Drew Carey loses 80 pounds and cures Type 2 diabetes with low carb diet

Comedian and The Price is Right host Drew Carey, 52, told People Magazine that “It sucks being fat” and having Type-2 diabetes. Using a “no carb” diet and 45 minutes of cardio exercise per day, Mr. Carey lost 80 pounds and went from a size 44 waist to a 33-34-inch waist. It reportedly took Drew about 6 months to achieve the goals of both weight reduction and the reversal of his diabetes, which is a disease of carbohydrate metabolism characterized by abnormally high levels of the hormone insulin.

Many Hollywood celebrities, including Beyonce Knowles, Heidi Klum and Simon Cowell, Fergie and Whitney Port, use low carbohydrate strategies to control their weight. And this may actually be medically preferable to the low-fat, semi-starvation diets that have obsessed Americans for the past 30 years. Science writer Gary Taubes, and others, have argued that such diets were always based on faulty and incomplete research and ill-considered government policies that actually led to the epidemic of diabetes, obesity and heart disease that currently affects a frighteningly large percentage of the U.S. population.

We have read an advance copy of Mr. Taubes’ new book, Why We Get Fat, and it should be required reading for everyone who cares about diet and health. While you’re waiting for the book to come out, check out his June 2009 Grand Rounds at Dartmouth Medical School and also his debate with Dr. Dean Ornish, moderated by Dr. Mehmet Oz. Dr. Andrew Weil has endorsed Mr. Taubes’ findings and recommendations which are at odds with widely-held beliefs, among both the public and the medical profession, about the healthfulness of low fat, low calorie diets and exercise.