I have not always been a nutrition-conscious individual. In fact, in my younger years I was a poster child for how not to eat. I grew up in Tennessee in the ’80s and ’90s, during which time obesity rates increased both at home and throughout the rest of the country. My own growth matched the countrywide climb of obesity very neatly. I gained more and more every year, topping out at 280 pounds by my senior year of high school. I have no memories of ever being at a healthy weight as a child. I remember that every time I went for a check-up with my family doctor, he would tell me and my mother that I needed to “do something about this,” gesturing to his invisible pot belly.
Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of an individual’s height relative to weight, and it is often used as a comparative tool to determine where a person’s health fits in with the rest of the population. BMI is judged on a standard spectrum that ranges from underweight to obesity class III. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends comparing your child’s BMI to other children of the same age and height by plotting the child’s height and weight on a tabulated chart. From the results, you can place the child within a percentile of growth. My height at that age was fine: I was in the 75th percentile. My weight, however, was literally off the chart. The chart places 210-pound 17-year-olds in the 97th percentile and stops measuring at 230 pounds.
During this time, it was not uncommon for me to drink a six-pack of Dr. Enuf every couple of days or eat an entire pound of Twizzlers in a single sitting. I cannot recall what I knew about nutrition or food at the time, other than that being so overweight did not make high school easy. I do remember that I had a vague idea that my weight was my fault and that I should “do something about it,” as the doctor would say.
Occasionally I would decide to get healthy, which usually manifested in one of two ways: First, I would “starve myself” by eating only fresh fruits or salads for as long as I could stand it, which was usually about three days, seeing as I was a teenage boy and all. Alternately, I would try to follow an extreme diet of some sort. I never had great success with any of them because either they were ridiculous, I did not follow them properly, or both.
By the time I was in college and getting my first undergraduate degree, I had managed to lose about 20 pounds by working full time and being a full-time student. I simply had less time to be sedentary. Also, when you have to buy your own food, candy becomes a little bit less of a priority. Even though I was no longer eating my weight in Twizzlers, my diet had not gotten much better. I was still pretty much in the dark about food; after all, my first undergraduate degree was in communications, not nutrition. My diet at this time consisted mainly of Easy Mac with the occasional can of tuna fish dumped into the convenient little plastic cup that is used to serve and prepare Easy Mac. Tired and perpetually hungry, I found it very difficult to resist the comfort of highly processed carbohydrates. I do not think that Kraft intended for Easy Mac to make up the majority of a person’s diet, and I sure felt like crap.
It was not until a few years later when I had returned to school to study nutrition that I started to get serious about the science of eating well. I had been working in the print industry but after the strong downturn of 2009 I found myself unemployed. Six months of having my résumé rejected prompted me to go back to school and switch careers. I decided to go into nutrition because, after years of struggling with my weight and watching others do the same, this was a career that would help me finally understand how food really affects the human body. If I could learn how to control my own weight, I was certain that I would be able to help others take back control, as well. In just under five years, I earned a second bachelor’s degree—this one in human nutrition—and a master’s degree in clinical nutrition. Shortly after that I became a registered dietitian.
Throughout my nutrition education, I experimented with a few dietary and lifestyle patterns and gradually lost another 50 pounds. I was vegetarian for a couple of years and vegan for a while. During my time as a vegan, I also got really into cycling. Yeah, I was that guy. My wife and I even tried eating only raw foods for about a week. I was no longer looking to quickly lose weight like when I tried the crash diets in high school; I was more curious about how diet would affect a person’s day-to-day experience.
Throughout all of these experiments, I was exercising and trying to eat more sensibly than I had in the past. I wanted to reach a healthy weight, partially since as a dietitian I would be viewed as a nutrition expert, but I was also interested in having the firsthand experience in the things my future clients would be experiencing. I tried the “consistent carbohydrate” diet recommended for diabetics, I did a three-day juice fast, and I followed the post-gastrointestinal surgery recommendations that exclude raw or fibrous foods.
It was this curiosity (and my biochemistry professor) that introduced me to ketosis and the ketogenic diet. In one of our metabolism classes, our professor ran an exercise he called “metabolic accounting” in which we calculated how much molecular energy the body got from processing each of the three major macronutrients: fat, protein, and carbohydrate. I learned that it is much easier for the body to get energy from the digestion of carbohydrate than either protein or fat. This was when I first thought that fat might be a better energy source than carbohydrate for weight management purposes. When I asked my professor about this, he told me about the metabolic state of ketosis.
During my second year of graduate school, I tried the ketogenic diet for the first time and it was a revolutionary experience for me. My weight loss accelerated and I had more energy than I’d had for several years. Since becoming a dietitian, I’ve continued to eat a ketogenic diet and my weight has stabilized in a healthier range.
When I was approached with the opportunity to write this book, I was excited because it gave me an excuse to further research the long-term benefits of the ketogenic diet and the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet. When combined, these two diets result in an amazingly healthy, delicious, and easy way to eat that leads to fairly effortless weight management, along with a host of other benefits.
With this book, I hope to teach you a little about how your body works to process the food you eat, discuss some of the interesting science behind ketosis, and give you the tools you need to take back your health.
Human metabolism is complicated, fascinating, and not fully understood. While it is not my intention to frame carbohydrates as bad, I believe that there is sufficient evidence to say that most Americans could benefit from some form of carbohydrate restriction. It’s true that many healthful diets around the world are based on complex carbohydrates and many people are able to meet the majority of their caloric needs with carbohydrates. However, I propose they are not necessary for health, and that the excessive amount of carbohydrates consumed by followers of a Western diet are at least partially to blame for the rise in obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
Lastly, a standard but important disclaimer: If you have any disorder of metabolism, especially diabetes, you should personally consult a physician or dietitian (preferably one well-versed in ketosis) before trying the Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet or any other diet. Ketosis can be dangerous for diabetics but does not necessarily have to be. This caveat goes for pregnant women, as well.