Doctors keep telling me that I have to lose weight! Oh No!

Doctors keep telling me that I have to lose weight. I have heard this for 30 years now and have not been complying with the Doctors' recommendations even though I know they are right.

When it comes to weight, what they say about exercise and watching your diet is correct, but there are exceptions, and what works for some people does not work for others. There are many different types of bodies.

Consider the strange case of Cliff. I worked with Cliff for two years and he had an enormous appetite for so many of the wrong foods. We worked during the night at the Telephone Computer Center where I was his boss. Every night he would bring in a full sized brown paper shopping bag full of Potato Chips, Corn Chips, Cupcakes, Pies and other pastries, three or four cans of soda pop loaded with sugar, fried chicken and hamburgers and thousands and thousands of other calories. Calories! Lots of Calories!!

Cliff was eating 3000 to 4000 calories a night! I do not have any idea what he ate during the day. Yet, he was skinny as a board and there I was already at that stage of my life where I gained weight easily. I was eating 300 calories a night and 1200 calories a day and was eating "healthy food," but I was slowly gaining weight day after day after day.

Cliff used to tell me that I was gaining weight because I must be eating too much. That irritated me. I knew I was not eating too much compared to Cliff, but he was skinny and I was getting heavier every year at a rate of about 8 pounds a year, year after year after year. I was on the wrestling team in high school and wrestled at 148 pounds or below in 1967. In 1987, 20 years later I was 220 pounds. I looked good because I was exercising, but it was obvious that I was heavy, especially in my upper chest and shoulders.

I used to joke with Cliff about his amazing ability to eat all of that food night after night. His response would be that he had such an active body that he just burned it up. He claimed that he had a "super high metabolism" and just burned all of those calories in an hour or two after he ate them because he would always be hungry again two hours after eating.

To me that did not make sense, as Cliff was sitting down all night long just like I was. I worked at a desk and he worked at a console. Both of us were not burning many calories using our muscles because we were just sitting and using our hands and mouth and eyes to do our jobs. So, I asked Cliff if he kept track of his body temperature and he said he did, and that it was always low in the 97 to 98 degree Fahrenheit level.

98.6 degrees F / 37 degrees C is what we call "normal" but some people have slightly lower body temperatures. I am one of them, just like Cliff.

I though about that for a few seconds, and told him,"Cliff if you were burning those calories from all of the food you are eating, your body temperature would be higher, but your body temperature is lower than average. That means you are not burning those calories. They are going in one end and out the other, without being digested. You are consuming a lot of good tasting food but you are not digesting it and not using it."

He sounded a little angry when he replied a little louder than normal and said it was his High Metabolism, because his doctor said so.

So I asked him, "Next time you see your doctor, ask him where all of those thousands of calories go? I am curious about that, and you should be, too."

Since it was a sensitive subject for him I did not say more.

About a month later he came in and said, "The doctor said you were right, I am not totally digesting the food."

I smiled, because I knew that had to be true.

Cliff could eat a lot of Carbohydrates and they passed right through his body. I digest almost everything I eat, and Carbohydrated are converted by my body into fat that they body stores for the cold winters, just like Bears get fat before winter.

My ancestors, the German tribes in the Euro mountain geographic area lived in a colder climate where to live they hunted and gathered what they could. The same with the Eskimos in Alaska. They hunted and fished for their food and ate a diet heavy in meat and animal fat, but did not gain weight easily. Still they need fat on their bodies to live through the winter when there might not be food. The Germans and the Eskimos had berries and vegetables in summer when the plants grew in the warmer months. When they ate the carbohydrates from the plants, they stored the extra calories as body fat, but only for those few months that those foods were available.

So, what happens to a German or Eskimo when he has carbohydrates all year long? Simple, his body tries to store the extra carbohydrates as body fat. So, if a German or Eskimo changes his diet to one that has a lot of corn or wheat or rice or ground flour from those grains or fruits that are shipped in to his grocery stores, he or she can gain a lot of weight.

In Europe 2000 years ago the German tribes moved west and became the light skinned people of northern Europe. Many, many of them have weight problems and then heart problems and Type Two Diabetes once they have gained the weight. About half the German people gain weight very easily. The browner skinned people of southern Europe do not have that serious of a problem. About 20 to 30 percent of them gain weight easily. I have watched many Italian men who eat a lot of pasta (Carbohydrates) who (just like Cliff) never gained weight. If I ate Spaghetti like they did, I would weight 500 pounds and probably would have died of a heart attack 20 years ago.

The Poor Eskimoes in Alaska who live to be 80 and healthy when hunting and fishing on the North Shore are now moving to the southern cities and towns of Alaska. Because there are few jobs most of them are on assistance from the US Government and the State of Alaska. They get free money for food and housing for free. With that money they buy all of the type of food that Cliff used to eat, and they are now turning into very fat people who die of heart attacks in their 40's and have Type II Diabetes. Their arteries are clogged with fat and they are very unhealthy and fat. The fat deposits in the arteries are made up of Cholesterol and most of the Cholesterol in the human body is created in the body from Carbohydrates. The same thing applies to our Indians in the western United States. They have increased their Carbohydrate consumption and are becoming fat and developing Type Two Diabetes. Also, many Mexican Indians who move up to the United States and are increasing their carbohydrate consumption. They get fat and die.

Carbohydrates make many Germans and Eskimos and some Indians fat, and add to clogged arteries and heart attacks. Doctors now know that fact to be true. Some people gain weight easily when they eat carbohydrates and other people like Cliff do not. His body does not process carbohydrates like my body does. As long as I eat Carbs (fruits and vegetables and bread and sugar from many sources) I gain weight easily.

When I cut the carbs back to just a few grams a day, I stop gaining weight, even if I eat a lot of meat and fat in that meat. I always take a multi vitamin pill when I am cutting those carbs.

I had high blood pressure when eating an American diet with lots of fruits and vegetables like the doctors recommend. When I only eat a few grams of carbs a day, my blood pressure gradually goes lower and lower back to normal. Hummmmmmm?

Too many carbohydrates to me are obviously a poison. I love Mexican food, but I can not eat Tortillas, I can't eat Salsa, I can't eat Beans and so many other Mexican foods. I can have Chicken, but I can not have the Mole sauce.

I wish I had Cliff's kind of body. I wish I had a Mediterranean body like a slender Italian or a Spaniard. I could be one of those handsome slender Spanish men who can dance so beautifully opposite their beautiful women, yet, I would look silly trying to dance like that.

I like carbs and fresh fruit is now my biggest enemy since I have cut out the processed grains. So I have learned to cut most of the fruits out to maintain my weight. Notice the word "Maintain."

Still, to LOSE weight, I have to count calories like the Doctors say. That is the hard part, because if you are not eating carbs, what you have left to eat is a very little meat a day and that has no taste after a while.

I wish there was a miracle pill that would let me eat regular food without gaining weight. We could call it a Cliff pill, and all men could look like Spanish Dancers and eat Mexican or Spanish or Italian food all of the time. Amen!