keto diet BLT salad

Who says you can’t eat well on a keto diet? A bowl of low-carb bacon, undressed lettuce, and diced tomatoes is an elegant, satisfying, and delicious way to follow the keto path. Don’t forget to put a drop of sesame seed oil on it for enhanced flavor. If you find bacon too rich, try crab legs instead.

The diet world before keto

The keto diet began over 30 years ago as a way to enjoy good health without feeling starved. Then you won’t feel like complaining about keto! Just for laughs, let’s take a look at historical diets.

Americans spent $61 billion on diet products in 2019

Weight and beauty overshadow fitness and health. 78% of Americans are overweight or obese. Why do they fail to lose weight while spending a lot on diet books, beverages, meal replacements, diet foods, and fads?

The UK Daily Mail says the average woman tries 61 diets by 45

Companies target overweight people with guilt, shame, and self-hatred. “If we just bought whatever new enhanced diet food or regimen they’re pushing, we could be smaller, younger, and more loved,” writes Louise Foxcroft. 

97% of people who lose weight return it within three years and try the latest diet. “Big food” politics and views about why individuals battle with weight have clouded obesity science. 

Even though they’re the majority, overweight people feel unattractive and endure workplace discrimination. The Rudd Center ranks obesity-based hiring discrimination above race, sexual orientation, and disability. In 1997, teenage females dreaded being overweight more than cancer, losing their parents, or nuclear war. 

Diet Chaos began when?

Why is obesity worsening despite tens of thousands of diets and products? What happens? 

Continue reading about Western Civilization’s horrible eating history to test your ability to distinguish fads and scam artists from realistic and scientific ones. 

“Does this loincloth make my butt appear big?” said the first caveperson. Maybe. Illiterate cave dwellers did not record their diets. Survival required eating whenever possible. And whatever possible. Including each other in times of severe famine. Greeks and Romans expressed themselves by the body beautiful. Not the body bloated. Greeks believed healthy bodies meant healthy minds. Your mind was brilliant because you looked like a Greek deity. Obesity is ugly and emotionally bad. 

Wealthy Greeks spent eight hours a day in the gym, frequently naked. They held female beauty pageants. 

Obese people should eat well, exercise, and vomit if they have bad sleep, aches, pains, flatulence, or constipation, according to Hippocrates. 

Fortunately, the ancient Greeks’ ideal body was bigger and stronger than today’s

Venus de Milo was 5’7″, 171 pounds, with a 35-inch bust, 30-inch waist, and 40-inch hips. 

Anorexia

Early Christians considered the body the soul’s enemy. All of the early Desert Fathers—St. Jerome, St. Anthony, St. Augustine, St. Basil, and St. Jerome—had food concerns and occasionally starved to become more holy. Their “holy anorexia” may have triggered their hallucinations. Pope Gregory characterized gluttony as eating hastily, excitedly, or between meals and being excessively hungry around 600 AD. He believed gourmets and “picky” diners committed this tremendous sin. 

Catherine of Siena continued the skinny trend

She refused dinners to marry her sister’s widower when her parents asked her to. She only ate Communion wafers after occasionally licking poor people’s pablum. Water was unpalatable. After her legs failed on February 26, malnutrition killed her on April 26, 1380.

Fitness experts of long ago taught the belief that an overweight body is spiritually unfit. Liquid diets began around 1066 A.D. William the Conqueror’s weight caused riding issues. He had to kiss the earth after falling head-first. He simply drank. Lots of ale, beer, wine, and mead. When he rode again, the saddle horn caught in his stomach, producing a fatal infection. Let that be a lesson to you: Don’t drink and drive. The diet failed because priests couldn’t fit him in his coffin, breaking his intestines. 

First Diet Book Ever

Renaissance secularized, sexified, and softened Western attitudes. Being overweight was bad, even during a famine. Henry VIII was much mocked. In 1550, John Halle advocated eating meagerly since “more die of gluttony than sword or pestilence.” 

Renaissance women corset-slenderized. Choking bras and waistbands bound them. “Straight lacing” killed women when corsets sliced their flesh and produced festering sores. 

Elastic “shape-wear” or corsets thin modern women. Kim Kardashian is reviving “waist training corsets” to reduce her waist. At 40, overweight Italian Luigi Cornaro realized something. He restricted himself to 12 ounces of food and 14 ounces of alcohol because he was weary of being overweight, out of control, and unable to have sex. “The Art of Living Long” by Cornaro offers advice. From 500 years ago. 100-year-old Cornaro solely ate egg yolks. 

In 1614, Giacomo Castelvetro authored “The Fruits, Herbs, and Vegetables of Italy.” Castelvetro praised Italians for eating fresh vegetables and condemned English for eating too much meat and sugar. His work influenced the “Mediterranean Diet.” 

Potatoes saved Europe in 1660. Starving cartoonists labeled the obese George IV the “Prince of Whales.” 

Famous 1700s figures battled weight. 

The famous scholar Dr. Samuel Johnson became sad and overweight, calling his weight “my black hound.” His lifelong friend and biographer, James Boswell, asserted that “slim people can eat a great deal and remain thin, while others eat less and grow fat,” but Dr. Johnson believed that his weight was due to overeating.

Rotund poet Samuel Coleridge sought “bloat and constipation” therapies for years. In 1730, Dr. George Cheyne published The Natural Method of Curing the Diseases of the Body, the second diet book. After stopping milk and vegetables, he lost it.” Confined animals induce human nervous diseases,” he stated. Vegans still say, “I cannot see the difference between consuming human flesh and animal flesh.” 

Thomas Short’s early 1700s book “The Causes and Effects of Corpulence” suggested that swamps make you fat and deserts are best for weight loss. 

19th-century diet

Mid-1800s beauty was slender and romantic. Both sexes’ form-fitting garments hurt obese persons. 1850–1920 women’s gowns have modest laced waists. Men wore tights or breeches with form-fitting coats until the late 19th century. Form-fitting clothing and slim idealization again criticized and blamed obese people of immorality. One 1881 book recommended imprisoning obese people. But that’s hardly necessary with the keto diet. Keto helps people live ketogenic within the parameters of their normal body weight.