What a loss this is for our community. I've known Adele for several years, having met her in person for the first time after being a huge fan of her blog for a few years before that. Her humor and razor-sharp wit & sarcasm were unparalleled. Her writing was a tour-de-force and a joy to read. I love that she was no-nonsense and didn't mince words, but that never got in the way of her poking fun at us (the low carb community) nor at herself. One of the things I admired most about her is that she was one of very few people who spoke about socioeconomic and racial disparities in healthcare and food security. Good luck shopping at the hoity toity co-op or health food store when you're a single mom using public transportation to get back and forth between your two jobs just trying to keep the rent paid. She was also a powerful voice for low carb advocacy and getting therapeutic carbohydrate restriction recognized more broadly in clinical practice, including helping to develop a standard of care employing it. Something else fairly unique about her is that she called the low-carb folks out on our own nonsense. She could recognize the therapeutic power of carbohydrate restriction while never sensationalizing or overpromising what it could deliver. She held us to a high standard in terms of our rhetoric and messaging, lest we fall into the same oversimplistic and misleading language we try to combat in other areas. She is gone far too soon, but her legacy lives on in every patient who sees a doctor, NP, PA, dietitian, or nutritionist, who plants the seed that maybe they might want to think about cutting down on the sugar and starch. The last time I saw Adele in person, we were with Casey Durango enjoying lunch and a glass of wine together in Durham. We had a great conversation and a lot of laughs. That's my last memory of her in person, and I cherish it.
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I met Adele back when she was working with Dr. Westman in his Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic and I was a patient there in 2008. She was so helpful to me then, and in the years following, when I would email her sharing recipes, and also see her occasionally at the Low Carb Support Groups in Durham. Then when she left the practice, I followed her through her blog. She certainly was one of a kind in the low carb world, and I am better for having known her the short time I did.