Like Oprah, before I found low carb eating, I was ravenously hungry all the time and couldn’t understand how other pople did it, how they could eat a certain amount and then stop because they were full and not eat again until they got hungry. I never felt full. Low carb eating changed all that. While I still dont really have a complete full signal I no longer feel that ravenously hungry gotta eat feeling. It’s worked for about 20 years now. I prefer eating this way to the thought of taking a pill with all its side effects, known and unknown. It bothers me that Oprah is advocating this medication but it seems to be the fad of the moment. There really is another way to go about weightloss.

She is absolutely right about this.

But that same "not even thinking about the food" can be achieved by cutting out the addictive foods that cause you to obsess over them, even though it does take quite a long time to get to where you stop thinking about those foods.

That's how AA works - you cut out the alcohol completely. You stay away from it at all costs. When you fall off the wagon, you get right back on that wagon as soon as you possibly can. There isn't really another option, unless you really want to be in an alcohol induced stupor forever.



I have to admit that I don't think we're going to get to that kind of attitude about food addictions though, at least not in my lifetime, especially now that we have drugs that are pretty good at limiting appetite, no matter what you crave.

There was a trend at one time to cut out the carby foods (despite the constant narrative to the contrary saying you NEEED all those carbs, meats and fats are deadly, etc), which for a carb addict was the same as an alcoholic ditching the alcohol. It's tough to do - all of us here remember what it was like to throw out or stop buying those foods - even more difficult if we had to continue to buy/make them for our family while we stopped eating them.

People who previously tried to ditch their carb addiction but fell off the wagon too many times are willing to admit that they don't have the self control needed to stay on a LC diet for the duration. They're happy to let a drug control their appetite. They no longer need to give up the addictive food - they now have a drug that controls how much they can eat of that addictive food.

Those who never tried LC because they couldn't even imagine giving up bread are also delighted to have the drug. No more calorie counting. No more eating a small serving off a tiny plate while trying to convince yourself that you're full. No more mindful eating where you chew each tiny bite 27 times before swallowing. No more drinking a big glass of water before a meal to fill up your stomach as much as possible so you can't eat as much. No more tasteless fat free foods - you can have whatever food you want, if you can stomach that food. You just don't want much food.

The development of semaglutide drugs have changed the perspective on food in general.

When they say it's a game changer, it really is a game changer for those who can't or won't ditch the addictive carbs.

At least it's a game changer until the drugs end up causing so many serious side effects that they need to stop taking them. Then they'll be right back where they started - out of control carb eating, regaining the weight they lost, beating themselves up again because they lack self control over food.

I'm not sure what come after that - maybe they'll use weight loss surgery as a back-up in those cases.

What a fat load of trash! MAUREEN CALLAHAN slams Oprah as a dishonest shill whose Ozempic special was a glorified Big Pharma ad that indulged her lies about weight-loss jabs... and fed her oversized ego

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowb...N-CALLAHAN.html

Pharma is being told by investment firms: we don't want cures. Healthy people don't make them any money.

I mean, they've been accused of it before, but now it's widely on record what they are acting upon. I still see serious problems letting such delusional people run important things. I first read this in 2018 and I'm assuming things got worse, as they do on this subject:

It's Official! Curing Patients Is Bad for Business



An even better plan is avoiding a lot of unnecessary medical treatment, of course. But I can tell you -- as someone forced into early retirement from health issues -- once a person is a US senior we are officially a cash cow in a for-profit system. It's great that a sick person can see all kinds of specialists but why do retirees get it forced on them as a hobby?

Practically a job in itself between fighting the extra insurer US people get sucked into signing up for, and all the different offices and appointments and tests, with extra confusion and all the burden on the patient to track everything and get there and come up with co-pays.

It's not that I haven't helped close seniors through this, but doing this myself, after 20 years of eating for health, is that even being healthy is not always enough to get off the ride. My doctor understands my cholesterol numbers and my diet, but 99 others would insist on statins, maybe even throw me out.

BTW, the way to solve this problem is to fire your doctor. But we no longer have the privilege, most of the time. Especially once we are retired.

Poor health practices by the patient leads to poor health advice from the doctors who have to -- first -- cross off the most effective strategies because diabetes and heart disease patients won't change their lifestyle. They want to take a pill. Because they have absorbed that this is what you do: take a pill and go about your business.

It's not that we're doing a bad thing by providing health care to people who need it. It's that we're doing a good thing in a bad way, because the incredible bulk of this senior care is preventable.

Snag is, the way it is set up for profit: if we aren't sick, how can they make money? While the US once had the reputation for "best healthcare," now it's merely the most expensive.

Wrong metric. And do remember that, even if Oprah has a ton of money, it hasn't helped her lose weight. But she knows her audience. Really well.

Gary Taubes' new diabetes history book is like a roadmap of how we got here. Faced with certain death, some people still wouldn't stick to the animal diet, essentially carnivore, which kept many diabetics healthy for decades, pre-insulin.

Which means some people can't stay off carbs even if it will kill them. Which is my definition of an addiction problem. Humans can make anything a substance, mentally; gambling, shopping, etc. But biological intake makes something a double whammy. This is a serious struggle because now we are messing with our metabolism and our brains.

One hundred years ago, insulin was looked upon as a cure, when it was a still-misunderstood* hormone used as a medicine. Taubes' point is that diabetes treatment went downhill around the same time industrial foods began increasing the problem of patients out-eating their diminished pancreas. Because it wasn't that the animal diet "didn't work" for some patients. Even those with type I and very low function, they lived for decades, without carbs and without complications.

That is the power of how addiction works for many people. From years of observation, the motivation to put together a sustained life effort without overusing of a coping mechanism -- be that shopping, gambling, substance abuse, or Frankenfoods -- must come from within the person.

But the least we can do is, as a society, is tell them the truth about food. Doctors act like just telling people is enough, the classes are run by dieticians trained by professional vegans, and the entire culture pressures everyone to eat more carbs and sugar because they are all so depressed and miserable.

Maybe, at last, we really will spend that money on mental health, instead? To help people make better decisions, themselves. And how they are relying on false authority and experts who have been secretly paid to lie.

I have diabetes in my family, and they all have the tool in their hands already. But they were told to take "insulin to cover" any carb intake, forcing patients to perform this tricky task every meal, and if they can afford it, getting a pump and other aids.

But it still doesn't work if the person doesn't eat in a way that is aware of the condition. That's what they mean by when they say "brittle diabetic." It's not that insulin has stopped working. It's that the patient can't stay away from grains, starch, sugar, and alcohol in a way that requres pin-point control their body no longer has over these substances.

Which are all almost the same addictive substance. They drain B vitamins and leads to hormone derangements if they aren't eating enough animal fat.

So, once again, it is the food.

*misunderstood because other hormones develop resistance and the interplay is important. Like my cortisol resistance, which contributes to my anxiety and blood sugar issues with the results.

Also keep in mind that the very first use of injected insulin was for T1 children who were literally at death's door because their pancreas had shut down completely and their bodies were unable to produce any insulin at all.

It was used experimentally as a last ditch effort to save the lives of those children. And it worked.

Also, let's not forget that children don't have much control over what food they are provided. Other than refusing food they don't like, they don't really have a choice, and if they're hungry enough they will eventually even eat food that they hate.

Of course the whole thing has gotten completely out of control now with "healthy carbs" being pushed on everyone, no matter what. Add in the constant increase in carb based snacks and vegan diets, and it's just a health disaster.

But still, the use of insulin really did start out with good intentions.

Posting this because it gives a slightly different viewpoint of weight loss drugs from the point of view of Whoopie Goldberg.


https://people.com/whoopi-goldberg-...300-lbs-8611145

She doesn't say whether she'd be likely to use Monjauro again if she has another massive weight gain due to needing steroids or other drugs that cause rapid weight gain, since she never really cared that much about her weight until that particular high point.

Oprah definitely appeared to be a shill for big pharma.

Considering that there have been other diet drugs over the years... decades... or even a century ago when tape worms were used to lose weight.

I found a chart on the NIH site that has a list of weight loss drugs, how they were supposed to promote weight loss, and why they were never approved or were pulled from the market. The list covers the years from 1892-2020. Some were never marketed because of ineffectiveness or the side effects during testing , others were pulled from the market due to serious side effects:



I think most of us recall at least a few of these being promoted as the answer to weight loss - and yet none of them are on the market today.

The semaglutide drugs are really only just the latest in a long line of weight loss drugs, and they're really only just getting started, but with this kind of track record for weight loss drugs and the side effects already reported, I'd say it's only a matter of time before they're pulled from the market too.

Of course, it was a "miracle" for some. Taubes' point in the book is that it became a crutch. Once again, it was all about a miracle drug, not understanding its use as a hormone?

Hormones create sensitivity. It's a body feedback mechanism, which regulates how much gets into the cell. So doctors began forcing hormones into the cell.

so some people didn't have to eat differently from other people.

This conformist worm in people's heads which did not allow for genetic variation -- which is real -- and the idea of different treatments is still not as accepted as it should be. It's gotten better, but everything is still based on the young medical students who were the guinea pigs for so many years. And that was not a diverse group, was it? Women, in particular, just weren't studied.

I loathe bad science thought!

People have to eat the way that is right for them. It's no different from me not wanting to wear colors that don't flatter me. But the fashion industry tells everyone what to wear, and the food industry tells everyone what to eat.

If they can get away with it.

Since it actually starts with the medical diet studies (based on young healthy male participants) which determines what a "healthy diet"/"healthy weight"/"healthy lifestyle" is for everyone on the planet. They then do a press release, and the media passes that on to the public.

The public is exposed to that information at the same time the food manufacturers are exposed to it.

But the food manufacturers aren't going to go all-in on producing food that meets those recommendations immediately - that would be absolute folly.

Sure, they will start figuring out how they might accomplish those recommendations in what they produce, whether it's reducing fat content or increasing fiber, etc. Changing production takes quite a while - years actually. If they make a product that has more fiber, can their current equipment handle that? Or do they need to make changes to the equipment to keep the equipment from breaking down 10 times a day? So while they're waiting to see how the public takes to new food recommendations (conducting focus groups, surveys, watching their own sales to see whether foods that naturally are closer to those recommendations sell better than those which don't meet the new food recommendations) to make it clear what the public wants (meaning: what the public will buy) before they start creating new foods or revamping how they make foods to fit the dietary parameters set up by the healthy diet research.

Meanwhile, they also do lots of taste testing of a new product long before production starts - if they're trying to make a low fat cheese, then they start out with their test kitchens producing various types of low fat cheese - lots of taste testing. And very likely lots of totally unnatural ingredients included to try to imitate the taste and texture of all the missing fat until they finally have something that not only meets the health recommendations but gets as close as possible to real cheese taste and texture (no matter how far that falls from the mark). Once they have some potential low fat cheeses that don't have the taste and texture of mud in comparison to real cheese, they start doing taste testing with focus groups. From that they determine which ones are most likely to succeed with members of the public who actually want a low fat cheese. If they find that only a very small percentage of the public is interested in low fat cheese, they're not going to immediately convert all their production to low fat - they'll only convert just enough production equipment to meet the potential demand. (They also need to figure out what they're going to do with all the cream they remove from the milk used to make the low fat cheese, because it's an expense removing all that cream - they're going to try to recoup as much of that expense as possible, and hopefully even make a profit on that too - maybe add cream cheese or marscapone to their product line, because they know not all of their customers are going to go low fat.)

My point is that it's not really the food industry telling us what to eat - it's what passes for diet research, the dieticians, and the market analysis that shapes what the manufacturer produces.

The fashion industry on the other hand... that's why I sew. At least with the fabric outlets around here, I can find fabrics I like, in colors and prints I like, and make the style of clothes I like... because I'm old enough and rebellious enough that I just don't care anymore at all what's considered fashionable.

But then I do the same thing when it comes to food - I cook what I like and makes me feel better. As long as I can still get the basic ingredients, I'm fine.

While that's true, who is shaping the diet we have now? No one did research on all the junk that's in it now, which has slipped in through regulatory loopholes that just assume all this is safe.

Because I've noticed the drive is all one way. We get research that says butter is good for us and it makes it to the cover of Time. But no one brought out, as yet, a line of "EXTRA SAT FAT" anything.

My cat food research indicates the food industry loves bad fats because they don't turn rancid on the shelf. So I supplement my cat's fats, because they won't put them in the food. People are not so lucky, but yet, there is no support for the real research. And we all know who pays for the false studies, and run the American Diabetes Association...



Which is why I think the dietician's goal (make everyone vegan) and the food industry goal (make it as cheap as possible) combined with how economy of scale got applied to biologic organisms -- and now we are starving ourselves while getting overweight and sick.

I'm saying things get this screwed up with a lot of effort.



My bold. Because it's hard to imagine that won't be the case... but there's a lot of incredible arrogant delusion going around. Including people who think they can live on weightloss drugs and junk food.

The irony is that many, like Oprah, who can afford the best food, home gyms, therapists, and personal chefs. Andf they still can't get it together without a drug?

Aren't they really swapping one drug for another? Like going from heroin to methadone? When all the solutions are corporate ones, we all suffer.

Thinking about cats, obligate carnivores, it's clear they should be restricted to the 5% carbohydrate found in studies of their wild ancestors. Domestication wouldn't change what they should eat.

And it goes the same for us. We created cities, bread, and beer. Food storage (thanks to cats. This is why they were worshipped in Egypt, and already domesticated.) But we didn't change our digestive systems, to my knowledge. Just saying hunter gatherers didn't have that problem, AND every region had a winter season of some kind where plant foods aren't available.

This, I theorize, lets them purge themselves of plant toxins, which I now must avoid completely to keep my current health roll going. I think I've always been especially sensitive, but as a hunter/gatherer, I don't think it would have ever come up.

Since I'm so sensitive to anti-nutrients, I'm not getting much nutrition from plant content anyway.

Not all of the market research has to do with what the ADA and dieticians tell us to eat (through the news releases to the media). The UPFs are definitely being driven by the constant desire to increase sales.

The eventual development of junk food is definitely linked very closely to the shift from a hunter gatherer world to the beginnings of agriculture.

It seems that even ancient Egyptians were sifting flour - which removed the bran and germ, thereby removing most of the nutrients, but removing all those chunks from the whole grain flour created a flour which was easier to work with, wasn't as attractive to rodents, and and didn't go bad as quickly (oils in the germ become rancid very quickly after the wheat is ground - want it to last longer? Remove the germ by sifting it out).

I'd consider it to be the first UPF - or at least the first step towards the UPFs we see today.

It didn't really have that much chance to snowball into the craziness we call "food" today until society developed ways to remove the last remnants of nutrients in the already sifted flour that might cause it to go bad, developed ways to refine sugar from sugar cane (and vegetables such as beets and corn), and refine oils from seeds (which supposedly keep for ages, but to me they always smell rancid).

The UPFs developed over the last 100 years or so, and especially over the last 50 years or less - those are being inspired by the UPF factory marketing depts (corporate greed): "What else can we make that people will love so much that they want to keep eating it?" By the time that product is showing signs that the public might be getting tired of it, they've come up with a dozen other UPF products that are taking it's place.

What they're often doing now is trying to combine the UPF profit margin with "health" glow of medical research requirements.

Unsaturated fats? Look at that - we already have the cheap unsat fats because butter goes bad too easily in products when we produce enough to have a 6 month supply in our warehouse.

Plant based protein? We're all about that, since most of the UPFs any given factory produces already has some plant based protein in it, since all plants contain bits of protein. Add a bit of soy beans or chick peas to the product (along with enough extra sugar and salt to hide the taste) and put a big label on the front letting the customer know we're behind the whole plant based protein trend, and we'll have another winner!

Reduced salt? We can do that - we can reduce it by a small percentage, add some more sugars to make up for the lack of salt. Print up some "reduced salt" labels for them, ok?

Too much sugar? Easy enough to do - switch part of the sugar to some artificial sweetener (aspartame is cheap) or sugar alcohols (hey they're not technically "sugar" even if they're digested like sugar and can still raise blood sugar). Plaster that "reduced sugar" label on the package, and we're good.

There will be no demise of UPFs - they'll just figure out ways to make them more acceptable to the customer who is looking for specific health features.

Which reminds me of this article I saw a couple days ago:



These are mostly examples of manufacturers taking advantage of health trends while still not necessarily producing products that are low in sugar, free of seed oils, added salts, etc - and all of them are primarily carb based.

snacks are not a part of any health-eating plan. There are always a few times when a snack might be needed but they should not be used every day.