Before I started Banting, I had been a runner and inclined to fitness all my life. I have a compulsory fitness component to my life in that I am a Special Forces Operator that need to stay at a minimum level of fitness. I was an active participant in road running and ran several marathons, including twice the Two Oceans and twice the Comrades. I have always had a ‘sweet tooth’ and fond of pastas so the idea of carbo-loading was naturally appealing to me. Despite my best efforts at staying and keeping fit, I had to experience my thighs “love handles” growing away from my body especially after reaching the forties. I also started picking up quite a stomach. I started experiencing discomfort while sleeping, my legs seems to have lost their feeling and I often woke up with pins and needles. The sensation after eating a lot of bread or potato or in general a high carb meal really started becoming problematic. Discomfort and heartburn as well as deadly tiredness became regular symptoms of mine. I started picking up weight despite my best efforts to train hard and run or exercise it off. The worst part is that I often found myself over indulging when I consume a lot of sugar and carbohydrate rich foods. The craving for more and the lack of a feeling of being satisfied often got me in trouble with my wife. Compulsive eating habits were part of my daily regime often taking a second or a third helping during the evening meal.
Then I heard about the LCHF way of eating from a friend and from the internet and due to my long standing respect for Prof Noakes, I use to own Lore of Running and also bought it as a present for friends, I started reading articles, googled podcasts and eventually bought The Real Meal Revolution.
What happened next was I really became convinced of the theory behind the LCHF way and started experimenting with it seriously. I cut all external sources of sugar and starch and moved over to a LCHF way of eating consisting of a solid breakfast of eggs, bacon or liver, tomato (sometimes fried onion), aubergine, avocado in season etc. I started becoming a serious coffee drinker, preferring my coffee with full cream milk and cream (I like to froth my milk and cream).
My snack at work consists of a couple of LCHF, nutty crackers (containing seeds and psyllium husk) that my wife make and I often make my own hummus from left over vegetables from the evening meal (according to the recipe in Real Meal Revolution). I found that the moment I started consuming psyllium husk, my constipation ended! I consider psyllium husk as one of the secret ingredients of a LCHF diet. A typical supper would consist of a combination of the following vegetables: courgettes, pumpkin, cabbage, onion, sweet potato, oven baked or stir fried in coconut oil with a protein source like red meat stew or mince. It became such a pleasantry to not have cut away the fatty parts and this became my preferred portions. I regularly consume fresh vegetables with olive oil too.
The physical and mental results after a year of changing my eating pattern to LCHF:
I started of in April 2014 with a body weight of 103,4 kg, definite mental and physical symptoms of carbohydrate intolerance, tiredness and a general unsatisfied experience of food and the effect of exercise. I was visibly overweight, prone to gluttonous eating patterns, hunger cravings and tiredness.
After a very short time I physically started experienced the following:
I was losing weight without necessarily exercising more or better.
I was not feeling hungry for hours after having a good LCHF meal and my cravings for late night snakes or in-between eating disappeared.
I was able to cut out in between snacking and eating due to feeling satisfied for far longer.
I did not crave sugar anymore. A good cup of coffee with cream and full cream milk would almost act as a meal replacement for hours.
It was simple to become a ‘one platter’ something I could never succeed in doing while eating a high carb diet.
My energy levels picked up and I never experienced fatigue and tiredness after a meal anymore, on the contrary, eating the LCHF way leaves you satisfied and energized after a meal!
I could stay awake far easier in the evenings and experience less trouble waking up early.
Exercise became a pleasure again and not a burden.
I measure my athletic performance with the Voortrekker Monument Park run on a Saturday morning, a five km time trial on a challenging route. For the sake of empirical evidence, I will include my times in this testimony:
Voortrekker Monument park run results pages
Minnaar FULLARD – 13 runs at Voortrekker Monument
13 park runs total
Most recently ran in VM45-49 age category
Summary Stats
Best Average
(mean) Worst
Time 24:44 31:43 48:16
Age Grading 59.16 % 48.61 % 30.32 %
Overall Position 34 96.69 354
Gender Position 29 62.38 176
Best Annual Achievements
Year “ Best Time “ Best Age Grading “
2014 00:28:06 52.08%
2015 00:24:44 59.16%
Run Date “Event Number “ Pos “ Time “ Age Grade “ PB? “
25/04/2015 72 39 24:44 59.16% PB
11/04/2015 71 48 25:51 56.61% PB
28/02/2015 67 54 26:34 55.08%
21/02/2015 66 72 27:57 52.36%
31/01/2015 63 43 26:16 55.71%
24/01/2015 62 54 26:37 54.98%
10/01/2015 60 50 26:07 56.03% PB
03/01/2015 59 34 27:21 53.50% PB
27/12/2014 58 86 38:45 37.76%
20/12/2014 57 129 44:10 33.13%
25/10/2014 52 51 28:06 52.08% PB
18/10/2014 51 243 41:37 35.16% PB
11/10/2014 50 354 48:16 30.32%
From the above it should be evident that my time on the 5km event started with a walk of 48 minutes and is currently at sub-25 minutes!
I have constantly broken my PB and am set on getting on at 20 minutes later in this year and I’m turning 50 on 2 August.
I have managed to get back to doing eight chin-ups on a bar, the entry level requirement for Special Forces that I was able to do 20+ years ago!
I weigh in at 85 kg’s and I’m still gradually losing without effort!
I even cheat with a bit of homemade fudge or koeksusters that my wife makes now days! but I am educated for life to know that sugar and starches are my worst enemies.
All in all a great thumbs up for the Banting LCHF lifestyle. It changed my life for the better in more ways than one. I don’t need any empirical evidence or convincing that this was the right thing for me to do. I am my own empirical evidence!
Thanks to the honest people out there like Prof Noakes, that showed us the truth about starches and sugar and refined foods.
If there is any court case, I believe the refined food industry and the medical professionals that backed their false claims and sold it to the public as gospel should be in the accused bench.
Stoning or discrediting ground breaking scientists like Prof Noakes, will go down in history as religious and scientific persecution.
This is my true story
Regards
Minnaar Fullard