The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

Same here. I lost 75 pounds on the keto diet. It's not so much a diet for me anymore, it's just how I eat. I wrote about my experience here: https://thedon.me/2015/10/07/i-lost-63-pounds-heres-how/

> my understanding was that ultimately whatever macromolecules you are consuming, lipids, proteins, or carbohydrates all only get absorbed into the blood stream as glucose

Amino acids, glucose and fatty acids are all ancient molecular structures known to all cellular life and thus can and do circulate in our blood at all times. If everything got converted into glucose during digestion, that would mean we could live entirely off candy fortified with vitamins and minerals, and produce all essential fatty acids and all essential amino acids from the glucose. Not so.

PROTEINS provide amino acids, basic building blocks for near everything organic about our body (or all cellular life-forms really), not just muscles but hormones neurons etc etc. The body may convert protein into glucose but this laborious process occurs to any significant degree mostly under a prolonged lo-fat-lo-carb-hi-protein regimen or plain starvation conditions (ie post-fasting, not just normal fasting with plenty of fat reserves left, which is simply ketosis, hence protein-sparing and fat+ketone-burning). If so, this doesn't occur in the digestive tract, since glucose production (or provision from glycogen) is the job of the liver.

LIPIDS aren't and cannot be converted to glucose in the digestive tract, or we wouldn't store body fat to begin with and also have essential fatty acids circulating at all times now, would we? BUT 2 triglycerides CAN donate their glycerol backbones for the production of 1 glucose molecule, and I believe this is constantly happening in ketosis when glycogen is depleted. Again, glucose production/provisioning is a liver job, not a digestive tract job.

CARBohydrates of most any kind ARE converted to glucose in the digestive tract. Exceptions: fiber travels on to the colon for excretion or to be fermented by bacterial action (into I believe short-chain fatty acids and B/K vitamins) and fructose is "metabolized" into triglycerides by the liver. Since the blood needs a certain glucose level at all times (around 5g-ish), circulating glucose in excess is immediately shuttled into first: any cells that are receptive to the concurrent insulin signaling, second: glycogen storage (liver and muscles), third as a last resort converted into body fat.

> As someone who has shifted to a sugar-free, high-fat lifestyle (keto diet), I can attest to the fact that sugar really is the ultimate evil in terms of health and nutrition.

It should be noted that the important thing here was probably shifting away from sugar, rather than shifting toward high fat. For example...

> I've lost about 100lbs in 2.5 years... The only thing that I really changed was doing a Keto diet

I've lost 86 pounds (39 kg) in the last 217 days (594 milliyears). The only thing I really purposefully changed initially was trying to keep daily calories from carbohydrates at under 40% of my total calories. I also tried to keep fat under 50%.

As a side effect, I found myself satisfied with fewer calories, and so the weight started coming off.

I mostly did this by making sure each individual food I ate was within my overall carb and fat limits. If I wanted something that was outside the range, I'd try to balance it out with other things in the same meal so that the meal as a whole would be within the limits. For the last meal or snack of the day that was relaxed and the requirement was just that the day as a whole be within limits.

> I do have a hard time with vegetables because I don't shop often enough for them not to go to waste, but I'll usually handle that with a salad for lunch.

Have you tried frozen vegetables? Some of the "steam in bag" kind that are meant for the microwave actually come out quite tasty and are very convenient.

I have! Every once in a while I'll grab a few bags and they aren't nearly as bad as I had assumed. But then I kind of skip that aisle (w/ frozen dinner and ice cream where I am) altogether and forget that they're an option...

I oughta get back to 'em.