Dana Carpender has been a regular on the Low-Carb Cruises for several years. Her book, “How I gave up my low-fat Diet and Lost 40 Pounds” is a timeless classic. In fact, it was one of the books that we read back when Mrs. N=1 and I started our own low-carb journey roughly 15 years ago.
She has sold a total of over a million copies of her books since then.
The photo on the right is linked to her very popular “Hold The Toast” blog.
An aside: I went back to read some of the negative reviews of “How I gave up my low-fat Diet and Lost 40 Pounds” and found them quite hilarious. Most of them stridently warned about the “dangers” of low-carb diet and ketosis. One of Dana’s favorite sayings is that her kidneys have stubbornly refused to fall out even after 19 years of low-carbing.
It was a real honor to be able to chat with such a high-profile celebrity. We had chatted several times before this interview, and Mrs. N=1 and I even got the opportunity to attend one of her summer “meet & greet parties” a couple of years ago, but she has always been so busy that we never managed to record a podcast or a video with her. That finally changed for this year’s LCC. One thing that I did right was contact her prior to the cruise about doing a video, so I had a prior agreement.
However, with her activities and position as one of the featured speakers, it was still a challenge to find a time that fit her schedule. What we finally did was a lunch-break meeting in my cabin, which had the added bonus of natural lighting. Her husband, Eric (to whom she refers as TNBIM*), helped out with setting up and monitoring the operation of the camera.
With that long-winded intro, here is the video of the interview:
Notes & Links:
- 00:00 Introduction
- 01:00 Events that converted her from low-fat to low-carb
- 02:15 Her new doctor’s reaction to her bloodwork
- 05:00 Why she started her first low-carb book in 1997
- 06:18 She had the most popular cable-access show in Bloomington, IN history
- 07:35 She found that The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet by Drs. Rachael F. and Richard F. Heller did not work well for her
- 08:28 Her first book (self-published) “How I gave up my low-fat Diet and Lost 40 Pounds” sold 13,000 copies
- 09:02 Next book was the first of many cookbooks (or, as she put it, “how to gain weight on a low-carb diet”)
- 12:30 1001 Low-Carb Recipes was a compendium created by her publisher
- 13:50 Next cookbook will have over 3000 recipes (but she isn’t working on any books right now)
- 15:40 Her cruise presentation: “How to Live Low-Carb in a High-Carb World”
- 16:30 Hold the Toast blog and Facebook Fan Page
- 21:20 No particular interest in “resistant starch”
- 22:45 A recommendation for Tom Naughton’s Fathead-Movie.com blog
- 24:15 Once-a-week moderate carb-up
- 27:40 The final question
Unfortunately, the camera quit about 10 seconds before the actual end of the chat. We just decided to let it go at that point and let that be a wrap.
* TNBIM = “That nice boy I married.”
