I got an e-mail from Jane Britton in Australia, who struggled to lose weight with low-calorie diets for many years.
Here’s what she discovered when she decided to study to become a dietitian, and soon realized what the biochemistry text book had to say about what causes storage of fat:
The E-Mail
Hi,
I would like to share my story:
I was a very skinny teenager who married early and had three babies over 15 years and each time I got slightly fatter. I stand 173 cm/5’8″ tall and at my heaviest I weighed maybe around 80 kg/176 lbs. My mother was a Weight Watchers lecturer (even though she was always overweight) who starved herself and resorted to very low-calorie diets, such as Jenny Craig. When my weight became an issue I resorted to those same diets trying to be “skinny” like I was in high school. I even walked an hour a day very fast and joined the gym. Nothing got me lower than about 75 kg /165 lbs and I always put the weight back on very fast as soon as I gave up, which was often.
By the time I was 25 I was on antidepressants for a back problem that caused me to have restless leg syndrome, I had chronic sinus, and basically felt absolutely miserable. I had my gall bladder removed and was shocked at the size of the stones because I ate low-fat everything. I thought high-fat diets caused gall stones! I was always constipated and worried I would get bowel cancer like my mother.