One day I looked in the mirror and hated what I saw. I was pudgy and sluggish. When I gain weight, it lingers around my middle. One day, I was in the bookstore and I picked up Jorge Cruise's The Belly Fat Cure. It's filled with quick fix 'bad versus great' photos, a thinly veiled attempt to hide just how terrible the Belly Fat Cure is for you. In short, the Belly Fat Cure is high on protein and fatty foods and less on carbs and sugar. Duh, everyone knows if you eat loads of saturated fats and meat, you don't just get fat, you get heart disease and all sorts of bad news. Like any good picture books I spent time looking at the "belly bad" versus "belly good" photos. These sound byte distractions keep you from reading the text. When you see things like fast food good; bananas bad, it's a red alert. Yes, the Belly Fat Cure promises that you can lose weight quickly but you'll just put it back on just as fast. Rapid weight loss is unnatural.
Why am I writing about the Belly Fat Cure? Today, I saw an email pitching Cruise's latest easy diet for women. While Cruise's diets aren't ones I'd ever do, the Belly Fat Cure was the first time I started thinking long and hard about my diet. I was vaguely aware of the studies about how people eat too much sugar, how obesity was on the rise, but those things didn't apply to me.
So I thought.
Around the same time I came across Jorge Cruise's diet plan, I was told I was pre-diabetic. Actually my doctor's pre-diabetic announcement was like an afterthought. "Come back and see me in 6 weeks and by the way you are pre-diabetic. Here's a prescription for metformin and a super sugary sucker. Happy pooping." One of Metformin's side effects is violent diarrhea. Metformin and I did not get along. I was constantly sick. I had a brief consultation with Google MD and decided to stop taking it. When I told my doctor the problems I was having with metformin, his answer was to take more not less. My blood sugar wasn't getting better. It was worse. I had to do something else. Since I wasn't going to pay attention to my doctor, I decided I needed to work my diet.
That is how the Belly Fat Cure comes into my life. While I think the diet is deplorable, it actually gave me a quick way to count my carb/sugar intake. I researched the recommended daily allowances for a woman, and made that my base number. The Belly Fat Cure says 15g. I started at 40g and gradually reduced the number from there. Right now the recommended daily allowance for women is 20g and 36g for men. I don't know what my sugar intake is any more since I monitor my glucose now. Non-Diet soda and pasta, high in carbs and sugar, were the first two things eliminated from my diet.
But it didn't help...
Diet alone wasn't enough to control my blood sugar. I found a new doctor. With new medications and a strict portion control diet, my blood sugar numbers are stable, and I feel better than ever.
Belly Fat Cure is a fad diet. But Jorge Cruise's book was a catalyst, a spark that started my journey on the road to changing my diet for the better.
If you have made major changes to your diet unrelated to illness or disease, what was the spark that got started?
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