I have the same problem you do (am clinically obese despite a relatively active daily schedule—I walk three miles a day, don’t drink soft drinks, don’t eat junk food, eat lots of fresh fruits & vegetables etc). I’ve come to a lot of the same conclusions, especially that insulin resistance probably has a lot to do with my problem. I switched to whole grains years ago (brown rice, whole wheat pasta, whole grain bread etc.) but my weight continued to creep up. These grains (along with others like bulgur and couscous) do make up the bulk of my diet, and my recent reading has led me to believe that the glycemic load of these foods combined with my own insulin resistance is probably what’s making me fat.
I know you tried a low carb diet in the past, but you mentioned mostly eating turkey and bananas—bananas are a relatively high glycemic load food (http://www.lowglycemicload.com/index.cfm?ID=69) so that could explain why you didn’t see much progress low-carbing it. (Low carb diets do work for me, but like the vast majority of people, I’m not able to maintain a diet based on such sweeping restrictions in the long term: and when I go off the diet, I quickly gain back the lost weight plus extra pounds.)
I’m taking the glycemic load approach now, which is a lot more flexible in terms of what it allows you to eat. (It’s worth noting that there’s a distinction between the “glycemic index” and the “glycemic load” charts, and that the glycemic load charts are much more useful for practical purposes.) I’m also supplementing with cinnamon and apple cider vinegar, both of which seem to have a beneficial effect on insulin resistance.
I’ll try to put up another post in six weeks to report the results.
Updated results: I got pregnant, which pretty much kiboshes the experiment. I don’t think the pregnancy is attributable to a low-glycemic-load diet, however!
Newer research has revealed that certain chronic conditions seem much more common than is thought. It could be that a relatively large portion of the population is suffering from certain conditions which don’t exhibit severe enough symptoms to be diagnosed with anything or that symptoms are ignored by harmful social paradigms, e.g. someone with a mitochonodrial disorder is labelled as “lazy” despite inability to properly metabolize energy.
Lyme Disease is one disease which could be extremely prevalent but be underdiagnosed because of the difficulty in which it is diagnosed and the lack of reliable tests. There are plenty of other candidates as well. If one has any persevering health problems, it bears that one should try to objectively judge one’s physical& mental abilities for the possibility of physiological abnormalities.
My experience is years of frustration with my health, being overweight, low energy all the time, and it turns out that the lyme disease I had been treated for back in high school had survived and continued to plague me beyond my immune system’s capacity to completely eradicate. It returned periodically for years, and only during periods of extremely low stress when I was out of school was I able to live comfortably at all. What tipped me off to getting treatment was comparing my physical abilities during high school as an athlete to my abilities up to this point in which I can barely engage in anaerobic exercise.
I have the same problem you do (am clinically obese despite a relatively active daily schedule—I walk three miles a day, don’t drink soft drinks, don’t eat junk food, eat lots of fresh fruits & vegetables etc). I’ve come to a lot of the same conclusions, especially that insulin resistance probably has a lot to do with my problem. I switched to whole grains years ago (brown rice, whole wheat pasta, whole grain bread etc.) but my weight continued to creep up. These grains (along with others like bulgur and couscous) do make up the bulk of my diet, and my recent reading has led me to believe that the glycemic load of these foods combined with my own insulin resistance is probably what’s making me fat.
I know you tried a low carb diet in the past, but you mentioned mostly eating turkey and bananas—bananas are a relatively high glycemic load food (http://www.lowglycemicload.com/index.cfm?ID=69) so that could explain why you didn’t see much progress low-carbing it. (Low carb diets do work for me, but like the vast majority of people, I’m not able to maintain a diet based on such sweeping restrictions in the long term: and when I go off the diet, I quickly gain back the lost weight plus extra pounds.)
I’m taking the glycemic load approach now, which is a lot more flexible in terms of what it allows you to eat. (It’s worth noting that there’s a distinction between the “glycemic index” and the “glycemic load” charts, and that the glycemic load charts are much more useful for practical purposes.) I’m also supplementing with cinnamon and apple cider vinegar, both of which seem to have a beneficial effect on insulin resistance.
I’ll try to put up another post in six weeks to report the results.
Updated results: I got pregnant, which pretty much kiboshes the experiment. I don’t think the pregnancy is attributable to a low-glycemic-load diet, however!
Newer research has revealed that certain chronic conditions seem much more common than is thought. It could be that a relatively large portion of the population is suffering from certain conditions which don’t exhibit severe enough symptoms to be diagnosed with anything or that symptoms are ignored by harmful social paradigms, e.g. someone with a mitochonodrial disorder is labelled as “lazy” despite inability to properly metabolize energy.
Lyme Disease is one disease which could be extremely prevalent but be underdiagnosed because of the difficulty in which it is diagnosed and the lack of reliable tests. There are plenty of other candidates as well. If one has any persevering health problems, it bears that one should try to objectively judge one’s physical& mental abilities for the possibility of physiological abnormalities.
My experience is years of frustration with my health, being overweight, low energy all the time, and it turns out that the lyme disease I had been treated for back in high school had survived and continued to plague me beyond my immune system’s capacity to completely eradicate. It returned periodically for years, and only during periods of extremely low stress when I was out of school was I able to live comfortably at all. What tipped me off to getting treatment was comparing my physical abilities during high school as an athlete to my abilities up to this point in which I can barely engage in anaerobic exercise.