Tuesday, April 19, 2016

weight-loss testimonial

This is from an online friend who requested that I not use his name. Agree or disagree, doubt or not, it's an interesting story about a guy who lost a hundred pounds (45.4 kg).

So: the background before I lost 100 pounds. Around age 14, I developed acne, allergies to pollen, and a strange need to sweat a lot at night. It turns out the sweating was my skin processing the gunk my kidneys weren't getting out by themselves during the day. It wasn't "a problem" by any stretch... I just smelled bad when I woke up, and after I was old enough to drink alcohol, the alcohol smell got sweated out quite obviously within the hour.

Fast forward to last year. I was a touch over 300 pounds, had gallstones, and my wife had been looking for ways to get me better. The method that finally worked was the one outlined by William Davis in Wheat Belly: no sugar, no flour.

I thought my wife's latest "fix you!" plan was going to yield yet-again tiny results, but I did it... I got to keep up drinking alcohol, and the meat, bacon, and veggie dishes I ate were pretty yummy. My sugar intake at the time was pretty small, I thought—usually a Coke, and whatever sugar I added to black coffee. But I took it to zero.

Over the next three months, I ate normally and drank coffee to get going in the morning. I took to beating the summer heat with lemon juice added to water, with some turmeric added... strangely refreshing, and I had a huge craving for the turmeric around week 3, hopefully to clean out whatever from my insides.

I was slowly losing fat from all over, not just my gut. My calves, my temples, etc., lost weight pretty evenly. After about two months, I noticed I was displacing a lot less water in the bathtub. At month 3, I finally checked, and I was down a touch over 100 pounds—and nearly all fat, as far as I could tell.

Around here, I noticed my kidneys doing their job fully. I was no longer needing to sweat badly at night to feel rested. And without my skin needing to process gunk, my acne disappeared. I also noticed that the strange "fog" on my wedding ring was gone. Since I was no longer sweating gunk, my ring was uncoated by gunk, and shiny again.

It also turned out about then that a bulge just under my now-much-flatter abs was a parasitic worm I had. A couple days of garlic tea got rid of something that, as far as I could tell, I’d had for about 20 years. With the worm gone, I noticed that I was able to more completely sleep at night, and more completely be awake during the day.

So it's about a year later, and without flour, things are going fine. I cut out milk/cheese for a while. After a binge of Costco cheddar, my wife noticed my temples getting puffy. Turns out the cheese was doing it. Hopefully my mild dairy problem is the sort of food allergy that can be overcome by three months or so of abstinence. I'm looking forward to getting back to cheese.

In terms of other food, I'm actually doing okay without the flour (pasta, bread, cake, etc.). I can now make a mean steak, and with potatoes in the mix, I'm fine in terms of being not so hungry.

If you're looking for some advice on a full-bore water fast, I can ask my wife. She's been on one for about 4 weeks. The turn-around has been huge in her case.

I hope you get better, Kevin. You're a good guy. I hate to see you not at your peak.

If you want any more info, let me know. My wife has been the one doing all of the reading and research, and she did a ton of it. She reads Japanese, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Most of the good info she got started with some Brazilian doctors who were exploring various nutrition works from the USA. Altogether, she found a lot of interesting things.

Losing a hundred pounds in three months is incredible, although I find it counterintuitive that my friend could continue to eat potatoes, which are as starchy as wheat-based carbs. Then again, I haven't read Wheat Belly, so who knows?

In the meantime, my friend Charles sent me a link to a website called Nutrition As I Know It (NAIKI). Charles writes:

It's maintained by a Nutritional Science and Kinesiology student, and it's pretty fascinating. Of the many things on the site he has a list of trustworthy nutrition sources and untrustworthy nutrition sources (Tim Ferriss is on the latter).

Apparently, there's a lot of bullshit out there, and NAIKI's mission is to act as a sort of guide and corrective. The NAIKI "naughty" list of diet-info sources to avoid is here. Are Wheat Belly and William Davis on it...? Even if they are, I have no reason to doubt that my friend did in fact lose a hundred pounds in three months. At the very least, the diet worked for him, even if it's not guaranteed to work for other folks.



Maven said...

Perhaps your friend was able to eat potato vs bread because potatoes don't have gluten? Just a thought.

In the last few months, I have started baking my own sourdough bread as the Maharajah has a phytase sensitivity. There is scientific proof that soaking grains and fermenting grains helps access the phosphorus etc locked up inside, and makes the grain based products easier to digest. Also, it allegedly lowers the glycemic index of the items made from those soaked or fermented grains.

I agree with your friend about the change in diet, but sometimes gradual changes are more sustainable than to try to change your entire way of being.

As you might've guessed, I find the parasitic worm aspect of the story compelling, and of course, I'd like more information on this. Did he pass the worm in his stool?

Maven said...

PS: Check your email, I sent you a link to a book you might find very useful.

Charles said...

William Davis is in fact on the list, and the link leads to a pdf of an article examining some of the claims made in the book. As I mentioned in my email, it would be nice if the list were broken down by degrees, but unfortunately it isn't.

Kevin Kim said...


Yeah, I actually looked that up while I was writing the post, and I inserted my "Are Wheat Belly and William Davis on it...?" question just to be coy.

Kevin Kim said...


Got your email and replied! Thanks.