional meetings of diet doctors. Then there is Professor Tim Noakes, a sports medicine specialist and marathoner, who discovered that you can (and should) run marathons while eating a diet consisting of meat and fats. He wrote a book that updated the 19th century book The Banting Diet. Professor Noakes does not recommend the old idea of carbohydrate loading, which was all the rage when I was a runner.
One book that is very informative is by Dr. Ken Berry entitled Lies My Doctor Told Me that explained where a lot of the myths about diet and disease come from. As a practicing physician, he is at pains to explain that while the doctors may tell you things that are not true, it is not because they want to lie to you. For the most part, they just don't know any better. They have been lied to. In addition, he has a number of youtube videos on The Proper Human Diet.
Since I have been eating what Dr. Berry calls a Proper Human Diet, I have, of course, lost weight. I feel younger, and move better. I have gotten rid of many pains, and I now go up and down stairs like I was still 40, not 70. I am off all drugs. I look forward to each new day. The government, Big Pharma, Big Food, and the media have been lying to you. Those who tell you to eat a vegan diet are lying as well. We are predators, probably the apex predator on the planet. We are designed to eat mostly meat and fats. Embrace that status.
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