In 2001, M Magazine published an article about Low-carbing. Joanne Pollock and Friend Karen went for the “healthcheck”, and I gave an e-mail “interview” to the Journalist in charge of the article.

I also published it to my e-mail list, and more recently to the low-carb list owners list, where I got called “One Awsome lady…” for writing such a comprehensive piece of information.
Here in its entirity is the the interview to M Magazine, and typically, they only used one quote from the below!

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—-Original Message—–
From: Nikki
Sent: 27 June 2001 23:25
To: Michele
Subject: RE: interview for magazine feature – Long reply, sorry!

Glad you are up for an interview. I don’t have a slant, positive or negative- on this one. Everybody who has been on it or know people on it, think it’s the best thing ever. I’d say conventional nutritionists and
dieticians are the ones that might ( though I do not know for sure yet) find flaws.

Dieticians would find flaws… You only have to look at the recent copy of “Which?” magazine, where they reviewed diet books, basing their finding on current nutritional guidelines! The low-carb books failed to meet the panel’s criterian miserably, and yet in practise, they appear to be the most sucessful!

So, re:pointing me in the direction of research – please do. I am particularly after books ( available in UK) besides Atkins and Protein Power, and Eat Fat, Get Thin, that advocate this general idea. We want to do a box to run alongside the text on books.

I suspect I will do the “interview” via e-mail! lol! I hope you also speak to me too. But I will answer this lot on here, where I can marshal my thoughts as well!

Research. First up the Internet. I would guess that you have already visited my site and had a good nose. Also in there of specific relevance is a page on all the low-carb books I could find on Amazon.co.uk. Most are not widely availiable, but there is definitely more choice out there than when I started 18 months ago!

There is also an amazing book and site by a lady called Dana Carpender, http://www.holdthetoast.com. Dana did a lot of research, and wrote her book, entitled “How I gave up my Low Fat diet, and lost 40lbs!” for reference. This is a true synopsis of low-carbing! I cannot recommend this one highly enough!

I would also highly recommend a look see at Lowcarbluxury.com.
Lora owns what I consider to be the premiere low-carb information site globally. She has a “news archive” on her site, which is well worth checking over. I would particularly point your attention she has to the link to Science mag. They did an Article not so long ago about how The American Government have spent the last 30 years trying to prove fat is bad
for you, and failing miserably! You have to subscribe to the Science site, which is a bummer… But it is an excellent article!

Mammoth research could be undertaken about UK attitudes by trawling through the Archives of Low-Carb in the uk, my low-carb e-mailing list.

You do not have to be subscribed to the list to read the messages, it is a public database. Try doing some keyword searches on topics you want an angle on, and see what pops out! We are candid, and discuss just about
everything and anything!

I would also point you at Dr Barry Groves’ Website. His writing on Cholesterol myths and Low-carbing are rather good.

You may also want to read the First low-carb diet book, written by William Banting in 1868. (You do have to print this to read it I feel, as it is as wordy as you would expect a Victorian to be! lol!)

And this one written in the sixties before Dr A came to the fore:Eat Fat And Grow Slim by Richard Mackarness, M.B.,B.S.

And so, to the questions!

1) Tell me, briefly, about your own experience, how much weight have you lost, are you maintaining, etc, and how this compares , for you , to other diets you have been on.

Read My Story. It tells it is a nutshell, with Pictures too. As of this day, I have lost 3st exactly! I am in a stall right now, having gained back a little weight due to my not coming to terms with some emotional issues with food, and overeating… hey, no news there, over eat when eating anything and if you have a body type with propensity to gain weight, you get fat! I understand my stumbling blocks, and am hoping to get back on loss track soon.

How does LC compare. No Hypoglycemic attacks. I have to say that this is the BIGGEST plus. Having done a lot of research, about how insulin works, and how my body shapre relates to my insulin sensitivity, on the blood sugar roller-coaster that is “healthy eating” I was forever tired, washed out, irritable, moody and plain HUNGRY!!!!!!

Using LC plans, the blood sugar is ROCK SOLID (which is of huge advantage to diabetics) and also by switching your body over to Ketone Burning (Fat as fuel) rather than Glucose Burning (Sugar and starch for fuel) hunger is blunted, and less food is needed for appetite satiation.

Weight loss is erratic… This is due to Fat loss and Muscle gain. Muscle is more dense than Fat, so it takes up less space in the body. Why the Tape measure is more important to a low-carber than the scale. Low-cal diets are Muscle wasting, which slows down your metabolism. Low-carb promotes muscle growth, keeping your metabolism healthy! As an aside, this is why a low-carb will never be as light as a low-cal dieter. We have more muscle!

2) Do you have to eat this way for life? If you go back to eating carbs will you not just gain the weight back?

You never *have* to do anything… For me personally, I don’t want to go back to eating the metabolic poison that are Cabohydrate in large quantity. (yes, my “conversion” is complete… I view Refined Sugar and white Flour as total posion), I am happy to low-carb for life. The food is natural, nutrient-dense, varied, interesting and above all tastes good! Why would I want to feel like crap again, be tired all the time, have higher blood pressure (I dropped from 130/90 to 110 over 78 in the past 18 months), bad skin, brittle nails, dull hair, and above all, get fat again, after all this work!

You are right, if you have a body that is predisposed to plumpness, when you revert back to the diet that made you fat in the first place, you are going to get fat again! This is no shock, on low-carb or low-cal!!!!

However, studies have shown you are more likely to give up and gain back on low-cal than on low-carb. At the end of the day, Hunger usually does the low-cal person in, and they go back to how they ate before, gaining back all the weight they lost, and some more into the bargain! This will happen to a low-carber that gives up as well, but normally we don’t give up that easily.

3) Has not eating carbs cut your cravings for them?

The physical craving Yes. Simple answer there. However, all of us seem to have a favorite carb, mine is potatoes. My mental attitude change is so steep that I can walk down the Cake and Sweet ailse in a supermarket, and just see poison all round me. I live on my own, so I don’t have to keep sweets and starches (or milk, I don’t drink tea or coffee! I just don’t like them, rather than not allowed them) in the house anymore, but when I was living with a partner, I had no trouble not eating after I had cooked them for him… However you put a plate of chips in front of me, and I have real troubles resisting them. The Smell of toast is a killer as well, but resist I can. I know it is not worth the blood sugar High and Crash, and the hunger that follows.

It is strange. I have no desire to eat heavy duty carbs. It is really as simple as that. I have broken my addition. I don’t intend to get seduced again, that is for sure!

4) Do you have to take supplements?

Again, you don’t *have* to, as the LC is very nutrient Rich… however, I personally do take supplements. All the Vitamin study in the 20′s and 30′s was done to “cure” disease cause by deficiency. I have researched, and am in the camp that believes that if you take some Vitamins and Minerals to “excess” you get health benefits, rather than just prevent illness.

My Bibles here are “Dr Atkin’s Vita Nutrient Solution” and “The Vitamin Bible” by Earl Mindell (Ed. Now out of print in 2010) and I take a veritable cocktail of Tabs. All from Holland and Barrett.

2x Green Source MultiVit
2x Chelated Calcium 333mg with Magnesium 150mg and Zinc
2x Selenium ACE Maximun, with Zinc
2x CoenzymeQ10 50mg
2x VitC 1000mg (may up this to 3 we shall see…)
2x Glucosamine Sulphate 500mg
2x Fish Oil 1000mg
2x Flaxseed Oil 1000mg
2x Starflower Oil 1000mg
1x Chromium 500mg
1x VitB complex
1x Biotin 50mg
1x Vit E capsule 400UI
1x Korean Ginseng Extract
1x Cranberry Extract
1x L-Carnite 500mg

Split it into two takes, one with Breakfast, one with lunch, and the L-Carnite at Bedtime.

Some of it is general spectrum stuff, other stuff have specific jobs in the body, either to do with metabolism, or specific health issues such as my arthritis.

I don’t take these every day, I tend to take them during the week, and not at weekends. You do need to leave a gap, as the Fat soluable Vits build up to toxicity levels in the body if you are not careful!

I also notice that when I don’t take them regularly, my body lets me know,  especially the Glucosamine Sulphate.

5) Do you have any concerns over long term health effects? It seems to defy logic that you can eat that much meat and not have cholesterol problems.

No concerns at all. LC is a natural diet. It is Nutrient dense and Chemical Sparse. It is the diet that our bodies evolved on, and thrived on enough to get us to Homo-sapiens state!

If you do the research, what you find is that Cholesterol in the diet has NO EFFECT on serum Cholesterol at all! Also, It is now thought that Triglycerides are a Better indicator of problems than Cholesterol.

We produce 80% of the Cholesterol we NEED to live in our liver… if we eat less, our body simply produces more.

Also, I don’t eat “all that meat!” I have meat once a day, twice if I cannot be bothered to be imaginative. I tend to have Scrambled eggs with butter and Mushrooms for breakfast, and usually either Salmon or Steak with a salad dressed in With Pepper, Olive oil and Balsamic Vinegar with mayonnaise on the side for lunch. Dinner is whatever turns up From Safeway or a restaurant. Weekends can be a bit catch as catch can as well.

If you want to check out what I have been eating in detail, and my musings for the last month or so, check this…

and hey, if Dr A and Barry have not dropped dead, after 40 years of low-carbing…

6) Correct me if I am wrong, but Atkins seems to think ketosis is a good thing, whereas Barry Groves – eat fat get thin, says it is not essential.
What is your view?

Ahhh… That argument. I have had this out with Barry on list (yes, he is a member of my LC list)… Do a search on the thread “Ketones – why waste the best fuel?” if you want his and my views. (messages 8605, 8611, 8640 and 8862)

It is all due to Dr A not being the greatest wordsmith on the planet. The aim of an LC diet is to make the body run on Ketones as its prefered fuel, rather than Glucose. The body runs better on Ketone bodies, and it is indeed the prefered fuel of the brain. What they “disagree” about is what I call “Ketone-Spillage”

Barry’s plan will put the body into what is medicly called “ketosis/lipolysis” ie Fat burning as well as Dr A’s or any of the other LC plans do… But, the difference is that Barry does not believe in wasting ketones, where as Dr A Does! What Dr A called BDK, or Benign Dietary Ketosis means to be at a point of Ketone Saturation, so that unused ketones exit the body via Urine and Breath. I think this gives thespoon fed American dieter a marker, to show he is doing well…

Barry is more economical, and expects us Brits not to need unnecessary “crutches”, that is all! His plan is trying to get your body to burn *all* the ketones you release from your body and dietary fat.

Now, I mostly follow Dr A, and I can afford to waste a few ketones! lol

6) Tell me what you eat in a typical day.
Again, Have a look at Fitday.

As I said above, usually Eggs and Mushies for breakfast, “protein” (a steak, salmon or an omlette if I am poor!) and a dressed salad for lunch, with perhaps a Loseley Greek yoghurt, then preferably a different protein and cooked, dressed veggies for tea. (Tonight I had a small Salmon fillet, with Asparagus tips, some herb Salad and butter/garlic fried Mushrooms, with a Cream sauce made of Cream, butter, Pepper and White wine vinegar! )

I Cook in lard and butter, dress salads and veggies with Olive and nut oils, use Mayo as my sauce if I need it, and make cream sauces where ever I can! Mostly in the evenings, as what I get from the canteen during the day is quite “limiting”.

I aim for a 70% fat, 20-25% Protein and 5-10% Carb caloric distribution. Most days I am on target… I don’t even have to think about it anymore, it just falls that way!

Here is what I wrote to “Which?” Magazine about what I eat, as it is quite a good piece, and typing it again would be tedious!:

“The diet of a low-carber is based around eating as naturally as possible. It practically forces you to cook proper food, and not to stick nutritionally barren chemical and sugar stuffed processed food into your body. My diet is based on drinking Water (at least 3ltrs a day, I usually make 5) and maybe a glass of wine or two once a week, and eating Meat, Fowl, Game, Fish, Eggs, Cheese, Nuts, Seeds, Non-starchy, Nutrient-dense “Green” Veggies, Small amounts of “native northern European” Fruits, Herbs, Spices, Butter, Cream, Lard, Olive oil, and a small amount of baked goods made from nut, soy and whey “flours”. (yes, I make my own low-carb bread, biscuits and cakes… they are fantastic!) With these ingredients, I don’t have to *try* and make my food taste good, it does so all on its own!

I eat as little prepackaged foods as possible, as few chemicals as possible, and I avoid the very addictive “Sugar” as much as I can get away with, in a world where manufacturers put it into everything! ”

7) Can you do the government recommendation of five portions of fruit and veg a day on this plan? What about fibre?

From the above, you can see yes! I don’t realy like fruit anyway… Fruit is Sugar wrapped in fibre, Veggies are much more nutrient dense! ie, there is more Vitamins C in Brocolli than an Orange!

I do eat strawberries occasionally, with cream of course.

I view fruit with trepidation anyway, as our bodies evolved to convert Fruit sugar (Fructose) to Triglycerides (fat) without needing the “help” of Insulin! (Excess Blood glucose is converted to triglycerides and shoved into fats cells by the action of Insulin, which is why people with insulin resistance (apple shaped) who eat the standard high-carb diet are fat!) It is what we ate to get fat for winter!

Fibre. I get enough from my veggies I feel. I also eat Nuts, and seeds, which are also Fibrous. I don’t suffer constipation very often, but when I do, normally due to either not drinking enough (I throw back between 4 and 6 ltrs per day) or having non-balanced meals (ie a burger (no bun of course!) grabbed on the run between a and b, or a breakfast at a friends house that is a slice of ham or three, or a lump of cheese)I have a good spinach meal and I am all sorted!

Sorry if these questions seen really basic but remember you know all about this and I am writing for people who know nothing about it.

Well, I suspect I have been far too comprehensive here, but I wanted to cover all bases. Trying to compress 18 months of experience into a *short* e-mail is probably impossible! lol!

Thanks for your help,

Not a Problem. Speak to you soon I hope.

Kind Regards
Nikki

This is an e-mail sent by Tim (The “Fella I worked with” in my story), to the Concise-low-carb-uk list. I thought it was better than my responce to the same post…

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Dr Jeremy Mills said: Are all these supplements discussed really necessary if you eat a varied low-carb diet – surely by cutting out the carbs you aren’t necessarily losing anything else ??

I think the view is generally that it is *better* to be getting your vits and minerals from food in any case, as there may be “other things” in there which science doesn’t currently fully understand, which lend themselves to enhancing absorption.

Most vitamins should, as you say be readily available if you are eating your veggies up (with the possible exception of Omega-3′s and Magnesium, and you can get Omega-3′s from oily fish if you’re into that.)

However, some of the antioxidants (and a handful of others) have such a dramatic beneficial effect that it may be worth supplementing in any case!

Getting the right fat balance is very hard to do today, unless you are a big fan of sardines! Taking a fish oil supplement comes highly recommended, just to make sure you get your Omega-3′s.

Magnesium reportedly has almost miraculous properties, and everyone should take it!
(This is to do with Magnesium/Calcium balance, it’s a bit like the Omega-3/Omega-6 fat thing)

(Note from Jeanette in reply to this post:
I would just urge one caution about the Magnesium and your comment “everyone should take it!”: In Protein Power LifePlan on page 220, there is a caution that if you have heart or kidney trouble you should NOT supplement magnesium without the permission of your doctor.)

Chromium apparantly has an insulin sensitising effect, and so may be helpful on this WOE, especially to people in the early phases of the diet.

Again with people in the early phases, you’ll be losing a lot of water initially, so it’s probably a good idea to replace the inevitably lost potassium, this can most easily be done by using some kind of lo-salt, but you could take a potassium supplement instead if you wanted to.

There are a whole swathe of anti-oxidants, but these 4 are generally considered to be the most important:

Vitamin E – THE most important antioxidant, hands down
Vitamin C – everyone knows about this one
CoQ10 – horrendously expensive, but very good for you
Alpha-Lipoic Acid – another excellent anti-oxidant, also has the effect of regenerating the 3 above in your body!

The anti-oxidants are recommended for their anti-aging and cancer-retardant properties, as I’m sure you know already.

Realistically, you are already doing your body a lot of good by getting your blood-sugar and insulin levels right down via the WOE. Everything else is really just extra. If you want to “go that extra mile” and perhaps reap some additional benefits, then start taking supplements as well. You won’t get anything like the benefit you’re already getting just from the WOE, but you may feel just a little better. It’s really down to the individual, where in the effort/reward balance do you feel most comfortable.

If you want to get more info, I highly recommend The Protein Power Life Plan which has some excellent science in it, explaining a number of aspects
of this WOE that I’d not seen touched on in such detail elsewhere, and has several sections dealing with vitamins and minerals and their specific effects.

Hope this is at all useful!

Regards,
Tim (KSC, KoX) -><-
“We are sorry, you have reached an imaginary number.

Please rotate your phone ninety degrees and try again.”

What can I drink on this diet?

Another oft asked qustion, both in my in-box, and to both the mailing lists, are questions about Alcohol. Men especially ask about “their Beer”. One such question, from a Chap called Gavin, got a good reply, and not being selfish, here it is! (hey, waste not want not! )

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—-Original Message—–
From: Nikki [mailto:admin@low-carb.org.uk]
Sent: 02 November 2001 21:28
To: Gavin Male
Subject: RE: beer…
Hi Gavin…

Great site you’ve whipped up there…
My thanks.

I have a quick question for you regarding low-carb action… I’ve done Dr Atkins in the past, just for a full-on two week period, drinking just water,no caffeine, alcohol etc. Being a young single bloke in London, I like to have a drink or two… main question is, do the principals of Dr Atkins still work if I drink as well?

The answer is yes and no. Alcohol as a fuel HAS to be burned off before anything else. So whilst the Alcohol won’t stop you producing Ketones, you will not be using them for Energy whilst you’re drinking. This is effectively stopping your fat loss dead in its tracks, but it will start up again once all the alcohol is burned off.

The Second Problem is the Carbs. The “best” alcohols to drink are either Spirits or Dry wines, as they have few carbs to refill your Glycogen stores with…

Beer, by its nature is rather carby. Lite Beers and Pilsners are your best bet if you still want them… in moderation.

So basically I’m looking to have very few carbs in my food, but still having alcohol. I avoid all drinks except water / de-caff tea etc, but really need my beer !!

Fair enough, then have it. Just remember that low-carbing will lower your alcohol tolerance (hey, I used to be able to drink my mates under the table… now, two glasses of red and I am pickled!) and that it will dehydrate you, which in turn will make you retain water as you rehydrate.

As a Man, you will not have as many problems drinking beer as a woman would have (don’t you just hate body chemistry sometimes…) but did you also know that beer contains phytoestrogenic componds… These are what gives you the
“Beer Belly” look… They are giving you a “pregnancy protection layer”!

Let me know if I’ll get thinner please!

As long as you stick with the plan, work with it, and don’t indulge *too* much, then I can see no reason why not. If you do have trouble though, I do suggest that you lay off the beer for a while… After all, what is more important, Beer or Thinness? I know my choice… What’s yours to be?

L&s
Nikki
http://www.low-carb.org.uk

There is a short section on this in the FAQ, but the subject really does merit a larger article. NOT written by me, and if anyone knows the credit please forward so that I can add it.

“Trying to keep both your fat and carb intakes low in the hope of losing weight more quickly? It’s probably not a good idea, and you do it only at your own risk.

Your body needs energy to perform all the little daily tasks it’s called upon to do. It takes energy to walk, to digest food, to sit in an erect position, to move, to breathe — even to think. It even requires energy to sleep, and for your body to repair itself of all the little damages it incurs during daily life.

Fortunately, your body is a very efficient power plant. It can use any of three fuels to generate the energy it needs. Only if it runs out of those fuels will it be totally unable to produce energy and cease to operate. But before it reaches that state it goes into a stage comparable to rolling blackouts — a condition in which it warns you through various symptoms including, but not limited to, hunger, aches and pains, extreme fatigue, bowel irregularities, and even problems with
the texture of your skin and hair, that it needs more fuel. However, you should never let your body get to the point of warning you that it’s out of fuel. Here’s why:

The three types of fuel the body can use are carbohydrates, fats, and protein. Carbohydrates are the body’s “preferred” fuel — the one it will use first, if available. If there are no carbs (sugars and starches) available, then it will use fats. And only as very last resort- — after having warned you via the “rolling blackout” method that it’s in real trouble — will the body use protein as a fuel.

That’s because the protein you eat is needed by the body’s organs and muscles, and is constantly used by those organs and muscles to keep in good repair. So if you require protein to produce the energy for your daily activities, you divert it from its prime — and very important — purpose. You could even end up cannibalizing your body, causing a breakdown of first its muscles and then the major organs you need to simply sustain life. (This, by the way, is why some doctors and
nutritionists are so convinced that low-carbing will shrivel your muscles, eat your liver and do unspeakable things to your kidneys. They don’t consider the fact that the body will use fat for energy before it’ll use protein if it’s supplied with enough fat for its needs. And because they’re so conditioned to the low-fat way of eating they can’t even imagine anyone eating enough fat to supply their body with energy, for heaven’s sake!)

Now back to the body’s preferred fuels. We are mostly conditioned from birth to use carbohydrates for fuel, so the body will use them automatically. (There’s a good reason why human breast milk — nature’s
intended food for infants — contains more than 1.5 times the carbohydrates that cows’ milk does.)

Most people get more than enough carbohydrates to fuel their bodies’ daily activites. The body, being a well-run power plant, puts the leftovers in storage to use in the future if it’s needed. But it can’t store carbohydrates, so it turns them into fat and keeps them on deposit in the body’s cells. And we see it walking around the streets wherever we go, hanging off bodies in a most unattractive way. Some of us see it every time we look in the mirror, as well, and don’t like the way it looks on us.

An excess of fat storage is usually the reason we choose a low-carb way of life. We want our bodies to use the stored fat for energy and leave our bodies lean and sleek looking. And, as we all know, it works. But we can make it work far more efficiently by understanding the way the body uses fat.

The switchover from using carbs for energy to using fats for energy is only semi-automatic. In the absence of carbs the body will use fat, but only sparingly. Remember, the body is conditioned to store that fat against the time when it runs out of fuel. It considers fat an “emergency ration” and it goes into conservation mode, producing only the amount of energy that’s necessary to sustain life, and you go into those “rolling blackouts.” You may feel hunger, fatigue, muscle aches,
joint pain, etc. You may become extremely constipated. Or you may just feel a general malaise. This happens to many people when they begin a low-carb diet, and often keeps them from following through. “Oh, I tried
that,” they’ll say, “And it didn’t work for me.”

There is a way, though, to train the body to use fat automatically as its preferred fuel, and one that it can safely use to produce unlimited amounts of energy. You do that by depriving it of carbohydrates, while at the same time providing it a good supply of dietary fat. After a while — usually only a few days — this convinces your body that it can
always expect to have a bountiful supply of fat to use as fuel for its energy generator and takes it out of conservation mode. Because it has both dietary fat and stored fat to draw upon, and has no reason to stay
in conservation mode, the body will produce lots and lots of energy.

You’ll avoid the “rolling blackout” warnings and feel far better, with plenty of energy. And this will continue for as long as you eat enough fat to keep your body out of conservation mode.

This is one of the reasons that doctors who support the low-carb way of eating tell you that you shouldn’t eat fat-free mayonnaise, salad dressings, cheeses, etc. (The other reason, of course is that most of them contain added carbohydrates just to make them barely edible.) It’s also the basis for the widely touted and very effective “Fat Fast”
method of jolting your body into weight loss if you find yourself in a persistent plateau.

But what the doctors often forget to mention is that these days even eating full-fat condiments and foods may not provide you with as many fats as you should have to encourage your body to freely burn fats. This is because so many of today’s foods are routinely stripped of the good, healthy fats they used to contain.

For example, food animals are bred to be as close to fat-free as possible. Beef and pork is touted as being “lean,” and it is — almost to the point of being tasteless. It’s nearly impossible to get chicken with the fat and skin still attached — I have to order it specially from my supermarket. Recipes routinely call for pans to be sprayed with fat-free sprays rather than using fats to keep the food from sticking, and even those of us who follow a low-carb way of life often use them, thinking we’re doing the right thing.

So to avoid depriving our bodies of both fats and carbohydrates at the same time, we often have to consciously add fats to our diet. Trying to eat a low-fat or reduced-fat diet along with a low-carb diet is almost a sure recipe for failure. It may appear to be effective, at least for a while. You may lose some weight, but despite cutting your carbohydrates down to almost zero you probably won’t lose as much as you would if you were eating more fat. You surely won’t feel nearly as good as you would if you ate more fat. And you may even end up falling by the wayside along with those people who say “Oh, I tried that, and it didn’t work for me.”"

On the e-list Low-Carb_in_the_UK we have far ranging discussions. What started this one off was a discussion about Kilroy, a programme about Obesity. As you would expect, this was no sympathetic view, but a ridicule session, along the standard lines of fat people have no will power or self control…

We know this to be carb addiction… You know what? I cannot wait for the day the rest of the world wakes up to this fact!

Anyway, this got us talking about “self image”, and Elaine wrote this rather wonderful essay…

So, I give you, Elaine’s take on Body Dismorphia.

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From: {hazeymaze6@*****.com}
It was always something I wondered about – whether, because anorexic women look in the mirror and see a fat person, how do they view me?

From:Lillian15@*****.com
> I hardly even notice that I’m fat and even when losing weight, I can’t really tell the difference.

This is just another facet of the same thing – body dismorphia. We have an image of our own body, and, no matter how we change our body, the image stays the same. Anorexics have a body image that is fat, sometimes huge.
There was an experiment performed with a “flexible mirror”, which the anorexic person could control. They moved the mirror until the reflection that they saw was the same as their body image – in their mind the mirror was then “flat”, and non-distorting. It was amazing how “fat” the people with anorexia saw themselves as, – and how thin the “fat” people thought
they were! It was a consistent thing, with many people all showing similar mis-conceptions. I know that my body image is thinner than I am, and despite the weight that I have lost, my body image and I still have a long way to go
before we coincide!

If you have lost weight, but your “body image” hasn’t, you may have body dismorphia too. In our case, it could prove fatal if we fail to accept the evidence of the scales – our body image tells us we are thinner than reality, so we can afford to eat a little extra food, and so we could become morbidly obese. Thankfully we have all accepted that reality and image do
NOT coincide – otherwise we would not be here! For those with anorexia, their dismorphia works the opposite way. They are desperate to shrink their body image, and can not accept that their body image and reality are not the
same. For them, too, body dismorphia can be a killer.

Would any program stand in front of a group of anorexics and say “eat more – you’ll be healthier”? Not today. It’s accepted that anorexia is a serious illness with deep seated psycological roots. All these have to be addressed before anorexia can be conquered. But Obesity? Well, obese people are just plain greedy and weak willed, and so any humiliation can be directed at them.

We know better.

We must just hope that, eventually, those ignorant medical professionals who dismissed anorexics in the past, but who now accept the serious and multifaceted nature of their disease, will learn that obesity may have similar deep seated causes.

Maybe then we will get the respect that we deserve when we go into the doctors surgery.
When we speak to a dietician.
When we appear on a TV program desperate for help.

Lets hope that, eventually, those people who have been hurt and humiliated find their way to this healthy way of eating, as we have, and turn their lives, if not their body images, around.

Body dismorphia is a killer. Let’s be grateful that we have ours under control.

Elaine in Cumbria