Give Me a Bit More Detail

A Common Progress in Four Minutes.

Metabolic Syndrome drives most of the chronic poor health in the community. Your immediate concern might be obesity, joint pain, lack of sleep, type 2 diabetes, lack of energy, loss of libido, or something similar.

You are trapped by what you "know". When you learn about the Banting Diet (Keto, Ketogenic, LCHF), giving it a try, looks easy. But all of us have brains full of nutritional and health propaganda. This destroys our initial efforts, and failure is inevitable. You have to unlearn a lot of stuff, and that takes time.

So time passes and things get worse. Joining an online Banting or Keto group always helps.

The online internet group, lets you see that other people are making progress. You get inspired and try again.

The focus is likely to be on weight loss, and "Keto Foods" and making breads and muffins and deserts. More time passes and there is some success. It's certainly possible, and people enjoy the success of producing "Keto friendly" treats for the family, but it's expensive. It's also fake. Doing Banting without really Banting at all. It's avoiding real change.

Even so, slowly, ever so slowly, from other people's knowledge; understanding about how to prepare real foods, how to measure carbohydrates, what is or isn't a good fat, and how to read food labels grows. Now the sugar, bread, potatoes and rice are never on the table.

Fruit and fruit juice is recognised as a source of blood glucose. Cakes, muffins and deserts are no longer needed. Then we discover that there was alcohol, artificial sweeteners and diet coke involved too. When better informed, one's weight plunges again, and then stalls, about 5kg above your best adult weight.

Things are definitely better, one can exercise now. Walking and or lifting weights becomes not only sensible, but also possible and enjoyable. You have energy, and flight of stairs or a hill doesn't intimidate you anymore.

The Banting Diet will have improved many health issues, some of them will be surprising to you. One can focus on remaining issues, like remaining inflammation of the skin or joints. Some people have autoimmune issues that resist simple changes. Talk to your doctor, but continue to seek your own way forward.

Many people find that removing vegetables from the diet reduces inflammation and restores health. This is strange and confusing to most of us. It's exactly the opposite to our expectation. It's also likely to horrify your GP or dietitian. Still if you are not sure, a 30 day trial is very safe and costs little or nothing.

Meat, fish, eggs, cheese, cream; plus water, tea or coffee; seems to be an impossible diet. If it allows you to be pain free, and to have energy, and to maintain an ideal weight easily, that's such a relief.

Somewhere along the way people discover that they are never hungry, that they now eat only twice a day, and sometimes only once a day (OMAD).

It's a journey. A journey we've taken, and we've seen many other people take. All you can do is begin, and see where it leads.

Far too many people waste three or more years getting started. That's the story of Professional Dissonance, getting your head around all the new ideas that the Banting way of thinking and living entails. Most of it directly conflicts with everything you've been taught.

Then people blame themselves for their failure to be healthy. It's NOT your fault. Fake news isn't something recent. Much of your education is based on opinion, and nutritional and health education is full of both wrong and doubtful recommendations. Your existing knowledge about health and nutrition needs to be unpacked and re-evaluated. See Common Health and Dietary Ideas. There's no quick way to unlearn old stuff that stops your progress. We can tell you what to do, but you can't do it. We make poor decisions. We sometimes lose previous gains. We have to relearn old lessons.

Then there is the social taboo of even talking about health issues with family members, or work associates or other people you know well. Too often, the issue is so sensitive that it cannot be discussed. See The Forbidden Conversation.

Finally, there are some things you need to understand about What you can do NOW to improve your Health. Make a start. You have to find your own way. Mistakes are part of the journey. Start again.

You will make much better progress if you can understand why Banting works. Learning about real foods, and how nutrition maintains your body, and about Metabolic Syndrome, will give us many reasons for continuing to develop your knowledge.

Return to the Banting Overview (Tablet)