I decided to start seeing Dr. Z (the bariatric physician I'm seeing) because a friend of mine has lost over 70 lbs with her and looks (and feels) like a brand new person.  I've tried everything else short of surgery...I know I have to do something...I can't go on the way I am.

Dr. Z works with her patients using a combination of nutritional counseling, medications and behavior modification.  The first appointment was blood tests, meeting with her individually, a group presentation (with three others), then another private meeting.  She told me to keep my sugars at the equivalent of 10-15 tsp a day, and my calories at 1600-1700.  It's basically a very low carb eating plan.   The way the sugar is calculated is Total Carbs minus Fiber divided by 5, giving the teaspoons of sugar.    For example, if I have 75g carbs in a day, and 20 grams of fiber, then my net carb count is 55, divided by 5, I have 11 teaspoons of sugar.

I am also now on the same medications that I took about 7 years ago as part of a research study with another doctor (who was at the time my primary physician).  It was really effective...I lost over 40 lbs.  But then I start feeling like I was losing my mind.   I was also taking Chantix at the time, to quit smoking, and I think that the combination of the study drug and the Chantix were just affecting my mind in adverse ways.  I felt like I was going crazy!   I stopped taking the meds and tried to pull out of the study, but then at the doctor's urging went back on it, and I'm sure I was given a placebo at that time because it just wasn't effective anymore.   Long story short, I eventually gained it all back and then some.  But I haven't smoked since then!  So I was successful at least at that.  LOL

Dr. Z also called me the next day when she got back the results of my blood tests.  Because of my numbers, she wants me to take metformin.  My body is pumping out outrageous amounts of insulin but is resistant to it, which is making it pump out even more. I am not only insulin-resistant, but I have hyperinsulinism.

It's not only doing all kind of horrible things to all of my organs, but it's also turning nearly everything I put into my mouth into belly fat and causing all kinds of really damaging and painful inflammation throughout my body.  I'm a walking timebomb. The metformin will help my system use the insulin efficiently.

The key to all of it, however, is dramatically changing the way I eat.  Dramatically changing the way I even think about the food I put in my body.  One of the books she recommended to us is "Salt Sugar Fat" by Michael Moss.

 I bought the book, and what I'm reading is making me very very angry at the food industry, and our government.  The last time I felt this kind of anger was when I started researching on what the tobacco industry had done and is still doing to get people addicted to their product  and to hide the truly death-inducing effects.   And how they were GIVING their products away in third world countries, to get more new "customers" addicted.

The food industry is doing the same thing.  In fact, several of the big food companies have been bought out by big tobacco (Philip Morris owns General Foods and Kraft...think Entenmann's, Oscar Mayer, Shake and Bake, Jell-O, Raisin Bran, Grape-Nuts, Kraft Mac-n-Cheese).

My hope is that the same anger that helped me throw away the cigarettes forever in 2007...vow to NEVER give the evil and insidious tobacco companies another dime, will help me do the same with the equally insidious processed food corporations that are basically killing us all, who know fully well exactly what they are doing, and even worse, who pay researchers big money to learn how to do it even better!

They have it down to a fine science.  They know how to addict us.  And they are perfecting it more every single day.