I heard somewhere that a whopping 70% of us Americans will go on a diet this year. And with all the choices in miracle weight loss plans available just in he supermarket check-out alone it's no wonder we get confused as to what will actually work. After all the goal is to lose weight healthfully and still satisfy our hunger, isn't it? So it isn't really surprising that most of us find it hard to stick to any of these plans, small portions, low-cal, low-fat, ow-carb, prepared foods, etc, and when we fail we take it hard. (we gain back what we lost and add a few more pounds for good measure)

I Did it my way

This website advocates losing weight by cutting back on bad carbs and the research backs us up, however, how YOU do it is up to you. I combined elements of the South Beach Diet and the Adkins Diet to lose weight and at the same time tried to watch my fat intake. It worked! The point is, I made up this diet myself. I used proven weight loss tricks but I personalized my own plan where I adapted each diet plan to fit my life, not the other way around. Check out ome of these proven strategies and choose ways to make them work for you.

Cutting Carbohydrates = Success

And by that I mean the bad ones, refined flour in the form of white bread, pasta and especially refined sugar. Did you ever stop to think how much sugar there is in all of our so-called low-fat foods? Just look at the labels and it becomes obvious, when a product removes the fat they have to add sugar to get the taste back - otherwise, no sale! All of these foods may taste good but they provide zero nutrition and empty calories. Learn to eat your way around them. Just avoiding one 20-ounce soda per day could translate into savings of 25 pounds or more over a year! Try the ones with Splenda, like RC Zero or my personal favorite, Diet Ocean Spray Cranberry Grape Juice with Splenda. Both have zero calories and zero carbs and they taste very good.

Eat Smart, Eat Well

Your body needs carbs for energy but if you eat the wrong ones your body just ends up storing them as fat. Eat smaller portions of good carbs like vegetables and whole grains. These will give you a satisfying feeling between meals and will steady your blood sugar. If you have to eat refined foods (like white bread) try to combine them with a food that has protein or healthy fat like lean meats or greens.

Eat to lose

That may sound like a gimmicky statement but it actually works, IF you know what to eat. I know that when I am hungry I need to eat. And I don't mean one of those wimpy diet meals that will have me sneaking into the fridge an hour later. I like to choose foods high in fiber and water content so that I can eat a lot, feel full and still lose weight. I eat a lot of salads. At first I found it hard to control the amount of salad dressing I used because I was using the low carb ones like Ranch and Oil & Vinegar. But even low carb dressing can defeat you by using too much. Here is a tip for you: dry your lettuce well with either a salad spinner or using paper towels, a tablespoon of salad dressing will then go a long way. My favorite is ranch but again, don't get carried away.

Add some bulk to every meal by adding high-volume foods like fruits and vegetables. If you are just starting out and you want to lose weight quickly in a short period of time try the Atkins two-week induction plan. Fruits are a no-no during this period but plan on adding them back in when you finish induction. A lot of fruits are high in carbs but they are good carbs, natural carbs. Atkins got a bad rap from his critics and competitors when he suggested a diet without fruit but read my lips: This was during induction only - he never meant to exclude them from a healthy eating regimen - ever.

Watch the Fat 

When I first started advocating both the South Beach Diet and The Atkins Diet people would say, "oh, thats the one that says it's ok to eat a pound of bacon for breakfast." Well, that's just ridiculous and it only goes to show you ignorant people can be. If you are interested in the facts, read the books. What I did that worked for me was to try to control my fat intake as well as my carb intake. Naturally I banned the bad carbs from my diet but all of those things that Atkins said were ok like butter, mayonnaise, olive oil, meats and seafoods, cheeses, eggs, etc, I cut back on too. It was scary at first, all the things that the low-fat bunch had drilled into my brain, but after I saw the weight loss and how good I felt, it all started making sense. I mixed low fat mayo with real mayo, I ate two strips of bacon for breakfast instead of four, I cut out bread and subbed Parmesan wafers, I kept the half&half for my coffee but cut it down, etc. Just use common sense and it will work for you as well. There is no other diet that will allow you to eat as much and as well as a low carb diet.

Check this out. Did you think he did this Nike commercial in one take? Not even Tiger is THAT good!

This is a rare feat for golfers like me with relatively good vision (with my glasses on I can see the pin from 200 yards away) but is really rare for guys like Leo Fiyalko who is legally blind, 92 years old and, God bless him, is still swinging. I have been fortunate enough to have three holes-in-one in my 30 year + golf career and know first-hand what a thrill it is - especially the first one! And, I got to actually see the ball go in the hole all three times! This story comes from Angela Jacobs, writing for the tampabays news 10 website. It's a story worth reading.

Normally, nine holes with his wife Pat is all he plays in a week. This time he was playing in a Thursday foursome with a group of golfers ranging in age from 70 to 90-plus and on the Par 3, 5th hole at Cove Cay Country Club in Clearwater, Florida, he scored his very first ace in his 60 years of playing golf. Swinging a five-iron from 110 yards away he had to rely on his golfing buddies to tell him his shot had gone in the hole. “I could tell it went on the green, (but) when we got up there I didn’t see it. I looked in the hole and there it was,” said Jean Gehring, one of his playing partners. For the past 10 years, Leo has had macular degeneration, no vision in his left eye and only peripheral vision in his right. 

Leo brushes the whole thing off as no big deal, even refusing to appear on the Jay Leno show, "I didn't want to fly," he said. On January 10th, the day he made his ace, he said it didn't excite him much, attributing his lack of emotion to old age. (I don't know about him, but personally, at age 92 I would be excited just to be swinging a club!) So he still can't understand why the rest of the world is making a big deal out of it.  A humble Leo comments, "When I get up to the green, I can barely see the ball, I'm just trying to hit the damn ball. I'm lucky to hit it." 

The story ran in the London Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, Sports Illustrated. Golf Digest and the Associated Press. He even turned down an appearance on Good Morning America, saying, "if they want to talk to me they can come here." His wife Pat says he settled down quickly enough, not wanting to take long trips because of his age. Fiyalko’s friends at Cove Cay CC presented him with a plaque to commemorate the feat.

Men Concerned About Their Wives and Risk of Diabetes

I was speaking with some fellow veterans at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans Hospital in Phoenix the other day while I sat in the waiting room of the Agent Orange Registry. I was there for an examination that would tell me if I had or, were at risk for, type 2 diabetes, a disease now on the the list of associated nasty things that you can get as a result of exposure to high concentrates of Agent Orange (DDT- a defoliant) in Viet Nam. Anyway, as vets will do, we got to talking about our wives and what they were doing to lower their risk of diabetes and how a certain diet might help. All of the wives that were discussed were women ranging in age from 50 to 60 years old, having weight problems, and were on diets of some kind. It's a well-known fact that being overweight is the single largest contributor in causing the onset of type 2 diabetes. And, believe me, you do not want to get this disease!

Low-Carb or low-fat?

The discussion with my Viet Nam comrades resulted in a split decision, some were in favor of the low-carb diet and some were on the side of low-fat, with the consensus leaning (ha!) toward a low-fat approach. My wife cringes when she sees me eat a steak or bacon or cream cheese, regardless of my weight loss results because she has been conditioned to think that way by a multi-zillion dollar campaign to keep king sugar posting record profits. This includes glossy ads in magazines and TV commercials that promote low-fat foods or diets while showcasing the thin bodies and beautiful faces of those (18 year old) ladies among us, who represent less than 1% of the entire female population, paid to say they got that way by consuming a certain low-fat food. Pullease! 

Up on my Low-Carb Soapbox

Among my veteran colleagues there were advocates for both low-carb and low-fat approaches but before I could get up on my low-carb soapbox and enlighten them with all that I have learned about the low-carb nutritional approach to weight loss, I was called in to the doctor. When I came out my new friends had dispersed to examination rooms where the news was either good or bad. (in my case, I came out ok, whew!). I thought about it on the way home and got on the computer first thing. And voila!, right there in Healthday News was an article about those same concerns. Very illuminating, especially for woman who feel the need to reduce the amount of meat in their diet, and their concern they might be at risk for type 2 diabetes.

Low-Carb Wins!

It turns out that a diet low in carbs but high in animal fat and protein doesn't seem to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in women, a new study claims. As a proponent of the low-carb approach I was happy to hear that because sugar and insulin spikes are the culprits here and low-fat diets are full of sugar! I agree that "one study is never enough to change a recommendation," but this study leads the way in pointing out the obvious, what us low carb advocates have known for years now; a low-fat diet is not the way to eat if you are concerned about preventing type 2 diabetes.

Low-Carb diets show protective effect against type 2 diabetes!

Author of the study, Thomas Halton, a recent graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health and founder of a nutrition consulting company called Fitness Plus, seemed to be a bit surprised that the one diet that did seem to show a protective effect against type 2 diabetes was a low-carb plan, one that advocates cutting out "bad" carbs like processed sugar and flour. Duh!, just because dieters the world over (nutritionists and doctors too!) have been brainwashed by all the low-fat propaganda out there doesn't mean that there aren't people in the know. It's just that no one wants to actually read Dr. Atkins or Dr. Agatson's books or if they do what is said in them is taken out of context, ridiculous comments like; the Adkins approach advocates not eating fruit or vegetables! Baloney, what has happened here is that the sugar people have done their jobs well, just go to any grocery store or even specialty "health food" stores and read the nutrition labels of their "low fat" products. Prepare to be amazed at the sky-high carbohydrate content - 99 percent of which is sugar! In order to make low-fat products palatable, food manufacturers have to add sugar when they take out the fat. No taste = no sale!

Protecting Yourself From Diabetes

Being overweight is not just a cosmetic problem, it's a major health problem around the world. Just in the US alone, two-thirds of adults weigh more than they ought. And, as the study in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition points out, a  low-carb diet that minimizes bad carbs is a much better way to go than eating sugar-loaded, low-fat products. I love sugar as much as the next person and, as a matter of fact, have a serious sweet tooth. However, a low-fat cookie for example has more sugar per serving than a regular one. Go figure.

A Common Sense Approach to Dieting

The thing that has worked for me, after having read and studied both of the definitive books on the subject of low-carb dieting; Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution and the South Beach Diet by Dr. Arthur Agatson, is a combination of low-carb and low-fat, meaning, have that juicy steak - but cut off the excess fat, enjoy your cream cheese - but on a stalk of celery, not a bagel, keep the bacon for breakfast - but limit it to two slices. Use common sense when faced with eating decisions. Keep track of what you don't eat and make a list of the (bad) carbs that didn't make it past your lips. At the end of a week use this formula to see the amount of weight gain you avoided. (this is only an approximation because of the differences in body structure from one person to another). I start the formula with a stern warning; one dessert consumed = 1 lb of weight gain, no matter the portion size. That's the bad news IF you should fall. But for each 100 grams of bad carbs you resist you can say you avoided a pound of weight gain. So, at the end of the week, if you lost 3 lbs and you resisted 300 bad carbohydrates, you can say you doubled your weight loss! It's just like resisting a sale, especially when you don't need the item that is discounted. Like my Dad always said (i know it's corny but I think of it often) "Son, if you want to double your money, fold it twice and put it back in your pocket."

The good news about Type 2 diabetes, which affects as many as 45 percent of women and 30 percent of men in the United States, is 75 percent preventable with the proper diet. (The other 25 percent is hereditary). And, while low-fat, high-carb diets are often recommended by doctors who treat diabetes, my feeling is that we have to minimize our carb consumption, especially the bad carbs found in processed foods (empty calories) and continue to promote the "good" carbs found in fruits and vegetables. You just have to find that fine line between weight stabilization or weight gained, usually determined by portion control.

The surprising thing about this study was not that saturated fat will have much less impact on insulin levels than whole grains (bread), cereal fiber or fruit and vegetables (which can heighten the risk of type 2 diabetes). Even if you don't follow Atkins or The South Beach Diet you may already have known that. We also know that even the good carbs found in fruits and vegetables are still carbs so we have to count them too. For the study referenced here, Halton and his colleagues examined the association between low-carb diets and the risk of diabetes among 85,059 women participating in the Nurse's Health Study. The data, which included 20+ years of follow-up research, also ranked women according to what they ate. "We calculated a low-carbohydrate diet score based on the women's percent consumption of fat, protein and carbohydrate," Halton explained. "A higher score reflected a higher intake of fat and protein with a lower intake of carbohydrate. Therefore, the higher a woman's score, the more closely she followed a low carb-diet, the lower her score, the more she followed a low-fat diet." Bottom line is; meat-eating women with a higher score did not have a heightened risk of diabetes. In fact, and this was the surprising find I alluded to earlier, they seemed to have a slightly decreased risk when they derived their fat and protein from vegetables (like avacados) rather than animal sources!

Low-Carb regimens that follow similar paths to those of the Atkins and South Beach Diets can be diets that include animal fat and  protein. Or they can be vegetable and fruit inclusive. The problem is that even though it's a "very good thing to do," most people don't know how to eat well. They don't bother to learn the differences between simple and complex carbohydrates and what's involved in maintaining a healthy and balanced diet. People go to extremes," said Dr. Stuart Weiss, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. "In general, carbs should be limited just like saturated fat needs to be limited. . . If you eat too much of anything, you're bound to get into trouble."

American Diabetes Association  

Care, Cure Commitment 

 Yes folks, it's 2008 and Super Bowl fever is right here in sunny, warm Arizona! It's just one week before the big game and last night The New England Patriots (18-0) arrived in Phoenix for Super Bowl XLII (for you un-Romans out there XLII means 42nd Super Bowl). Their plane touched down at 7:35 pm on a rare, rainy Sunday night At Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and to put everyone's mind at ease, Tom Brady actually walked to the waiting bus UNDER HIS OWN POWER! Speculation had run rampant about his injured foot, ankle, tendon, toe, fill in the blank, and the infamous "boot" that was nowhere to be seen. He declined an interview with yours truly and I don't blame him, he stubbed his toe getting on the bus, and was in obvious discomfort (just kidding)! The New York Giants kinda snuck in, preferring to let their football do the talking.

 What does the Super Bowl and Tom Brady's foot have to do with Low Carb dieting or golf, you ask? Not a darn thing! This is just an opportunity for me as a resident of Scottsdale, Arizona (and as the owner of this site) to brag about what a great sports town Phoenix and her neighboring cities are. In less than one week from today the greatest football game of the year will be held in Glendale, Arizona at University of Phoenix Stadium, home of the (snake-bit) Arizona Cardinals. This year Arizona is providing new meaning to the term "Super Sunday", not only is that the day of the big game but just prior to kick-off and just a few miles to the east in Scottsdale, the PGA Pro's are putting the finishing touches on the final round of the FBR Open, a PGA TOUR event.  After a week of partying at the TPC Scottsdale, golf fans will be anxious to crown a new champion and get in front of the most gi-normous big screen TV they can find! I feel sorry for the fans if it turns out to be a sqeaker or, God-forbid, a playoff - because only the true, die-hard golf fan would remain - everyone else storming the exits to get home in time for coin toss.

 And just for the record, The FBR Open at the TPC Scottsdale always sets PGA TOUR attendance records (mostly by breaking their own) each year. (The secret if you want to know is; unlimited parking). It is the home of the infamous 16th hole, a delicate little Par 3 that Tiger Woods aced in his first FBR Open appearance. What a year that was (1997), the fans were salaming Tiger and tossing their beers into the fairway in tribute. And that was before the stands resembled those of the Roman Colliseum, lining the length of the hole and around the tee box, sort of a stadium within a stadium. Deane Beaman, you are a genius!

As if a Super Bowl and the final round of a wildly popular PGA TOUR event on the same weekend werent enough, Scottsdale is also host city to the first Super Skins Celebrity Golf Classic on February 2 hosted by Nick Lachey and NASCAR'S Jimmy Johnson. All the stories I read by press time quoted Jenna Fryers article in the AP which was a nice fluffy little piece but declined to disclose a location (golf course) for the event or which of our fine golfing celebs would be playing. I know a couple of choices I would make; Sean Connery, Joe Peschi, Clint Eastwood for sure. Bill Murray will be finished clowning around at the TPC Scottsdale Silver Pro-Am by then so he will probably be there.  Nick Lachey, the former Mr. Jessica Simpson, and Jimmy Johnson of NASCAR fame are hosting the first of three contracted events held in Super Bowl locations. The AP story details how NASCAR star Johnson had broken his wrist last December clowning around on top of a golf cart and how embrarassing it was but that the event is a great way to get friends together to raise some money for charity. Each hole will be worth $20,000.00 but both Nick and Jimmy declined to be interviewed for this article nor would they disclose the route the celebs will take for the short trip from Scottsdale to Glendale for the Super Bowl on Sunday. As of this writing flight plans had not been filed.

So, with all this cool stuff going on, culminating on the Sunday of Super Bowl XLII, which I am predicting will be one of the greatest Super Bowls' ever played - I hereby - by the power invested in me as Scottsdale's #1 Golf Fan, former ABC Sports Golf Spotter, charter member of the Scottsdale Golf Packager's Hall of Fame, Scottsdale Golf Industry Insider and a player of some notoriety himself - proclaim that Sunday February 2, 2008 will be forever known as SUPER DUPER SUNDAY. Remember, NFL Films and Steve Sabol, I said it first!

Pat's by 3.

I thought I should pass on this interesting article I saw on MSN's website, Health & Fitness section that rates the sugar substitutes, the good, the bad and the so-called unacceptable. Written by Sylvia Geiger, M.S.,R.D., Eatingwell.com

In my opinion this article is not only a review of sugar substitues but a reassuring bit of information that helps to enlighten the public as to their options when it comes to FDA approved sweetners. A quote that appears in the article by Manfred Kroger, Ph.D., professor emeritus of food science at Penn State says it all for me. "The public should feel confident that any approved sweetener is truly safe and has been closely scrutinized." And it's not just me, most food scientists agree with that statement. That's comforting news for those of us who have been subjected to the cancer scares of aspertame - even though most are aware that you would have to consume buckets of this stuff daily to maybe get the big C. The sugar industry does what it can to mis-direct and mis-inform us about other sweetners that challenge their markets but from the looks of all the low fat foods out there that depend on sugar for taste I dont think sugar has much to worry about. But when I see some of the big guns out there like Coke and RC with labels that proclaim "sweetened with Splenda," it does my heart good.

Ms. Geiger goes on to talk about the fact that sales of "diet-friendly" sugar substitutes have gone through the roof, up a factor of 50% from 2000 to 2006 primarily because health experts are now recommending the use of them to their overweight and diabetic patients. A staggerting 66% of Americans are overweight and 20.8 million have diabetes. She mentions that according to a recent survey, seven out of 10 adults say they want to reduce or avoid added sugars. And in order to do this they are forsaking regular sugar for sweeteners that deliver zero or minimal calories. 

For me Splenda is the only choice for sweetning beverages both hot and cold, especially coffee. I am a sweet freak that has to have sweet in his life and Splenda does it for me. I have to use 10 times the amount of sugar to get the same sweetness and that is just unacceptable. Bottom line is it just depends on what you get used to and what you believe the experts like Sylvia Geiger have to say. I started using Splenda when I read about it in Dr. Atkins book, The New Diet Revolution. He recommended those sweetners like sucralose, not because he thought aspertame caused cancer but because it seemed to derail his patients efforts at the Induction phase of his low carb plan. They were not able to lose as much weight as quickly. Bottom line, read the article and decide what is best for you.

Scottish superstar golfer Colin Montgomery uses the Atkins low-carb nutritional approach to losing weight. This is not exactly a current story since Monty started the plan back in 04 when it seemed like everyone was trying it but it still has relevance here because most golfers know who he is and what he used to look like. Not only that but the fact that he has kept it off using the same plan would seem the bigger story here. I got this story from Jimmy Moore's Livin La Vida Low Carb Blog and he got it from the Glasgow Sunday Mail.

Monty was the guy that everyone loved to hate because he let everything and everyone on the course bother him, especially during Ryder Cup competition, and he was subsequently branded a whiner as a result of his constant complaining. Monty let his clubs do most of his talking and you would be hard pressed to find a guy with a better record in Ryder Cup play. Personally I think this is what rattled his drunken detractors (true golf fans would never be so rude) - he always found a way to beat us. But at some point over the last few years he suddenly became the darling of the US Tour whenever he showed up to play. This might have something to do with his record in the majors here (0 for a million) or his light and funny press conferences about how good a player Tiger is. At any rate the story in the British newspaper reported that he is a big fan of the Atkins lifestyle and has used it to slim down.

I didn't see the original story but Jimmy Moore (my low carb idol) says that it refers to Atkins as a "no-carb regime" (a fine example of a reporter too lazy to do his homework and I agree with Jimmy when he says - when will these people ever learn?!) It still had some great quotes from the man golfing fans (now) affectionately refer to as "Monty Read the rest of this entry »