K is for Keto and Diets

Ask any woman about diets and you will find that she has stories about the topic and how they influenced her life either by her trying them, avoiding them, or being modeled for her by friends and family.

Diets I Have Known

Grapefruit

The first diet I think I ever heard of was through a friend’s mom. She would get a scoop of cottage cheese on on top of a half of a grapefruit on a bed or lettuce. Sometimes there was a maraschino cherry on top. I think this was a lunchtime thing for ladies clubs in the 1960s.

Vegetarian

The second diet with which I had any real familiarity, was what I thought of as more of a lifestyle than as a diet . I simply came to a place in my life where the thought of eating mammal flesh was so repugnant that I would gag if I saw raw meat or if even smelled red meat cooking. I followed this diet for 10 to 12 years until I became pregnant and could smell LBTs everywhere I was and I really wanted one!

Stress

This was a diet within a diet. While I was a vegetarian in my twenties I unconsciously limited my food intake to a ridiculously low level when I went through a significantly challenging period in my life. During that time I considered a cup of yogurt a full meal and went from 125 lbs. to 104 lbs.

Keto

The only diet I ever consciously began and followed was Keto, supervised by a physician to lower my weight and A1C. It worked. Several years ago I lost 25 lbs. and brought down my A1C to 6.2. I can no longer find the motivation eat the amount of meat and protein required by Keto, and the danger of ketoacidosis frightens me. I want to become a vegatarian again.

I still am losing weight very slowly by continuing to exercise and omit all processed sugar as well as to limit bread and pasta. I have never been a follower of anything including diets, unless health or spirituality moved me in that direction.

Other Diets I Somehow Know About

Even though I do not consider myself to be a dieter, the contemporary culture here in the US assails us with constant advertisements to be something we are not, to change, to lose weight and to conform to marketer-peddled ideation generated to sell products. While I am not too susceptible to such pressure, I cannot block it all out and am aware of the content of an incoming stream of corporate propaganda.

Food Type

From time to time single foods are promoted as the key to weight loss. The “secrets” or wonder properties of certain foods may come from in eating them with every meal, from eating only it for one meal a day, from eating only one food to cleanse the body, to limiting a diet through exclusion of one component of food such as fat, of limiting the form of the food as in liquid or completely masticated food, or the percentage of types of food

• Grapefruit.
• Cottage cheese
• Cabbage
• Liquid Diet
• Low Fat
• Zone: 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fat
• Fletcherism: Included as Type of Food as it encouraged chewing food until liquid

Ideological

• Macrobiotic: based in Buddhist philosophy, the central tenet is to balance the yin and yang of the body through food that is often vegetarian, humanely harvested if fish or chicken, locally produced, and eaten in moderation.
• Paleo: essentially this is a diet centered on the belief that eating only foods to which our archaic human ancestors would have had access to in unprocessed form.

Branded

These food stuffs are patented or trademarked and sold by corporate enties who advertise that their brand, process, or system is inherently better, more successful, or delivered to the client in a better fashion that other brands.

• Weight Watchers
• Atkins
• Jenny Craig
• Nutrisystem
• Ornish

By Place

• Scarsdale: named for city in which the author practiced cardiology
• Beverly Hills: food combining and time limited
• Mediterranean: in general this is intended to mimic the type of foods, oils, and proportions used by mediterranean peoples eating traditional foods.
• South Beach models itself as a healthy diet from a glamorous community. Similar to Scarsdale, Keto, and Adkins.

All these varied diets, to me, show that we do not understand digestive processes and how our food maintains structures in our bodies. But I am not promoting or discouraging whatever diet works for you and keeps you healthy.

What I do encourage is that you use the topic of diets to examine and discuss how food marketing promoted beliefs in your life that you should eat differently, lose weight, strive for a culturally preferred body type. Do you feel manipulated, shamed, or unworthy because of body shape, weight or image.

We can help each other and younger generations by discussing the concepts of diets beyond what is recommended by a physician and how they have impacted your life and self-concept.