Confessions of a Carb Queen Part Two

I’m not going to give you, dear reader, excerpts from this incredible book, "Confessions of a Carb Queen - The lies we tell others, the lies we tell ourselves," by Susan Blech and Caroline Bock, mostly because I don’t want to ruin the experience for you if you decide to read the book.

And at a more than reasonable cost of $10.85 at Amazon, if you’re at all interested in the emotional and psychological reasons why someone can become morbidly obese (468 pounds) while thinking she’s “just a little chubby” this book is a must. Denial was a large theme throughout this book.

Although a very personal memoir with a vivid inside view to one woman’s experience, this book will certainly ring true for a majority of people who struggle with obesity, binge eating, and dealing with emotions by burying them with food, and denial. Denial and miscalculated portions and calories among dieters and non-dieters alike is epidemic. Dietetic studies done with doubly labeled water, which measures exact caloric intake and burn, show nearly all subjects underestimate their caloric intake by as much as 50 percent. (See Leigh Peele's demonstration video on how small miscalculations in portion size can cost you big).

One curious twist to this book is the title itself. Although Ms. Blech gained her weight binging on fast foods laden with carbohydrates, her foods of choice were also rife with fats, sugar, and just plain high in calories. And how does she lose over 250 pounds? Ironically she’s did it by spending 2 ½ years in Durham, NC on the high carbohydrate and very low protein Duke Rice Diet. She maintains her weight with staples like rice, pasta, vegetables, and fruit. So, technically she is still a carb queen, just a much smaller one.

I know most of my readers are low carbohydrate people. But I’d suggest you keep an open mind when it comes to successful weight loss maintained long term no matter what the program. One message Ms. Blech’s book conveys is the inescapable fact that the roots of over-eating and obesity are emotional. The key to sustained weight loss is less about what diet you use and more about dealing with the underlying causes why you got fat in the first place.

Early on in this book, you learn of Ms. Blech’s less than perfect childhood (like many of us have experienced). Her mother suffered a stroke in her early forties and has spent the rest of her life in nursing facilities and hospitals. Her father raised four children on his own and Susan felt how thin he was stretched. Living in “the house without a mother” was the defining difficulty that sent Ms. Blech on a lifetime of emotional turmoil, low self esteem, bingeing and weight gain.

This memoir is so detailed and descriptive that many passages make you cry, laugh, gasp, or reread them. Ms. Blech and her sister / co-author are gifted writers. Ultimately, Ms. Blech gains control of her bingeing and her emotions. She losses an incredible amount of weight and finds her “grown up” self. One defining moment in her struggle comes after 35, while she’s been at Duke a considerable time. When her father visits and fails to say “I’m proud of you” or do or act as she wants, she binges, gains 40 pounds in a week, cries, and eats more. Her doctor’s gentle advice to “be proud of yourself” resonates to her as “Grow Up.”

And she begins to see her childhood in a new perspective. She lets go of the hurt child she was and begins taking care of the adult she is becoming. Susan Blech is a woman of great courage and naked honesty. She should be considered a genuine heroine in the war on obesity.

If this book doesn’t surprise, shock, and inspire you, make you laugh and cry, and hold you spellbound, you need to take a cue from the Tin Man.

Read People Magazine's article on Susan Blech.

More articles about The Rice Diet and their success stories.

Do You Have Eating Competence?

Frankly I had never heard the term ‘eating competence’ before I ran across the Science Daily piece below, ‘Eating Competence May Lower Risk Of Heart Disease’. But if you Google “eating competence” 17000 plus results come back. Although they can’t all be relevant here’s a few that are:

Enjoying the eating process without focus on dietary restrictions may be key to managing weight and staying healthy, according to researchers.

Eating Competence and the Adolescent: The Investment Pays Off


Reminiscent of mindful eating, eating competence is an innate ability in humans until they’ve been tainted by media, a plethora of processed and junk foods that alter our body chemistry, and a society that makes us overly conscious of our bodies and appetite. We would all benefit from bringing competent eating back into our lives. See Making Food Our Friend.

Eating Competence May Lower Risk Of Heart Disease

Science Daily — People who are confident, comfortable and flexible with their eating habits may be at a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease than people who are not. Researchers at Penn State suggest that a curriculum that helps people understand their eating habits could prove to be an important medical nutrition therapy.

"We wanted to see if people were at higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease if they were not eating competent to begin with," said Barbara Lohse, associate professor of nutritional sciences.

Lohse and her colleagues Sheila G. West, associate professor of biobehavioral health, and Tricia L. Psota, graduate student, measured eating competence among 48 men and women aged 21 to 70, who were at risk for cardiovascular disease. Eating competence, as defined by registered dietitian and mental health professional Ellyn Satter, is a nutritional model -- termed ecSatter -- that incorporates processes such as awareness of hunger, appetite and eating enjoyment with the body's biological tendency to maintain a preferred and stable weight.

"This population was already at high risk due to high levels of LDL -- the bad cholesterol -- and elevated total cholesterol, but did not have any other type of chronic disease," said Lohse.

Based on their responses to a questionnaire on eating competence, and readings of various biological markers of cardiovascular disease, the researchers found that participants who were not eating competent were five times more likely to have a LDL greater than the cutoff prescribed by the American Heart Association, and seven times more likely to have levels greater than that for triglyceride.

Lohse says that rather than only providing people with dietary information to lower their LDL or triglyceride levels, it might be more prudent to train people in becoming eating competent. She, however, cautions that the results offer only a snapshot in time indicating that future longitudinal studies will be required to reach a more comprehensive conclusion.

"What we have shown with this research is that we now have an instrument to measure eating competence. We are developing a curriculum that we are going to test until we know it instills eating competence," said Lohse, whose findings appear in the current issue (September/October) in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. The journal has published a special section on the ecSatter eating competence model and studies evaluating its effectiveness.

Such a curriculum, the Penn State researcher said, might provide a viable successful option to encourage eating behaviors that we know are associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease. The journal's special section is partially funded by Penn State's Department of Nutritional Sciences and College of Health and Human Development and the Sunflower Foundation.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Penn State.