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I was on the weight loss roller coaster for about a decade before I stumbled upon the most incredibly simple "food plan" imaginable. Basically, you stay away from pretty much anything that is even minimally processed, complex carbs, trans fats, seed oils, and most importantly anything that has wheat, corn, flour or SUGAR.

They call it a "food plan" rather than a "diet" because you're never hungry. The most common complaint initially is that it's simply too much food, but eventually the stomach expands to accommodate the high volume of food that is dispatched to the stomach every day.

I lost 150 lbs. in less than seven months and i did it without ever doing ANY exercise whatsoever. Now I ride my bike, play disc golf, run wind sprints, swim and screw like I'm seventeen again without any drugs.

I was taking over 8 prescription drugs just to keep my heart pumping relatively well. I had a standing 15 year diagnosis for congestive heart failure. My cardiologist was dumbfounded after seeing my latest EKG and echocardiogram which indicated that I no longer had congestive heart failure. He still wanted me to continue to take a couple of medications, but I eventually weened myself off of them as well and haven't seen any cardiologists in over a decade. I haven't been cardioverted in over a decade either.

Food was killing me and changing my diet has literally saved my life. It's really that simple, and if you grow a few things in your garden, it's quite a bit cheaper to eat healthy than to buy prepackaged crap from the supermarket.

I'm almost 60 years old and in better condition than I was in my early 30's. The body is quite resilient if given half a chance.

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That's a great story. From what I understand the prior medical consensus was that heart failure was irreversible, which increasingly appears to be bullshit, along with a plethora of other conventional wisdoms.

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Western medicine can keep you alive and numb the pain, but more often than not, it simply isn't worth the cost. For the most part, I'm done with western medicine. Well more than half the doctors I've ever been seen by are brainwashed by; Big Pharma and so full of themselves, they're completely incredulous if you question anything they say or recommend. Most of them have a God complex which isn't surprising when their patients are doped up on a cocktail of meds that naturally make them gush over them.

The farther away I get from modern society, the more my quality of life improves.

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We've all met the poor SOB doped up on a dozen pharma drugs that clearly aren't doing anything good for him who refuses to deal in reason because he has been fully indoctrinated by the TV and his doctor. He will never ask a single challenging question at the office. Instead, he'll take the script, thank the doc profusely for his limitless wisdom, and pay the $500 co-pay at the pharmacy.

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my ethos toward western medicine in single paragraph form right there.

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I enjoyed reading your inspiring story. Thank you for sharing!

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Sep 5, 2023·edited Sep 5, 2023Liked by Ben Bartee

Everyone wants an easy solution. Truth be told, the mechanisms for weight loss and improved body composition are quite simple. While there are multiple approaches for weight loss, the most reliable one (for me) was low-carb with time restriction.

As for fitness, almost anything will do. For me, a combination of daily yoga and calisthenics does the trick. Like I said, it’s remarkably simple.

The real problem is the will. Just as in smoking, where you merely stop putting cigarettes in your mouth. Easy, right?

Any approach that bypasses the conquering of your will is doomed to failure. That’s because your will needs to be mastered. Herein lies the difficulty. The good news? Small wins beget more wins, and the wins get bigger and bigger.

Conquering your will is the miracle. It pay’s dividends in every area of your life. Cheat there at your own peril.

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Hilarious, Ben. "Move their fat asses" indeed. Love it (you right wing fascist: if that's what we're calling sensible people these days).

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you might find this informative: https://time.com/6242949/exercise-industry-white-supremacy/

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A good read, Ben. Thank you. I found it a bit lop-sided, as if the author set out to prove a thesis and couldn't be swayed by other such considerations as women becoming more educated and free (discarding restraints figuratively and literally), fitness training for soldiers regardless of skin tone. And more, of course.

I enjoy your work, by the way, and appreciate the time you take to put it out there.

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Thanks, Rose-Anne

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Sep 7, 2023·edited Sep 7, 2023Liked by Ben Bartee

And $ickcare "doctors" are giving this shit to kids and recommending stomach stapling surgeries. Where the hell did parental wisdom go today?

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the television put a thought inside their head

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Thanks, Ben. Always good to hear of a scammy organisation being sued.

Obesity, vomiting and loss of teeth. Not exactly glamorous and, heaven help me for being cruel, toggling between tragedy and comedy.

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I read your related article on PJMedia - my reason for pursuing this issue is that there is a drug in the same family, Liraglutide, which is viewed as a potentially effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease in the UK https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/research/our-research/research-projects/testing-effect-diabetes-drug-liraglutide-alzheimers-disease.

Now, I have two issues with this - one is that it is sounding as if the cure might be worse than the disease, especially as your PJMedia article identified cognitive impairment as a side-effect (!); the other is that I believe that the theoretical basis for the research may need revisiting. The assumption that has been made, certainly since I last worked as a nurse in 2011, is that Alzheimer's might be a metabolic issue, hence the use of an anti-diabetes drug. However, hypoglycaemic medications also have antibiotic effects - whether this is intrinsic, or is simply because they target high blood sugar levels which would otherwise paralyse your immune response. Some years back (c.2015), I came across a very small piece of research, where the brains of six people who had had Alzheimer's were examined, and all six were found to test positive to gram negative bacteria. Granted, a very small piece of research, small enough so that the result should mainly trigger replication, rather than informing clinical intervention, but still a possible pointer to what should be being investigated. Unfortunately, the new website for the Pilgrim's Friend Society, which was where I found this article originally, does not appear to have the same archiving facility that the old one did, so I am unable to provide a citation. However, this more recent piece of research also appears to highlight a pathogenic process

https://www.pilgrimsfriend.org.uk/news-views/dementia-symptoms-reversed-and-personality-restored-in-japanese-trial

When I discovered the original piece of research, and made the connection that I did with the antibiotic properties of hypoglycaemic agents, I contacted the hospital that was conducting the liraglutide trials. However, given that my background was nursing, not medicine, and that I was no longer practising, I did not have the necessary professional standing to warrant being taken seriously.

My reason for this post is: (1) If this family of drugs has serious side-effects, then we are no longer talking about administering something that is effective and merely misunderstanding the mechanism by which it works - there is a serious cost-benefit appraisal that needs doing; (2) Given the new piece of research, there could be other agents that are more effective, and ultimately a vaccine (though heaven forbid that it is developed by the COVID lot!); in the meantime, people are potentially being given false hope (or not being treated at all if they are in the wrong bit of a double-blind trial). And, of course, I'm hoping that a journalist might be more effective than I was in raising this issue, if you conclude that it warrants an article or two.

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So the theory is that dementia is caused by a bacterial infection but it's being incorrectly theorized to be a metabolic condition because it might be treated with a hypoglycemic agent that also acts as an antibiotic?

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That's right - I'm not sure how people arrived at the idea that it might be metabolic in the first place, but it is entirely possible that they saw cognitive improvements in people who were treated for both diabetes and Alzheimer's, and therefore postulated a link. The other thing is that there are preventive measures that could be put in place if we are talking about an infective process. At the time when I originally came across this information, I was caring for a family member who had Alzheimer's. Part of the background was that she had had longstanding depression, and had neglected herself - so it may be that something as simple as handwashing before meals would be an effective preventive - but, if we are working with a wrong causative theory, then that sort of thing won't be explored.

(later) I looked on Google books to try to find the original piece of research and found this https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Alzheimer_s_Disease_and_Infectious_Cause so clearly there are people out there who think that an infection is implicated, just not enough of them if the UK's premier dementia charity is dishing out grants of a third of a million pounds for metabolic research.

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