My Story
by Dr. Peter Rogers
- I would also like to share my story with you
- because I think it illustrates many of the common difficulties encountered by persons trying to lose weight
- I had been thin and exercised frequently up until my mid 30’s.
- Then I got married and had lots of kids and my responsibilities at work increased.
- I stopped exercising.
- I was trying to combine 2 fellowship training years into one and was working long hours
- There didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day.
- I slept less and relied on caffeine to keep me alert during the day.
- I had frequent episodes of rebound hypoglycemia which I did not understand at first.
- Quietly, I would think to myself, “what is wrong with me”. I am too young to be having problems like this.
- Several times, I had symptoms of dizziness and blurred vision during episodes of rebound hypoglycemia.
- I even went and had an MRI of my brain to reassure myself that I didn’t have a brain tumor, vascular malformation or other intracranial lesion.
- I was drinking 6 to 7 cups of Starbucks Mocha coffee every day, and also having a snack with each cup such as a poptart.
- I always felt tired, except for about 2 hours after each cup of coffee.
- I would need to get that cup of coffee or I felt that I couldn’t function effectively.
My weight had ballooned up from a baseline of 155 to 210 pounds.
- My personality had become increasingly irritable, which in retrospect, I think was due to the excessive caffiene.
- Another problem with excessive caffiene is that it tends to lead to erratic sleep patterns.
- Then a person begins to wonder at times if they are feeling tired due to rebound hypoglycemia or lack of sleep.
- It is a negative feedback cycle that perpetuates itself
- My wife told me that I looked like I was headed towards a heart attack at a young age.
- I asked myself the same question for 3 years --> Why can’t I lose weight?
- I would reduce food intake and exercise 3 x/wk and lose about 5 or 10 pounds.
- Then work or life in general would go thru a stressful phase and soon I would gain all the wt back and possibly an additional 5 or 10 pounds.
My brother and his wife who are both in great shape and quite knowledgable about nutrition tried to give me nutrition advice.
- But I did not listen.
- I was arrogant.
- I thought that because I was a doctor and that since biochemistry had been my best subject in med school that I knew more about nutrition than them.
- Then they said to me, “well if you know so much about nutrition, Mr. doctor, then why are you so fat?”
- Now, I knew that they were right.
- I realized that in medical school, the emphasis had been on nutritional diseases associated with starvation and unusual situations like sailors that got otherwise rare diseases like scurvy.
- And that there had been little discussion of obesity and the western diet.
- On the topic of high cholesterol, the emphasis for treatment options had been to prescribe medications.
- Dietary approaches were typically labeled as noneffective and unrealistic.
- I knew that I had to learn a lot more about about nutrition.
- I read all the diet books I could find.
- I plowed thru article after article on nutrition research.
- I read nutrition textbooks
- I experimented with different diets and eating strategies and recorded these in notebooks
- eg. How long does satiety last after different types of meals
- This experience led to finding meal choices whereby duration of satiety increased, a snack between meals no longer was necessary and the net result was decreased overall caloric intake
- Another benefit of doing these eating experiments with yourself is that you learn what works and doesn't for you and how to adapt this to eating at restaurants and friends' houses
- I developed a method to gradually reduce caffiene intake which will be discussed later in the DVD.
- I discussed these with other physicians and began providing nutritional advice to interested friends and patients.
- I learned what works and what doesn’t for losing weight and feeling healthier.
- I lost 57 lbs and have kept it off for 3 years.
- My blood pressure is 100/60, total cholesterol is 111 and LDL cholesterol 60 and I do not take any medicines.
- And I realized that the old fashioned mentality of just eat less and exercise more does not work.
- It does not work because the underlying assumption is false.
- It assumes that a calorie is just a calorie is just a calorie
- and that if you eat fewer than you burn, you lose wt.
- But it is not that simple.
- A calorie of fat is not the same as a calorie of carbohydrate.
- Because the calorie of fat is far more likely to be stored as fat.
- And a calorie of simple sugar is not the same as one from complex carbohydrate
- because the sugar tends to cause rebound hypoglycemia and makes you hungrier so you overeat and gain weight
- Whereas the complex carbohydrate promotes a more stable blood glucose level and decreases hunger.
- So they’re very different.
- Both are carbohydrates, but with very different effects.
- Also, fiber is not digested. It provides no calories. Yet it has a profound impact on diet and wt loss.
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