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I was obese for fifty-one years before discovering a simple dietary fix. For most of that time I was morbidly obese. Among yo-yo dieters I may be world class, b

I was obese for fifty-one years before discovering a simple dietary fix. For most of that time I was morbidly obese. Among yo-yo dieters I may be world class, being on a diet for most of that time, losing and gaining over 100 pound four times. Two years and a few months ago I tried yet another diet. (I haven't tried _all_ of the others, just almost all.) This time it worked. I've lost 80 pounds and my diabetes is in remission, but that has happened so many times before that it isn't what has me smiling. The difference is that it has controlled my appetite. I don't crave the carbs anymore that used to be my life's breath. I'm not obsessed with food anymore, I just eat two moderate meals a day and move on with my life in between. I feel like my relationship with food has become like the normal, healthy people that I've misunderstood as masters of self control. Here's the secret: I went on a lately popular but politically incorrect diet, that when mentioned on this site gathers instant opprobrium. But the effect is that I'm consuming a much greater proportion of protein than before, in a more bioavailable and complete form. I attribute my progress to this change to my macros. I'd just never tried it before. But it turns out that it makes a huge change to my satiety, and the rest follows. I don't assert that other obese people are/were obese because of protein deficiency, just me. I do assert that it's mostly an issue of not getting the right nutrients from their food. No drugs, no surgery, and exercise only now, after great weight loss, for the joy of it.

jononomo 4y ago
I eat mainly beef and I don't understand why everyone in the world doesn't eat mainly beef -- it just fixes everything. I'm thinking about doing an only-beef 2023.
- nimbius 4y ago
  youve got it all wrong now. Ever since I read an article about farmhands and astute svelt businessmen who stand at 18th century lecterns conducting traditional old fashioned business I learned our modern diet is causing everything from climate change to the inevitable heat death of the universe itself. Cornkids and Soyboys beware, for what I propose is a radical change in everything youve ever known about putting a thing into your mouth. For the past 1500 years ive made it a point to eat nothing but the rancid dew-pocked suet in unattended suburban bird feeders for breakfast. My lunch is a simple trip back to those very same bird feeders, and --you guessed it buddy-- dinner is a quick helping of that sweet greasy nectar of the caged brick full of seeds and lawn detritus. Most people say they cannot believe their eyes when they see what i look like, or how I managed to stay so physically fit, or where all their suet keeps going to. I hope to start a blog soon where i will expound upon the brilliance of giving up old fashioned coffee as well in favour of a modern advancement in nutrition i call, contact cement and model epoxy.
  - jononomo 4y ago
    In fact I spent several weeks during 2021 rendering tallow from beef suet and now I use tallow to fry eggs in and to slow-cook roasts in. I've also been thinking of making pemican with it. I have several gallons of tallow in my fridge (along with several ribeye steaks that I'll be eating later).
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  Well for starters that is an economic impossibility.
  - jononomo 4y ago
    I buy my beef by the cow and I get the whole thing for less than $4/pound, whether it be ribeye steaks or ground beef or roasts. That price is for the cow bought at auction, slaughtered, butchered, packaged, and frozen. Note that I don't spend money on any other food, since I only eat beef. You save massive amounts of time, since you only go shopping for food once or twice a year, you never deal with vegetables or chopping, pealing, etc, and your food never goes bad. Sometimes I'll go to Wegman's and buy fifty ribeye steaks and then just eat ribeye steaks for a while -- that can run me about $700 since I've been able to find them for $13/pound and they're about 1.1 pounds each. But the crazy thing is the health benefits you experience -- three dozen minor issues are cured.
    - algoatecorn 4y ago
      That's great, and I believe you've experienced positive benefits in many ways. I myself eat a large amount of meat. But it's a privilege for individuals in high income countries. The economic impossibilities are tied to the resource side: water, energy, land-use. Again, I'm far from anti-meat but I am a food systems researcher and the world cannot extract enough resources to feed ourselves mostly beef - or meat for that matter. Nor could we do it at cost. Perhaps there is a scenario where a majority of the population is directly involved in agriculture and we spend >50% of our income on beef. But then you have a massive reduction in total GDP because more human capital is pulled away from other sectors.
      - quotemstr 4y ago
        > ...the world cannot extract enough resources to feed ourselves mostly beef - or meat for that matter. Nor could we do it at cost. I wouldn't be so sure: markets find ways to satisfy demand. People made similar statements about photovoltaic panels, but here we are, with solar competitive with coal. I'd prefer to let markets organically allocate scarce inputs to their highest and best use over asserting that this technology or that behavior is unsustainable. If you're right, markets and prices will take care of modulating the demand and there's no need to tell individuals that their habits and preferences are a "privilege".
- devilbunny 4y ago
  Well, it is expensive.
  - maxk42 4y ago
    I went from spending $1600 a month on food to just over $600 by switching the majority of my diet to beef. Turns out I can only eat about 1.5 lbs of food a day when I'm eating primarily beef. When I'm eating an omnivorous diet I eat around 4 - 5 lbs of food per day and eat out several times a week.
    - algoatecorn 4y ago
      When people say expensive, they aren't necessarily talking about just your wallet. Our agri-food system does not fully price in the negative externalities and govt subsidies which artificially brings the consumer cost down.
- cheapliquor 4y ago
  Move over OnlyFans OnlyBeef the next big thing coming 2023
- akrymski 4y ago
  Nothing wrong with other protein sources - I prefer chicken as it's cheaper and much leaner for shredding and lean gains for example. Every bodybuilder I know is eating primarily chicken breasts & eggs. Why doesn't everyone in the world eat mainly chicken? ;-)
  - jononomo 4y ago
    Because chicken is less nutritious than beef — look it up.
bheadmaster 4y ago
> I went on a lately popular but politically incorrect diet How can a diet be "politically incorrect"? Did you go on a Nazi diet or something?
- hirundo 4y ago
  I eat beef and salt. I haven't gotten much pushback about the salt.
  - checkyoursudo 4y ago
    > I eat beef and salt. I haven't gotten much pushback about the salt. And nothing else? I've done keto a few times for a couple weeks each time, and I cannot imagine only ever eating beef. Does that take a lot of willpower? I can't even really image eating only meat over a long term, much less only one kind of meat. A couple weeks seems to be about my limit. Is the amount of salt unusual, or just like a normal sprinkle of table salt for flavoring?
    - maxk42 4y ago
      Not the one you're replying to but this is my diet as well. (Having breakfast now - beef and butter with salt.). I thought I'd be bored with it quickly at first and decided to keep using spices on my meat but after two days I ditched the spices and haven't been bored yet. Eight weeks tomorrow.
    - hirundo 4y ago
      I also eat butter, some eggs, chicken and pork, lamb, buffalo, etc. occasionally. Probably 90% beef. I try to eat more eggs just to keep the cost down. I remember sitting down to my first meal on this diet, when I intended a month "cleanse". It was about a pound of hamburger patties fried in butter. I'd never been a big meat eater. (I still don't like steak.) Looking at those burgers I got depressed. Is this all I'm going to get to eat for the next month? I might have gone and added a bagle to it if I hadn't tossed them all. Then I ate it, and it was good, and the sad went away. I don't think I'd had an all-meat meal before on purpose. After a few such meals my reservations about it went away, and at the end of the month I wasn't interested in stopping. And far from having to will-power myself to eat, I am enjoying food at least as much or more than ever. I generally eat ribs for breakfast (yeah, very expensive, especially in comparison to dying young of metabolic disesase). I very much look forward to that same breakfast, with no regrets or boredom. This is not the typical carnivore story that I've heard. Jordan Peterson talks about how incredibily tedious this diet is. My brother and his daughter have had success with it, but find it hard to keep going long term. Whatever it is that makes it work so well for me is clearly not the same for everyone.
wlll 4y ago
> I went on a lately popular but politically incorrect diet Well, what was it?
maxk42 4y ago
Sounds kind you went went Carnivore. I've been doing the Carnivore diet for the past eight weeks tomorrow and I'm down 14 pounds despite not exercising and increasing my daily caloric intake to about 3500 calories. The change is remarkable. It makes so much sense to me now that obesity rates were about 2% a hundred years ago when nobody knew what a calorie was and ate all the butter and meat they liked but as soon as people been limiting fat in the 80s the obesity rate exploded culminating in today's over 40%: eating fat was never what made people fat.
- ferrumfist 4y ago
  > my daily caloric intake to about 3500 calories How tall/big are you if you don't mind me asking? I'm 6'0" 180lbs and my caloric intake is about 3500 when I'm in a bulk cycle (I do a lot of cardio/fencing in addition to weightlifting, so my calorie needs are quite high). Was just curious of your composition given your caloric needs are similar to my own.
  - maxk42 4y ago
    6'0", 192 lbs, sedentary when I started. Now down to 178 and dropping.
Salgat 4y ago
The sad reality is that diets aren't a one size fits all solution. Different diets work for different folks. And before someone tries to be a smartass, I understand the calorie out > calorie in requirement; the whole point of finding the right diet is finding one that best helps you control your appetite.
quotemstr 4y ago
I can attest to both the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate diet and the odd skepticism and judgement that follows it. It's as if some people have so strongly internalized "conventional wisdom" that when their own eyes undermine it, they react to the resulting cognitive dissonance with hostility. The evidence against the past 40 years of official nutrition advice now appears to be overwhelming, but there's still an ugly part of our psychology that wants to punish people socially for dissenting from the opinions of credentialed experts. We're in a strange moment in history when it pays to basically do the opposite of what conventionally credentialed people say --- in a variety of areas.

jononomo 4y ago

I eat mainly beef and I don't understand why everyone in the world doesn't eat mainly beef -- it just fixes everything. I'm thinking about doing an only-beef 2023.

nimbius 4y ago
youve got it all wrong now. Ever since I read an article about farmhands and astute svelt businessmen who stand at 18th century lecterns conducting traditional old fashioned business I learned our modern diet is causing everything from climate change to the inevitable heat death of the universe itself. Cornkids and Soyboys beware, for what I propose is a radical change in everything youve ever known about putting a thing into your mouth. For the past 1500 years ive made it a point to eat nothing but the rancid dew-pocked suet in unattended suburban bird feeders for breakfast. My lunch is a simple trip back to those very same bird feeders, and --you guessed it buddy-- dinner is a quick helping of that sweet greasy nectar of the caged brick full of seeds and lawn detritus. Most people say they cannot believe their eyes when they see what i look like, or how I managed to stay so physically fit, or where all their suet keeps going to. I hope to start a blog soon where i will expound upon the brilliance of giving up old fashioned coffee as well in favour of a modern advancement in nutrition i call, contact cement and model epoxy.
- jononomo 4y ago
  In fact I spent several weeks during 2021 rendering tallow from beef suet and now I use tallow to fry eggs in and to slow-cook roasts in. I've also been thinking of making pemican with it. I have several gallons of tallow in my fridge (along with several ribeye steaks that I'll be eating later).
algoatecorn 4y ago
Well for starters that is an economic impossibility.
- jononomo 4y ago
  I buy my beef by the cow and I get the whole thing for less than $4/pound, whether it be ribeye steaks or ground beef or roasts. That price is for the cow bought at auction, slaughtered, butchered, packaged, and frozen. Note that I don't spend money on any other food, since I only eat beef. You save massive amounts of time, since you only go shopping for food once or twice a year, you never deal with vegetables or chopping, pealing, etc, and your food never goes bad. Sometimes I'll go to Wegman's and buy fifty ribeye steaks and then just eat ribeye steaks for a while -- that can run me about $700 since I've been able to find them for $13/pound and they're about 1.1 pounds each. But the crazy thing is the health benefits you experience -- three dozen minor issues are cured.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    That's great, and I believe you've experienced positive benefits in many ways. I myself eat a large amount of meat. But it's a privilege for individuals in high income countries. The economic impossibilities are tied to the resource side: water, energy, land-use. Again, I'm far from anti-meat but I am a food systems researcher and the world cannot extract enough resources to feed ourselves mostly beef - or meat for that matter. Nor could we do it at cost. Perhaps there is a scenario where a majority of the population is directly involved in agriculture and we spend >50% of our income on beef. But then you have a massive reduction in total GDP because more human capital is pulled away from other sectors.
    - quotemstr 4y ago
      > ...the world cannot extract enough resources to feed ourselves mostly beef - or meat for that matter. Nor could we do it at cost. I wouldn't be so sure: markets find ways to satisfy demand. People made similar statements about photovoltaic panels, but here we are, with solar competitive with coal. I'd prefer to let markets organically allocate scarce inputs to their highest and best use over asserting that this technology or that behavior is unsustainable. If you're right, markets and prices will take care of modulating the demand and there's no need to tell individuals that their habits and preferences are a "privilege".
devilbunny 4y ago
Well, it is expensive.
- maxk42 4y ago
  I went from spending $1600 a month on food to just over $600 by switching the majority of my diet to beef. Turns out I can only eat about 1.5 lbs of food a day when I'm eating primarily beef. When I'm eating an omnivorous diet I eat around 4 - 5 lbs of food per day and eat out several times a week.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    When people say expensive, they aren't necessarily talking about just your wallet. Our agri-food system does not fully price in the negative externalities and govt subsidies which artificially brings the consumer cost down.
cheapliquor 4y ago
Move over OnlyFans OnlyBeef the next big thing coming 2023
akrymski 4y ago
Nothing wrong with other protein sources - I prefer chicken as it's cheaper and much leaner for shredding and lean gains for example. Every bodybuilder I know is eating primarily chicken breasts & eggs. Why doesn't everyone in the world eat mainly chicken? ;-)
- jononomo 4y ago
  Because chicken is less nutritious than beef — look it up.

bheadmaster 4y ago

> I went on a lately popular but politically incorrect diet How can a diet be "politically incorrect"? Did you go on a Nazi diet or something?

hirundo 4y ago
I eat beef and salt. I haven't gotten much pushback about the salt.
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  > I eat beef and salt. I haven't gotten much pushback about the salt. And nothing else? I've done keto a few times for a couple weeks each time, and I cannot imagine only ever eating beef. Does that take a lot of willpower? I can't even really image eating only meat over a long term, much less only one kind of meat. A couple weeks seems to be about my limit. Is the amount of salt unusual, or just like a normal sprinkle of table salt for flavoring?
  - maxk42 4y ago
    Not the one you're replying to but this is my diet as well. (Having breakfast now - beef and butter with salt.). I thought I'd be bored with it quickly at first and decided to keep using spices on my meat but after two days I ditched the spices and haven't been bored yet. Eight weeks tomorrow.
  - hirundo 4y ago
    I also eat butter, some eggs, chicken and pork, lamb, buffalo, etc. occasionally. Probably 90% beef. I try to eat more eggs just to keep the cost down. I remember sitting down to my first meal on this diet, when I intended a month "cleanse". It was about a pound of hamburger patties fried in butter. I'd never been a big meat eater. (I still don't like steak.) Looking at those burgers I got depressed. Is this all I'm going to get to eat for the next month? I might have gone and added a bagle to it if I hadn't tossed them all. Then I ate it, and it was good, and the sad went away. I don't think I'd had an all-meat meal before on purpose. After a few such meals my reservations about it went away, and at the end of the month I wasn't interested in stopping. And far from having to will-power myself to eat, I am enjoying food at least as much or more than ever. I generally eat ribs for breakfast (yeah, very expensive, especially in comparison to dying young of metabolic disesase). I very much look forward to that same breakfast, with no regrets or boredom. This is not the typical carnivore story that I've heard. Jordan Peterson talks about how incredibily tedious this diet is. My brother and his daughter have had success with it, but find it hard to keep going long term. Whatever it is that makes it work so well for me is clearly not the same for everyone.

wlll 4y ago

> I went on a lately popular but politically incorrect diet Well, what was it?

maxk42 4y ago

Sounds kind you went went Carnivore. I've been doing the Carnivore diet for the past eight weeks tomorrow and I'm down 14 pounds despite not exercising and increasing my daily caloric intake to about 3500 calories. The change is remarkable. It makes so much sense to me now that obesity rates were about 2% a hundred years ago when nobody knew what a calorie was and ate all the butter and meat they liked but as soon as people been limiting fat in the 80s the obesity rate exploded culminating in today's over 40%: eating fat was never what made people fat.

ferrumfist 4y ago
> my daily caloric intake to about 3500 calories How tall/big are you if you don't mind me asking? I'm 6'0" 180lbs and my caloric intake is about 3500 when I'm in a bulk cycle (I do a lot of cardio/fencing in addition to weightlifting, so my calorie needs are quite high). Was just curious of your composition given your caloric needs are similar to my own.
- maxk42 4y ago
  6'0", 192 lbs, sedentary when I started. Now down to 178 and dropping.

Salgat 4y ago

The sad reality is that diets aren't a one size fits all solution. Different diets work for different folks. And before someone tries to be a smartass, I understand the calorie out > calorie in requirement; the whole point of finding the right diet is finding one that best helps you control your appetite.

quotemstr 4y ago

I can attest to both the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate diet and the odd skepticism and judgement that follows it. It's as if some people have so strongly internalized "conventional wisdom" that when their own eyes undermine it, they react to the resulting cognitive dissonance with hostility. The evidence against the past 40 years of official nutrition advice now appears to be overwhelming, but there's still an ugly part of our psychology that wants to punish people socially for dissenting from the opinions of credentialed experts. We're in a strange moment in history when it pays to basically do the opposite of what conventionally credentialed people say --- in a variety of areas.