A low-carbohydrate diet may have health benefits that go beyond weight loss.

A new study shows that a low-carbohydrate diet was equally good as the weight loss drug orlistat (the active ingredient in Alli and Xenical) at helping overweight and obese people lose weight, but people who followed the low-carb diet also experienced a healthy drop in their blood pressure levels.

Read the entire article here on WebMD

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Marines Know How to Eat
• Low Carb vs Low Fat
• The Patton Plan Has Marines Vote

A Dog Fit For The Pentagon

We need more marines like this in Washington to sort out the mess we have gotten ourselves into in the middle east. Posted with the greatest respect for the Marine Corps and our Armed Forces this picture signifies the kind of message that we at home are tired of all the BS from our government and want these wars to end.

Our country has gone to the dogs and maybe they can do a better job!

Image: my chocolate lab Duke by: Pets In Uniform

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Marine Test
• The Patton Plan Has Marines Vote
• Robin Williams As The American Flag

Anyway, this guy was out in the wilderness with his wife and youngsters cutting firewood when a seriously starving mountain lion tried to make this marine a quick snack.

What this guy did to defend himself, with a chain saw no less, is the stuff marine legends are made of.

Semper Fi

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Weight Loss Secrets Guaranteed To Work!
• Marine Test
• Marine's Dog

Life Lessons From A Dog Named Lava

This dog is amazing – and marines are particular suckers for dogs and kids – in that order! 

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Weight Loss Secrets Guaranteed To Work!
• Marines Reclaim Their Own From Makin Island
• Marine Test

I have spoken in this blog many times about my uncle, SSgt Jack Rice, USMC, deceased. It was while arciving some of his Marine memorabilia that I discovered a rare gem, hidden away in Jack's personal papers a cartoon drawn by Hapley while enlisting in the USMC at age 22. Although Jack didn't get to know "Hap" Hapley until the late 60's, he followed his career as a movie poster artist and often spoke with him on the phone from his home in Los Angeles.

Jack and "Hap" finally met just before his death in 1976 and it wasn't until Jack's death in 1982 that I was made responsible (Jack's sister was my Mother) for putting his affairs in order. Among his most valued possessions I was amazed to find this cartoon rendering of the Marine Corps Recruiting Station in St. Louis reproduced in the August 5th, 1917 St. Louis Post Dispatch, Sunday Magazine Section, the place where Hap enlisted as a private in the Marine Corps during WWI. I was even more amazed to discover the artist of this little bit of cartoon mischief was none other than Alvan "Hap" Hapley himself!

I seems Mr. Hapley wanted to poke a little fun at his experience with the Marine Corps recruiting office in St. Louis. During intervals of waiting for various examinations while enlisting in the Marines he found the time to sketch his impressions – while at the same time providing the Marines with a boost in enlistments as a part of a recruiting effort by the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The entire Sunday Magazine section was devoted to reproducing his cartoon along with this 1917 poster, in the August 5th, 1917 issue, so that families could proudly display this colorful and patriotically stirring 11" by 18" poster in their front window when one of their own enlisted in the Armed Services of the United States of America during WWI.

After his service during WWI, Hadley got back into his art and eventually became a movie poster artist for MGM, and produced movie posters in the 1930s for a number of Howard Hughes films, including “Hell’s Angels” (1930), starring Jean Harlow, and the controversial “Cock of the Air” (1932). “Cheating Blondes” (Equitable, 1933). He created movie posters for Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, as well as promotional posters for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and billboards for Roy Rogers, one of my all-time favorite childhood cowboy heroes.

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Most Famous Marine Photo Of All Time
• Proud To Wear The Uniform Of United States Marine
• Flag Of My Marine Father

I ended up shuffling papers like a civilian pogue with a nine to five billet that was pretty much like a regular job. I lived off -base with my new wife in a fine apartment and played ball on the 7th Engineer Battalion Softball team. My first sergeant was a heck of a ping-pong player and taught me all he knew until all of a sudden my four year enlistment was over. I enjoyed the Corps and was tempted to re-up but my wife had this crazy idea that she wanted to raise our kids in one place!

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Most Famous Marine Photo Of All Time
• Out Of The Corps
• Proud To Wear The Uniform Of United States Marine

I had finally gotten my wish, I wasn't reporting the war, I was fighting it! I spent most of the first half of my tour building bridges, blowing up tunnels, sweeping roads for mines and generally leaving a smoking trail of destruction wherever I went. The only good thing about it was I made a lot of grunt friends who appreciated my skills at both spotting and spotting booby traps. I spent most of the rest of that year humping around between Dong Ha and Quang Tri, later to be transferred south to Da Nang where I finished my tour assigned to the Marine Air Wing, I have fond memories of how well the pilots of the "Wild Weasels, Gunfighter Squadron" took care of "their" Marines.

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Most Famous Marine Photo Of All Time
• Out Of The Corps
• Proud To Wear The Uniform Of United States Marine

Most marines are like me, from middle class backgrounds (the guys who know the real skinny) who join the Marine Corps, each with his own reasons but high among them is the opportunity to show their patriotism by serving their country in the United States Marine Corps. What's going to happen to us when serving our country goes out of style? – When does it dawn on us as a nation  that our economy is one gi-normous Ponzi scheme orchestrated by our family of senators and congressmen – all members of the same family, the Hands Family; Hands OUT, Hands UP, Hands OFF and Hand it OVER.

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Marines Know How to Eat
• Marines Thinkin It Joe Ligotti Sayin It
• The Patton Plan Has Marines Vote

If folks have a problem with his language or presentation that's understandable as long as the message gets through. Joe doesn't really care what you think of him but only an emotional guy like Joe can get to the real heart of an issue using the kind of language and emotion we all understand. He puts his heart into every rant he does and somebody has to keep reminding us we are all mad as hell and we aint takin it anymore! 

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Out Of The Corps
• The Patton Plan Has Marines Vote
• Robin Williams As The American Flag

My uncle, Jack Rice, a talented writer and former Marine had a life-long love affair with the Marine Corps and over the years produced a number of feature stories about various aspects of it for his weekly column in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He often would write about what a marine might do when confronted with a civilian problem. In his own humorous style he would then speculate on how a Marine would settle the problem, often with hilarious results. His articles always ended up sounding like something Dave Berry might have written – if he had been a Marine!

One of my favorites was a two-part series about Marines that appeared in the March 12th and 13th, 1977 issues of that newspaper where he first penned an article titled; Marines Use Polished Approach followed up by; Boot Camp Leaves It's Mark, the following day. This was the first article of a two-piece series written about the Marine Corps by my uncle, Jack Rice (SSgt, USMC, deceased) for the St. Louis Post Dispatch Newspaper in March of 1977. He was a staff writer there until his retirement in 1980.

Accompanying this 1977 sattire about President Truman's efforts to disband the Marine Corps "before the gray sands settled on Iwo Jima" was a picture that Jack had taken of one of his most prized posessions, a bit faded in this old newspaper clipping but clearly a Marine Corps recruiting poster circa 1912. It took up most of the space in the center of the newspaper article and it shows combat Marines, "Soldiers of the Sea," hitting the beach on a hostile shore, challenging the viewer to test his mettle and apply to the Marine Corps Recruiting Station at 122 North 7th St, St. Louis, Missouri. "Your Country Needs You!"

That very same poster now hangs on the wall in my office at home where his campaign hat, letters and articles and his other Marine Corps memorabilia reside because I was the one he trusted most to take care of them. The one thread between us that could never be broken was the fact that we were both Marines. This feature was written mainly as a plug for the same Marine Corps Recruiting Station in St. Louis but in it he could not resist a jab at a US President he admired - Harry Truman - the man who for whatever reason attempted to disband the Marines after WW ll.

More From Lowcarb Marine

• Proud To Wear The Uniform Of United States Marine
• Marines In Viet Nam Could Have Used A "Mt. Suribachi" Of Their Own
• Marines And Super Marines