On a mission

For at least a few years, it has been my ambition to do two things: first, to lose the 200 or so pounds I need to lose, and second to publish a blog while I did it as an inspiration to others. I even went so far as to create this blog years ago, and before I "rebooted" it with this post had made five posts to it over the years. These posts chronicled my failed diet attempts&emdash;low-fat, calorie counting, glycemic index/insulin resistant approaches, NutriSystem, WeightWatchers--you name it, I've tried it at one time or another.

So now I'm trying again. What's different this time? Maybe a few things:

• Last November, I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes.
• My diabetes has, thus far, been "poorly controlled" to put it mildly.
• I'm fed up with being fat.
• I finally found someone "like me" who actually lost weight without surgery and kept it off. Specifically, Jimmy Moore over at The Livin' Low-Carb Show. He started right where I'm at--410 lbs. in 2004--and took it off and kept it off.
• If he can do it, so can I.

So there's the list. But let me expand on one item--the diabetes. A quick look at the list of complications of poorly controlled diabetes includes loss-of-limb (amputation), blindness, and kidney failure. I watched my grandfather-in-law die of kidney failure. It took years, and it was miserable. This sort of reminds me of Samson from the Bible: after Delilah betrayed him, he was tied up, hung down, brung down, blinded, and grinding another man's corn. I don't want to go out that way, but that's where I'm headed if nothing changes!

So, here I am again, determined to make a change. I want to lose weight, cure diabetes, and be there to perform my children's marriages (I'm also an ordained minister.) And I can do it.

So why blog about it? There are many reasons. One is to encourage myself to stick to it. However, I think there's a more important issue at stake. If what I've read is to be believed, a low-carb diet is capable of curing diabetes--not just for me, but for the 23 million other Americans with Diabetes. Yet, inexplicably, the medical community seems determined to ignore it. I propose to chronicle my weight-loss, and my progress in low carb living, along with the relevant blood glucose and A1C readings here for all the world to see. Is this a scientific study? Of course not. But it is another data point, another anecdotal case to keep the pressure on the medical establishment to look at the possibility that low-carb eating can cure the plague of our time that Diabetes is becoming. If I, as a man who has weighed over 400 lbs. for years, with relatively newly diagnosed type II diabetes, can actually lose weight and reverse my disease through the use of a low-carb diet, then that means something, at least at the level of common sense.

So, there's my "why". What's the how? Well, I think chronicling every bite I eat every day is probably beyond me. But I plan to log my blood glucose levels here, my weight here, and at least a summary of what I eat every day for the world to see. And here's hoping that it amounts to something, by God's grace.