I had been overweight all my life, then ran into a friend who had dropped 70 pounds after going to Overeaters Anonymous.  She had dropped all sugar and flour from her diet, and had lost her taste for them.  Frustrated by my seeming inability to lose weight, I visited a local meeting, where I had an epiphany about my lifelong addiction to sugar.  

After going abstinent from sugar, starches, and processed food, I quickly lost my excess weight, going from 156 to 122.  At the urging of friends, I recorded my experience in a book called "Farewell, Club Perma-Chub: A Sugar Addict's Guide to Easy Weight Loss," which is a short, friendly girlfriend's guide to overcoming sugar addiction. 

CHALLENGES: 
Accepting I was addicted to sugar.  Accepting that I was basically an alcoholic with the white stuff.

ADVICE: 
The biggest obstacle for most people is fear of cravings.  They are accustomed to having the "sweet tooth" and regularly giving into its powerful pull.  But once people confront their chemical addictions, miracles happen with ease, because once we pull that invisible syringe out of our arms, the sky is the limit in terms of improved nutrition and reclaiming our biochemistry.

In December of 2010 I decided that it was long past time for me to do something about my health. After a bout with physical exhaustion and 2 very unforgiving pregnancies I found myself 100+ pounds over the limit. I felt terrible on a daily basis. I was no longer the active, vibrant person I used to be. I wanted to change. I NEEDED to change. So I downloaded a calorie counting program for my iPod, weighed and measured, and made a plan that I thought I could stick to and get results from. 

For 2 months I diligently counted calories, keeping within daily and weekly limits. I also did some mild exercise 3-4 times per week: walking, Wii Fit, DVD workouts. My cardiovascular health began showing some minor improvement, but my weight was not changing and I really wasn't feeling very good. I was hungry ALL the time. Even after just finishing a meal. My results were not great. Heck, they weren't even good. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a good friend of mine was just finishing up a paleo challenge with her CrossFit Box. They started with a Whole30 followed by 60 days of Paleo. She was having amazing results, so I decided to give it a go. 

On February 25, 2010 I started a Whole30 of my own. The first few days I felt a bit anxious and had a pretty bad headache. But by the end of the first week I was feeling wonderful. I no longer had that constant hunger that I had been struggling with on a calorie restricted, yet very high carbohydrate, diet. 30 days flew by and away went the first 10 pounds right along with them. I gave myself a 'reward day' and then immediately started another Whole30. This time I lost another 10 pounds! 

The third month I went straight paleo - allowing for a bit more leniency in the foods I was eating. The fourth month I started running and continued with my paleo eating.  By July of 2010 I had lost 50 pounds. I almost couldn't believe it. All I was doing was eating real food. And as much of it as I wanted to. And that, combined with moderate exercise was giving me the results I was looking for! People were taking notice. I was thrilled!

Over the next few months I continued my running and also went to my local CrossFit Box for a month - which was where my exercise routine went from moderate to more intense. I did another Whole30 concurrent with that month of CrossFit and lost another 10 pounds in 30 days. 

In September I slowed down a bit, continuing to run and doing some CrossFit style working out, but not as intense a schedule as the previous month. And I definitely loosened up the rules a bit about what I could eat. I still lost weight this month, but only a few pounds. 

In October I started the P90X fitness plan and stuck with my paleo way of eating. I let myself make some very high carb choices during the holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas - the trifecta of high carb incidents; but 95% of the time I was strictly paleo/primal. One of the major changes that I made during this 90 days was that I added cheese, butter, and occasional white potatoes into my diet. My results were not quite what I expected, but were pleasant nonetheless. I only lost a net of 2 pounds in 90 days, but my BODY changed dramatically with a loss of 10" from waist, hips, bust, arms, and legs. 

I whooped it up on New Year's Day and on January 2nd, 2012 I started another Whole30. I needed to 'clean the machine' from all the off plan stuff I had indulged in over the holidays. I am currently 22 days in and 5 pounds down. I feel great every day. I have the energy to keep up with my daughters and my household and still get in a good workout every day. 

All along I was just eating real food: meat, eggs, good fats, vegetables, and a limited amount of fruit, nuts, and seeds. Easy and delicious food that was simple to prepare. 

The results speak for themselves: To date I have lost 72 pounds and more than 50 inches from my body. I am supremely healthy: I have not been sick once since beginning my paleo journey. I feel and look younger. I am vibrant and have energy like I haven't had in years. I would and do recommend a paleo lifestyle to anyone, whether they need to lose weight or not.

CHALLENGES: 
Doing so in a family where I am the only one eating paleo.

ADVICE: 
My biggest obstacle was the mentality that going paleo was a 'diet' wherein when I was finished losing my weight that I would go back to eating a Standard American Diet again. I am over that hump. Paleo is not a diet for me, but rather a complete lifestyle change. My advice to someone who is new to this is to try to embrace paleo as a lifestyle rather than a diet. Paleo teaches you how to eat foods that work with your body instead of against it. Once you feel this good, you never want to go back to feeling like garbage every day. 

I started on a low-carb transition after Christmas of 2010. I was 255 lbs. I ate and drank (alcohol...I always drank diet sodas) whatever I wanted but during the work week I would actually eat very little. My breakfast many days would consist of a "Fiber One" bar and my lunch would be a "Cup o noodles". I am a soccer player thus I ran quite a bit and due to what I assume was gout my feet hurt all the time. 

I requested the book "The 4-hour body" as a Christmas gift and read most of it within 2 days. It gives many low carb diet recommendations but includes a lot of beans. I followed this diet for about a month and didn't really start losing weight until I removed the beans I was eating at every meal. I stumbled across Gary Taubes's article from the New York Times magazine and then onto the Paleo diet websites where I read and read and read. I couldn't get enough. 

I added more fat to my diet and completely removed any source of carbs that wasn't a green vegetable. I started losing weight immediately and it kept coming off. With almost no effort. I was blown away. I reached 193 lbs sometime in late September 2011 and maintained 195-200 lbs through Christmas and now have resumed losing weight and hope to be down to 185 or so by spring break.

CHALLENGES: 
Cooking constantly was the biggest challenge.

Almost 3 years ago I was sick and Obese. My doctor said I was a ticking time bomb with very high blood pressure and high blood sugar, high ldl cholesterol, daily asthma attacks. I was in pretty rough shape. I am 5'7" and I weighed 260lbs. My back ached so bad I could barely walk a block. 

A friend of mine introduced me to LCHF by giving me The Protein Power Life Plan by Drs. Michael and Mary-Dan Eades. I jumped on board immediately. Cleaned out my cupboards, fridge and pantry and started of anything with wheat, grains sugar and vegetable oils. I applied what I learned and went cold turkey, no weaning. The first week I list 7lbs. I continued to lose a pound a day for a month. 

I was down 60lbs in 3 months. I am now down 92lbs and keeping it off. I no long have High blood pressure, my pre-diabetes is gone, asthma gone, haven't been sick in almost 3 years since starting LCHF. I am healthier than I have ever been.

CHALLENGES: 
Preparing meals for family members not adhering to lowcarb. Dining out.

ADVICE TO OTHERS: 
Remove all processed foods. Buy and consume only real food from meats, fowl, fish, butter, heavy cream cheese, natural fats, vegetables and occasional berries. Educatoe yourself, read books and blogs about health and nutrition. Good books to start with are: Why we get fat by Gary Taubes, Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis, The Protein Power Life Plan by Drs. Michael and Mary-Dan Eades, Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. Start with these. There is more, many more good books.

Thank you.

We have now accrued over 3700 subjects from 71 countries around the world, to our knowledge making us one of the largest - and the only international - weight loss registry. We have struggled for years trying to come up with the best way to use all the data for the largest benefit to all who have registered, and to all that have not.

We will now be opening up our database to you. Doctors, researchers, bloggers, journalists, or any citizen scientist interesting in doing research with our database.

LEARN MORE >>

We have representation from all 50 U.S. states and 70 countries and regions, including:

You can see our complete results here.

We are very excited to see that our distribution among multiple variables very closely parallels that of the general population. Here is our height distribution:

The average height was 67.9 inches (5'8") which is almost identical to the average of males and females around the world. The median was 68, with a standard deviation of 4.03.

Male and female representation was nearly identical:

The average weight loss among all members - regardless of their weight loss goals - was 30.5 pounds, with a median weight loss of 25, and standard deviation of 26.9. 

Weight change ranged from losing up to 300 pounds all the way to gaining 78. Many of these subjects are eating low carb or paleo for improved athletic performance, improved health etc and did not try to lose weight, which may explain the enormous variation.


Do your own research
"Is there any relationship between weighing yourself and weight loss?"

"How did the Atkins vs Paleo diet compare?" 

"How do eating behaviors in Africa differ from those in the United States?"

"Do people in Alabama eat differently than Massachusetts?"

"Was calorie counting associated with greater weight loss?


Answer questions like these, as well as anything you can possibly think of that may come from our questionnaire. We can do things like descriptive statistics, comparing multiple variables, regressions, etc.

Free response analysis

The most powerful, interesting data we have discovered is through our free response search algorithm that finds every mention of a certain disease/condition among the 1,200 pages worth of text submitted by our members. This is an incredible tool for developing hypotheses. For example, this is a list of what the first 1100 members said about hunger, and a few quotes from that list:

Get raw data and analyze it yourself

If you are interested in getting the anonymized raw data, we can license it to you for a reasonable fee. Or if you want all of the above, we can do that too.

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We want this data to be used by the world, for a better understanding of this way of eating, and we think this is the best way to do it. If you are interested, please fill out this form and we will get back to you shortly.

No go and enjoy this snack.