Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes & Obesity

Okay, so I can't stop thinking about weight loss diets cold-turkey. I had this book ordered via inter-library loan for a month and it just came in yesterday. I haven't stopped reading it since it got picked up.

The book in question is Taubes' Why We Get Fat book, very pro-low carb, specifically Atkins type high fat low carb. Loads of good points he makes that I'm trying to ignore, because although I know deep-down inside that eliminating the majority of carbs will certainly help in weight loss, I still feel that eating high fat meats will not be beneficial to cholesterol levels, even though he shows study after study that show it's the carbs, not ingested fat, that raise cholesterol levels. The low-fat high starch veg docs can show even more studies to prove their way is best.

Anyway, near the end of the book, where he starts talking about what type of food plan really should be eaten, he mentions this little ditty on page 205:

"Physicians who have treated patients by prescribing carbohydrate-restricted diets for a decade or longer and published discussions of their clinical experiences - the British physician Robert Kemp, for instance, who began doing so in 1956, and Wolfgang Lutz, an Austrian physician, who began a year later - have reported that a small portion of their obese patients failed to lose any significant fat though they faithfully avoided fattening carbohydrates (or at least they said they did). Women failed more than men, and older patients more often than younger ones. The more obese the patients, and the longer they had been obese, the more likely they were to remain obese. However, as Lutz said, this doesn't mean 'that the carbohydrates were not responsible for the disorder (obesity) in the first place. It is quite simply, and sadly, that a point of no return has been reached.'"

Gee, NOW someone believes us (I think. He did seem kind of smarmy at the "they said they did" remark) when we say we stayed on the food plan strictly and lost nothing! Of course, he still wants us on that strict super low carb food plan of mostly red meat, poultry, fish, butter, and green & yellow veggies.