Cut the sugar and starch

In 1863 a London undertaker named William Banting, so heavy he had to walk downstairs backward, published a sixteen-page pamphlet describing how he'd lost fifty pounds. Letter on Corpulence. His doctor had told him to stop eating bread, sugar, potatoes and beer, and to eat meat, fish, vegetables and a little fruit instead. It worked, and for a century afterward in Britain, "banting" meant dieting. In 1972 an American cardiologist named Robert Atkins revived it for a new generation, and low-carbohydrate eating has been in and out of fashion ever since.

The idea is simple. Carbohydrates, sugars and starches, raise blood sugar and insulin; insulin stores fat and blocks its release. Cut the carbohydrate, and insulin falls, and the body runs more on fat. A moderate low-carb diet lands somewhere around fifty to a hundred grams of carbohydrate a day: no sugar, no bread, no pasta, no potatoes, but vegetables, fruit in moderation, nuts, dairy, meat, fish and eggs.

The research, after decades of argument, has mostly settled into something undramatic. Low-carb diets work well for weight loss, especially at first and especially for people with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, where the blood sugar effects are substantial. Over a year or two, they perform about as well as other sensible diets; what matters most is which one a person can keep. The scariest claims against them, on heart health, haven't held up; neither have the grandest claims for them.

Vault Human holds it as one sound door among several. For some bodies, particularly ones that struggle with blood sugar, it's the key that turns. The set point from day six still applies, and so does the thermostat.