When the idea of a very low-carb diet is bruited about to family, friends, and even enemies, a common refrain is that it is too "restrictive". Spoiler alert. It is restrictive, very much so. However, this restriction is not mere accident or cussedness on part of the proponent, it is in fact the entire point of the exercise.
When someone is drying out from an alcoholic binge, they do not hear claims that they are pursuing a course of unhealthy restriction of their alcohol intake. Nor do smoking quitters hear blather about their balefully low and restrictive tobacco consumption. In the case of low-carbers, they are battling carbohydrate toxicity, and yes that's a thing, a monstrously huge thing, so restricting all that carbage is the most efficacious way to overcome it. Additionally, at the same time the low-carber is battling carbohydrate addiction. Which is also very much a real thing and is easily proven by most people's entrenched reluctance to quit their beloved "comfort" foods. Unfortunately, in this context the proper synonyms for comfort are, or should be, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, numerous autoimmune conditions, kidney disease, and fatty liver.
"Autoimmune" covers a lot of sickly ground. Conditions and diseases that once affected tiny percentages of the population are now rampant and increasing in lockstep with our miserable diets. Walk down the aisles of any big box or grocery store in the U.S. and witness the prevalence of quasi-mobile human parade balloons. A week ago, at a Wally World, I saw a husband, wife, and teenaged daughter who collectively had to weigh in excess of a thousand pounds. This trio is, literally, a burden on society. And as time goes on they will be a tremendous burden and drain on the medical system, along with a hundred million of their hefty compatriots. Even now that system is becoming ever more ramshackle and swamped by a populous that is bound and determined to eat themselves to an early death. A populous, and a medical establishment, that is sneeringly derisive of the idea of "restriction".
