Over the years I've done extensive work with diabetes, treating the symptoms through custom insoles and nutraceuticals, aimed at treating the disease in a non-direct manner. Doctor's worked in the same way treating symptoms with traditional insulin injections and prescription pills. However, as time passed, I realized that custom orthotic inserts and multivitamins were only band-aids to the true issue, which is obesity brought on by carb loading.

Our grand parents knew that carbohydrates were fattening.  In fact an article in the British Journal of Nutrition stated that fact.  For over 100 years before that conventional wisdom was that foods such as potatoes, bread, rice, beer, sweets and pasta made us fat.  They also knew that fats and protein did not make us fat.

Since the 70’s, we have come to believe that there was nothing fattening about carbohydrates any more than protein or fats.  We accepted -as fact- that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.  Then the only way to lose weight is to eat less, exercise and see what happens.  Even experts know this approach rarely seems to work.

As I studied to become a disease state manager in Diabetes, I increasingly became aware that what we were taught in the 70’S is simply wrong although we had come to accept it as fact.  I believe that that belief is a large part of the reason we have seen an increase in diabetes, obesity and conditions associated with these TWO conditions happening in the same time period.  I am really surprised at my conclusion, that obesity or gaining too much weight is not caused by just eating too much.  It for sure is not caused by eating too much fat or protein.

Carbohydrates, not fat, are the cause of excess weight, just as our grandparents' generation always knew.  Eating carbohydrates triggers a hormonal response, -insulin secretion- that signals our bodies to accumulate fat.  This is why the fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.  Sugar, flour and other refined carbohydrates produce an exaggerated version of this response, and so are particularly fattening.  Exercise alone will not cause substantial weight loss.  It may just make us hungry.  I believe that fat does not cause heart disease.  The same foods that make us fat –carbohydrates, such as sugars and other easy digested carbs (high glycemic carbohydrates)- will eventually cause diabetes, heart disease and obesity.  One of the best predictors of heart disease in waist circumference.  What makes our waist get larger, you guessed it -high glycemic carbohydrates.

The American Heart Association has insisted on calling the low carbohydrate diet a Fad Diet.  But the truth is that a restricted carbohydrate diet was standard practice until the 1960s.  To prevent heart disease, we were encouraged to eat a low-fat and high-carbohydrate diet by The American Heart Assn.  Even without scientific data, this way of thinking and eating caught on.