Why I loved Vegetarian Low Carbing

It tasted great!

At the beginning it was truly that simple. I'm a great lover of food. Though I don't believe it's healthful to overindulge, eating is nonetheless one of life's true pleasures. Each time I attempted low-fat diets I called upon all my creative culinary skills in attempts to maintain the joy of eating, but there simply isn't a lot of satisfaction to be had from food devoid of fat. (Your miles may vary, of course.) My options with low-carb were all tasty and filling. I was in food heaven!

But the flavors weren't the only enticing aspect.

After a few weeks on low carb, I began to feel physically good!

I'd had no idea how tired, lethargic and drained of love-for-life I'd become on my high-carb veg diet. For years it had just been my normal state. As my body began to take in sufficient fat and protein and distance itself from the blood-sugar/insulin roller coaster, I started to feel downright terrific. Believe me: one happy morning when I was still at least 230 pounds I dropped everything and started dancing in my room because I just felt that physically marvelous. Energy zinged through my limbs. I could breathe easily. I felt alive.

My fifteen years of typical high-carb veg eating had stripped me of that joie de vivre and nearly destroyed my health. Low carb veg dieting gave me my life back.

I can never thank the marvelous Doctors Eades enough, nor adequately repay the keenly intellectual Jenny The Bean for sharing her low carb wisdom and research with other dieters. These lovely people helped me drag my body back from ruin.

I'm also forever indebted to the funny, delightful, vigilant Jimmy Moore for keeping me laughing even on blue days. (I feel a kindred spirit in Jimmy. Low carb dieting gave him his life back and, I suspect, filled him with an enthusiasm and gratitude so great that he has to share this amazing experience with others or burst.) The Low Carb community is, for the most part, a friendly place full of easy humor and good will. Even as a vegetarian I never felt marginalized. Not only are there other vegetarians out there practicing low-carb, most omnivores are more curious than judgmental when they learn a fellow low-carber is abstaining from meat. (I wish I could claim the veg community is as tolerant and embracing of low carbers; alas, it is not so.)

I realize that no single nutritional path is going to suit everyone. My body responded wonderfully to low carb dieting because my physiology is tipped heavily in favor of insulin resistance. I've met people who insist they feel ill when they reduce carb intake--and I believe them. But if you've never tried it, don't dismiss it!

I would dearly love to see other severely overweight people experience the same return to happiness and health that I've enjoyed.

It is true that after fourteen months as a low-carbing vegetarian, I changed my diet to include seafood as well. I was a pescetarian for roughly six months. In November of 2007 my surgeon directed me to stop eating fish and discontinue all my vitamin and mineral supplements. Because I'd had particular difficulty with brain fog even with acetyl l-carnitine supplementation, I made the difficult decision to include birds and mammals in my diet for the months before and after my surgery. (Carnitine is only available in red meat.) I was also instructed to up my carb intake so that my body would be in anabolic rather than catabolic mode while I was healing.

It was tremendously difficult for me to raise my carb intake and emotionally distressing to return to eating meat, but I learned from the experience: I feel better than ever. The inclusion of land animals in my diet seems to have inched my health up another notch. And my increased carb level has aided my cognition. For an average American, this carb level would be unthinkable. For an active low-carb dieter, it would probably seem a dubious weight-loss path. But the fuzzy thinking that plagued me beginning in February of 2006 seems at last to have lifted. Keep in mind, however, that I keep every one of my 105 net carbs as low glycemic as possible and that I count every sugar alcohol that trots onto my tongue. If I were "dieting" and counting carbs according to traditional rules, I could probably discount many of these carbs.

Ahhh, I have strayed far and away from my original topic: why I loved veg low carbing.

I loved it because it gave me life and joy. I haven't been this happy since I was seven years old.

Not a small accomplishment for a simple weight loss diet.

Cheerfully,
~L