Do you think the doctor asked me what my diet was like? Hell no. All he did was tell me in a jocular manner that I should "take a little weight off" (like I didn't know that) and that I should "hit the salad bar more often." In other words, I should go on the traditional low-fat diet.
That was about two years ago. I went another year of avoiding stuff like bacon and eggs in favor of pancakes without the butter and syrup and dry toast. Instead of ordering steak in a restaurant (what I really wanted), I'd get a pasta dish or fish with rice. I thought I was making the right choices because everybody was preaching on how bad fats were.
Fortunately I discovered the low-carb threads on Free Republic and started participating. At first, I was a skeptic. It didn't make sense to me. But finally around the end of March, when I returned from a business trip having gained over five pounds, I was at my wits end. I now weighed in at around 300 pounds. Which was 115 pounds over what a man of my height (6'3") should weight. My waist size was now 48 and I started buying size 50 pants because loose pants made me feel better - they allowed me to fool myself into thinking I wasn't so fat after all.
So in spite of my skepticism of the normal-carb way of eating, I decided to give it a try. After all, every other diet I tried failed miserably (even when combined with exercise).
BTW, you might be confused with me calling this a "normal-carb" way of eating. This is because I think "low-carb" is the wrong way to describe it. I eat carbs. I just don't eat the ridiculous amount that the government says you should eat under that food pyramid. I think the problem is that we have set the threshold too high for carbs. The average American eats 425g of carb a day. I was eating over 600g of carb a day easy during my fat days.
Well since April, I have reduced my carb intake to 100g or less. I didn't do this consciously. That is, I didn't walk around all day with a notepad counting carbs like some folks do with fat or calories. I simply cut all the junk out of my diet. All the sugary junk. Fast food. Processed food. By sticking to natural foods like meat, fish, vegetables, eggs, berries, nuts, yogurt, etc., I automatically limit my carbs to a tolerable level.
This isn't Atkins officially. I don't think I ever went into ketosis. But it's the same basic idea: By reducing my carb intake, I have forced my body to burn fat instead. I have accelerated the fat burning by incorporating two workouts a day into my schedule. I get up at 5AM and walk for an hour. I then walk another hour either at lunch or right after work. So I walk (briskly) for two hours a day at a 4mph pace. That's at least 8 miles a day right there. And on weekend, I usually do more than that.
So you don't have to be a gym rat or an athlete to boost your metabolism. Just walking two hours a day will do it. This exercise, combined with the normal carb diet, allowed me to lose over 100 pounds in just over 7 months. It works.
And if I hear any skeptic prattle on about how eliminating food groups are bad for you, I ask "what food groups"? I eat more vegetables than I ever did before. I eat berries every day. So what food groups are you talking about? Domino's Pizza? Reese's Peanut Butter Cups? Lay's Potato Chips? Donuts? Cakes? Candy? Those are the only kind of food groups that I cut out.