Hi
there!
My
name is Amy Berger, and I live in the Durham, NC area, but I work with clients
all over the US and even internationally, via phone and Skype. (See here for the
services I currently offer.)
I
have a master’s degree in human nutrition from the University of Bridgeport.
I’m
also a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS). This designation requires a master’s degree,
passing a board exam, and accumulating 1000 hours of supervised clinical
practice and other professional nutrition work. In this way, the requirements
are similar to those for being a registered dietitian (RD), but the education
programs are very different. I happen to also be a U.S. Air Force veteran, but that doesn’t have much bearing on my nutrition career,
except that I used my GI Bill to get the master’s degree, so that was pretty
nice.
I
have been eating a low carbohydrate diet and learning about this way of eating for over 15 years. My specific areas of
interest include using low carb and ketogenic diets as nutritional therapies
for diabetes (both type 2 and type 1), obesity, PCOS, migraines, acid
reflux/GERD, cardiovascular disease, and neurological & neurodegenerative
disorders (such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy).
I’m
the author of the book The Alzheimer’s Antidote: Using a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet to Fight Alzheimer’s Disease, Memory Loss, and Cognitive Decline.
In
addition to writing the blog here at www.tuitnutrition.com,
I write for other websites, blogs, and companies, mostly focused on low carb,
ketogenic, and Paleo-style nutrition and health. (Some of my best work is at KetoDiet blog.) I've also presented internationally at low carb and keto conferences and seminars.
Want to know
more about me and how I got into low
carb/keto? Read on.
My
personal story below talks mostly about weight loss, because that’s the battle
I fought most of my young adult life, and it’s how I got started with low carb. But over the years, I’ve become fascinated
by all the other things this way of
eating has been proven beneficial for, like the conditions I mentioned above.
So if you’ve come here looking to lose body fat, great. But if you’re
interested in low carb for some other reason, equally great!
And
now, on with the show…
I know what
it’s like.
I
know how it feels to spend years doing “all the right things” but not seeing
the positive changes you expect in your health and physique. And worse, I know
how it feels to blame yourself. I
know how it feels to watch your thinner, seemingly healthier friends eat
whatever they want, not exercise, and slink into clothing you could only dream
of fitting into.
 |
Angry?
Frustrated?
I understand completely.
|
I
know what it’s like to feel like a failure because you are counting calories, and you are
eating low-fat, and you do exercise,
but the weight isn’t budging, and your energy’s dragging, and your moods are
still low. I know how it feels to sweat, count, weigh, measure, discipline, and
white-knuckle yourself into confusion, anger, frustration, and self-loathing
because despite your best efforts—despite all the lettuce, despite the fat-free
dressing, despite the skinny soy lattes, and the hours upon hours at the gym,
you look and feel no different than when you started. Maybe you even look and
feel worse.
Any
of that sound familiar to you?
If
the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting
a different result, then I was downright certifiable. For a smart person, I was
pretty silly. See, I spent years
doing what I thought were “all the right things” in order to lose weight and
optimize my health: I ate low-fat foods,
reduced my intake of eggs and red meat, used light margarine instead of butter,
avoided eggs, used skim or soy milk instead of whole, and spent lots of time
exercising. Specifically, I spent lots of time jogging and racking up miles on
a stationary bikes and stairclimbers. After all, losing weight was just a
matter of “burning” more calories than I was taking in, right?
Well,
no.
It’s
not completely wrong, but it’s far from right. There’s a lot
more to fat loss and health than “calories in/calories out.” Unfortunately,
this myth that the human body—complex, vibrant, and dynamic—works as simply as
a dime store calculator, has pervaded the national conversation about health
and weight for decades. And where has it gotten us? I’ll tell you where:
saddled with levels of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, depression, mood
disorders, and other health issues unprecedented in human history.
 |
| Thanks for nothing, government nutrition guidelines! |
Like
millions of people, I trusted the government and other “authorities” to give me
good advice about nutrition and health. I ate and exercised the way they
recommended, yet I didn’t see any improvements in my health or physique. Call
me a glutton for punishment; when following the standard recommendations for
low-calorie, low-fat diets and lots of exercise didn’t work, I simply did more of them. Ate even fewer calories. Exercised more. And still no fat loss.
My self-esteem took a
serious beating.
Instead
of looking outward and questioning the paradigm I was following, I blamed
myself. Maybe I wasn’t working out enough, or was still eating too much food.
After all, if those weren’t the case, I’d have seen some nice changes, right?
So the problem couldn’t have been the advice I was following; the problem must
have been me.
I
can’t blame myself for coming to that conclusion. When all the messages you
hear from the government, from the mass media—and yes, from medical experts—tell
you to eat less and move more, and you do,
when you don’t see the promised results, the problem can’t be that the messages are wrong, but that you’re not listening to them well
enough. It becomes a moral issue instead of a scientific and biochemical one.
This happens to overweight people every day. We’ve come to see obesity as a
character flaw, as some kind of moral failure. In our politically incorrect
society, heavy people are the last acceptable targets. We see them as lazy.
Greedy. Gluttonous. Undisciplined. But you know what? I was none of those
things. I completed two marathons. I joined the Air Force. I wasn’t afraid of a challenge, and I sure wasn’t afraid of a hard
workout. And I don’t think most other people are, either. I have more faith in people than that. I
think if it were really as simple as “eat less, move more,” we’d have had this
obesity thing licked a long time ago.
 |
What I learned shocked me.
The "experts" were so wrong!
|
After
years of failing to see results from
my hard work, I finally questioned the way I was doing things. I found a few
books and websites that talked about nutrition, health, and weight loss in ways
I’d never heard before. To put it bluntly, I had my mind blown. Repeatedly. I learned that most of what
“they” tell us about how to lose weight and stay healthy is dead wrong. (Pun
intended.)
Thanks
to the messages of low-fat, low-cholesterol foods and “moving more” we’ve been
bombarded with for the past few decades, many of us have come to believe that
foods that have nourished and sustained healthy, fit people for millennia (like
beef, butter, dark meat chicken, and egg yolks) suddenly started to kill us and
are now unfit for human consumption.
After
reading everything I could get my hands on,
I changed my diet radically and changed my approach to physical movement. I
reintroduced many “forbidden foods,” dropped the processed junk masquerading as health food, spent a lot less time on the cardio
equipment, got over my fear of the gym’s scary “guy area”—the weights—and
voila! The results finally, finally came.
I
was so fascinated by what I’d learned that I’m now dedicating my career to
sharing it with people who are still fighting this battle—and who maybe feel
like they’re running low on morale and ammunition. I know from my time in the military that we need battle buddies—people who know what
we’re going through. People we trust to have our backs and stand with us when
things get tough. I may not have been a Marine, but Marines aren’t the only
ones who don’t leave a man behind. I know there are men and women of all ages
struggling to reclaim their health, vitality, and zest for life. And they won’t
get left behind. Not on my watch.
I
can’t get back the years I spent following the road to nowhere, but I can help
steer others to a more productive way. I’ve told myself that if I can spare just
one person the self-esteem nightmare I put myself through when I was younger,
I’ll consider myself a professional success.
 |
| Feel
lost in all the conflicting messages? I don’t blame you. Let me help you find your way. |
SO:
If
you’ve been doing “all the right things,” yet haven’t seen the improvements you
expected, don’t get down on yourself. Get Tuit!
If,
like me, you’ve spent years banging your head against the wall because you
can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong, don’t lose one more day on something
that isn’t working. Get on a better path. Get Tuit!
If
you haven’t been making efforts to improve
your health but know you should, don’t get upset with yourself. We all start
somewhere. Start here. Start now. Don’t
get angry with yourself. Get Tuit!
*Tuit Nutrition – a source of sanity in the sea of nutritional
madness.*
