You're confusing complex carbohydrates with sugar.

How complex are pasta, rice, pint of blueberries, 5 medium apples, 2 mangoes, and a pound of grapes?

Pasta, rice, and fruit have huge amounts of simple sugars.

What are you talking about? Wholegrain pasta has like 40g carbohydrate that includes 1g sugar. Brown rice has around 25g carbohydrates that includes 0.4g sugar.

I’ve been a fan of the keto diet (low carb high fat) for a while. But I suspect any diet that cuts a very large group of foods like carbs or fats out forces you to be more mindful of what you’re eating. And that’s a large part of the weight loss on those diets.

Elsewhere in this thread it was stated that food journaling was the gold standard in weight loss, which also I’d expect to increase mindfulness around eating.

I believe there's a fair bit of evidence to the effect of, any "diet" that restricts one's food options - be it calorie restriction, low fat, low carbs, low protein, intermittent fasting, no sugar, whatever - will result in weight loss as long as it's stuck to. Which makes sense logically; if normally you'd eat whatever you felt like, and then you restrict what (or when) you're "allowed" to eat, some substitution will be done, but you'll likely also just eat less.

And then when you go off the diet (either intentionally, or more likely, by just slowly drifting back to the norm), you'll return to eating what you were before, and will return to your original weight. Which is why the only diet that works is one you can stick to indefinitely. So, if the parent can stick to a no fat, high complex carbs diet for life, it will probably work for them.

After 2 years, my blood pressure went back down to a steady 110/75, heart rate about 55-60, bad cholesterol is on the low of normal range. I do about 2 hours of cardio with light weights per week, no longer lift. That's not a lot, but it's enough to stay at the same blood pressure for many years now.

I don't do high carbs - fruit are not high in carbs you actually process. I eat normal portions of complex carbs like bread and pasta, normal sized meals. I eat a ridiculous amount of fruit, and that has some sugar in it, but it's actually not that much. What that does is increase my fiber intake to ridiculous levels - and that has many benefits.

My issue was that I use food as an anti-depressant, and to deal with stress. The solution had to involve eating a lot, but minimizing calories. That's why the fat had to go - I can eat twice as many carbs as fat for the same weight. When you look at things like fruit - a lot of those "carb" calories you don't even metabolize since it's fiber.

I don't think I have discovered some magical solution, but it works for people like myself, who have what I consider a minor mental illness called 'self-medication with food.' Mental problems are a lot harder to fix than just not using oil and replacing nuts and chips with fruit. My solution to win the war was not to fight it and learn to live w/ the fact that I'm not perfect, and adjust the lifestyle to that.

High carb diets are a bad idea. I eat normal balanced meals, just with no fat. Long-term high fat diets are for people who want liver damage, and stop eating when they're full. A little bit of fat makes you full, unlike carbs. But keto is terrible for your health if you do it for decades.

The tiny amount of fat I do get, is from things like red tuna and other low-fat fish. It's amazing how little good fat you actually need in your diet, if you look that up. Literally one can of chunk light canned tuna is all you need for the day.

Now here's something groundbreaking that's pretty good - thin and wide no sugar no fat pancakes: 1 cup flour, 3/4 cup fat free fairlife milk, 2 packets splenda, 1/2 cup Egg Beaters. mix real well so it's runny with no flour chunks. no need for baking powder. real short spray of oil to just get some drops on a teflon pan. no need to spray when you flip.