Low carb hight fat diets are becoming very popular again. Sports teams, professional athletes and everyday people are looking into low carb high fat (LCHF) diets. Many attribute the early recognition for low carb dieting to Robert Atkins and his Atkins Nutritional Approach. Atkins first wrote Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in 1972 and later revamped it in 2002 with Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. Many have come along since and low carbohydrate diets are catching on.
Although Dr. Atkins is credited with some of the early successes of low carbohydrate eating, he was not the first nor will he be the last to advocate cutting out the carbs. The Atkins diet is essentially a 20th Century version of a system that was made popular by a mid-19th Century Victorian by the name of William Banting.
William Banting
The story of William Banting begins in London in 1862. He was a large man, almost 202lb, which was accentuated by his relativity small 5ft 5in height. Coming from a line of royal undertakers, Banting’s family were responsible for the funerals of many royals including Prince Albert and the Iron Duke. Banting enjoyed a successful career, even gaining credit for coming up with ideas for a modern funeral for the royals, and by his retirement in late 1862 he had reason to be proud.
However, his retirement was anything but happy and he became depressed about his weight. The notion of the fat and jolly Victorian is hugely overplayed and there was a growing awareness at the time that being overweight was unhealthy. Banting attempted everything to try and liberate himself from ‘the evil’, as he would call his bulk but to no avail.
Banting became so large that he couldn’t reach down to tie his shoelaces and had to go down the staircase backwards to help ease weight on his knees. He became despaired, his sight and hearing were becoming poor and he couldn’t get rid of any of the fat he desired to lose. It was at this time, in August 1862, that he met a man named William Harvey.
William Harvey and Claude Bernard
Harvey was a well-regarded ear surgeon, a social activist and a good friend of writer, Charles Dickens. He was an adventurer and from early in his life enjoyed regular trips to Paris, the forefront of experimental medicine at the time. On a stroll one evening in 1856, he saw an announcement pinned up advertising a lecture by a Dr Claude Bernard.
Bernard was a failed playwright who became a great name of 19th Century medicine and was also a vivisectionist. He believed that the only way to fully understand illness was through a method of blunt observation of bodily actions. This made him very controversial and unpopular in his time, yet it is a chance discovery that was made from dissecting an animal that Bernard is most remembered.
One night, Bernard and his assistant had taken the liver of a dog, washed it out and applied clamps to both ends of the veins to stop any contamination. He was then suddenly called away, forgetting to remove the clamps. When he returned the morning after, he measured the levels of glucose in the liver and to his surprise found that the liver had managed to produce its own glucose. From this observation, Bernard discovered that the liver in fact manufactures glucose and stocks its own glycogen, the main fuel of the body.
The Banting Diet
While listening to Bernard lecture, Harvey had a flash of inspiration that would change William Banting’s life. In January 1863, while calling for one of his doctors, Banting was informed the doctor was away on holiday and was referred to a Mr. Harvey. Harvey immediately saw the nature of Banting’s problem and proposed an unusual plan. He used a horse as an analogy, describing how the horse had a round belly and that it was simply down to the horse eating the wrong type of food. The horse was eating grains that contained excess starch and sugar as opposed to its natural food hay. He told Banting to treat his body in the same way as the horse.
Banting was given basic no-nos: milk, sugar, bread, butter, potatoes and beer. The diet worked incredibly well and in under a year Banting had shed 46lb. His hearing and vision also improved and he declared himself on “a tram-way of happiness”. Banting was so ecstatic about this incredible diet he felt the urge to spread the news.
A Letter on Corpulence
He published a brief pamphlet, dubbed ‘A Letter on Corpulence’ which was so popular he produced six different editions in two years, selling over fifty thousand copies. By 1866, London and beyond were wild about Banting’s diet. Much like the Atkins diet of today it appealed to everybody, even the would-be King of France, Comte de Chambord, used the diet to get his weight down in preparation for taking the throne.
Banting’s greatest critics were, much as Atkins’s today, the medical and government institutions that speculated the system was dangerous. With more research and a reevaluation of research that has been out there for years we are finally realizing that Harvey and Banting had it right from the beginning. Low carbohydrate diets can be very be very helpful in the normalization of insulin and glucose levels and often the loss of excess weight. Low carb high fat eating is a healthy and very safe way to help your body return to the way it was intended to take in food. So get started now with your low carb high fat diet and start enjoying life!
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