Too much protein will damage your kidneys. 'Too much' fat

Posted on: December 24, 2017 at 19:53:46 CT

won't hurt you. Some cultures, like the Eskimoes, have eaten very high fat diets and were very healthy. I think more than 35%(?) of your calories from protein, however, can damage your kidneys. Recommendation is to substitute mostly fat for the carbs if you need to lose weight.

I had always been pretty lean and could eat and drink anything I wanted and never gain weight, at least up until I got married we started having kids. Then we were too busy to sleep it seemed, much less get out and get some exercise. Add to that I was the family garbage disposal. I would eat until I filled up & then my wife would bring me one plate after another of stuff the kids didn't eat and I would overstuff myself.

I was probably adding a couple of pounds or 3 each year, but over time that starts to add up.

I got some literature in the mail from PETA, I believe, or some organization pushing vegetarianism & they were talking about how great it was for your health and for losing weight. They showed vegan athletes & famous people that looked to be in the peak of health and it seemed to match up with what the mainstream medical community was saying.

Eventually, I thought "What the heck, I'll give it a try." Sort of. I didn't want to give up meat & fish completely, but I figured I'd move in that direction. I had always cut almost all of the fat off of my meat anyway, even as a kid but now I made a conscious effort to eat more/mostly potatoes and pasta and stuff.

I had read that fat was the real culprit with weight gain as a gram of fat had 9 kCalories per gram, vs 4 kCal for protein and for carbohydrates. From what I had read in the mainstream medical community, the main problem with sugars was that they were "empty calories", you didn't get all of the vitamins and minerals you would get if you were eating "real food". I didn't figure that was much of a problem, I took multivitamins & minerals to compensate.

I still at a little meat and fish, couldn't give it up completely, but made some meals just a big bowl of mashed potatoes, cheese and margarine, with a little soy sauce for taste. For others I would just pig out on pasta. Those were literally big bowls... not serving bowls, but probably half way between a serving bowl and a regular bowl.

Much to my surprise I ballooned up quickly, but I didn't stop the experiment right away. I couldn't figure out why that happened, so I figured it must be some anomaly. It went against everything I had read from the mainstream doctors... and I gained even more weight.

Then I noticed a story on the StlPostDispatch for some event, perhaps a book signing, by Gary Taubes who was promoting his new best selling book, Why We Get Fat, and What to do about it. I was stunned when he said in the article that almost everything we had been taught on the subject was wrong. Carbs was the culprit for weight gain, not fat. He said we needed to avoid things like potatoes and pasta. I couldn't believe it & posted something in the comments about that being nuts. How could that be if fat contained more than twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbs.

But it caught my attention enough that I got the electronic version of the book from our library, though I had to wait a little while for it to become available. There was a waiting list.

I thought the guy was probably a quack, but he was rated as one of the top science writers in the country by some people that seemed credible, and when I dived into the book I was quite surprised that he had the studies, the examples and the history of some doctors to back up his assertions.

I tried it and flipped the food pyramid on its head and did the exact opposite of what I had been doing, which ticked my wife off big time. I wouldn't eat the oatmeal, rice and whole wheat bread, potatoes and pasta she had been stockpiling and started eating mostly meat and fish. Per his book, very similar to a diet the Duke medical department recommended, he went for a "shock treatment" of 20 grams or less of carbs per day and no sugar. Green leafy vegetables like kale or collard greens or lettuce etc. were ok, but little else. I think I added a little cheese.

I was amazed at the results. I ate if I was hungry, but stopped when I wasn't, and I lost a little bit of weight each day. I expected it would go down a little, up a little and so on, even if the general trend was down, but it seemed to just be down every day. My scale is in 2/10ths of a pound increments, btw.

I lost 10 lbs, then 15, then 20 and I couldn't believe it. I wasn't going hungry or anything, I was just losing weight. It went against everything thing I had learned from the regular medical literature. I joked that I would waste away to nothing if this kept up, and it did keep up. I eventually lost 34 or 36 lbs, I forget which before I bottomed out. I wasn't quite where I wanted to be but pretty close.

My problem was that staying on that diet seems to be necessary for me, and I cheat on it quite a bit. It is pretty much no fruits, no alcohol, no sugar, candies, cookies, cake etc. so especially around the holidays, birthdays etc. I cheat & put the weight back on, and it goes on a lot faster than it comes back off.

The bottom line is that for me, and I suspect for most people who need to keep the weight off, a low carb diet is essential.


Edited by JeffB at 19:56:22 on 12/24/17