Over the past 25 years, I tried countless methods, courses and books to lose belly fat—first for merely for aesthetics, later for serious medical reasons. While many of these had some small, temporary effect, and a few taught me "tricks" I still consider useful, none of them (including advice from medics) truly worked long-term.

Until, in summer 2019, a friend gave me this NYT bestseller. You must be a bit nerdy / intellectual to enjoy its scientific slant, but it truly had a life-changing impact on me.

Why we get fat by Gary Taubes

Some of my biggest takeaways:

• Neither reducing caloric intake, nor increasing caloric expenditure, will necessarily burn our stored fat. (Really? Yes! And he explains why.)

• Blaming fat people's lack of willpower is cruel and incorrect. The biological reason for fat accumulation is not psychological but a hormonal disfunction.

• A hormonally-regulated biological feedback loop determines whether cells should store fat for later or release it. When this metabolic feedback loop is out of whack, we get fat no matter how little we eat or how much we exercise.

• It is possible to reset our out-of-whack metabolism by changing what we eat—specifically, by avoiding the carbohydrates that trigger the imbalance.

• I thought medical science had it all worked out by now—it's the 21st century after all. Instead, Taubes spends several well-documented chapters to prove that medical researchers still disagree wildly on what makes us fat—and that's why official medical advice (including that which I had received) often doesn't work.

This book had a dramatic effect on me. I adopted the LCHF/keto diet it describes and, in due course, I observed fantastic results. I kept losing 1-2 kg of fat per month, my blood readings improved and my incurable disease went into remission—to the surprise of the medical professionals who had dismissed LCHF as another fad diet. Forever grateful to @garytaubes! Looking forward to reading his new diabetes book.