It saddens but doesn\u2019t surprise me that there is such a vitriolic response to Prof Tim Noakes’ recommendation of a low carbohydrate, high fat diet to achieve sustainable weight loss. It saddens me because I, and so many of us, have elevated the medical profession to a higher level of trust than other professions and it takes much to feel we can question or challenge a doctor’s prescription. It doesn\u2019t surprise me though as the groundswell of popular support threatens the status quo. It is becoming much harder for medical professionals to diagnose, prescribe and engage with patients to discuss their thoughts in the 15-minute billing increment.<\/p>\n
But times have changed. Prescriptions are no longer written in latin to maintain the veil of mystery and in today\u2019s connected world, access to knowledge from the globe\u2019s most respected universities, is a click away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Perhaps the time has also changed around the closed-mindedness (and, in my judgement, fear-based protectionism) by the medical profession in only considering randomised controlled studies as the basis for revisiting what was once believed to be true.<\/p>\n
The reason, to my mind, anyway, why Prof Noakes is so vilified is that he is not satisfied to simply publish his findings in the popular press and discuss them on talk-shows. He needs to, and has, shared his opinions and findings within the sacred pages of the SA Medical Journal – a move too far for the establishment which has responded with fear and ridicule. It is this point that disappoints me the most. Instead of engaging in robust debate and re-thinking to help shape a new way\u00a0 to manage obesity the medical profession appears to me to simply be protecting its position.<\/p>\n
It is a fact that obesity and the lifestyle diseases that stem from it threatens not only our nation and health-care budget but also those of many countries abroad. Surely, if for no other reason, this has to mean that the existing approach to healthy-weight management is not working?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Prof Noakes is so committed to his view that there is another way to manage obesity that he risks professional persecution for it.<\/p>\n
I am not alone in my appreciation to him for doing so. As someone who successfully managed to shed 70kg and have maintained the same healthy weight for 10 months now, I am hugely grateful for his outspokenness and fervour. Of course there are many factors that have contributed to my successful weight loss but I believe that the main one was my new-found appreciation that I was addicted to sugars and starch-based carbohydrates. It was only after purging myself from these toxins to my body that I was able to manage and maintain my weight loss. It is true that the terror of pending weight-loss surgery helped focus my mind on the reality of the problem but it is also true that eating a diet similar to what he recommends has allowed me to feel sated and without the cravings that haunted and ultimately undermined every other diet.<\/p>\n
Rather than investing so much in dismissing Prof Noakes I would have preferred his detractors to mobilise a study to test his theories.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It saddens but doesn\u2019t surprise me that there is such a vitriolic response to Prof Tim Noakes’ recommendation of a low carbohydrate, high fat diet to achieve sustainable weight loss. It saddens me because I, and so many of us, have elevated the medical profession …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[21,71,93,142],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weight_loss","category-what-i-eat","tag-brian-berkman","tag-lchf","tag-paleo","tag-tim-noakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}