Recommended Reading 1: Big Fat Lie

It was Gary Taubes’ landmark article in The New York Times Magazine in 2002 that persuaded me to start on this whole adventure. (Free, but registration required.)

If, like me, you weren’t all that heavy when you were younger, and you ballooned out like the Michelin Man during the 90s when They (the agricultural-industrial complex and its shills in the USDA and Congress) were recommending that everyone, even healthy people with normal weights and no risk of coronary artery disease, even tiny little two-year-olds for Christ’s sake, should follow low-calorie, low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets; if you spent two or three days eating a lunch consisting of a sandwich made of whole wheat bread, skip the butter, skip the mayo, with two or three skimpy slices of sliced deli turkey (a substance that tastes like death marinated in chemicals), a handful of Snackwells, and a big baggie of veggies, only to be so hungry by 3:00 that, to combat the shakes, you pumped something like $5 into the vending machine to get a sugar fix to stabilize your blood sugar until the next dry-bread sandwich, and after 2 or 3 days you gave up the low-fat lunch in defeat and binged on a pint of super-premium ice cream; if you watched yourself go from a 110-pound waif (BMI=19.5, at the low end of normal) to a 165-pound fat girl (BMI=a near obese 29.5) even as you kept a box of “healthy” low-fat, whole-grain breakfast cereal at your desk for snacks - this article will undoubtedly make you as angry as it made me.

I didn’t see Taubes coming, that was for sure, as I ate yet another Sunday breakfast of dry toast with jelly (all healthy, low-fat foods) while I read the NYT magazine on that lovely day in July, shortly before my 33rd birthday. Halfway through the article, I set the magazine aside for a moment, walked to the fridge, defiantly slathered my dry whole-grain toast in butter, and fried up a couple of whole eggs in more butter, and, ultimate sin against the establishment, I ATE THE YOLKS. I wasn’t hungry again for hours, and unlike a typical weekend day, I did not feel the need to go right back to sleep after breakfast, a real problem when I used to eat bagels or pancakes or toast or muffins for breakfast. Taubes, I was convinced, was onto something.

The next day I bought the Atkins book, learned that even the whole-grain toast wasn’t the greatest idea, fed the rest of the bread to the ducks, and, in spite of many, many detours from it over the years, I have never questioned that low-carb was the right thing for me and a lot of people like me.