Low Carb & Cancer Follow-Up

I posted information yesterday on the benefits of a low carb lifestyle for cancer patients. Today I got some very interesting feedback from a low carb forum I frequently visit. ShonMarie generously shared the story of her sister's battle with breast cancer.

(For the original cancer post, click here http://wifezillasway.blogspot.com/2007/09/low-carb-cancer.html or just scroll down a bit.)

"WifeZ, thank you for posting about the cancer/sugar component on your blog. Let me first say, I really enjoy your writing. My younger sister was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 30. That was 23 yrs ago. At that time, I did read what little there was about the cancer/sugar/insulin component - mostly from Atkins. She followed that regimen for 23yrs and although the cancer continued to spread, it was a slow process. She had many good years and we had much fun together. She was diagnosed with metastases to the liver 2yrs ago and, at that time was given 6mos to live. She continued on her low carb regimen and lived 2yrs. She died this past January. I definitely attribute her 23year "survival" to the low carb way of eating. She couldn't eat much in her last weeks, but we had her for all those years. And even though she suffered, she always had a smile for people whom she met. She never burdened others with her illness. Friends would always tell me that she looked so good - never looked like a "cancer" patient, even though she went through many rounds of chemo and radiation. I miss her so much, but I thank God for His gift of her to us. And she never once was angry - kind of viewed her illness as a "gift" to bring her closer to Our Lord.

So, thank you for writing about these connections - hopefully others will read it and pass on the news. Btw, my sister's oncologist DID espouse the benefits of the low carb woe(way of eating), and he is one of the leading oncologists in our area. There is hope! "

When I asked her if I could pass on the doctor's information she provided me with the following;

"He is such an intelligent, amazing and caring man. His name is John Petrus, M.D., he is board certified in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Oncology and practices at Akron General Medical Center, Akron Ohio. He is also on the staff at Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine. He was wonderful with my sister, Patty. My mom also had breast cancer. It showed on a mammogram, but her physician failed to tell her for 10 Years!!! Fortunately, it was contained, but she did have a mastectomy and radiation. She did well from that, but died on the table while having a pacemaker replaced. Dr. Petrus was also her oncologist and she had such confidence in him. Dr. Petrus was always so amazed at how well my sister did. She had an extremely difficult cancer - a type that is rarely seen. He would always take her info to meetings and lectures and present her data to tumor boards. That she was able to survive as long as she did is truly a miracle. She had so many surgeries - one of the most critical was when the cancer spread to her bone and completely destroyed her sternum. She had to have muscle taken from her hip and placed where the sternum was in order to protect her heart and lungs. Her body was mutilated from all the surgeries, but she was truly a fighter. And with more grace and class than I could ever hope to muster with an ingrown toenail!"

Then when I asked if I could share her sister's story with my blog readers, she replied...

"I don't mind at all. I think anytime we can share our stories, we might just have an impact or give hope to someone. Here is a link to my sister's obituary. I would just like you to have a glimpse of what she was like. She was wonderful. We all miss her so very much. She has a twin sister and we were and are all so close. Thank you, Linda, for your kindness and willingness to share. http://www.legacy.com/Ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=86015317"

No ShonMarie.....THANK YOU! By sharing your sister's story you are showing that low carb/high fat, even if it doesn't cure the cancer, can extend and add to a person's quality of life. I am so glad your family was able to grab those extra years you otherwise wouldn't have had.

Your post also points out that there ARE professionals out there who DO get it. (I was seriously worried there for a minute!) Unfortunately they are toiling away fighting volumes of bad information and bad public perception. These individuals need to be supported and applauded. They and their work should be receiving the press coverage, NOT the same old stories saying to eat glucose ladened fruit and avoiding healthy fat. That garbage isn't helping anyone.

Thanks again ShonMarie.

Low Carb & Cancer

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...well...ok...it was 1931 and right on this planet, but anyway...a man by the name of Otto Warburg was awarded a Nobel Prize for discovering that, basically, cancer cells like sugar. REALLY like it! They use 4 to 5 times more glucose than normal cells. Like a 2 year-old on Halloween, cancer cells happily munch away on sweets while growing rapidly and leaving a path of mayhem and destruction in their wake.

So here we are in 2007, SEVENTY-SIX YEARS LATER, and what kind of diet is being recommended to cancer patients? According to the Oral Cancer Foundation, they should be eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, whole grain breads and cereals, lean cuts of meat, along with low-fat dairy products. In essence they are telling you to ingest foods that have a very high glucose content while asking you to eliminate foods that can provide you with essential fatty acids??? But wait, it gets even more entertaining! The American Cancer Society posts a recommended shopping list on their website that encourages you to avoid fat, yet includes rice, pasta, couscous, orzo, cornmeal, whole wheat crackers, bread sticks, bread crumbs, raisins, fruit juice, corn tortillas, dinner rolls, English muffins, and bagels - ALL of which turn to glucose once they are digested and hit the liver. So, despite the knowledge from SEVENTY-SIX FREAKING YEARS AGO that cancer cells thrive on glucose, patients are told to eat glucose in the form of grains, glucose in the form of fruits, and glucose in the form of vegetables. Sugar, sugar, sugar, and sugar, with a side order of sugar. If I were a cancer cell, these recommendations would make me throw a party!


So now I am confused. Has anyone had the thought that....well....uhhhh...maybe since cancer likes sugar so much, HOW ABOUT NOT EATING SUGAR IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!? Anyone out there have a doctor tell them that cancer cells thrive in a high glucose environment and that there is a relatively easy way to change that environment right in your own body called low carb? Anyone ever hear of an oncologist handing a patient a copy of The Atkin's Diet, Protein Power, or Natural Health and Weight Loss? Anybody? They are more likely to hear that since they will be ill from their chemo treatment, they should just eat whatever they can, which ignores the fact that what they are eating may very well have helped make them sick in the first place.

Instead of a recommendation to avoid sugar IN ANY FORM, the "eat lots of fruits and veggies, eat whole grains and avoid fat" mantra is repeated throughout the cancer community, health organizations, and government institutions. Of course, you should recognize this as the same message given to the obese and type 2 diabetics as well as the general public. It is a message that has been pounded in to the heads of every school-aged child and is repeated on public service radio and television messages. But guess what? It's wrong when it comes to weight loss, it's wrong when it comes to preventing obesity, and I am guessing it is equally wrong when it comes to cancer. According to some recent headlines, my guessing may be right on....

"Eating fruits and vegetables was not strongly associated with decreased colon cancer risk, according to a study published online in the September 25 Journal of the National Cancer Institute." - Science Daily

"Following an eating pattern lower in total fat did not significantly reduce the incidence of breast cancer, heart disease, or stroke, and did not reduce the risk of colorectal cancer in healthy post-menopausal women, according to the latest clinical trial results from the National Institutes of Health’s Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). " NIH News

"A recent study questions whether the longstanding recommendation to eat an abundance of fruits and vegetables to reduce cancer risk may be overstated. In a report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2004;96:1577–1584), Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health found that eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily had an impact on cardiovascular disease risk but not overall cancer incidence. " American Cancer Society

Knowing SEVENTY-SIX YEARS AGO (yeah, I'm kind of stuck on that and it's still blowing my mind) that GLUCOSE has a big role in cancer growth, where are the studies on a low carbohydrate diet and its effect on cancer? Doesn't it seem logical that this should be an area of intensive study? I would think this would be the FIRST thing they looked in to after good ole' Otto pointed out the whole glucose thing. EDIT: I just found a link that lists 2 studies. Ironically, it shows up in the same search with a warning from the American Cancer Society about the dangers of low carb written in 2004. Despite the Cancer Societies misguided "warning", one study showed low carb reduced tumor growth, and the other showed eating fats kept tumors from stealing all the nutrients and prevented wasting. http://charm.cs.uiuc.edu/users/jyelon/lowcarb.med/topic8.html.

So, despite my initial tirade, there are actually a few people out there with a clue including Boston College's Thomas Seyfried. He was featured in a recent TIME article which stated, "Seyfried has long called for clinical trials of low-carb, high-fat diets against cancer, and has been trying to push research in the field with animal studies: His results suggest that mice survive cancers, including brain cancer, much longer when put on high-fat diets, even longer when the diets are also calorie-restricted. "Clinical studies are highly warranted," he says, attributing the lack of human studies to the medical establishment, which he feels is single-minded in its approach to treatment, and opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which doesn't stand to profit much from a dietetic treatment for cancer." http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1662484,00.html Looks like Thomas Seyfried is noticing the same things I am.

So there are pages and pages of cancer related sites recommending that you eat lots of grains, fruits and vegetables, which appears not to help at all, and very few pages of information about eating low carb to shrink tumor cells which appears to work. I am married to a big time news junkie, and I have seen none of this information in my local paper on cable or tv news. I am pretty sure the information that SUGAR FEEDS CANCER would have stuck in my mind. Even if the medical community and the news community was a bit slow on the uptake and missed that little nugget (we all have off days...or decades apparently), wouldn't THIS have given them a clue?

"Obesity has recently been linked to mortality from the majority of cancers. The insulin/insulin-like growth factor (IGF) system may partly explain this effect. The metabolic syndrome, associated with hyperinsulinemia, may modulate this effect. Recent evidence supports the role of insulin and IGF-1 as important growth factors, acting through the tyrosine kinase growth factor cascade in enhancing tumor cell proliferation."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14713323&dopt=AbstractPlus

That's right people. INSULIN appears to promote tumor growth. And what causes high levels of insulin? You got it! GLUCOSE! A low carb diet works by controlling insulin. You control insulin by not ingesting the glucose that causes insulin to be released, which promotes fat storage. Low carbers are successfully short-circuiting the glucose-insulin-fat cycle for weight loss, so it is logical to me that this would also work to short-circuit cancer growth. Since the same hormone that makes us fat also appears to makes cancer cells grow, why, with other than a few rare exceptions, isn't low carb at the very top of the study list? I guess there just isn't much money in people staying away from carbs (aka glucose). There is no big payout for drug companies in a prescription for low carb vegetables, low carb berries, good fats, full-fat dairy and meat. You just can't put the low carb lifestyle in a pill and sell it $79.95 a piece.

By no means am I implying a low carb way of eating is some kind of miracle cure for cancer. I don't want to give families struggling with this horrible disease false hope. Different cancers grow different ways and are effected by more than just amount of glucose available in your blood stream. But it is my personal belief based on the information I cited that low carb eating CAN be a valuable tool and, in a majority of cases, will do absolutely no harm. So why not add this way of eating to your cancer fighting arsenal? Lets not wait another 76 years to get started.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on tv. If you see anything wrong with this article, please let me know. Constructive criticism is always welcomed. If you just don't like my tone or think I am rude, well bite me!

***

Additional information about glucose and cancer. (My commentary in italics.)

http://www.thresholdpharm.com/sec/targeting_cancer
"Cancer cells require large amounts of glucose for energy production and growth. This increased consumption of glucose has two causes: the process of a normal cell becoming a rapidly dividing cancer cell; and the exposure of a cell to the low oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions within those regions of most solid tumors where cells are dividing slowly."

This place is working on a drug to limit the uptake of glucose. Of course you could just not INGEST it....LOL...but they do explain well how cancer uses glucose.

***
http://tinyurl.com/3y98zq
"Scientists have known for decades that cancer cells consume more glucose than normal cells. A longstanding assumption that the excess glucose metabolism was needed to make energy has not been borne out by research studies. This lack of understanding of why cancer cells need increased glucose metabolism has hampered the exploitation of this difference for cancer therapy."

Duhhh...how about a low carb diet for a good therapy?

***

http://www.ndmnutrition.com/deprived...ome%20can%20di
"Researchers have discovered that cancer cells self-destruct when they are deprived of glucose, a finding that could lead to new drugs to fight the disease...."When we bathed cells with high c-Myc levels in a cell medium with no glucose, they destroyed themselves by triggering a cell suicide process called apoptosis,"

Self-destruction of cancer cells is an awesome thing. But do you really need a NEW DRUG for that? Just starve the bastards so they blow up!

****

Here is a quote from Dr. Barry Groves' book Eat Fat Get Thin. This is out of print, but he has an updated book called Natural Health and Weight Loss available on Amazon.com ...

"Cancers are Sugar Junkies.

Seventy years ago Otto Warburg, PhD won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering that cancer cells require glucose (blood sugar) for growth. Most cells have a requirement for glucose, but cancer cells consume as much as four or five times more than normal cells. In fact, cancer cells seem to have great difficulty surviving at all without glucose. A study carried out by Johns Hopkins researchers found that some cancer cells will self-destruct when deprived of glucose.

‘The change when we took away glucose was dramatic,’ said Dr ChiVan Dang, director of haematology. ‘By the next day we knew very quickly that the cells we had altered to resemble cancers were dying off in large numbers.’ He continued: ‘Scientists have long suspected that the cancer cells’ heavy reliance on glucose (sugar) – its main source of strength and vitality – could also be one of its great weaknesses.’

And if cancers cannot survive without glucose, then it follows that a low-carb diet is likely to prevent a cancer starting in the first place. And just that piece of knowledge could stop all the heartbreak, pain and misery that cancer causes – not to mention the huge cost to the National Health Service. I say low-carb, not low-sugar, because all carbs become the blood sugar, glucose."

Dr. Barry's website...www.second-opinions.co.uk

A Walmart Moment

While shopping at Walmart last week, I overheard another shopper tell her husband, "I usually don't buy this because it is so bad for you. It's just so full of fat!"

Having finally lost weight myself due to eating low carb and INCREASING my fat intake, I was really curious to see what this evil fat-ladened product was. I tried to inconspicuously peep over at her cart, but I could not see the particular disparaged product. However, what I DID see really shocked me. Big bags of cereal, boxes of baking mixes, juice, a stack of frozen pizzas and other various prepackaged frozen diners. Basically sugar, starch, carbs, salt, more carbs, and a side order of high fructose corn syrup...Yikes!

But how do you tell someone you never met before in a grocery store that the fat content of one particular product wasn't her problem? How do you inform a stranger that her and her family would be better off buying a gallon jug of olive oil and sipping it through a straw than eating the carb laden crap she was planning to serve? I am pretty sure my input would have been as welcomed as a BBQ cart at a P.E.T.A. convention.

The sad thing is my shopping cart used to look a lot like hers. I believed the "Fats are Bad" mantra. I bought in to "Fat makes you fat. Fat clogs your arteries and makes your heart explode. Eat what you want as long as it is fat-free." This is what has been drilled in to the brains of the American public over the past decade or two, and sadly, it looks like it has really sunk in. Heck, I used to be one of the anti-fat believers!

Too bad the concept that ingesting fat causes you to BE fat is entirely wrong. Low-carb gurus like Dr. Atkins, Dr. Barry Groves, and Drs Mike and Mary Eades (among others) have shown time and time again how wrong this thinking is. They have analyzed the data, and they have seen it themselves through their own research and patients. Fat DOES NOT make you fat, and, as Barry Groves has pointed out, the decline in the amount of fat eaten can be directly tied to the RISE in obesity numbers. That's right people, the LESS FAT Americans and Brits eat, the FATTER they are getting!

Humans are designed to eat and burn fat. Ingesting fat doesn't produce an insulin release, which is a FAT STORING hormone. Fat is even the preferred fuel for your brain. Sugar and carbs are the things that cause you to store fat and gain weight and the American diet is awash with them. I followed the recommendations of the food pyramid, I switched to whole grains long before it became fashionable. Heck, I even went vegetarian for a while and I tried to follow a low-fat diet. All of these things caused me to GAIN WEIGHT and hop on the fast train towards type 2 diabetes. Fortunately I did some reading, learned about low carb, and saved myself from certain disaster. I am now working to reverse the damage I have done (60lbs of damage to be precise), and my success so far is due to me understanding and eating healthy fats.

Even though I am getting healthier, I guess I am not quite ready to be a low-carb-witness or raving fatologist, accosting people at random and asking in a cult-conditioned voice "Can I talk to you about your carbohydrate intake?" as I try to hand them a beat-up copy of The Atkins New Diet Revolution.

For now I will have to settle with documenting my weight loss journey, further educating myself, posting on forums, and showing my friends and family the benefits of eating low carb AND high fat by continuing to lose weight. Hopefully that misinformed woman from the grocery store will stumble on the facts about fat before she screws up her metabolism, her husband becomes diabetic, or she is tempted to ship her kids off to a fat camp. Meanwhile, I will enjoy my extra virgin olive oil drenched salads, eat my eggs fried in coconut oil, and put REAL butter all over my steamed veggies. Then I will think of this woman and try to send some positive vibes her way. The poor thing is really going to need them.

Wifezilla finds Low Carb

I am a bit of a nerd and like to read. So reading different diet books seemed to be a good step for me to finally get serious about losing weight. I had read a lot of magazine articles, but they all promised quick weight loss in the same issue with tons of recipes for fattening foods.

Uhhh....ok. WHATEVER!

I was tempted to try a few of these plans, but only gave them half-hearted attempts. Then I ordered the Rosedale Diet ebook and read through that. Some of his concepts made a lot of sense (good fats, avoid sugar and starches etc...), but I still had this mental block about following someone else's plan and I was having a hard time grasping the concept that fats could be GOOD. We have just had 20 years of FAT IS EVIL crammed down our throats through newspaper, magazine and tv sources. How could eating fats make me slimmer?

A few months later I found the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet at a church book sale. That also had some good concepts, was also a plan to stay away from sugar, lower carbs, etc... but it had this idea of a reward meal every day. It is a sixty minute window to eat the carbs you were avoiding the rest of the day, but the meal is still supposed to be "balanced". Balanced or not, do you have any idea how much food I can pack away in 60 minutes? As I thought about my interpretation of the good and bad points of both diets, I began to understand certain things about myself.

When I ate carbs, it did not satisfy my hunger. Potatoes, corn, bread, rice, pasta... it didn't matter which one. Whenever I ate these kinds of food, I always wanted more. I would eat to the point of being in pain. Only then would I feel "full". Well, more like SICK, but only after a whole box of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls or the whole loaf of garlic bread, or a whole batch of rice would I stop. I tried to resist these items, but I could only hold out for so long, then I would binge...tearing through carby food like a wood chipper through a pile of sticks.

I had a basic start in my low carb education and decided to take it online. I found articles and many interesting websites. Eventually I stumbled on some forums. A world of information opened up before me. So I wasn't some weirdo after all! There where others like me that could not reduce calories without suffering and then binging. There were others who exercised an hour a day 6 days a week and didn't lose a pound. There were others who understood what it felt like to have hunger so intense despite having recently ate that you fell in to a box of snacks and didn't come up for air until they were all gone!

I learned about carbs and how people like me reacted to them (with excess insulin release, lots of fat storage, and uncontrollable hunger). It finally sunk in that dietary fat wasn't the evil enemy popular opinion liked to say it was. I also learned the food pyramid was a complete load of crap and that if I followed it, I would LOOK like a pyramid!

I started cutting carbs and lost 8 pounds in 3 days. Sure, it was water weight at this point, but this was my first weight loss of ANY KIND in almost 5 years. I was elated! Then I seemed to settle in to a pattern of losing about 2 pounds a week. I am still in that pattern and have lost a total of 30 lbs so far with 30 more to go. Low carb works. It works well and I know I can eat this way for the rest of my life! I still learn, I still read, and I still talk to my online buddies while trying to learn as much as I can about low carb living.

As I explored online and made new friends in the battle of the bulge, I also came across more books and included The Atkins New Diet Revolution, Protein Power by Dr.s Eades, and Eat Fat Get Thin by Dr. Barry Groves to my low carb library. Each seemed to give me a valuable nugget of information that I was able to incorporate in to my daily life. From Dr. Atkins, I learned about Ketosis. From Drs. Mike and Mary Eades, I learned about potassium depletion and minimum protein requirements, and from Dr. Barry Groves, the concept of healthy fats was driven home, and also learned how all calories are not alike (it takes fewer excess carb calories to make you gain weight as it does excess fat calories).

I have only been on a low carb journey for a short time. I started low carb eating in Mid-May 2007. But here it is, the middle of September 2007 and I am already down 30lbs. I am in the process of cleaning out my closet because most of my clothes no longer fit. People are noticing and it feels pretty great. But most of all, I am healthier now at 44 than I have ever been.

Exercise and no weight loss

So after my 40 pound weight loss with the use of chitosan fiber supplements, I had more energy and wanted to continue the downward trend. The pills stopped working, but I figured by exercising, I could lose even more weight.

My first structured activity was belly dancing. Every Wednesday night I went to an hour long class and learned to dance. It was so much fun and after a few classes, I started huffing and puffing less, and I noticed my flexibility improving. My buddy, Jo, who originally talked me in to the class never went beyond the first class even though I continue to take classes to this day. Her work schedule changed, but because of her high blood pressure, she still wanted to work out and knew I was looking to increase my activity level.

She then suggested water aerobics. Well, bad knees and bad hips run in the family, and while belly dancing was helping my flexibility, I was still 40 years old! I thought water aerobics was a great idea. We began going twice a week at our local community center. The teacher was fantastic and the classes were high energy and really fun. But despite my dramatic increase in activity and positive changes in my eating habits. The scale did not budge.

Week after week I took the water aerobics classes, the belly dance class, and then started to add walking. Sometimes I walked by myself, sometimes with Jo as her schedule allowed, but I was averaging an hour workout 6 days a week. I was getting toned. I felt great after the workouts, but still, the scale refused to move.

I was frustrated, but with the increase in flexibility, and great people at both my dance class and the water aerobics class, I continued the classes and the walking for almost 2 years. Then Jo got a different job. I lost my workout buddy...my "personal trainer" as my husband called her. And then Winter hit with a vengeance. It was so easy not to go out and do anything during a blizzard. I stopped going to water aerobics, I stopped walking, but I still went to dance class.

It didn't take long for me see the scale creeping upward instead of staying stubbornly at 240 like it had for the past 3 years. As Spring approached, I was up to 250. I had to make a change, but I had tried all kinds of diets before with no success. Then one day I was with Jo at a festival. One of the churches near the festival site was having a book sale. We walked over and started looking through the stacks. I grabbed a book that sounded interesting... The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet by Rachael & Richard Heller.

I knew I fit the profile for a carbohydrate addict. Eating rice, corn, bread or sugary snacks just made me hungry for more. I didn't totally embrace the idea of a reward meal, but it was still a good book with some great concepts. And more importantly, it got me thinking more and more about starting a low carb lifestyle. About a year earlier, I had purchased the Rosedale Diet ebook and there seemed to be some overlap. Things started to slowly click in to place. But could I really do a "diet"?

I hate counting ANYTHING let alone carbs and calories. I have the attention span of a 2 year-old on Pixie Stix! And telling me I can't have something is the surest way to make me want something more. And tell me how to behave? I will just likely scream "You're not the boss of me!" Like I said in my previous post...I am a rebel without a clue :D So was low carb really a diet for me?

Next.... Going Low Carb

Meet Wifezilla

I am a tad stubborn...or so I am told. I like to do things my way. Since childhood I have been a rebel without a clue.

Maybe there is something wrong with my brain. I am left handed after all. Maybe there are some other crossed wires. More than one person has asked me if I have ever been diagnosed with ADHD. No doubt, if I was a kid in grade school today, my mother would be getting notes from my teachers touting the wonders of Ritalin. I even have a friend who is autistic and has dissociative identity disorder. It is her verdict I am not as normal as I might like to think. If anyone knows crazy, it's her!

So knowing I am a bit different, it shouldn't surprise anyone that when it came time to lose weight, I would take a path that others would call insane. I am on a high-fat, low carb diet. I started in May doing a general low carb diet after reading The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet. Previously I had read The Rosedale Diet. Both had some good points, but neither option seamed to totally "click" with me.

Despite that, I knew I had to lose the weight somehow. At 6' tall I was 280 lbs and wearing sized 22 clothes. Heart disease and diabetes were in my future, as it had been for many family members. I had two uncles die of heart disease in their 40's and I was going to be 40 soon. I had to wake up.

Restricted calories is something I had tried before with disastrous results. Like many others who followed this path, I was all gung-ho, lost a little weight, and then eventually cracked...binging on Little Debbie's Swiss Rolls, Hagendaas Ice Cream or big bags of Doritos. Restriction and deprivation just made me think about food constantly, obsess about what I was missing, gave me headaches and an upset stomach. Then, after a pathetically small weight loss, I would gain back all the dropped weight, then proceed to gain more.

I even tried supplements, diet pills, diet shakes and other expensive products. One even worked a little bit. I had managed to go from 280 down to 240 using chitosan fiber pills. Of course I was constipated the whole time, but hey...the weight was coming off! Then suddenly it stopped working. As disappointing as that was, I had still managed to lose 40 pounds and had a bit more energy. I had just turned 40 along with my friend Jo. She wanted to do something wild to celebrate turning 40 and talked me in to taking a belly dance class. It was fun, I liked the exercise, and have been going ever since. This began my exercise phase.

Next... Working out and not losing