Letter on Corpulence

Somebody else posted a link to this earlier today and I gave it a read.
Interesting!

If you haven't read this 1869 book (just 22 pages, all online) called
"Letter on Corpulence" it's worth taking a look at. It is considered the
first book advising a low-carb diet.

http://www.lowcarb.ca/corpulence/index.html

It's really interesting, and except for the old-fashioned language
reminds me a lot of modern-day newsgroup messages, talking about
weight-loss week-by-week, before and after photos, etc.

doug

"Doug Lerner" wrote in message
...
Somebody else posted a link to this earlier today and I gave it a read.
Interesting!

If you haven't read this 1869 book (just 22 pages, all online) called
"Letter on Corpulence" it's worth taking a look at. It is considered the
first book advising a low-carb diet.

http://www.lowcarb.ca/corpulence/index.html

It's really interesting, and except for the old-fashioned language
reminds me a lot of modern-day newsgroup messages, talking about
weight-loss week-by-week, before and after photos, etc.

doug

Yes. It is excellent. There seemed to be just as much controversy then
with the style of dieting as there is now. Not much has changed in 150
years.

"Doug Lerner" wrote in message
...
Somebody else posted a link to this earlier today and I gave it a read.
Interesting!

If you haven't read this 1869 book (just 22 pages, all online) called
"Letter on Corpulence" it's worth taking a look at. It is considered the
first book advising a low-carb diet.

http://www.lowcarb.ca/corpulence/index.html

It's really interesting, and except for the old-fashioned language
reminds me a lot of modern-day newsgroup messages, talking about
weight-loss week-by-week, before and after photos, etc.

doug

Yes. It is excellent. There seemed to be just as much controversy then
with the style of dieting as there is now. Not much has changed in 150
years.

This reminds me of the times in both the 70s and 80s that people
recommended staying away from "starchy" foods to prevent weight gain.
Now no one seems to remember anyone ever thinking that, and all this
low carb stuff is all new and a passing fad!

In the 70s, my mom was doing the Atkins thing, though I doubt she knew
it, since she wasn't doing it even vaguely right. But I remember her
talking about avoiding "starchy foods" like potatoes and eating lots of
cottage cheese (which now I know isn't exactly "low-carb," either.) I
don't know if she lost anything, but it didn't last long. Too bad!
Now she's in her 60s and doing Atkins from the book, and still not
doing it right and not losing much weight because she still has to have
her pancakes on Sundays. Though her colesterol went down
remarkably at least.

Then in school in the 80s I remember health teachers saying that eating
the typical "meat and potatoes" diet was bad and would cause weight
gain, because of the fatty meat and the starchy potatoes and pastas.
They were starting to look at fat, but they still mentioned the starch.
I didn't give it much merit, because no one ever explained the
mechanics of it, and the low fat thing was just starting and getting
all the attention.

When I hit college and took nutrition, it was all about low fat for
weight loss, which I did (obviously not too well) for 15 years and put
on about 150 more lbs and always felt deprived and tired and depressed.
It literally almost killed me.

Now I've come full circle in my life and have lost probably about 100
lbs since last February doing a low carb diet. I didn't have a scale
that went high enough to weigh me when I started and my chiropractor
somehow lost the information of my weight taken the month before I
started (but they did print out my old "posture photo" for me, OMG!),
but I've estimated from subsequent loss when I could register on a
scale right that I probably started at well over 400lbs. After a
3-month stall this fall that I finally broke by cutting down protein
and calories a bit and upping my carbs a little bit about every 3 days,
I'm losing well again and hope to break the 300lb mark before my year
anniversary.

After this success of mine, and also all the weight other family
members like my husband and sister and brother- and sister-in-law have
lost - over 125lbs combined - it makes me wonder why people over time
keep forgetting this way of eating if it works? Is it the medical
establishment? The junk-food companies? It boggles the mind... I
just wonder sometimes what would my life have been like over the last
15 years if I'd been taught low-carb in college instead of low-fat? Or
how the whole world would be if this guy's book hadn't sunk into
obscurity along with the other low-carb diets that followed it, like
the Eskimo Diet (1929) and the Stone Age Diet (1958,) etc???

"...but if fat is not an insidious creeping enemy, I do not know what
is."

wrote in message
ups.com...
This reminds me of the times in both the 70s and 80s that people
recommended staying away from "starchy" foods to prevent weight gain.
Now no one seems to remember anyone ever thinking that, and all this
low carb stuff is all new and a passing fad!

In the 70s, my mom was doing the Atkins thing, though I doubt she knew
it, since she wasn't doing it even vaguely right. But I remember her
talking about avoiding "starchy foods" like potatoes and eating lots of
cottage cheese (which now I know isn't exactly "low-carb," either.) I
don't know if she lost anything, but it didn't last long. Too bad!
Now she's in her 60s and doing Atkins from the book, and still not
doing it right and not losing much weight because she still has to have
her pancakes on Sundays. Though her colesterol went down
remarkably at least.

Then in school in the 80s I remember health teachers saying that eating
the typical "meat and potatoes" diet was bad and would cause weight
gain, because of the fatty meat and the starchy potatoes and pastas.
They were starting to look at fat, but they still mentioned the starch.
I didn't give it much merit, because no one ever explained the
mechanics of it, and the low fat thing was just starting and getting
all the attention.

When I hit college and took nutrition, it was all about low fat for
weight loss, which I did (obviously not too well) for 15 years and put
on about 150 more lbs and always felt deprived and tired and depressed.
It literally almost killed me.

Now I've come full circle in my life and have lost probably about 100
lbs since last February doing a low carb diet. I didn't have a scale
that went high enough to weigh me when I started and my chiropractor
somehow lost the information of my weight taken the month before I
started (but they did print out my old "posture photo" for me, OMG!),
but I've estimated from subsequent loss when I could register on a
scale right that I probably started at well over 400lbs. After a
3-month stall this fall that I finally broke by cutting down protein
and calories a bit and upping my carbs a little bit about every 3 days,
I'm losing well again and hope to break the 300lb mark before my year
anniversary.

After this success of mine, and also all the weight other family
members like my husband and sister and brother- and sister-in-law have
lost - over 125lbs combined - it makes me wonder why people over time
keep forgetting this way of eating if it works? Is it the medical
establishment? The junk-food companies? It boggles the mind... I
just wonder sometimes what would my life have been like over the last
15 years if I'd been taught low-carb in college instead of low-fat? Or
how the whole world would be if this guy's book hadn't sunk into
obscurity along with the other low-carb diets that followed it, like
the Eskimo Diet (1929) and the Stone Age Diet (1958,) etc???

"...but if fat is not an insidious creeping enemy, I do not know what
is."


It made sense, without a lot of science, for people to go low fat to lose
weight. A gram of fat has almost twice the calories as a gram of carbs or a
gram of protein, right? And fat is, well, fat!

When I first started putting on weight, I remembered how my mother dieted
(she never has been FAT, just sometimes a bit overweight) on a lowfat diet.
So I ate beans and rice and spinach. And put on a lot more weight.

The beans and rice were to blame, but at the time I didn't know that.

The low-carb WOE works for most everyone, some fairly quickly, others
slowly, but it is well documented (and most of us here can testify to it)
that it works.

It tickles me when some people call it a "fad", Does this mean it will only
work as long as we believe in it?

What the low-fat adherents didn't tell you (apparently they didn't know,
exactly) is that although fatty foods have more calories per gram, it takes
less bulk to fill you up and keep you from getting hungry.

The more we understand about how the human body works, the better we will be
able, if we desire, to achieve weight control.

Jim Bard wrote:
|| It tickles me when some people call it a "fad", Does this mean it
|| will only work as long as we believe in it?

I think so. If you don't believe in it, you won't do it. And if you don't
do it, it can't work. FAD.

wrote in message
ups.com...
This reminds me of the times in both the 70s and 80s that people
recommended staying away from "starchy" foods to prevent weight gain.
Now no one seems to remember anyone ever thinking that, and all this
low carb stuff is all new and a passing fad!

It's mad, isn't it! I meet the same with diabetes professionals - ones who
trained in the 70s and 80s are prepared to accept a low-carb diet is a
workable one for diabetics, but it switched somewhere in the mid-80s to the
exact opposite! Recipes in diabetes magazines across the world now are
filled with low-fat, high-carb recipes that make me flinch... I hope it
comes full circle again soon!

Nicky.

--
A1c 10.5/5.7/6 Weight 95/80/72Kg
1g Metformin, 75ug Thyroxine
T2 DX 05/2004