A lot of people comment, watch, and balk at the diet logging I'm doing via #140 on Twitter.

My goal is to reduce my sleep apnea, eliminate my diabetic symptoms without drugs and permanently establish a healthier lifestyle. I believe the best way to do this is to get to a reasonable weight as fast as possible to reduce stress on my joints, heart and eliminate disease related to my elevated blood sugars and insulin resistance. Moderate exercise and weight loss, even twenty or thirty pounds, can practically eliminate diabetic symptoms.

Statistically, nobody has a success rate that proves long-term lifestyle works better than rapid or medical intervention. Most fat people get fatter. It's a sad but factual reality. Since so much risk follows obesity it is a good idea for each person to find a solution that works for them and do it immediately. The longer you are overweight, the worse your prognosis.

It should be noted that mine is not a diet I recommend people continue long-term. My diet is intended to get me to a goal weight where I intend to eat a more "balanced" diet. Thirty pounds over a one or two month period is ten times easier for me to suffer than six or twelve months. My diet of carbohydrate and caloric restriction won't kill anyone that shouldn't be on tight medical supervision. If this diet could cause you serious damage, you've got bigger issues. Our bodies are designed to survive winters without fruit, months without vegetables, and I've personally known people to go more than a month with absolutely no solid food at all suffering no serious complications. Many people, especially "health experts" grossly overstate the risk of extreme diets for short periods of time. It's just not that big a deal.

If you work in the fields ten hours a day, it's likely that a few thousand calories from grains and refined foods won't cause much damage. If you're an average American, where physical labor is a thing we heard our grandparents speak of, it will likely kill you. The food pyramid was a marketing campaign put together by the agricultural department. No scientific research backs it as a healthy standard for modern diet. Practical thinking tells us that since man didn't always have refined breads and pastas, or even the ability to farm rice, he lived on something for thousands of years before modern farming yielded the high-carb nutrient rich grain products we enjoy today. They're great for keeping us alive during famine, awesome in their ability to convert more of our hours to things other than the pursuit of animals and berries. But, they just don't prove out to be a good combination en mass with a modern lifestyle. Olympic athletes should probably consume carb rich foods, but the rest of us should probably dramatically reduce our grain intake.

My long-term diet can't include a food pyramid structure of high-carb foods. It will kill me. So, grains, rice, etc. are forever a very small part of my long-term diet.

I'm under the care of a good physician and he'll tell me if my diet is killing me. Right now he's screaming "you're fat and bad things will happen if you don't do something radical and immediate!"

Of course, Doc would be happy to just prescribe me a pile of pills. He doesn't believe I have self-control. But, he agrees self-control would be preferable.

There's a valid argument that you should simply balance your behavior, lifestyle and food to maximize your quality of life and let the weight come off as it naturally does for those who live active lifestyles. I think that's valid for people that are a few pounds overweight, perhaps even heavy. It's a bit polianic for someone facing dire health conditions due to obesity and onset diabetes.

Rapid weight loss beats no weight loss. One of the successes of gastric bypass surgery is its rapidity. Fat people are shocked that they can in fact be leaner and smaller than they ever dreamed. It dramatically changes their self-view. This often results in aggressive daily work to maintain what a physical trick provided them. It would be preferable that they avoid surgery and lose the weight slowly and properly. But, while they slowly lose the weight, old habits risk reversal of success. I'm simply not convinced a slow yo-yo is healthier than rapid weight loss, if the potential success is long-term life changes.

There are some realities healthy people ignore regarding morbidly obese people and people that are both obese and suffering sleep apnea, discomfort, diabetes, hypertension, elevated fat lipids, and a host of other disturbing medical conditions that follow obesity. First, it sounds great to tell an obese person they should exercise, jogging with an extra fifty or hundred pounds on your body can do serious damage. Healthy exercise isn't as easy for an obese person as it is a slightly overweight person. It's an impractical demand for most obese people. If there were a way to peel off the huge burden of an extra fifty or hundred pounds the permanent lifestyle choices we all agree fat people should adopt become much more practical and offer less risk of permanent injury.

Rapid weight loss beats up the body's organs. Without getting into an extrapolated medical debate for which I'm not qualified (neither are most who would choose to debate this topic), let's agree that rapid weight loss is rough on the body. However, prolonged elevated blood sugars do terrible damage. A drastic reduction in carbs instantly eliminates that effect. Additionally, drugs aren't required to regulate blood sugars in DM2 patients that drop carbs. That reduces stress on the body. People seldom weigh the damage medication causes, because the alternatives are so awful. But, between carb restriction and medications that we know cause serious bodily injury, there's not a lot of evidence that drugs and higher carbs are the preferable combination.

You're welcome to watch. I hope you'll take this subject seriously if you're obese or overweight. And, I encourage you avoid often abused terms like moderation or balanced. I didn't opt for gastric bypass and I'm doing it drug free. So to me, this is very much a choice of moderation and balance. I'll publish my blood tests and weights at thirty, sixty, and ninety days.