My story

Weight control has been a problem for me from as far back as I can remember, and I'm no stranger to diets - you name them, I've tried them over the years! The only diet that has proved successful for me in the long term has been low carbohydrate. I first tried this in the 1980s, with significant success. However, there was much less evidence then to demonstrate its safety than there is now, and there were certainly no support organisations as there are now to provide motivation and practical advice to low carbers. These factors caused me to return to low calorie/low fat dieting, with disastrous results.

Twenty years later and considerably heavier, I decided it was time to find out how things had moved on in the world of medical and nutritional research. I was happy to find that many of the alleged dangers of low carb diets had been shown to be scientifically groundless. And I was even happier when I discovered that low carbing was now being hailed as more healthy than the low calorie/low fat/high carbohydrate diet currently in vogue. It seems that a significant proportion of the general population, perhaps the majority even, may be metabolically unable to handle carbohydrate foods in the form and quantity which make up our diet today. In fact, researchers and clinicians at the forefront of research into carbohydrate metabolism have gathered enough evidence over the last decades to give them the confidence to claim that, rather than fat, carbohydrate is the real villain - not only in obesity, but in diabetes and heart disease too.

This discovery coincided with the publication of an updated version of the low carbohydrate diet I had followed in the 1980s. The intervening years of research and improved understanding of the subject had resulted in a diet that was more 'do-able', and this, together with the more credible scientific evidence of its safety, was enough for me. I bought the book, started the diet in January 2000, shed my surplus weight (three and a half stone/49 lbs/22 kg - quite a lot for someone who's 5 ft 1 in/1.55m) and have never felt better. The weight just melted off over the next year, despite the fact that my daily calorie consumption had substantially increased. Much of the excess weight was already gone by the summer of 2000, and family and friends who knew how much I'd struggled with my weight problem for so many years simply couldn't believe it.

I can truly say that going low carb has transformed my life. Quite apart from the spectacular weight loss, I've lost the carbohydrate cravings I was always fighting against, the constant hunger pangs and the lack of energy. Better still, my confidence and self-esteem have rocketed. Being able to demonstrate that losing weight is not a simple matter of reducing calories or eating less makes me feel I've got my own back at last on all those in the past who doomed me to failure by serving me up with this advice and then blamed my inability to fit the theory on lack of willpower and/or 'emotional eating'.

I don't feel deprived any longer, either, because there are so many really satisfying, delicious, and even downright sinful foods you can have on low carb. It doesn't bother me as it once did to have to say no to puddings, cakes and chocolates because not only can I have my own low carb versions of them, but there are also plenty of other foods I can have instead which would have been forbidden when counting calories. One surprise is that I've completely lost my sweet tooth. I now find 'normal' chocolate, cakes and desserts disagreeably sweet. If anyone had told me pre-2000 that I would lose my taste for ordinary chocolate, I would never have believed them!

I don't actually count my carbs every day any more, but my tolerance level is somewhere between 25 and 40 grams. This is enough to allow me plenty of veggies and salads, 'porridge' for breakfast and a daily serving of yoghurt, ice cream or other dessert, whilst still having some of my quota left over for the occasional bread, pastry or sauce and the odd treat such as chocolate, shortbread, flapjacks and even chocolate eclairs. (All my special low carb versions, of course.)

The only challenge is that eating away from home is still difficult, because most food manufacturers and catering establishments, if indeed they provide 'healthy eating' options, focus on low calorie/low fat. These usually equate to 'fat content removed and replaced by sugar or other refined carbs', so I avoid these automatically. Shopping for certain low carb ingredients can be tricky, too. Which is one reason for the Low Carb is Easy Website - lots of visitors to the site will help convince food manufacturers and caterers that the demand is out there, ready and waiting!

One other thing that has resulted from my switch to a low carb way of eating is that I've started baking again. Years ago I counted it amongst my hobbies but I gave it up when I realised that I was just making things harder for myself by having newly baked biscuits and cakes around to tempt me. But having discovered that low carb substitutes exist for many ingredients, I became an avid experimenter in the kitchen. Not for me a life of plain cooked meat, fish, cheese or eggs, green vegetables, and salad - my new way of eating had to have enough interest in it to keep me on it for life!

So I discovered how to make low carb sauces, pies, quiches, bread, cakes, biscuits, desserts, ice cream, yoghurt and so on. Family and friends who sampled my efforts were pleasantly surprised at how good they tasted compared to the 'normal' versions. However it quickly became apparent that I would need to organise the many scraps of paper on which I had scribbled my trial recipes and the inevitable carbohydrate calculations. I also realised that my accumulated knowledge might be useful to others. New or potential low carbers are often discouraged by what they mistakenly believe is a very plain and uninteresting diet, and by the need to change to a different way of thinking in the kitchen. So it was that the Low Carb is Easy Cookbook and the Low Carb is Easy website came into being.

Four years later - an update

Well, all was well for a couple of years, until I started to gain weight again. I thought maybe it was 'carb creep', but checking my carb intake confirmed this was not the case. I checked my calorie intake as well, to see if that could be the answer. But too many calories certainly wasn't the problem. So back to my books and papers I went.

It was then that I started to truly appreciate just how many more factors besides carb or calorie intake are involved when you are trying to lose weight. It seemed that there were a number of possible reasons why I had started gaining weight again. Depressed metabolic rate and low thyroid were top of the list of suspects, together wtih food allergies, candida, toxic load and nutrient deficiencies. From my research, I began to piece together how these problems all relate to one another. I also began to understand why tackling just one or two in isolation would not get my body back into the healthy balance that is needed before weight loss can occur.

So, one by one, I tackled the potential weight loss saboteurs that my research had identified. The thyroid problem was the most difficult to deal with. This was because I was already being treated for hypothyroidism (low or sluggish thyroid) but according to my blood results, my treatment was getting my thyroid hormone levels into the 'normal' range.

However, I had come across various thyroid specialists and researchers who were saying that some hypothyroids need more and possibly different hormone replacement before they become free of symptoms such as unexplained weight gain or difficulty in losing weight. To cut a long story short, I turned out to be one of these people. I am now being prescribed a different thyroid hormone (T3) as well as the T4 that is usually prescribed, and at last my weight seems to be moving downwards once again.

By this time, of course, I had collected hundreds of scraps of information and research papers and my library of reference books had grown prodigiously. As with the recipes I had developed earlier, I realized that the knowledge I had gathered would be useful to other people for whom diets were not working. I knew that such information was not readily available, because I had searched the Internet for it exhaustively. Sure, there were many books and articles on specific aspects. But there was nothing that covered all the factors in a comprehensive way and made scientific sense of a seemingly disparate collection of theories and clinical experiences by looking at them on a biochemical and hormonal level.

So I embarked upon the mammoth task of transforming my notes and papers into a book which would explain all these factors that can prevent you from losing weight. "Why Can't I Lose Weight - The Real Reasons Diets Fail And What To Do About It" was the result of my work and is now available from a new sister site to Low Carb is Easy.com called Diet Plateau.com.

Founder Director
Low Carb is Easy.com and Good Diet Good Health.com