My Story - Just the Facts, Ma'm

Hello reader.  I've decided to undertake a new project.  In the midst of a very busy time in my life, this could downright be the worst idea in the world.  I may furiously blog for a few weeks, then go radio silent for a few weeks to months, and the pop back up again because I realized I haven't written in awhile.  It's good showmanship to keep the fans waiting.  Just not too long.

Right then, let's delve into why I'm writing this.  I've been wandering a forest for some time now and only recently have I felt like I've come to a clearing.  You know, one of those clearings where you can see the rolling hills covered with the forest you've been lost in for so long.  Now that I can see things a little more clearly, I can at least attempt to give myself, and perhaps you, more direction.

Okay, you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about.  Well, it all starts with a simple question.

What is the ideal diet for man?

Everyone has an opinion about this.  In fact, you go anywhere in the world and ask such a question a million times and you'll get a million different answers.

First off, you need to realize I'm already pretty far along in my journey to answer this question.  Remember, I'm in the metaphorical clearing as I mentioned.

A brief history of Steve:

As a kid, I ate a normal complement of what modern day food bloggers and scientists call the Standard American Diet (SAD).  From cereal for breakfast to the carbohydrate heavy mexican pizza for school lunch to the spaghetti and meatballs for dinner always with some kind of soda, my diet was awash in processed carbohydrates and sugar.  It's just how I ate, how my family ate.  It's in fact how most families eat.  Granted, I did have access to fresh fruit, vegetables and good meat as well.  I was never overweight.  My sister and I remained a normal weight despite what I've come to believe is a poor diet.  However, despite this, I suffered from what are the other consequences of a diet that promotes insulin resistance.  I had terrible acne and rapidly became nearsighteded (myopia).  Out came the benzyl peroxide creams and eyeglasses in my early teens.

Fast forward through high school, undergraduate school and finally onto pharmacy school.  My acne had cleared up only because of a rather toxic drug called Accutane.  I made it to 5 months before it started messing with my liver but, amazingly, my acne was clear for the first time in my life.  I was still, however, nearsighted and I was still 5'10 and 150 lbs, like I've always been.

Blood pressure lab.  Yes, we pharmacists learn to take manual blood pressures as the machines you seen in a pharmacy can be notoriously inaccurate.  My diet still consisted of no breakfast, pizza for lunch and, most of the time, some kind of terrible fast food for dinner.  I was 23.  I was fit.  I lifted weights and ran.  My blood pressure was 150/100 mm Hg.  For those who don't know, that's Stage I hypertension (and maybe stage II).

The last year of pharmacy school is when we do our clinical rotations.  My first rotation was in New York City.  I was still 5'10, still 150 lbs.  Perfect Body Mass Index (BMI).  I never walked so much in my life. In NYC, you do an incredible amount of walking.  Just to get to the subway could mean a mile of walking.  I increased the amount of exercise I was getting dramatically.  I also took to having a iced coffee with sugar in the morning from Dunkin' Donuts, chinese food for lunch and usually some kind of pizza for dinner.  Sometimes it was a sandwich.  You know, to stay healthy.  In general, however, it was pretty bad food.  Thirty days later, despite a serious increase in my activity given the amount of walking I was doing, I gained 25 lbs.  I was 175.

Years of being at 175 passed.  I knew all that weight gain wasn't muscle mass.  I continued to eat the same way I always had and my weight stayed pretty steady.  I couldn't really lose it.  At work, I'd occasionally measure my blood pressure on those notoriously inaccurate machines.  It'd squeeze my arm and blink back some number like 155/100.  Maybe I was stressed?  Was it normal for a 28 year old to have this kind of blood pressure?  I finally started seeing a doctor after I graduated.  I figured it'd be the responsible thing to do.  My blood pressure was usually elevated and my lipid profile sucked.  My LDL cholesterol was always high but more importantly my HDL was always low and my triglycerides were always above 150.

But, I was active, wasn't gaining weight and so I didn't give it much of a thought until I met my now wife.  She's a physician with a strong interest in nutrition.  And, since I'm stubborn, it has taken me awhile to come around to the idea that perhaps a steady diet of government chees...errr...fast food from subway, sodas, pizza and the like will put me in my grave before I'm 50.  Luckily she's a great cook.  I started slowly, making myself breakfast for the first time ever, trying to exercise, bringing leftovers for lunch and experimenting with various diets (vegetarian, vegan, whole foods, etc).  It's been a journey for me that has culminated into a personal philosophy of eating that I am hoping I can share with you.

I'm now back to 150 lbs.  What's critically vital for everyone to know and understand is that I lost that weight through no extraordinary calorie reduction.  In fact, before I lost the weight, I never ate breakfast.  Now, I eat large, calorie dense breakfasts.  I eat far more calories now than I did before.  It's not the total calories.  IT IS THE TYPE OF CALORIES consumed.  My blood pressure has much improved, my lipid profile is back to normal and I do not count calories.  I never have.  I eat when I'm hungry (usually three times a day like normal people) and eat until I'm full.  It wouldn't surprise me if I ate 2500 calories a day.

The ideal diet does one and one thing only:  it makes  keeps people insulin sensitive.  Any diet that stimulates you to produce insulin in rapid, large quantities will lead to something medicine calls hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance.  Insulin in and of itself is the main player.  The target.  The whole enchilada.  The generally helpful hormone with a complex array of purposes that our SAD way of eating has commandeered and forced to work way behind what it was meant to do.  Even if you don't have diabetes, you still could be insulin resistant and so still, in my opinion, at risk for the modern ills of civilization: diabetes, coronary artery disease, cancer, etc.

As a note about me, I'm like I said a pharmacist with an undergraduate degree in biochemistry.  My training and studying has prepared me for only one thing:  how little I actually know.  I'm very much a scientist at heart and I don't believe anything unless there are a set of good observations/data behind it.  Having said that, it's important to and sometimes very difficult for people, especially in medicine, to understand the limits of their own data.  I feel over the last 50 years that we've been lead astray by well meaning people who tried to create mass societal experiments without the data to back it up.  Science as a whole, has seen players who have and continue to challenge the status quo, the dogma, the accepted truth.  And so I say to you, anything that I say has been my own personal experience is not in any way meant to be medical advice.  It is a culmination of a lot of reading and experimentation.