Dr. Sarah Hallberg TED Talk Highlights

Why Dr. Sarah Hallberg is My New #LCHF Heroine

She may look like the woman next door, but don't let Sarah Hallberg's Rice Crispy Treats toting soccer mom facade fool you. The petite physician is poised to prove that a ketogenic low-carb high-fat diet is the ticket to health for most Americans -- especially those suffering from obesity, diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

I have been hooked by everything Hallberg says and does since viewing her TED Talk a while back, an 18-minute mind blowing lecture called

Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines

Dr. Sarah doesn't play.

Dr. Sarah Hallberg delivering
her TED Talk on
reversing Type 2 Diabetes

In folksy English spiced with clinical data and compelling anecdotes, the self-described obesity doctor challenges conventional medical advice for treating Type 2 Diabetes.

If you don't have 18 minutes right now to watch Dr. Sarah Hallberg's TED Talk on You Tube, I have highlighted they key points below. However, before reading them you must pinky swear to watch the actual video when you have more time.

Obese people are not to blame for their situation; nor do they have weak character. The culprit is the nutritional advice provided by the medical communit.

Obesity is a hormonal disease caused by insulin resistance.

Insulin resistant people can't drive blood sugar into their cells. This causes a rise in insulin levels.

Almost 50 percent of all American -- about 120 million people -- now have diabetes or pre-diabetes.

Insulin makes us hungry and causes us to store fat.


Everything we eat is a carb, protein or fat -- or combination thereof.

When we eat carbs, our insulin and glucose levels spike quickly. When we eat protein, insulin levels spike less than with carbs When we eat fat, insulin levels do not spike at all.

Diabetes is a state of carbohydrate toxicity in which the cells become resistant to insulin. This prevents blood glucose from entering our cells, causing blood sugar levels to rise in the blood and the body to produce even more insulin.

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) tells people with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) to eat 40-65 carbs per meal and additional carbs for snacks. That is recommending they eat what caused their problem.

The ADA states there is insufficient evidence to recommend limiting carbohydrates.

ADA guidelines say if you take certain diabetes medications you have to eat carbs or your blood sugar will drop too low. This is a vicious cycle: take diabetes medication so you must eat the same carbs that  caused your problem in the first place.

The ADA does not tell patients there is a method to reverse T2D through diet.

Human bodies do not need carbs. The minimum daily requirement for carbs is zero. A nutrient is essential if you need it to function AND you can't make it from something else. The body can make its own glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis.

Overconsumption of carbs is making us very sick; yet we continue to recommend that people get about half of their total energy intake every day from carbs.

Patients at Hallberg's obesity clinic dramatically decrease daily carbs, and their blood glucose goes

Dr. Sarah Hallberg:
Medical revolutionary
disguised as soccer mom

down -- decreasing or eliminating their need for insulin.

The single biggest risk factor for cardio vascular disease is insulin resistance -- 42 percent of heart attacks are caused by this. 

Low-carb interventions work so quickly Dr. Hallberg has pulled patients off hundreds of units of insulin within days or weeks.One patient with a 20-year history of out-of-control diabetes was on multiple meds -- including 300 units of insulin being injected by pump continuously. She lost weight via low-carb dietary intervention and now her blood sugar levels are normal all the time -- without taking diabetes medication.

T2D can be controlled, but not cured. If patients start eating excessive carbs, their problem will come back.

Dr. Hallberg's recommended diet is low carb. Not zero carb. Not high protein. Carbs are mainly replaced with fat.

Fat tastes great and is incredibly satisfying. It is the only macronutrient that keeps glucose blood sugar and insulin levels low.

Dr. Hallberg's five simple rules for eating:

1. If it says light, low-fat or fat-free, it stays in the grocery store
2. Eat real food
3. Don't eat anything you don't like
4. Eat when you're hungry; don't eat when you're not hungry -- no matter what the clock says
5. Do not eat GPS foods: Grains, Potatoes or Sugar.

People who are not insulin resistant can eat pure whole grains but most so-called whole grain foods have some refined carbs in them. If you are insulin resistant, do not eat any grains. You can still enjoy baking and eating home-baked treats on a low-carb diet using ingredients like coconut and almond flour.

Dozens of randomized control trials looking at low-carb interventions for diabetes, cardio-vascular disease and inflammation have shown improvement in these conditions.

Dr. Hallberg did a study at her medical clinic in which 50 patients followed a low-carb diet and 50 followed ADA Guidelines. Her low-carb patients had a significant metabolic advantage over the ADA group.

Diabetes is a progressive disease that requires more medicine over time.

It is difficult to change conventional diet guidelines because many hidden agendas are involved. A recent study showed there is no randomized control evidence to remove fat from the diet, which is how carbohydrates became such a large part of the typical American diet. When you reduce fat, you typically add more carbs. The low-fat movement was a huge experiment on millions of people that failed miserably.

There is a lot of money to be made on keeping people sick. Nutritional guidelines panels are typically stacked with people who have a conflict of interest.

Stop using medicine to treat diseases whose root cause is carbohydrate intolerance.

New Medifast Achieve 4&2&1 Plan Permits Pasta, Baked Potatoes and Fruit!

Adios Ketosis! 

In one of the more cynical marketing ploys in commercial diet program history, Medifast has introduced a new weight loss plan that pretends to be more affordable and permits customers to consume formerly forbidden high-carb foods like fruit, pasta and potatoes.

This graphic for Medifast Achieve
from a recent blog post
is the same big hot mess
as the diet itself.

Ironically, Medifast is calling this program Medifast Achieve™ although the most likely achievement will be a short-term spike in its stock price.

As the company's profits -- and customers' waistlines -- expand, the only thing likely to shrink are customers' wallets.

When I lost 35 pounds on Medifast two years ago, I followed the more nutritionally logical 5&1 Plan which eschews fruit, pasta and potatoes in favor of lower-carb alternatives. I developed a habit of doing without these foods and planning my meals around a protein and vegetables.

Which I still do to this day, with the addition of butter, coconut oil and other healthy fats.

Medifast is using a cheap
point of entry as a hook
to sign up new members.

Happily, the 5&1 Plan is still being promoted by Medifast's Take Shape for Life (TSFL) division, which includes the services of a free health coach who provides guidance and emotional support. However, for those who opt to order their food directly from the Medifast website, that plan is neither mentioned nor offered.

The new Medifast Achieve™ plan is now just another low-fat, low-calorie diet, similar to Weight Watchers -- but without the meetings.

Because the higher carb load will not put dieters in the fat burning state called ketosis in which the body burns ketones instead of glucose, weight loss will be significantly slower. This will dampen motivation and increase the likelihood of failure.

Medifast admits on its own website that carb load makes a difference in losing weight:

"In general, be aware of your total total carbohydrate intake. If you are experiencing slower weight loss or hit a plateau, we recommend staying between 80-85 grams of carbs per day."

And this:

"While on the Medifast 5 & 1 Plan for weight loss, we recommend that you avoid fruits, dairy, and starches because of their high carbohydrates contents (eating too many carbohydrates during the weight-loss phase can prevent you from achieving or maintaining the fat-burning state)."

So how does that square with the fact that the newly permitted baked potato snack contains a whopping 37 carb grams and has a glycemic score of 111 (anything over 70 is considered high)?

And though the Medifast Achieve™ website links to multiple studies that "prove" the Medifast diet is effective for weight loss, a footnote at the bottom states, "* All studies based on the heritage Medifast 5 & 1 Plan."

Indeed, I could not find any studies on the Medifast Achieve™ website to prove this new plan works except as a means to separate desperate people from their money.

Since there are only four Medifast replacement meals per day in the new Medifast Achieve™ plan, it will seem cheaper -- and thus more appealing -- to dieters on a tight budget. In reality, they will have to fork out money for an extra lean & green meal and snack each day, resulting in higher overall food costs than the 5&1.

I credit Medifast with being my catalyst to discovering a more ketogenic eating style, but I have since parted ways with the program because I disagree with its focus on low-fat foods. However, I will always feel indebted to the company for helping me achieve my initial quick weight loss -- a success that Medifast newbs may never experience.

Fortunately, they can still lose significant weight on Medifast via the company's Take Shape for Life program, which continues to advocate the "heritage" 5&1 plan with its history of proven success.

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas

My first attempt at Fat Head Pizza,
henceforth to be known in my house
as Fat Cooky Head Pizza

This #LCHF pizza crust has great taste and texture. And it doesn't require squeezing water out of cauliflower!

I usually work nights so making dinner is a relatively rare event for me. Which explains why my husband raves about pretty much anything I cook. Still, I can pretty much tell when he is giving me an encouragement trophy or thinks I really scored.

Fat Head Pizza was the real deal.

This low carb pizza recipe with an almond flour, mozarella cheese, cream cheese and egg crust is all over the keto blogs; so it's hard to know where it originated. It's called Fat Head Pizza because Tom Naughton's brother sampled the recipe and posted about it on the Fat Head Movie blog.

But if you read the blog post, the brother's son actually tweaked the recipe from the Cooky's Creations blog; and since I can't source an earlier version, I will credit Cooky as the creator unless I am corrected.

Pizza dough after being rolled out
between two sheets of
parchment paper

No matter who came up with this genius pizza crust concept, many LCHFers now call it the "Holy Grail" of low carb pizzas. Even most of the ketons on Reddit talk about ditching cauliflower and other faux pizza crusts for Fat Head.

Though cauliflower is arguable a tad healthier, it is a ton more work and some non-believers consider cauliflower's, um, fragrance off-putting. As in, my husband leaves the room house when I cook with it.

If you decide to try this low carb Fat Cooky Head Pizza (which sounds like something a first grader might call the class bully "Go away you fat cooky head pizza!"), be forewarned that it is very filling. A slice or two is all you will need to feel satisfied.

I made my first pizza with pepperoni, olives and baby bella mushrooms, which I sauteed in olive oil first since the toppings bake for only five minutes on the pre-baked crust -- just long enough for the cheese to become gooey.  I also used the lowest sugar pizza sauce I could find, but next time I might just use sliced tomatoes to lower the carbs even more.

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Here is a link to the recipe I used from Cooky's Creations.

I also watched this very helpful You Tube video from Elizabeth Nimphius to visualize the process.

And here is the blog post from Fat Head, along with the Reddit thread.

Mangia! And do let me know what you think.

Low Carb Diet Restaurant Trick: How to Magically Turn Any Sandwich Into a Salad

I was never a big fan of Subway (even before the creepy Jared revelation), mostly because its meat seems to be a little on the mystery side. But one thing that restaurant chain does right is offer the option to turn any sandwich into a salad.

Ditto for Togo's, a west coast sandwichery known for über thick rolls stuffed with so much meat and vegetables you practically need pliers to get your mouth around them.

In my early Medifast/low-carb diet days, I would find myself looking longingly at a menu's sandwiches,  wishing some of them were salads instead. If none of the salads looked good, I would sometimes order a sandwich sans bread.

Until I got smart.

Philly Cheese Steak Salad

These days, I look at menus as mere suggestions, assuming any ingredients in a sandwich can be plopped atop romaine lettuce, spinach or other salad greens.

At work the other day, the in-house food vendor offered Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches as its Friday lunch special. I politely asked if I could have the sandwich as a salad and ended up with such a gorgeous looking meal a bunch of other people ordered it that way, too.

Many low-carbers are huge fans of protein burgers, which are bunless hamburgers wrapped in lettuce. I find these kind of awkward and messy to eat; so I even order my cheeseburgers as salads (or just eat with a knife and fork).

Of course, most restaurants do not mention the option to turn any sandwich into a salad. Bread and rolls are a lot cheaper than salad greens; so they offer only a limited number of salad choices.

But if a restaurant has lettuce and tomatoes in its kitchen, it should be able to accommodate your request. And you should be willing to pay a buck or two more if asked (although that has yet to happen to me).

To borrow a phrase from Taco Bell, "Think outside the bun." Then imagine which of your favorite sandwiches could become your favorite new salad.

My Kimchi and Roasted Cauliflower Rice For Lunch Every Day Science Experiment

So I'm on day three of my own personal science experiment to eat kimchi and roasted cauliflower "rice" for lunch every day.

Mmmm... lunch
Kimchi and roasted cauliflower "rice"

Before the science police come to my house and handcuff me, I realize it's not a valid study since I'm not measuring anything and there is no control group. But I'm cool with collecting anecdotal data and hope to achieve a perceptible change in my overall health, energy levels and appearance.

At this point you may be wondering why I'm eating this weird combination of foods for lunch every day and what I hope to gain. And for that we need to start with kimchi, a Korean food staple as intrinsic to that country's cultural identity as the hot dog is to America's.

Since starting this blog, I have become a nutritional research hobbyist and recently noticed an increasing amount of literature on the importance of our microbiota. I did not even know I had something called a microbiota until a few months ago, but it turns out I have several in different parts of my body, including my mouth and skin.

The microbiota I'm going to focus on here is my gut microbiota -- the cluster of bacteria in my colon. (Biologists used to call this bacterial soup gut flora, but maybe they thought it sounded too much like something you'd find at a goth florist shop.)

Anyway, the factoid about gut microbiota that really hijacked my attention is that many scientists now consider this collection of bacteria a body organ, just like the heart. To me this revelation was as mind blowing as finding out Pluto was not a planet (although I think it may be re-instated. Could you please make up your mind already astronomers?)

I was equally amazed to learn we have ten times more bacterial cells in our body than human cells. So in some ways we are walking bacteria nesting in a human host, which is kind of creepy when you think about it

The bottom line is the adult gut contains thousands of different species of known bacteria that collectively weigh as much as the brain. And that's a $#!+load of bacteria!

The health connection to all this is that only one third of these bacteria is common to most people -- the other two thirds is peculiar to the individual. And its composition -- big surprise here -- is impacted by what we eat.

The reason it's so important that we have a good combination of gut bacteria is that our gut microbiota affects our health and mood in a major way. Everything from getting cancer to being depressed to gaining weight is affected by the health of our gut. There may even be a link to autism.

This recent New York Times article explains the mood association way better than I ever could; so I suggest you read it at least three times, along with this intriguing piece on the obesity link from Scientific American last year from which I will share this intriguing excerpt:

"New evidence indicates that gut bacteria alter the way we store fat, how we balance levels of glucose in the blood, and how we respond to hormones that make us feel hungry or full. The wrong mix of microbes, it seems, can help set the stage for obesity and diabetes from the moment of birth...."

This pre-riced cauliflower
should be back in stock
at Trader Joe's in August

So, I figured if I had an opportunity to improve my gut microbiota, one of the best ways I could do this was to eat more foods associated with good gut health. And when I did the research on this, one of the most popular suggestions always turns out to be fermented foods like kimchi.

I purchased my kimchi from the neighborhood health food store, which stocks a brand local to Sacramento called The Cultured Kitchen. For the caulirice, I hoarded stocked up on the pre-riced frozen organic cauliflower when Trader Joe's still carried it and roast it in the oven with some olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic. (You can also make your own caulirice from a real cauliflower using a Vitamix, box grater or most any food processor or blender.)

In addition, I am taking probiotics in tablet form and eat only yogurt that contains live cultures when I'm in the rare yogurt mood.

Whether my gut flora will now bloom -- or whether I will even notice -- is hard to predict. But as my dear departed Grandma might have said, "It can't hurt."

Chris Christie Fat Jokes

So you don't get to be more than a hundred pounds overweight without eating a few more doughnuts or cheeseburgers than you should. But does that mean it's okay for Jimmy Kimmel to joke that the White House chef is worried Chris Christie will turn the presidential mansion into a White Castle?

Chris Christie eating a doughnut
on the David Letterman show

Or that the New Jersey governor should select a running mate who is 600 pounds so he'll look thin in comparison?

Or that he's not fit for the Oval Office ... unless they widen the door?

While these monologue fillers may elicit a mild chuckle, are they really funny? And how do they affect people who are overweight and struggle just to get through the day?

Recently Jerry Seinfeld said he refuses to play college campuses any more because young people are so politically correct you can't make a joke without offending them. Our society in general has become so prickly and sensitive it's practically impossible to make a jab about any group without hurting someone's feelings.

That said, certain groups are off limits -- unless you are a member of that group. Which means gays can make jokes about gays, Latinos about Latinos, blondes about blondes, etc.

Should Jimmy Kimmel
pick on someone his own size?

Maybe Kimmel's jokes would be funnier if he were fat like Christie because he'd be poking fun at himself at the same time. It's okay to laugh with someone -- not so much at someone.

If I were morbidly obese and had to hear fat jokes night after night, it would probably make me feel worse about myself. Which would make me depressed and less likely to take action to change my situation.

I would also be subject to discrimination by people who judge others based on their weight.

"Overweight people have much less of a chance of getting a job, they have much less of a chance of keeping a job ... (and) they are paid less than those who are thin," David Birdsell, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College in New York, told ABC News. "In this era of exercise, we impute moral failings to people who don't rein in their weight." 

Still, it's not a comedian's job to make society fair or increase the self-esteem of people who don't fit a socially ideal mold. Whether in good taste or not, comedians like Jimmy Kimmel will continue making jokes about Chris Christie and other outliers when the audience stops laughing.

Diet Etiquette: Is It Rude to Discuss Other People's Diets?

So yesterday a member of one of my Medifast Facebook groups -- let's call her Carol -- started an interesting thread about co-workers who make derisive comments about her diet. She had declined to partake in the chicken tenders, rolls and potato salad served at a lunch meeting, and someone remarked, "Oh, are you going to be eating your special diet food?"

What's weird is that Carol could have easily responded with some equally snarky comment about her co-worker's hyper-carby meal and how sleepy she and the others would feel after lunch. But having been raised by non-wolves, she just smiled and said "yes" while smarting inside over the rudeness of being called out for eating differently.

While everyone on the thread agreed there is really nothing you can say to jerkwads who try to make you feel like an oddball for not eating what everyone else is eating, the thread digressed to a more general discussion of whether it is ever polite to comment or ask about other people's diets.

To me this dilemma is similar to asking to touch the belly of a pregnant woman. Some expectant mothers are extremely offended when someone requests to touch their belly while others think it is cool that someone wants to share in their miracle.

Though some people who deviate from the standard American diet don't like to be asked what they're eating or why, others welcome the question and relish the chance to talk about it.

The problem is you don't always know who is who.

Personally, I am fascinated by what other people eat, but I always test the water before diving into the pool. I'll ask a simple question or make a comment about someone's meal and then check to see how they react. If they act like I just asked how much money they make, I'll back off immediately. But if they seem comfortable with my food question, I usually follow up. More often than not, I learn something beneficial and forge a tighter bond with that person.

Like weather, food is a great universal ice breaker; and it's a far more interesting topic.  I mean how many times can you say, "Wow, it's really hot outside today!"

My only advice is to refrain from criticizing the way other people eat or suggesting that your way of eating is superior to theirs. How we eat is a deeply personal subject, and if someone is trusting enough to discuss this subject with you, it's not cool to show disdain for their choices.