Straight Talk & No Nonsense Low-Carb Commentary by Kathleen Lunson

Kathleen Lunson doesn’t pull any punches.

She offers straight talk and no-nonsense advice about losing weight, food addiction, New Year’s resolutions and the low-carb lifestyle.

Here are all the posts by Kathleen on CarbSmart.com.

• Sex And Food – There are certain instinctive drives that all human beings share. Hunger is one of them. Eating is necessary for our survival as individuals, so we eat. We can’t live without eating, so the drive to eat is hardwired into our psyches. As individuals, we can live without sex, but as a species, we cannot, so that drive is also hardwired into our psyche.
• And The Oscar Goes To… – We all know what it feels like to be overweight. The self-disgust. The shame. The exhaustion. Unpleasant physical symptoms abound; maybe we even have to have our blood taken regularly to test for diabetes. A trip to the doctor’s office includes the inevitable rationalizations about heavy clothing as we step on the scale and later dire pronouncements of doom and gloom from the doctor if we don’t do something.
• When I Cheat – I’ve been on low carb many times in my life, but when I started trying to lose weight in 1996, I finally stuck with it. I weighed 208 when I started. In December 1998 I got down to 137. I’ve been maintaining ever since then.
• Honesty IS The Best Policy – Webster’s defines honesty as “the state or quality of being honest; specifically refraining from lying, cheating and stealing, being truthful, trustworthy or upright, sincere, fair, straightforward.” The original meaning of the word was akin to the word honor.
• Religion And Weight Loss – Admit it. It crossed your mind to think that a mandatory burka would cover a multitude of figure flaws, didn’t it? Did you ever consider joining a convent just for the baggy robe, just as a way to give up on trying to look good?
• No One Ever Makes A New Year’s Resolution Like This – No one ever makes a new year’s resolution like this: “This year I resolve to find a product which will magically turn me thin, and I resolve to buy it.” No one ever makes a new year’s resolution like this, either: “This year I will find a magic expert to take over my life and by following them exactly I will lose weight.”
• Once An Addict, Always An Addict? – I think it was in 1993 that I began to play Tetris for hours and hours every day. I would play even though my thumb and hand ached from holding the controller. I strove for the highest score over and over again, and was sick to find that once past a certain score the little video celebration at the end of a good game never got any more elaborate. I played to the ultimate celebration level on game A and then game B, and then I sought over and over again to top my previous high scores.
• You Can’t Always Get What You Want – You can’t always get what you want. And, it seems to me, that even if you try, sometimes you can’t get what you need, Mick Jagger’s opinion notwithstanding.
• Why Would I Want To Stay Fat? – If we’re so sure we want to be thinner, why do we so often do things that are counterproductive to that? Why do we cheat? Why do we refuse further tweaking of our low carb way of eating when we suspect it would help us get thinner?
• Two Years Of Maintenance – In 1996 I weighed 208 (or maybe more) and wore size 22 jeans. Two years ago this month I hit a body fat percentage of 24% and realized that at 137 I had reached goal. At 5′-4″, I wore sizes 8 and 10.