When it comes to your health, you should get to decide what’s ‘practical’

Earlier this week, I saw a tweet made by a medical doctor who is board certified in Obesity Medicine, in which he said “In a world where ultra-processed foods are cheap and accessible this notion that ppl should ‘just cut them out’ bc they are problematic is not practical for most.”

It’s a theme echoed frequently throughout the medical establishment, that when it comes to food that is killing us, it’s “impractical” to make changes that could sustainably reverse obesity and restore metabolic health.

Who’s to decide what is “practical” when someone else’s life literally hangs in the balance?

In October, 2018, I received a phone call from the surgeon who had a few days earlier removed a mass from my neck, telling me that I had cancer.

A couple weeks later, my wife and I sat in an oncologist’s office and listened as she explained a treatment plan she believed would cure the disease that was threatening my life.

Compared with “eliminating processed food from my diet”, the treatment plan she was recommending seemed considerably more ‘impractical’.

The treatment would involve six chemotherapy sessions and 28 radiation sessions, which together would result in chronic fatigue, complete loss of the sense of taste, and excruciating pain in the throat that went on for weeks.

The treatment also involved countless blood draws, CT scans, a couple of surgical procedures, and medical camera devices pushed through my nose and into my sinus cavity.

The cancer treatment was successful and I never second guessed my decision to follow my doctor’s advice.

Looking back, I think there was probably a reason she didn’t tell me that her recommendation would be extremely painful and “impractical.” Instead, she said “You have a cancer that if left untreated will kill you, but we have a treatment plan that can leave you cancer-free.”

Perhaps one day more practitioners will join the ones in the low-carb community and treat obesity and metabolic disease with the seriousness that these conditions deserve. The patient will of course make the final decision on their course of treatment, but let’s not have practitioners telling them that the path to success is ‘impractical’.

Having experienced both cancer treatment and giving up hyper-palatable, hyper-processed foods, I can tell you that when the alternative is loss of life, or even just a loss of QUALITY of life, I highly recommend both, regardless of how ‘impractical’ they may seem.