November 21, 2018 | UHCL Staff
Figuring out the best way to lose weight can be confusing and difficult, even if you’re a registered nurse and you understand the science. Silsbee, Texas resident Lori Harvey, 48, attended the Low Carb Houston Conference recently held at University of Houston-Clear Lake because she had struggled with her weight as well as diabetes, high blood pressure, and other chronic ailments.
“I attended the conference because I wanted to continue my education on the low-carb lifestyle,” Harvey said. “About 18 months ago, I was 150 pounds overweight, and because I was working home health I spent much of my day in the car, eating meals on the go and was not very active. I was suffering from the side effects of diabetes and I just had no energy. It was because of the way I was eating.”
The Low Carb Houston Conference, presented by UH-Clear Lake’s Exercise and Nutritional Health Institute, addressed the influence of poor nutrition on chronic disease while focusing on research evidence and clinical experience supporting the success of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet to improve overall health. Over 20 health, medical and nutrition professionals from all over the world spoke to more than 220 attendees.
She did a two-week ketogenic (low-carb, high-fat) diet challenge because doctors and dieticians backed the plan. Things started to improve. “At this point, I have lost 130 pounds and I do not take any medication for diabetes anymore,” she said. “I fixed my insulin resistance simply by changing the way I ate.”
She added that her blood pressure went down and many of her other health issues also went away. “It took a lot of convincing,” she said. “I had learned that the low-fat diet with a lot of grains was the right way to eat. But now I’m finding that the majority of the population is not served by that. I’ve kept the weight off and I invested my time to come to the conference to learn more so I can teach others how I have changed my life.”
Harvey said she learned new information about the role of cholesterol in the body. “As a nurse, I was still not totally clear,” she said. “When people eat low carb, their low density lipids (LDL) cholesterol goes up as they get closer to their goal and that’s exactly what mine did, even though we learned that LDL is a marker for heart disease.”
She found out that LDL is not a marker for heart disease. It is only a factor if you have other risk factors as well, like high triglycerides and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. “If you have those three risk factors working together, then that is a marker for heart disease,” she said. “But if you only have high LDL, that alone is not an issue.”
The low-carb diet, she said, simply makes sense. “Learning more about cholesterol in the body was my ‘ah-ha’ moment. I no longer feel like there might be a need to take a statin,” she said. “By reducing the amount of carbs I ate, I cured myself.”
Harvey said she understood that carbs were addictive and there’s an actual withdrawal phase that can be very difficult for people. “For some reason, some people won’t buy into this,” she said. “But I went from being on several different kinds of medications to only using an asthma inhaler as needed,” she said. “I’m not counting calories, eat when I am hungry and my quality of life is so much better.”
For more information about UH-Clear Lake’s Exercise and Nutritional Health Institute, visit www.uhcl.edu/exercise-nutritional-health-institute/about.
