As health professionals we have an interest in diet as we believe diet, exercise and sleep to be the most important modifiable factors impacting your health. We first came across the low carbohydrate high fat diet (LCHF) in 2018. We felt an overall improvement in our health, energy levels, weight and sleeping. Since this stage we have gone on to learn more and more about LCHF and how the food industry has lead us astray.
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Dr Peter Brukner, the ‘founder of sports medicine’ in Australia, creator of Olympic Park Sports Medicine, left his lucrative role as sports doctor for Cricket Australia and became a full time advocate to reduce Australia’s sugar intake by half. Sophie was lucky enough to watch him evolve through this process, seeing him lecture on the topic 4 times over a number of years. Peter has joined many other top doctors around the world to look at the impact of high carbohydrate (high sugar) diets on obesity, type two diabetes and overall health. The LCHF diet is essentially returning to how we used to eat, before obesity was rampant and is not a diet so much as understanding what is healthy food and what is not. Learning from science, not from what the food industry markets to us. It is about understanding that starch breaks down to sugar and it doesn’t matter if that is found in your white bread or your banana, it still breaks down to sugar.
We are particularly interested in the LCHF diet as it also aligns with a low inflammatory diet and this can have a large impact on musculoskeletal and arthritic conditions. Excessive weight has been proven to negatively impact your joint health and therefore we find it important to talk about your weight and diet as part of your injury management. It also impacts the health of a diabetic and Dr David Unwin, your friendly local GP from the UK has had huge success with reversing type two diabetes via diet alone (ie drug free reversal of type two diabetes). This again links to Tom’s work as a Podiatrist providing skin and nail care for diabetics who are more at risk of ulcers and sensation/circulation complications. We had the pleasure of hearing Dr Unwin speak and he is a gentle and thoughtful Dr that has changed how he practices and truly listens to his patients. We highly recommend his content, particularly his youtube videos if you are a type two diabetic.
As we are not dieticians or nutritionists we have put together a library of resources to read and learn from. We also have close contacts of people in these industries and can point you in the direction of a helping hand. It’s also important to note that different people have different food tolerances and this will impact what food is right for you. Chose your medium, don’t try to read/listen/watch to them all!
Books
A Fat Lot of Good, Peter Brukner
Good Calories Bad Calories, Gary Taubes
The Big Fat Surprise, Nina Teicholz
Websites and links
Low Carb Downunder, this website also has a list of Australian LCHF health professionals. If you are looking for a particular health professional please feel free to also speak with us.
Sugar by half
Fat lot of good: website links, podcasts
Diet doctor: A low-carb diet for beginners
Intermittent fasting for beginners
Detailed guide to fasting
Facebook pages to follow
Sugar by half
Dr James Muecke, 2020 Australian of the Year
Diet doctors
MovingDietician
Videos
Dr David Unwin: HOPE on the horizon. Type 2 diabetes.
Dr. David Unwin & Dr. Jen Unwin – ‘Behaviour Change ‘In a nutshell’ & Picking our low carb battles’
Dr David Unwin: Explaining low carb in a simple way
Low Carb Down Under
Podcasts
The Fat Lot of Good website has a great list of podcasts
GP Podcast: Low carb for diabetes: Part 1, Part 2
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-Sophie Woodhouse
Physiotherapist Shepparton, GV Sportscare
-Tom Davey
Podiatrist Shepparton, GV Sportscare
Image sources:
–Sugar by half FB page
–Fat Lot of Good website
–Diet doctor FB page
–Low Carb Down Under website