tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-349532842024-03-07T12:49:27.534-06:00The Divine Low CarbAn opportunity to eat awesome food, never be hungry, lose weight, feel great, and be healthier. What's not to love?PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.comBlogger175125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-15346813586638929962016-11-28T03:42:00.002-06:002016-11-28T03:42:35.001-06:00A New Life, a New StartI almost died!<br />
<br />
They sent me home to die.<br />
<br />
But now I'm alive! And better than in years! And getting better all the time.<br />
<br />
It's been a long time since I posted. In order to catch the blog up properly I would need to write a book, literally. So I'm going to skip that, and even skip the reader's digest version, and just go right to a single post that summarizes some things, to get my blog up to date.<br />
<br />
Then, from now on, we'll see how my current plans work out!<br />
<br />
<b>LIPEDEMA</b><br />
<br />
1. Lipedema (sigh). Visions, voices, dreams, and yet-more of years of pubmed and web reading to try and figure this out, have brought me to a couple of realizations I have not yet had time to implement, but will. For those in that boat with me I'll share a summary. Might be worth what you're paying for it but hey, nobody else has a cure, so...<br />
<br />
Some agriculturalists say we "broke the sulfur cycle" in the 1940s in our nation and that people have been chronically deficient in this mineral since. Sulfur is in every cell and is what makes the membrane properly permeable and flexible. Without sufficient sulfur, the body has to allot what little it's got, and some cells will have to have rigid exteriors which do not allow oxygen respiration and waste disposal which will lead to bloated, toxic, unusable cells. Which also may have trouble being broken down properly as well. It's only theory but it would make sense the body would do this to fat cells since they are the cells most disposable in the body, and since they can easily be redistributed away from the vital organs. As rigid membranes would mean some cracks and leaks, chronic inflammation, pain, and so on in the areas where the body is storing those <i>en masse</i> makes sense.<br />
<br />
My body had suggested sulfur. At the same time (same night) it suggested quercetin. It turns out the membrane surface of cells needs to be conductive so that energy can pass between them (not just on nerve pathways but cell to cell). I looked in pubmed and this is what quercetin does. I believe an ongoing supplement of a quality MSM and quality quercetin will not harm me, and eventually may help. Who knows? I'm just sharing what I've gotten.<br />
<br />
<b>SERRAPEPTASE</b><br />
<br />
2. I had an ongoing period where I took a great deal of the supplement serrapeptase, with a little bit of nattokinase as well, before bed. I did this in the hopes that it might have some effect on too much fibrous growth in the lipedemic areas (hips-thighs for example). After a little while, my eyesight improved notably. Turns out that's one of the things it's used for.<br />
<br />
I'd had a significant health issue: I'd had whooping cough, and though it finally (took forever!) went past, my lungs never fully healed. Even the teens around me who had it, their hadn't either, we were having a talk about it over a year after we'd all gotten it. Although my lungs had partly healed, never fully and I could not sing as a result -- air control issues. Some time after the eyesight bit, I started coughing, for no apparent reason -- not sick -- but it genuinely felt like I was coughing up crap from the very bottom of my lungs. After about ten days of doing exactly that, my breathing was better, and I eventually realized I could sing again. I looked in pubmed and it turns out both of these things -- eyesight and lung healing -- have successful research on them with serrapeptase.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile my friend's sister began taking it and after some months was able to reduce and finally ditch the cane she'd had to use for six years, for her knees. There are lots of stories like this it turns out. Worth looking into.<br />
<br />
<b>Co-Q10 (and other supps)</b><br />
<br />
3. For reasons I'll mention below, I began taking the supplement Co-Q10, a few hundred milligrams a couple times a day. I was in a situation where I had cause to know: this supp really, really helps if there's a heart issue. The difference in energy and recovery of my heart, specifically, was very notable based on when I'd taken it vs. forgotten to take it (I suck at being consistent with supplements).<br />
<br />
There are only few supplements that I have found in my life where I really NOTICED a difference -- most we just hope they're helping. Those were:<br />
<br />
* Vitamin D3 in a fairly high dose. The first time I took about 10K of D3, about eight hours later I had what I can only call a significant improvement in my "fundamental sense of well-being."<br />
<br />
* A very hefty dose of lecithin and ascorbic daily (I was doing microencapsulated ascorbic, sometimes called homemade liposomal vitamin C though it's different. Note the sunflower lecithin is drastically higher in this, than in commercial versions of lipo-C, and I believe that's where much of the difference came in, it wasn't just the C). I spent ten days feeling like my whole spine had an "under construction" sign on it -- it felt a lot like overtraining deadlifts can -- it got less with each day until gone. I believed, intuitively, that the phospholipids were being used to rebuild the nerve sheaths around the spinal column. I had a vast amount more social patience, less traffic-driving stress, and so on.<br />
<br />
* Serrapeptase, see above.<br />
<br />
* Magnesium when rubbed all over my torso and legs, waited about 15-20m then took a shower and went to bed. I had signficantly more energy the next day every time I've done this. <br />
<br />
* Co-Q10, see above.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Meanwhile....</b><br />
<br />
So several years ago my energy utterly tanked. After ketogenic dieting had done awesomely for me, suddenly I couldn't survive on it. The overall effect got worse over time.<br />
<br />
I went through such extreme energy problems that for example, if I did the herculean effort to go grocery shopping even for a few things, I might sit on the couch, watching them go bad in a bag on the floor, because I hadn't the energy to get them to the fridge and freezer and hadn't the energy to get up. I could sit for hours trying to come up with the energy to take off my jacket. I had to "psyche myself up" for an hour to be able to get up to go to the bathroom. It's one of those things that in retrospect was so extreme I can't believe I wasn't in ER or something, but what would you complain about? I had no medical coverage then. (Note: that was my fault. I simply had not chosen to pay for it. Had I been truly poor, the government would have given it to me.)<br />
<br />
I spent a long time collecting "obscure supplements," sure that it must be something missing in me. Then I took them, once they were collected. This was aversion-training for taking pills. At the end of many months, it had helped enough that now my energy was merely about zero, as opposed to in the negative.<br />
<br />
I kept growing, physically, particularly in the lipedemic areas. By October 2013 I shouldn't have been driving. By February 2014 I couldn't anymore because I literally could not fit.<br />
<br />
Aside from the disaster of my size, and an energy problem so severe I could barely make it from the car to the door, I started reading and realized that I was probably insufficient in every nutrient, due to long-term low-grade anorexia. "Anorexics in fat suits" is a common term for lipedemics -- something about it seems to kill appetite, which is all anorexia means (the "nervosa" term added, is something else). Even without that, large people often undereat nutrients, overeating energy-foods, and so are often a bit malnourished anyway. I figured the two combined might be very serious, and might explain the problem. I determined to go on a sort of anorexia recovery program which would require me to eating very regularly and robustly.<br />
<br />
My body had been growing. And my heart was getting more tired. I would stand up to go to the bathroom and already any energy was gone. Merely getting to the bathroom and back, never mind shower, took the kind of effort most people only use for extreme versions of rock climbing. And it took me 20 minutes sitting in my bed to recoup. Thankfully I work remotely on a laptop!<br />
<br />
I got more sedentary until I was literally bedridden. I kept growing, physically, despite not eating much, because at that point nearly everything I ate seemed to cause 'reaction' (similar to a gluten inflammation reaction). I knew my heart was pressed but this was said to be normal for someone with lipedema -- when it's extreme -- and I had reached menopause, which is a hormonal event and those are known to cause big issues with lipedema and growth as well. It seemed like a cycle of degeneration that there was nothing I could do to change. I determined to get medical insurance so maybe I could at least get some help with the seeming heart stuff, but it would have to wait quite awhile as my company only does this once a year.<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>HEART ATTACK</b><br />
<br />
In October 2015 I had a significant heart attack. I wasn't treated for it. I wasn't sure until a few weeks later that's what it had been, and at that point I was already past the worst of it. Let me just summarize and say that this and the 2 week aftermath fall into the category of things I never, ever want to experience again for any reason. <br />
<br />
Starting Jan 2nd 2016, I worked frantically, now that I had health coverage, to get to see a doctor. Nobody could see me without a primary care physican. Nobody would become my PCP without my visiting their office. I was literally immobilized -- aside from barely making it to the bathroom and that with ropes I had anchored to cling to all over -- I could not stand, walk, etc. All the doctors said even if I went to ER and they were standing right next to me they would not be able to become my PCP, it required a visit "in their office" for insurance reasons. It was insane.<br />
<br />
In February 2016 the edema that had been growing from my lower body upward basically reached my lungs. I was literally drowning from the inside. And at one point, I could no longer make it to the bathroom on my own. I got there and knew it was the last time. I called the paramedics, and I went to ER. In the ER I told them of my Oct experience and how it had gotten worse ever since, and how I didn't have a doctor and why. They said they had to refuse me treatment because their charter is only for "acute" issues which means "new" the last few days. I said, I AM DYING. I will not survive another couple days. They said yeah, we see. The doctor talked to me until, in my brain-befuddled state, I realized that if I did not personally volunteer something that made it a RECENT (within 3 days) event, they could not help me. I said, "I've been having chest pains!" and that was it -- they checked me in.<br />
<br />
I was hospitalized for 8 days, during which they ran a gazillion tests and had me on strong IV diuretics (thank goodness). My weight according to their space-age bed was about 455. A strange thing kept happening. A doctor would see my specs from the tests. He would come in to talk to me about the fact that I was gonna die any minute. And he would see that I was totally alert and functional and react very oddly -- I mean it was obvious (one doc literally his eyes got huge, his mouth dropped open, he stepped back, and then excused himself and nearly ran from the room to do something different than planned on my account). They were attempting to get me this surgery for the heart, it is not open heart surgery which I didn't think I would survive nor did they. One of the big things in OHS is that you have to be mobile immediately after, you must, the stats on failure are huge for those who aren't. But I wasn't mobile even before the surgery. They would apply for me, three different docs trying to help, and the answer was always no. I didn't fit the stats.<br />
<br />
<b>HOSPICE</b><br />
<br />
They sent me home on hospice to die. I had about six months they estimated. That turned out to be a pretty good estimate. But for the sake of "quality of life" they kept me on (oral) diuretics. Which really, really helped. Because I worked hard -- not 'too' hard -- on losing some fluid and getting more mobility. I thought maybe if I did that, I could qualify for surgery and not die.<br />
<br />
But I had what I was pretty sure were a couple more small heart attacks, not long after a little exercise and food. It was clear that I was unlikely to survive to the point of being as mobile as I needed to be. Finally I begged my hospice nurse to help me talk the doc into finding me a surgeon -- maybe some wild cowboy lunatic with 99% chance of killing me but I was willing to kill myself at that point, I was so physically miserable, in pain, in despair, with no hope for the future. I figured if I died during or after surgery, well, at least I wouldn't have to live like that anymore.<br />
<br />
They found someone willing to look at me -- they didn't actually get a surgery agreement, but I didn't know that! -- and then because of my size, they put me on a high gurney and shipped me six hours away to St. Louis. I am pretty sure that a perfectly healthy person on an elevated gurney for six hours of bad highway would be seriously sore after. I literally woke up wailing and unable to move a muscle in my torso/shoulders voluntarily and had to be medicated for pain every morning for three days.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, during these days and another two, they were doing tests on me, all the same tests as before, and then some -- detailed lung tests, and a CATH test of the heart.<br />
<br />
And when all that was done they said: most people have clogging of the arteries. You don't. Most people have build-up in the heart valve that requires bypass. You don't. Blood pressure: normal. Blood insulin: normal. Insert a long list of other stuff here -- all normal. The only thing they could track was that I had a significant heart murmur, which I was born with, and that I had a profoundly degraded heart valve -- which I was born with.<br />
<br />
Who knew?<br />
<br />
So apparently, super-sized women age 50 in the cardiac ward, are not commonly healthy by every measure except-that-heart-valve-thing. And the lipedemic fat, but that wasn't going anywhere and it wasn't in my torso so aside from stats on paper didn't seem to affect any numbers much. Seriously they were a little bit amazed. I said well, I ate really well for about ten years! Maybe that helped.<br />
<br />
They said based on the heart valve, I hadn't been getting up to 70% of the oxygen and nutrients to my brain or body, in a rising gradient %, for many years. So my suspicions about anorexia were right -- but it was vastly more profound than I dreamed, and due as much to blood issues as what I ate or didn't. And they said if I had open heart surgery, assuming there were no problems during or complications after, that this would actually solve that problem.<br />
<br />
<b>OPEN HEART SURGERY</b><br />
<br />
So I had open heart surgery on July 1, 2016. It took half the normal time. Everything on recovery happened a day early. Went great. But let's add this to the box of "things and their aftermaths" that I never want to experience again in my life.<br />
<br />
They stuff you with fluids during and I came out of it larger than I went in, as incredible as that seems. Their theories (the docs) was that after a few months I would probably be losing the edema.<br />
<br />
They said that my body would literally have to grow from scratch or rebuild from atrophy all the inner workings to handle vastly more blood volume and heart pumping power. It's one thing to fix the heart but it's another to have the body systems ready for the upgrade. This is estimated to take about a year after the surgery... although that's for normal people, probably not people my size.<br />
<br />
The surgeon told me -- three times no less -- that my valve was one of the worst he'd seen and that once I was really healed up, my life would be "so amazingly different" I wouldn't even be able to believe it.<br />
<br />
I am on a beta-blocker for 'heart remodeling' (Coreg) and on Diuretics (previously Lasix/furosemide but I asked for a change to Demodex/torsemide which I got) but that is all. I am reactive to codeine and vicodin so the drug they gave me for pain was not do-able for me, gave me horrible nausea and they didn't send me home with any anti-nausea prescription. So I lived on gel ibuprofen (won't take Tylenol, I love my liver!) but I rarely take it now, and when I do, it's due to the side effects of the diuretics.<br />
<br />
I have lost a lot of edema though I still have what I'm estimating is about 140# or more of it. When it's gone, my weight will be lower than I expected, but that's probably from losing lean body mass due to a few years -- and the last two in particular -- of being nearly bedridden.<br />
<br />
So I am learning to stand, walk, be mobile again, I'm getting better all the time, re-developing all the body systems required. And the heart thing fixed my energy problem thankfully, although I still need to develop both muscle and cardio improvement.<br />
<br />
The more I've learned about this the more I've realized that pretty much the last 20 years of my life have been affected by the heart-valve problem; especially the last ten; and acutely, the last five. <br />
<br />
<b>WEIRD: GLUTEN (and other) INTOLERANCE CHANGES</b><br />
<br />
As a surreal side-effect though, by the time of the surgery, nearly anything I ate that wasn't meat caused massive "intolerance inflammation." I was to the point where I could hardly eat anything, it was horrible. But now, I can even eat wheat and rice, which used to destroy me even in tiny amounts, I can eat it outright and I do react, but more like I did a decade ago -- after 8 hours with rice, after about 24 with wheat, I get a little bit of lung asthma, that's all. I still don't really want to eat much gluten anyway, but not having to stress about every form of it even a little bit in something, plus half the spices in the world that were setting me off eventually, has certainly opened up my food options again. Bear in mind I live in Nowhere, Oklahoma. We don't have stores for herbs, there is no such thing as gluten-free bread in my walmart, really there are few options here. So limitations on foods tend to have a more dramatic impact here than they do for people who live in larger cities.<br />
<br />
Long ago a chiropractor friend told me that when people have serious liver/kidney issues that are untreated, they seem allergic to nearly everything, but that it was because the body just didn't have the normal "tolerance" for the standards of life, like grass and laundry detergent. That if you dealt with the organs issue, this would change. I think this is true, as I saw that happen with someone I know. I'm wondering if the gluten thing might relate. By which I mean, yes it absolutely IS a problem inherently, but maybe whether someone reacts or not has a lot of variables -- both within their digestive system, and also in their immune system. Once my immune system was not getting so much of my blood poured back into my body with a massive valve leak, maybe it had the capacity to 'deal with' more issues from other things.<br />
<br />
As I was not losing edema AT ALL after two months post-surgery, I went on a ketogenic eating plan, hoping that losing the base body water would inspire my body somehow. It really did. I lost like 66# of water in four weeks. But this had bizarre and very painful effects body-wide. It turns out that diuretics are one thing, and keto is another thing, but the two together do not end well. It's just not enough water -- my body told me in a dream. I tried going off the diuretics, but I grew massively in a week so I went back on them. I went off keto, and I grew but far less massively and over a period of weeks, but I didn't regain all that I'd lost of the water -- only the baseline (about 25#) I tend to carry at this size. I waited a few weeks and then tried again keto with no diuretics -- same result.<br />
<br />
I am only just beginning a new plan -- sans keto, with restored diuretics -- tomorrow. It combines a variety of carb levels depending on the day (for fluid reasons) and intermittant fasting. So, we will see how it goes.<br />
<br />
<b>SO IN SUMMARY...</b><br />
<br />
It turns out that years of life, utterly wrecked, were probably due to the birth-defect nobody knew about all along.<br />
<br />
My body needs to rebuild muscle-etc. for mobility after years down. My body needs to build massively inside, veins arteries lymph and more for the change in blood volume/power. There's tons of edema to lose. And more fat as well. So there is plenty to do ahead.<br />
<br />
But the good news is, I GET TO LIVE!<br />
<br />
I thank God, the Universe, and anybody else I think is listening, every single day. <br /><br />
PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-49572105755500360872014-04-29T23:11:00.000-05:002014-05-13T19:52:30.285-05:00Accelerating out of the CurveWhen I was 16, I took my boyfriend Chris to meet my grandfather, Robert Bourbon Bunyan Maples (aka "Bob") of Ojai, California. Bob came from Texas to California in a covered wagon in 1904, when he was four years old -- and he was a character like something out of a book.<br />
<br />
Two decades later, Chris told me the main thing he remembered about the man was his repeated insistence to us (having watched some inspiring documentary just before we arrived) -- while dangerously waving his large cane for emphasis -- that <i>we have sheep in our eyebrows!</i><br />
<br />
I can see how that might stay with someone.<br />
<br />
It embarrassed the hell out of me at 16, but seemed hilariously sweet in retrospect, when grandpa was gone.<br />
<br />
From the time I was five years old, he'd make me read the newspaper to any fool crazy enough to get near. ("She's smart as a whip!" he used to say to everyone.) And he loved to give advice. When I got older and I was around 17, he loved to opine to me while driving. Especially <i>about </i>driving.<br />
<br />
"When pulling out of a turn," he intoned as he took the circular curve of an on-ramp, "You have to <i>feel </i>the car," he says, as the 'pull' from the end of the hard curve took us. "Then <i>accelerate out of the curve." </i>To example this, he promptly accelerated to about Mach 2 just as we reached the 101 Freeway. (Given its daily percentage of PI lawyers, drug lords and movie stars, this went totally unnoticed.)<br />
<br />
I felt both terror and trust. We were like my once-favorite <i>Roadrunner </i>cartoon, but in an old American car only slightly smaller and lighter than an Abrams tank.<br />
<br />
I later came to consider his advice an <i>aphorism </i>of sorts:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>After all the twists and turns one goes through, when you finally see the road is straightening out ahead, that's not the time to relax from the stress, it's the time to get ready. Use the stress at the end as something to push off from, put some power into it and get yourself on the straight and narrow.</i><br />
<br />
Well, it makes sense to <i>me, </i>anyway.<br />
<br />
I'm just about there now, with health and nutrition. I won't lie, I am frankly exhausted, emotionally, from the effort it has taken over <i>years </i>to try and figure out what went horribly wrong with my body, my diet, my health, where my energy went (where my damned <i>hair </i>went!) and so on.<br />
<br />
But this isn't the time to let go or relax. I think I may actually see the highway up ahead.<br />
<br />
<b>My Poster Child License Has Been Revoked</b><br />
<br />
I quit blogging here for a long time. Even for years before that, it was nothing but barely. That's because I began this blog waxing-on about low-carb. VLC helped me lose 170 pounds and feel awesome.<br />
<br />
Until it didn't. I "crashed" into fatigue and other health symptoms so severe I'm lucky I've survived.<br />
<br />
Of course, you know what it's like: One day I'm the Poster Child for VLC and the next day <i>you must have been doing it wrong. </i><br />
<br />
Well, clearly whatever I was doing was wrong for my body. But I was pretty damn successful with eating the expected foods and getting the expected results... initially.<br />
<br />
We could back-seat drive the "what-if's" all day to no useful end.<br />
<br />
I am fairly rejecting of the medical system. This is due to my being a little bit 'Type A' personality ("I'm fine!" I once hollered as nicely as I could at a nurse, while ordering an overnight delivery of a new laptop computer to my hospital bed so I could continue work. Seriously). But it's mostly due to my having utterly lost respect for allopathic medicine's expertise on anything beyond rescuing one from the most acute version of poison or injury or something gone amuck to the far extreme. And even in those categories, it's more that they simply hold the legal monopoly of access and power for the equipment and elements needed. They still rate very low on the common sense list of treatment strategies in my view, even then.<br />
<br />
My family loves doctors. They believe everything they see on TV or are told by someone in a white coat. They all end up on chronic medication (sometimes multiple), missing minor organs (as if any organ is minor), and gradually getting sicker at a financially-lucrative-for-pharma slow pace, opining to me sometimes -- as if this means anything -- that they are sick "because they're getting old" (even if they're in their 40s) or that their chronic skin cancers have nothing to do with the fact that they've been taking rat poison daily for years and can't have vitamin K, no, the doctor explained it's because they were out in the sun a lot as a kid. (Insert facepalm here.) Don't get me started.<br />
<br />
So, I didn't go to the doctor. Anybody else with even half the severity of my post-VLC symptoms would probably have been on their way to a whole list of tests and labels and medications.<br />
<br />
But me, I just sat motionless (it was all I could do) and used google to search, and read, and search and read. Every night, every week, every month, every season, for a long time, years really, though I cycled through brief bouts of optimistic ideas (which failed) during that. I was trying to learn more about what my body might be missing and how I could fix it. Along the way I also found a lot of fascinating substances and techs and historical people and nutrients and so forth.<br />
<br />
I even discovered that the "unique" elements of my weight (and that of both sides of my family, though I am the far extreme) are in fact predictable and part of a known syndrome/disease (lipedema) with a huge estimate of affected women. Something which diet and exercise <i>won't </i>'correct' (explaining why I lost 170# and <i>none in those areas!</i>) and for which there is <i>no known cure. </i><br />
<br />
Excuse me while I leap from this ledge.<br />
<br />
But moving on: whatever the solution, I knew one thing: VLC worked great for losing weight and feeling great, right up until it didn't. Maybe partly because of my lipedema, but maybe just <i>because.</i><br />
<br />
Then my job went insane and for 10 months I worked so many hours I didn't have time to pee regularly let alone eat regularly. I annihilated what was left of my health, working from bed until I fell asleep on my laptop around 3-4 am, woke up and continued around 7am, seven days a week for six months. A few less hours a week 6 days a week for another four months. My best friend yelled at me more than once that a cocaine habit would have been less destructive to my life and health, my kid all but flunked out of school while I obviously wasn't looking closely enough, my web coding projects fell to pieces, my friends huffed off telling me when I felt like being a friend again to get in touch, since I hadn't answered an email or called in months -- in short, it ruined "the rest" of every area of my life that the health-crash following from my eating plan 'diet success' hadn't already covered.<br />
<br />
Once I finally had some hours back in my life -- and a lot less active web projects or friends, alas -- I wanted to blog a little more. My fatigue was even worse by then, by far. But I didn't have much to say about food that wasn't either depressing or confused. And that's not the kind of stuff I want to share.<br />
<br />
I would like to have shared some of the stuff I was reading about a given nutrient or DIY-health idea. But with a blog called <b>"The Divine Low-Carb" </b>it seemed ridiculous to be blogging here if I didn't have anything to say <i>about low-carb. </i><br />
<br />
By the time I finally started reading the blogs I had before in the LC/Paleo world (both back "when I had hope" and was blogging sometimes, and before the Google Reader debacle where I lost all my RSS feeds), I realized I was right in line with lots of other formerly VLC people who'd had similar results. All the things I thought were only about me turned out to be embarrassingly predictable.<br />
<br />
Still, I suspect it is as much about the <i>accumulated nutritional status and integrity of the body when someone takes VLC on, </i>than the eating approach itself, that leads to whatever end result someone has.<br />
<br />
None of us have a clear idea how healthy our organs are, or how nutrient replete we are with everything down to the spectrum of amino acids. It's a black-box situation.<br />
<br />
I suspect we are all on a long road to understanding what works vs. doesn't for our bodies, and even what does work or doesn't at one point may change later.<br />
<br />
<b>I Missed Congeniality</b><br />
<br />
In the last couple years in particular, I have learned something important from folks in lowcarb forums. I forgot how much I missed them when not visiting those worlds.<br />
<br />
Lowcarb is the most awesome community of good people on the internet. I've been on the 'net since 1993, and I've been part of many and owned several forums, and I'm telling you from a solid base of experience that most the people in the low-carb world are just inexplicably <i>really nice people. </i><br />
<br />
Especially compared to the internet at large. Whatever else that eating plan is doing for the world, it is at the least a great contribution to a sense of community.<br />
<br />
And guess what? It turns out, they don't <i>care </i>if me or others are still eating lowcarb or not. They actually learn to like people for being <i>people</i> -- imagine that!<br />
<br />
A lot of the people in the "low-carb" forums I lurk in or post in are not even LC at all. Some are paleo, some are even Weight Watchers or vegetarians or whatever.<br />
<br />
Because once people get to know each other, the detail of whether someone else might be eating honey becomes irrelevant. It doesn't have to be religious dogma by which all others are judged.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Carbism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be eating a potato.</i><br />
<br />
Many people I know have "cycled through" nearly every diet book and approach there is. Hell it's <i>their </i>body anyway, not mine, so who cares, sheesh. Right?<br />
<br />
That's the way it should be in every food community. It's not, I know. And maybe there are corners of LC where it's not, also. But in the main forums I visit (dominantly <i>Active Lowcarbers</i> [for my journal] and <i>Lowcarb Friends </i>[where I'm mostly a lurker]), that's mostly the way it is.<br />
<br />
The people there are just Really. Damn. <i>Nice.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Blogging </b><br />
<br />
Now that I am "accelerating out of the curve" and onto something a lot more like "an actual life" again, at a very low level yet the best I've had since about 2008, I've decided to take up occasional blogging again.<br />
<br />
I had previously (a few years ago) revised this with a big caveat that it was not-a-diet-blog. But now, at some point in the next month or three, I'm going to rename this blog something else, as soon as I think of what. That will change the address too, alas, but with a bunch of fancy footwork I think I can work it out.<br />
<br />
Suggestions for a new name welcome. I don't want it to be about food or nutrition solely, I just want it to <i>include </i>that, along with anything interesting to me. Maybe I should just make it my name. That seems dull!<br />
<br />
<b>Lions and Tigers and Bears</b><br />
<br />
So just lately, I've been reading so much about the "gut biome" that my eyeballs keep falling out.<br />
<br />
I'm excited for the simple reason that this falls into the crack of <b><i>what I have not yet tried. </i></b><br />
<br />
So, it's got enormous "potential." <br />
<br />
My growing "food intolerances" suggest this may be critically important. I've heard some people say they actually resolved their food intolerances by repairing their gut biome. Literally that the things that used to give them major 'gluten-ing' symptoms now don't. That's stunning! Wow, if that's true, that's <i>amazing.</i><br />
<br />
It turns out our entire body especially gut is filled with teeming hordes of bacteria who are living like whole forests and jungles of creatures, or whole cities and planets of life. An entire sub-cosmic ecosystem.<br />
<br />
Wars of hand to hand combat and devious intrigue are going on in our guts all the time, with lives that cover the space of minutes or an hour in our timescale, and we don't even notice.<br />
<br />
Our gut environment is affected by food and even stress. I bet it functions like the mysterious will of the <i>Far Being Retzglaran </i>inside:<i> </i>Luck, synchronicity (and the inexplicable Will of the Divine) to the life within.<br />
<br />
I find it kind of amazing. We have a whole <i>universe </i>of creatures -- inside our intestines!<br />
<br />
And sheep in our eyebrows. Right! :-)<br />
<br />
PJ<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-91728568464182074452012-11-02T06:35:00.004-05:002012-11-02T06:39:28.505-05:00Teenage IF and Nothing Left to Lose<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Insanity is relative.</span></h3>
<br />
Insanity is MY relatives. Let's talk about the teen.<br />
<br />
Ry is 16 years old now. She is amazing, awesome, beautiful, and also miserably infuriating, and capable of making me want to rage, weep, despair, and implode with love, within any 15 minute time-span.<br />
<br />
My parenting sucks. I need to work on being much more disciplined with her; she is horribly inconsiderate of me in so many ways, that 'entitlement psychology' that drives me mad.<br />
<br />
A lot of it really IS 'energy' issues on my part. When you barely have the energy to get up and pee, never mind take a shower or drive to the store, then having the energy to fight with your teenager (and constantly get up and <i>stalk them</i> to make sure they do stuff and nag them for the 1.2 billion things they screw up or half-ass do) is easier said than done. But, I know <i>it is what it is</i>. My not feeling particularly up to it most of the time does not excuse me from being responsible for it.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I get so angry and everything about her behavior just seems so <i>wrong</i>. One day, in the middle of ranting at her about something I can't even recall, I remembered the lyrics to a Linkin Park song I like -- archetypal teenage angst. The lyrics, made succinct here:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Tired of being what you want me to be<br />Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface<br />Don't know what you're expecting of me<br />Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes<br />Every step that I take is another mistake to you<br />Can't you see that you're smothering me<br />Holding too tightly afraid to lose control<br />Cause everything that you thought I would be<br />Has fallen apart right in front of you<br />Every step that I take is another mistake to you<br />And every second I waste is more than I can take<br />Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow<br />And I know I may end up failing too<br />But I know you were just like me<br />With someone disappointed in you<br />I've become so numb I can't feel you there<br />Become so tired so much more aware<br />I'm becoming this all I want to do<br />Is be more like me and be less like you</i></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-- 'Numb' by Linkin Park </div>
<br />
<br />
And I realized that what I really wanted to do was shake her while yelling, "Be more like ME dammit!"<br />
<br />
At that point, I realized the black humor of it all.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue;">Teenage Fat and Self Esteem</span></span></h3>
<br />
She has fought obesity, eventually to morbid obesity. I can't take back the past and my own ignorance and thinking that a lot of stuff was "not a big deal," and thinking that my inability to lose weight in the areas that turn out to define 'Lipoedema' and my inability to handle carbs without weight gain was unique to me. Like I was some alien circus creature and surely "everyone else" wasn't that way. After all, I was surrounded by people who ate 10x worse than I did and they were normal, or at least much smaller. So much for that logic. Some of them are now huge.<br />
<br />
I didn't get fat until my early 20s. I had a little chub that hit hard and fast at 13, but it fell off me when I hit 15, 'baby fat' they called it. And she seemed to have more her father's body shape and coloring than mine. So I never expected it of her. By the time it was overwhelmingly obvious that something had gone wildly wrong in her metabolism, she was a pre-teen and the damage was done.<br />
<br />
Our house was already mostly low-carb and mostly gluten-free by then. At that point it was more a matter of wanting to support her and let food focus be her own decision. Wanting to NOT be like mothers of my friends, who told me that their own mom's response to their weight when young was far more horrifying than the weight itself. I told her everything I could about low-carb but how too much of that for me had been an issue so maybe it should be moderated; about emphasis on fresh foods, <i>good</i> fats like coconut oil, and lifting weights. Basically, the things I was reading about at any given time.<br />
<br />
That doesn't mean that she has been able to do something successfully before now. Or be willing to do something even 'with me', even when I was willing just for the sake of helping her. It has to come from her, I have learned that the hard way.<br />
<br />
To say that the effects of fat on her self esteem are radical is an understatement.<br />
<br />
It has been hard for me to understand. By comparison, I was a fairly confident, slightly intellectual, barely-starting martial arts enthusiast, a manager in my workplaces from the time I began working, and a performing artist since I was a child. It turns out I am more an introvert than I realized (when I got to know myself, my psych rating changed from ENTJ to INTP/J). But she is none of that.<br />
<br />
She really is nothing like me in many ways.<br />
<br />
When I was around 24 and suddenly the social world of strangers began treating me like some especially gross gum on the bottom of their shoe, I was at first perplexed (how could anybody not know that I was <i>cool?</i>), and then enraged (how could <i>they</i> have the gall to look down on <i>me?</i>) and then mortified (if I stand behind the column in this shopping mall for another 10 minutes, those women I used to know in high school will leave). That is to say... I dealt with it poorly.<br />
<br />
But, once I got over nearly putting a bullet in my head about it, I was ok. I just <i>focused on work. </i>That's what dad said he did when his (now on #5) marriages went to hell. If you work enough, you don't have time to focus on, think about, anything else. And everyone you are around defines you primarily by your work, not by your weight, at least to some degree. So I became a workaholic.<br />
<br />
I'm working normal hours now. Probably temporary. But I'm trying to focus on fiction writing which 'feeds my soul' in some fashion, in my personal time. Still, it's true I'm affected by my weight, psychologically and socially, but except in rare moments of angst, it's more in the background for me.<br />
<br />
Not for her. It is up front and center for her.<br />
<br />
I didn't deal with fat nearly as poorly as she did, in her own way, though. She got it when self-esteem was still developing. Fat has had an emotional and psychological impact on her that it never had on me, because I had long grown past formative years (including response from boys) when it arrived.<br />
<br />
She claims shyness, and "a degree of social anxiety." I don't know what to believe, since the latter often seems to overlap with her not wanting to go anywhere or do anything and seems like a lazy-excuse. All I know is that she has been seriously harmed up by the situation, via more than just her figure.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue;">Teenage Self-Imposed Dieting, Exercising, Intermittent Fasting</span></span></h3>
<br />
On her own, since she is in that "never comes out of her room" phase, she has shifted to a 'fairly low-carb' eating plan on her own, lifts weights, and works hard on practicing IF, or Intermittent Fasting.<br />
<br />
Of course, she is 16. She is an artist (impressively so), which to my Virgo x4 logical mind appears to translate in our lives as "never does anything properly, won't study anything thoroughly, makes a mess of every environment, and is the laziest human alive." I think work and study are The Answer(tm). Clearly, she doesn't. So, getting her to "do these things right" and "truly understand them" is a lost cause.<br />
<br />
She does "something" and she's not particularly consistent and she's not particularly severe about it.<br />
<br />
But, I'm one of those people who was consistent and severe and ended up with seemingly new problems thanks to 'overdoing' VLC and 'underdoing' rich-nutrition, I suspect. So, it's possible that her doing it "mostly" and screwing it up "to a degree and sometimes" is actually the far-healthier approach!<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>She eats lowish carb. Except when she doesn't. Mostly she tries to keep her carbs to vegetables, legumes, and rarely fruits, and what comes in certain dairy.</li>
<li>She eats high fat. That is to say she eats to satiation, and is directly responsible for increasing stock prices in the Daisy Dairy company for their cottage cheese and sour cream products.</li>
<li>She eats meat as the base of any meal. </li>
<li>She tries to eat once a day, as much as she can, until she is totally full. She may blow it and have a protein shake or something else very LC in the middle of that sometimes. Once a week, she tries to fast for 30 hours instead of 24.</li>
<li>When she can gather up the gumption, she does the lifts I have insisted are the foundation of fitness: we don't have a bench and she's using only dumbbells, so: deadlifts, squats, arnold press, and then some messing-around things (e.g. side bends, shoulder shrugs, calf raises). </li>
</ol>
<br />
At least, she <i>tells</i> me she is doing this, and that this is why my weights are not in the living room where I want them to be. Since she is holed up in her room like a train robber evading the posse, I will have to take her word on it.<br />
<br />
She has lost from around 283# to 240#. (She is 5'6".) She's excited about that, but it's been a bit slow going, probably because she probably has too many calories when lowcarb, and too many carbs when normal on calories, and she is likely seldom if ever truly ketogenic, due to not retaining the <35g carbs daily for long enough to get there more than the tiny dip during sleep or something.<br />
<br />
Still, it is a very visible improvement all over her body, and she's so hopeful. The more I read about how weight regain is nearly inevitable and so on, the more when I think of her I feel an incredible rage. I want her to have a life and be proud of herself and feel good. She is young. Surely if there is hope for anybody truly losing it and being able to keep it off, it ought to be her.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue;">Food and Stuff</span></span></h3>
<br />
I had cans of white meat chicken that I store for emergencies, quick protein and kitty treat. Now I can't keep the stuff. She's discovered if she drains it, and fries it with spices, it becomes a diced/flaked chicken she can mix with lots of other things, eat plain, put in salads, whatever. It's surprisingly good.<br />
<br />
It's this stuff. At amazon if you buy the 10oz can, 12pk, on subscribe with prime, it's basically the same price as Super Walmart. Except they deliver it to your door.<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V1LXTU/">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V1LXTU/</a><br />
<br />
Initially I thought, I'm not fond of this as her primary food, since I am prejudiced against canned food, and it's expensive as hell for me as a 'primary' food, and surely fresh chicken is better. But she doesn't want to cook quite that much if she doesn't have to. So she's living on canned chicken, ground (organic) turkey burger, and (factory) chuck-burger, along with enough 'soft-dairy' for a Vermont advertising model.<br />
<br />
She's fond of the Greek seasoning I get her from Penzey's, and herbed crumbled feta cheese. She likes basic italian seasonings, and Montreal steak seasoning. She still doesn't like eggs, but she doesn't mind them "in" things. She uses canned diced green chilis, and sliced black olives, both in large quantity. And shredded mild cheddar cheese... and she never met anything that cream cheese didn't make better. Sometimes turkey pastrami sliced at the grocer deli. She's getting more courageous experimenting with spices.<br />
<br />
She drinks only water, since she says she can guarantee a facial zit for every few drinks of any soda, almost predictably. She eats salads with ranch dressing sometimes. That's about all I can think to say about her eating since I don't actually SEE most of it. I have to work 9-10 hours a day, and sleep, and some computer stuff, which means the only time I might actually be sharing her life in the early evening, she is usually locked away in her room, playing WoW or SIMS or drawing.<br />
<br />
<i>But it's working for her...</i><br />
<br />
She's losing weight. She's measurably smaller. She feels optimistic about it.<br />
<br />
And if she does every individual thing not so well to begin with, and blows it entirely off and on, well it might be that this actually does her more help than harm in the end.<br />
<br />
Because what she's doing <i>is working</i>. She had almost given up hope. She felt desperate and demoralized. She felt like she had nothing left to lose. Now she feels better.<br />
<br />
I consider this a great thing.<br />
<br />
PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-10940244295205180292012-05-24T07:06:00.000-05:002012-05-24T12:05:41.179-05:00The Pear-Shaped Secret of the Obesity Epidemic<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I remember the shocking and memorable photograph that <a href="http://garytaubes.com/" target="_blank">science writer Gary Taubes</a> showed in his book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400033462/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Good Calories, Bad Calories</a>," to help make the point of obesity as "a disorder of excess fat accumulation" -- a concept and phrase I had never heard before his book. The picture showed a woman who was nearly emaciated on the top half of her body, and more than just plus-size on the bottom half, a drastic difference that left her looking like some old-style carnival attraction. Which half of that woman "ate too much and moved too little?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I recall I had to take time out of my ranting to friends about what I was reading, to sit in stunned silence over some of the profound "reversal of paradigms" about health and obesity in that book. They were ideas I had never heard before. I credit him for educating me, but the writing was a tribute to the fact that a lot of things have been known for decades, even over a century -- but are carefully ignored, like that elephant in the living room on AA commercials, where everyone pretends the overwhelmingly obvious problem is not there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Apparently the Germans were on the right track, 75 years ago, but the world was so yonked about the war, the USA just started much of obesity science all over again, this time in English -- and this time, from the armchair of emotional psychology, rather than from the science lab of biochemistry. Oh sure, that's what the world needs -- more Puritan-guilt about biblical sins such as gluttony and sloth, to displace any objective reasoning -- like how some animals have similar metabolisms and results, even though they can't buy ice cream when upset and they get along very well with their mothers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Until the Taubes book, my maternal family's experience with being obese, morbidly obese, and severely obese, was as much like the "official government and health agency" story of fat as my seriously dysfunctional, lower-middle-class family was like television's Brady Bunch. I watched that surreal sitcom as a child with the kind of fascinated awe normally reserved for ancient pyramids and alien-looking sea creatures. How bizarre! How does that happen? Is that real?? Tell me more! It was a lot like the official version of dieting, where in inspired frenzy, desperately hopeful people can calculate precisely how many calories they will be not-eating, and allegedly burning-off, for that simple formula and a promised happy ending. Except you never get your money back with that guarantee.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="pullquote" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
There is only one body-theology in the church of whole-grains and calories amen. The government-ordained priests of health are now the <i>High Interpretive Intercessors</i> between the layman and science. Doctors in white coats shake their heads at how you cannot possibly be telling the truth or the magic would have happened, and when your 4.9 minutes of personal attention are up, you can get a prescription for statins that for most people won't much help (and for many, especially women, do actual harm) -- drugs that are, except in rare cases, ridiculously unnecessary since several nutrients you need anyway and an eating plan called "real food" will fix you. But the world is expected to abide by the mantra of "eat less and move more," and if that doesn't work out any better for you than it does for most of the rest of planet earth, the front desk can provide a new photocopy of a diet that'd make even perky Marcia Brady want to leap from a ledge.</div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then, call it gut-instinct, but you know when it's coming: a nurse (often obese) will express astonishment when you say no, you are not planning to have someone slice open your guts and profoundly screw up your ability to digest nutrients in the name of your being less fat. (Not lean. Just less fat.) Not counting the majority of people you may know who tried it and who are now dead, miserable or as fat as they ever were, there's that little thing about months or years of ongoing nightmare 'complications' followed by doom. As the ultimate in black irony, all those eons of horror followed by death are used as 'success' stories by the "gosh we don't collect those statistics" business world... a surgical industry nearly to the point of drive-thru bypass, even for children. And we thought medieval medicine was appalling. I'll take some Eye of Newt over that, any day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That doesn't even start on the bozos <a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com/2007/06/obesity-is-brain-disorder.html" target="_blank">who want to re-define 'obesity' as compulsive eating</a> -- troubled psychology, and wrong assumptions to boot -- not biology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">**</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The official doctrine of nutrition is right there in college textbooks. Science that was out of date decades ago (and things that were never good science, and things that were never even pretending to be science) are in today's college nutrition textbooks, teaching the people who will be doctors and nutritionists (a single-word oxymoron of the times) later. Frustrated at the fight to educate those who should already know better today? Guess what, you'll still be doing it at least a decade from now. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's said that science advances one funeral at a time; that not until the 'old guard' of science paradigms die off does allowance of new findings truly come about, but we've improved on that model. Now education sits in textbook pedagogical gridlock, and "remains consistent" a few million funerals at a time, giving advice that was ignorant and dangerous in the 1970's and helped shift a whole culture into diabetes overdrive, but is still being taught in 2012. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Don't believe me? Pick three major textbook publishers. Get a university-level nutrition textbook from each. Read 'em and weep. Probably that author was taught that decades ago. Probably <i>their</i> textbook author was taught it before then. The authors in 10-20 years are being taught by the books today. You gotta admit, it's impressive--even those sponsoring holy books have to work hard to maintain so much consistency over time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nutrition has become a state-sponsored religion. Authorities tell us what science says. I read the language of science, although with serious limits (and limits on journals I cannot begin to afford), and I read the blogs of scientists, doctors and specialists who know the subject and review such things, and I find it just fascinating how science so often doesn't say anything like what the abstract, or the title, or the press release, or the media, or the government, tells the public it says. Or even what the books say, <a href="http://rawfoodsos.com/" target="_blank">as Denise Minger so eloquently outlined</a>. (For sure, keep avoiding cholesterol and eating grains: somewhere, a cardiologist needs a new sportscar, and you can help each other out before long.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The congregation of people who are ill or fat are expected to have "faith," even when the official advice doesn't work. Even when it's so far from working it's not even humor anymore. The experts who represent the divine ideal of science will tell us what we need to know and if they say it works, no amount of obvious results saying otherwise matter. It is sacrilege to question the government-approved, agency-represented, and conflict-of-interest funded experts: those whose advice has so spectactularly failed to treat an epidemic of overweight and obesity, that it's now a pandemic of an entire spectrum of nutritional-deficiency diseases, of which issues like obesity (and now even morbid- and super-obesity) are merely one part.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The public wants to believe, because they want a solution, who wouldn't? Follow the paint-by-number plan, the slogans and logos... follow the money. The magazines make it all seem fun. There are even diet dinners (with heavy carbs on the side) frozen for your convenience. If it works, you'll be thin! Awesome. </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then strangers shopping won't look at you like you're more vile than an ax-murderer, despite your attempts to wear large loose dark shrouds of clothing that will not offend them with details. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then people who sublimate all their racism, sexism, nationalism and other -ism's into the one "allowed and encouraged" ism of fat-ism will target elsewhere, not knowing that once upon a time you were in that very crowd of untouchables. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You won't be walking through a world where lean people get to sit down and rest, but fat people can't because all the chairs have arms and you don't fit. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You won't pay for two plane tickets with seats that have hard, curved bottom and back edges, so with high weight pressing against your back and the middle of one buttock, the hours of tense spinal distortion in turbulence costs you a fortune and leaves you crippled.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">All those planes and trains with bathrooms you can't even use because you're too wide will be a thing of the past. (You can "hold it" for three days, right? I once had to. Thanks, Amtrak.)</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We're a culture-wide <i>Stockholm Syndrome</i> of fat. Even many of the victims of horrible nutritional advice and barbaric bariatic practices join in condescending identification with the very health agencies instructing us to eat a majority of carbohydrates for carbohydrate-spawned diseases like diabetes (rather like taking more arsenic to cure arsenic poisoning); the very researchers (and peer reviewers) whose approach to science is so bad my 8th grade chemistry teacher would have sent them to the hall; the very medical experts who guide us toward the most brain-opiate drug-addicting and digestive-destroying foods (it's no coincidence that the agency dedicated to supporting the USA grain industry is also the agency insisting on all those grains in the diet...); and let's not forget </span><a href="http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2010/10/04/the-dietary-guidelines-committee-receives-the-spanking-it-deserves/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">the official "latest nutrition standards" that fail on more points of real science than they've ever represented</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In war, in terrain combat, it has long been known that killing the enemy is just poor planning. The better goal is to disable an individual sufficiently that at least two or more other soldiers have to change their focus away from fighting, and toward keeping that soldier alive and reaching medical care. The same war-logic works for medicine: the goal is neither to cure nor to kill, both of which remove the consumer's financial usefulness, but to "treat" an ongoing (and ideally slowly degenerating, so it requires more drugs and more procedures for more issues over time) collection of maladies that ensure paying customers forever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"There is no cure of course, but you'll die if you don't buy this prescription!" -- Best. Marketing. Slogan. Ever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">**</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here's a few little things I didn't learn from official sources.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The average weight gain of the 'obesity epidemic' hysteria is only about 7-10 pounds. As this is on a population bell curve, of course any increase even fairly small would mean a great increase in numbers. So when they say "the number of obese people has doubled!!" that is technically true, but it sure sounds much more extreme than "on average, the population has gained 7-10 pounds."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The obesity increase is not evenly distributed. It correlates with genetics, although more research is needed on this. Next time you read <a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com/2007/06/too-fat-for-parenthood.html" target="_blank">about someone who could not adopt a child because they were too overweight</a>, or editorials on why fat kids should be removed from family, or teenagers surgically gutted "for their own good," or why insurance should cost more, jobs should be less available, public transportation is fairly unavailable or unaffordable to fat people, consider that this is not evenly applied: some genetic lines are going to be in the cross-hairs of that focus, and others barely so. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;">"...it turns out actually that these really obese kids are concentrated in particular ethnic groups and the gene pools are different in different ethnic groups,"</span> said Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University. <span style="color: blue;">"...some of the most powerful evidence that this is a biological problem and not a "behavioral one" (in quotation marks) is genetics. And so there are a number of ways to assess the genetic contributions to a trait. It turns out if you look for obesity it is probably the second most heritable trait, second only to height, with which it is quite close. Based on estimates that can be done by analyzing twins, 80 percent of the variability in weight can be accounted for by genetic factors."</span> Anybody in the real world knows that some people get huge quickly and with little effort while some eat everything in sight and are beanpoles, but it's nice to see someone like this guy recognize this also. <span style="color: blue;">"...So when you see a very obese person walking down the street there’s a very, very significant possibility that that individual just has a genetic alteration that makes them so."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If I mention that obesity is also correlated with poverty, I bet you can guess at least some of the races more prone to obesity (and morbid- and super- obesity) than others. Like the world needs <i>institutionalized</i> prejudice wrapped into everything else, right? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"Calorie math" is humor when applied to much of the morbid- and super- obese population. Even after gastric bypass, even after weight loss, even in a metabolic ward, very obese people can survive on less than 'starvation calories' and still not lose any further bodyfat. Really? Are we sure they aren't just lying about their food? Yes, we're sure. Friedman (the modern science rock star whose lab discovered the hormone Leptin), was talking about gastric bypass patients when he said: <span style="color: blue;">"...there’s another feature of this surgery that people, I think, ignore, and it’s this: when you do this procedure you limit the intake of a person to about 700 calories a day. Just so you know, none of you could consume 700 calories a day for very long; it is a very small number of calories. Despite that fact, these people still end up being clinically obese at the other end of the procedure. They lose a lot of weight but they would still on average be definable as significantly obese on average after the procedure." "...If they’re consuming 700 calories every day they’re going to be expending more than that. And so what you would find, you would expect to see is as long as they’re that imbalanced they’re going to keep losing and losing and losing and losing. That’s not what happens in these people; they plateau and they stop losing weight at what is definable as a significantly obese level. Now, if I had that procedure you probably wouldn’t see me in profile anymore because I would just get so thin. That’s not what happens to these people and it appears that in the face of reduced intake the body shuts down caloric expenditure and they can’t lose any more weight." </span></span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"...Now think about it, they’re eating 700 calories a day and they’re still obese. I mean if that doesn’t say that there’s something metabolically different about the obese than the lean, I don’t know what does."</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Taubes book recounted research where fat rats were starved until they died, and the autopsy showed they still had lots of fat: their body literally <i>sacrificed vital organs to spare the fat</i>. Apparently the "eat less and move more" philosophy didn't work for them either.</span><br />
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**<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here's something fairly new to me: there's an "incurable disease" called Lipoedema--it tends to occur in familes. Although it was named in the USA, it's profoundly under-diagnosed here. You'll never guess how this condition is described officially: "a disorder of excess fat accumulation." Wow, where have I heard that before?! Right: the Taubes book. It turns out this was already known in 1940, when researchers at the Mayo Clinic coined the term -- yet it's nearly unheard of 70 years later. I thought he'd just found a picture of something incredibly rare but telling. It's more than that, as it turns out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This affects women. Fat accrues between the upper pelvis and ankles (and in ~30% of the cases, arms). The feet are oddly free of it, as if the 'fat suit' only goes to the ankles. The upper body can range from skeletal to morbidly obese, but is not directly involved in the condition, so the top-half of the woman is often vastly smaller than the bottom half. Looks pretty weird. I know because I have a mirror, and other family members who in varying degrees look the same.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's official with the condition: Diet will not make this fat go away. Even anorexics will merely look exactly like that picture in the Taubes book: skeletal on top, still hugely fat on the bottom. Exercise does not make it go away. Even gastric bypass surgery and the following starvation from that does not make it go away: patients will simply lose weight on the top half of the body, and still be very fat on the bottom. Much like I lost lots of weight on low-carb: pretty much all on the top half of the body. Between loose skin and disproportional fat storage, 'losing weight' just makes one look more like a mutant.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">On the bright side, the fat is as far from the vital organs as it can get. On the down side, the fat will keep accruing, especially if the person doesn't get diagnosed (so they are unaware of the situation), and especially if they simply keep dieting, in ever-more try-anything-desperation. Plenty of research backs the ways the body adjusts half a dozen biological parameters to arrange weight regain--which in this case, even if lost off the top half of the body, is likely to return on the bottom, and be trapped there forever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Fat cells are not inert luggage: they put out hormones and enzymes and affect the entire body. No matter how otherwise seemingly-healthy the person is, guess what happens when they are eventually 100+ pounds overweight "in the hips to ankles?" Their whole body is affected, and additional serious obesity is likely. This condition is hormonal (starts around puberty, although not always apparent then, and kicks in more strongly after a major hormonal event(s)), and it's clearly <i>a disorder of fat accumulation </i>-- the body will not release that energy <i>no matter what</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The human body normally stores energy in fat cells and gives it back to build the body or as motive energy. The weight of a human may naturally vary at least slightly with the seasons. But in this case, both of those things merely add to this fat-bottom-half condition. The fat can form big lumps that interfere with sitting and walking. The fat is often very sensitive, with painful bruising on minor pressure, not helped by growing weight and size from the fat itself as you might imagine. And eventually it can begin to crush the lymphatic system of the legs, leading to an even more dangerous and miserable secondary disease condition called Lymphadema.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I bet you're thinking, "Yeah, but stuff like that is rare." Think again. It's estimated at least 11% of adult women have this. Leaving out women under 15 or over 64 for a moment, we have an estimated 103 million women in the USA. The obesity percentage for adult women is "over 60 percent" so let's say 60% of that is nearly 62 million. (Which reminds me, if public transportation is funded in part by taxes, and the majority of the population is fat, how come fat people can't fit in the bathrooms on public transportation, or have to pay double to be crippled by the only option?) Let's say only 10% have this condition: that's over 10 million people. Odd this is so unknown, given those numbers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Is anybody diagnosing this and informing women -- before cutting them open in dangerous-to-deadly weight-loss surgeries -- that it won't even affect their primary obesity? Is anybody diagnosing this before various other situations punish them for not being able to get thin? Is it considered before needed surgeries are refused "until they lose some weight?" It's not surprising that the casual world is full of people who will yell "Fat ass!" without concern for the cause of someone's fat, but how come the medical field is doing their equivalent of the same thing?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">To put this in perspective by numbers, breast cancer affects just under 12% of women, so it's nearly the same number. 12 million Americans are estimated infected with Hepatitis B. AIDS in the USA has 'more than a million' cases. You hear a lot about those conditions, in part because vaccinations and "treatment drugs" can be sold for them. (Well, and because they are fatal.) There is no known cure for at least 10 million American women with the Lipoedema condition, who may gradually end up with horribly disabling and even fatal secondary results. There is not very much to sell so it's nearly a secret.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If it were better known, it might cause a lot of people to wonder if "dysregulation of fat accumulation" might be an important concept to focus on. They might wonder why that "eat less and move more" plan doesn't work as well as it should for most people. The bigger the person, the more this seems to be so. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Looking for cause and solution for this condition (which would be unusual, given the current focus on 'eternally treating symptoms' instead) might give insight into obesity across the board. Do the funding parties really want to know?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Much of my overly pear-shaped maternal family has Lipoedema. Several key elements of our bottom-half fat that I always thought made my family uniquely weird, turn out to be case-study obvious instead. Reading how "it has no cure" was demoralizing. But then I realized, I had already stumbled on that realization myself anyway. At least, "so far." That's what they say about diabetes as well, and paleo/lowcarb have reversed that in more cases than we can count.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But think about this: pretty much every other pathological 'disease condition' that mankind has ever found a true cause and cure for, has ended up being a severe ongoing (and perhaps multi-generational) deficiency of some nutrient(s). (At the least, disease is certainly not caused by a deficiency of surgery or drugs.) So perhaps yet-more focus on very dense absorbed nutrition will help. Who knows?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">**</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What I do know is that the human body is not math, it is biochemistry. I know that the science of stuffing a rodent with soybean trans-fats does not justify saying the rodent's poor health is why humans shouldn't eat steak. I know that modern wheat is a mutant that will make you eat more, mess with your brain in a few ways including addiction, and destroy many peoples' digestive systems, causing anything from joint pain to asthma to reflux to brain fog or depression to syndromes like IBS, and chronic inflammation, which contributes to many diseases, including to being too fat. And I know that medicine is the new religion, where science has become like the old Latin, with 'agency spokespeople' and doctors like priests who 'translate' for us and whom we are not expected to question.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I know that the health agencies are becoming mostly public relations "fronts," with the stalker strong-arm of organized crime available to them via government power, for global mega-corporations. I know that there are many things the public usually doesn't realize, though it's info openly available, such as how in USA and Britain most medium to hard dairy cheese is actually made with GMO soy rennet. I know that there is a spectrum of disease, many conditions, all likely related to improper nutrition and toxins, many of which the medical industry is officially pretending does not exist for years now (such as Morgellon's, chronic Lyme, and many others). I know that any approach or substance which is truly curative and threatens big money is likely to end up squashed and its discoverer curing people with it in prison, if he doesn't die from a conveniently tragic accident instead.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I know that the surreal disconnect between nutrition propaganda and biological reality has created the most intriguing mass psychology experiment since the WWII era. I know that the entire obesity topic is as much a sociological phenomenon as medical: no amount of evidence is sufficient to make most the public question the party line that is so overtly not working... and the identification with the sources of that party line, and the social prejudice against obese people, is endemic in our culture. In previous eras, the reasonings and groupings of propaganda and public acceptance were different, but the governing intent and public psychology seems eerily familiar. We may be doomed to repeat history for lack of understanding it, but we're doing so in creative new ways.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Gary Taubes released his first book on the review of the science for nutrition several years ago. After reading it, I figured it was a good thing it was long and dense, so you had to be a good reader for it: if the general public really absorbed the situation in the medical world, there might be riots at health agency doors. (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702/" target="_blank">His simpler book is "Why We Get Fat."</a>) If you think the world banking situation is a racket, even that has little on the Machiavellian inverted-focus of illness-care... which is then used as a back door for ever-more frightening politics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I thought the concept Taubes wrote about, the dysregulation of adipose tissue, was so novel. It explained so much -- finally, a model that fit the "reality" of experience for so many, including me. But it turns out that's been known to be an issue since 1940! So why was he the first person to really bring that to the public?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The number of people affected even by just this one condition (Lipoedema) is huge, literally over 1 in 10 adult women. Yet I still don't see any sign that the US or UK governments or their regulating agencies are even looking at this neon-obvious question of why, when the body stores energy as fat (which is normal), it then refuses to give back the energy in that fat (which is not normal, and means that energy stays stored as fat, accumulates, and the person has to eat more to get energy to keep functioning). So as Taubes put it, you don't get fat because you are eating more and moving less; you are eating more and moving less because you are getting fat. If the body wasn't refusing to release it from storage, neither of those other things would be happening.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Some things are known and help a lot, such as reducing insulin in the body, primarily by reducing carbohydrates, especially refined foods. Some other things, like how to "fix" the body if that alone doesn't do it, are unknown. Alas my "disease" won't make much money unless it stays uncured -- although the diet industry is doing unusually well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When you see folks trying 'alternative' approaches they read on the internet (see the fascinating forum-websites <a href="http://earthclinic.com/">earthclinic.com</a> and <a href="http://curezone.com/">curezone.com</a>), consider that some people don't <i>want</i> to just sit around and get more miserable until they die. They actually want to feel better, imagine that. When the groups in our culture entrusted with guidance and science fail to serve those goals with any integrity, the public (or those with enough brains to question things, anyway) will look elsewhere.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The situation in illness-care in the USA and UK is nothing that religion hasn't shown us before. The answers are waiting for a little genuine investigation, some science ethics looking for solutions, not eternal drug dependencies. But like the Church and Galileo, current officials might get away with 300 more years of intentional ignorance, hidden by all that pontificating expertise. As long as they don't look through that scope, they will have "seen no evidence" of the reality so many of us live with every day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">PJ</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">P.S.: I have a number of 'experiments' with 'alternative nutrients and approaches' to various things that I'll be detailing here for friends over the next six months.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-27727062018517259712011-11-19T16:40:00.000-06:002011-11-19T18:48:18.326-06:00Food Angst and HolidaysMy aunt should have owned stock in Diet Shasta. She's been dieting with every option she could find since probably around 1969, and she's still morbidly obese--she got fatter over time of course. That's a lot of options and there's a lot of trying and it not working.<br />
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Sure, she lost weight. She just regained it of course. <a href="http://www.drsharma.ca/obesity-your-body-is-happy-to-wait-for-your-weight-to-come-back.html" target="_blank">See this post on research related to weight regain.</a> Concise summary: "Nearly inevitable." My theory: Moreso the more fat you begin. Caveat: entire amount may not be regained (so, that's something positive).<br />
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It is her daughter, my amazingly artistic cousin, who gained weight about as rapidly as I did and ironically at about the same age I did (I never thought of that until just now), and who eventually took up cocaine as the only hope for a solution for her wailing grief and mortified shame about her body. Now she is on the federal prison diet. That didn't end well.<br />
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I remember when I was 18 I went to a big celebration of my grandfather's 80th birthday. Family had come from around the country for this, and it was the first and probably the last celebration of its kind. My aunt was frustrated because she wanted to eat some of the food she'd spent 3 days cooking for it -- the smell of garlic bread wafting through the house was knee-weakeningly wonderful. But she was on this diet at the time which was mostly about drinking so much water it's retarded and dangerous.<br />
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And... I could tell she felt like everybody might be "thinking" that she "should" be on a diet.<br />
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<b>She might be right.</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
When I was at most 15# overweight (I didn't feel overweight, but I wasn't as thin as is considered proper today), age 19 or so (this is the 80's), I went to my stepmom's parents' house for the Thanksgiving family meal. She has 3 brothers. The entire family (except the brothers, and her at the time) was diabetic. I don't mean borderline. I mean losing eyes and limbs and dying over it eventually. At that time, several people were alive and whole who aren't now, and they were there.<br />
<br />
Did anybody make LC versions of anything for them? No. The idea was, it's a special occasion, you stuff yourself on food that will kill you and then use insulin to compensate. Don't get me started on <i>People Killing Their Diabetic Family Members By Making No Efforts To Help Them</i> as that's another rant.<br />
<br />
So, we are all eating. I was mostly scarfing down stuffing and white meat turkey which I love, despite it is dry and tasteless, go figure. Everybody else was eating more food than you can believe a person can shovel in. Plate after plate of macaroni salad, potato salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, twice-baked potatoes, brown sugar yams, fruit salad, on and on and on. I was sitting there feeling concern and pity for the fact that these people were diabetic and all the food seemed deadly. I considered eating some yams (love 'em!) but then I saw the dessert table! I decided that I wanted to have some pie instead, so I go get a slice of cherry pie. And I am walking back to my seat with it when her youngest brother eyes me with disdain and says, "Not like you NEED that, you know."<br />
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I was mortified. The other brothers laughed. I looked at him in some confusion, because a quick look around the room showed me that aside from those 3 young men, there were only approximately 3 other people in that entire seriously overcrowded house that were NOT fat, more fat, or hugely fat, plus diabetic: that would be ME, my dad, and my stepmom. So why he would say this to ME, when I weighed about 140 or so (~5'6), in that environment, compared to everyone else!, was a total mystery. I ate the pie (after saying something quietly unprintable to him) but I felt horrible then.<br />
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So the thing is, maybe people at that family gathering really WERE thinking that my aunt "should have been" on a diet. Maybe she wasn't just paranoid. Maybe she'd lived long enough fat to know what to expect.<br />
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It seems to me that this is often the perception people have about anyone fat. It doesn't matter how well you eat, or how much of the time you eat well. If you are eating anything but carrot sticks when they see you, "Well that explains it."<br />
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I (thin at the time) said <i>you know, given you've been dieting since I was about 4, and given you are not thin, I think maybe you should take this opportunity to just enjoy the meal you worked so hard on. I mean if this were a one-time focus maybe it would be different, but this is just one day in the middle of 15 years behind and however many years ahead, and I do not think it can be held to blame for your figure. </i><br />
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<b>Journal Trolls</b><br />
<br />
This reminds me of the people who on the internet, will go into someone's journal (I've seen this happen with several forum buddies), ignore that they have been eating nearly impeccably for years, point out the times in their journal that they said they ate "a coconut cookie" or "ten chips with salsa at the restaurant" or whatever, and then say, well it's obvious you just eat like crap so quit whining about being fat.<br />
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You know, if someone weighs 350# (let alone more) they are not fat because they ate 10 chips with salsa or a coconut cookie. Most people on an eating plan, averaged over a week, are low enough on carbs and calories both to absorb 'minor' things like that. People do not get and stay fat because they ate 6 cherries when otherwise VLC. That's stupid. We're not talking about major constant violations of eating plan here we're talking about occasional tiny things that were merely unplanned; not even necessarily exceeding their ideal food count totals.<br />
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<b>Neurosis and Food</b><br />
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At minor gatherings, like business trips or vacations, I have gotten up and left a shared public table to eat elsewhere, because it was filled with women who the minute they sat down, started rationalizing why it was ok to eat what they were eating because..., or started talking about nothing but fat, food, food that will kill you, disease, etc. If we ever meet and you want to share a meal with me, do not bring up the evil of food, or disease! WTF is wrong with people that they can't just have a freaking meal without such neurosis?<br />
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I see it as even metaphysically bad, like cursing your food while you eat it because you're focused on totally negative stuff. I want to tell these people, either eat well or don't, but shut the hell up about it and let other people enjoy their food! I've actually said that before -- more diplomatically of course -- but you will not be surprised to know that people did not like me any better as a result... :-)<br />
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I actually feel if you take total responsibility for yourself, oddly you don't have all that guilt because you simply accept that it was your decision to make, you had the right to make it, and that was the result and you will live with the results of your decisions. It's a matter of fact thing.<br />
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IMO the great angst is not about 'the decision' but about feeling one didn't really have the RIGHT to make the decision. So people are wringing their hands about what they should have done, even while they are with every bite making the decision over again. When you truly feel your food is your decision to make, you can just make it.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Holiday Food</b></div>
<br />
In major gatherings like holidays, I'm not saying (in the above example with my aunt) that anyone should eat crappy food when they don't want to, or use it as an excuse to blow a good eating plan. Actually I'm very conservative on that point because it's been my experience that "going off-plan for a day" often derails people for six months instead.<br />
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I'm just saying that ideally, a person would not do it, and feel fine about not doing it. Or, if they ARE going to eat it either way, then they might as well enjoy themselves. The whole big complex of guilt and shame and longing and sense of unfairness and misery attached to holidays because of food is just crazy.<br />
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The best weapon is to eat yourself stuffed on meat/fats before going of course, but failing that, I would much rather a person just ENJOY LIFE if they are going to eat it anyway: being miserable doesn't reduce the carbs at all.<br />
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Being so fat and worrying about surviving to see my grandkids has really made me realize how important it is to enjoy the moment. "Life is what is happening while you're making other plans," as that saying goes.<br />
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I think for people who are new to LC or who know that they have a problem with carb-up days, clearly holidays breaks aren't the answer. But if the need feels real, you can work on enjoying life by learning to make yourself lowcarb versions of what you feel most deprived of, or alternatives that are yummy, and eat those before going.<br />
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A couple years ago my kid wanted to eat carby at Thanksgiving and she was on LC with me. So we came to an agreement: we would make some LC sweet-crunchy-maple pecans, and we would make some "almond joy" LC candy, and she could have some of that instead. It was a decent trade. Beat eating 3 plates of potatoes and more, which she might have otherwise.<br />
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<br />
I think the psychological element of food is almost worse than some of the health elements.</div>
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<br />
PJ<br />
<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-6625458232950855352011-11-17T16:51:00.001-06:002011-11-19T22:33:47.814-06:00The Legos of Low-CarbIn the end, it's all about each person putting together the building blocks of what they find works best for them. Like legos, it can be fun, it can be creative, and it can hurt like hell when stepping on them.<br />
<br />
Comments here and in a forum about the <i>'Truth About...' </i>post have given me a lot of food for thought. From the back of my brain, up popped my Evil But Occasionally Right Twin, to have a little talk with me about the long list of Where I've Gone Wrong, Where I've Gone Right, and Why I Owe It To Readers to post that. It seemed to feel that other post translated like, <i>"You're dooooomed! Doomed, I tell you!"</i><br />
<br />
I explained to the Little Voice that the post was just fine on its own, and that I have the noted info in other posts here and there. But IT thinks that while I'm depressing the crap out of everybody, I should at least provide a succinct list of what really does work for me, what doesn't, and maybe most importantly, what I haven't tried, and considerations I haven't addressed. That way, people can say, "Ha! You see! She has not investigated (thyroid disease, pancreatic tumors, or eating only fish eggs while living at 30,000 feet elevation and fasting only days of month that start with the numbers 1 and 2), so how can she possibly say that for the super-obese there is a limit to fat loss or that regain is close to inevitable? She hasn't tried everything!"<br />
<br />
In what time I've had, I have been completely redesigning the blog. I added pages, if you see the tabs up top, "collections" of posts, like recipes, fat politics, or psychology, for example. But this was nagging me, so, let's see what we've got.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">Stuff that is critical to my feeling well.</span></b><br />
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This may or may not relate to fat loss (does when I am losing, doesn't when I am regaining). But it certainly relates to my being functional, as much as possible.<br />
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<b>1. Protein protein protein. </b><br />
<br />
<i>Animal Protein = amino acids = the building blocks of life. </i>The difference between my body after 10 days of 100++g/day animal protein, vs. say, 60g, is unbelievable. It's running up my porch steps instead of two feet at a time like a little kid, holding on to a handrail. It's walking to the store and making dinner, instead of starving because it's too much effort to get up and go to the kitchen.<br />
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<b>Issues: </b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>It takes energy to intake the protein, but without protein I haven't energy to go get it. </li>
<li>This is hugely affected by my lack of appetite. </li>
<li>There is a limit to the protein you can eat as food, even trying.</li>
</ul>
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<b>Caveats: </b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Allegedly we should intake gelatin to get the 'other' amino acids; the ratio is imbalanced if you eat mostly muscle meats. You can buy a type that doesn't "gel" and can go in cold or hot liquids. It still has some taste unless it's very small amounts in a strong tasting food. Probably a great thing to put in say, sauteed mushrooms/veggies/sauce that you want to make a gravy, or in thick blendered drinks. Alternatively and preferably, make tons of "bone broth" as this has gelatin and those amino acids in it.</li>
<li>If you have issues with arachidonic acids (I cannot see that word without thinking of spiders. How did these words get so similar??) then red meat is probably not for you. </li>
<li>Animal protein also includes fish and eggs and cheese in my book. I don't even count plants.</li>
</ul>
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<b>Misc. Details: </b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Drinking whole or 2% milk for all the protein did not work for me. I had more energy than 'none' but felt quite weak, not only that I had no 'motive energy' but even had to ask my kid to open jars for me. I also got deep/cystic acne near lymphs with that (from two separate periods of trying it, so I do think that's what it related to), so unless you have access to raw milk, the processing may have some less than ideal effects, done in mass dosage. (That was another experiment that was not low-carb.) </li>
<li>Sometimes eating meat for all the protein doesn't work ideally either, because it's a ton of meat, which is a ton of money, which is a ton of planning shopping prepping cooking cleaning, which is a ton of stuffing it down your throat when you aren't hungry.</li>
<li>I've found that a lot of meat, with a couple snacks of protein drinks, plus some supplements of full spectrum amino acids, plus something with bone broth or gelatin, seems to work best for intaking a lot of animal protein with less money, less bother, and more variety.</li>
<li>Note that Low-Carb diets range dramatically in recommended protein intake. Literally from like 60g to 140g for the same sized person -- and those sizes are generally limited to 250# top weight defined.</li>
</ul>
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<b>2. Supplements.</b><br />
<br />
In the next couple days I'll post the list of supplements I've gathered recommendations for from the people online I've come to respect. But to make a short list here, even when I am not doing a 'full' supplement panel, I tend to do much better if, every day for several days running, I have taken: A multi-vitamin; a multi-mineral; a B-Complex addition; and D3 (sometimes, also E and K2).<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">Stuff that screws me up</span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b>1. Anything that looks like a grain.</b><br />
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Gluten is the devil, period. I know some people can eat it (although research suggests it isn't good for anybody, it's just that many people the reactions are not external/conscious). Not only does it give me allergies, asthma, acid reflux, brain fog, but it gives me lethargy (reduces energy). That's bad. Aside from that, if I ingest it near ingesting soft-dairy, it will make me crave milk (even if the dairy was sour cream). Aside from that, if I eat it combined with fructose -- a perfect example might be a piece of whole wheat toast, with fruit-only diabetic jam -- I am ravenous for grains/carbs/sugars the entire day.<br />
<br />
If I were an evil genius plotting the downfall of my nefarious enemy--who, in the comic book in my head, must also be fat, since otherwise he would look cooler than me--I would ensure he had a small dose of grains and fructose, preferably together. This would ensure my cruel victory and I could laugh <i>MWAHAHA where is your willpower?!?!</i><br />
<br />
OK maybe not. But I'm sure this would work. All I lack is a Nefarious Enemy.<br />
<br />
Also: it's not just effects at the time. I have found I am affected a day or two AFTER eating them. A journal buddy of mine who has read a lot on brain chemistry and its response to food says that what you ingest actually may not kick in for hours or days. It makes it harder for people to see the correlations.<br />
<br />
Also: corn too. I can eat corn tortillas without it seeming to bring on cravings or noshing desire hours or days later, unlike gluten grains. However, it's difficult to eat just one of them and they have about 10 carbs each, and even when I am not eating LC, I notice that anytime corn tortillas are involved, it seems like I eat a lot more than usual -- I even notice later that I am over-full. I think there is something in that grain that sparks me, even though I don't react to it quite like gluten.<br />
<br />
<b>2. A lot of LC sweets.</b><br />
<br />
Although I have spent a decent chunk of the last 5 years on VLC to ZC -- as much by accident as design -- still, I am not really as averse to sweets as most people that eat that way tend to be. I think artificial sweeteners such as sucralose are probably more toxic than sugar alcohols and stevia (just wait and we will find out the 12 ways it kills us. Note that stevia is not approved probably because it's harder to corner the zillion dollar market on since anyone can grow a stevia plant and many companies can get the licorice taste out of it.), and I think eating dense sweet fruit as a sweetener (eg often dates/pineapples are used for that) is not the most healthy thing either, but it's not like this should be done often enough to kill you anyway.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, due to sucralose it is possible to make a whole lot of food that is sweet and to spend a good chunk of LC time eating things with sweetener. If that works for you, great, but for me, eating regular sweet stuff (or other crappy stuff that is technically LC) prevents my palate from adapting and being happy with what you've got. ("<a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com/2008/01/designing-your-appetite.html" target="_blank">Designing Your Appetite</a>" was my rant about LC faking-it.) When I'm eating very little sweeteners, I can taste the sugar in onions and peppers and tomatoes. When I'm eating a lot more sweeteners, I am less sensitive to more subtle sweet, and I tend to need "more" sweet when I add it to something. It also tends to fuel a slight sugar-noshing tendency, and then I find that I want diet drinks, I want more coffee with sweetener, I want more LC treats, or whatever. I'm not against LC sweets, they're great. I have just found that if I start to overdose on them it can send me spiraling offplan eventually.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">Stuff I haven't tried.</span></b><br />
<br />
I am sure this list is endless. I am sure that I could continue my "but wait, I'll try this instead!" efforts for the rest of my natural life and never run out of options.<br />
<br />
<b>OK back to the point. Stuff I haven't tried. Let's see.</b><br />
<br />
1. I have not had access to grass-fed meats/dairy in order to "do" primal or paleo well at all.<br />
<br />
2. "" "" "" in order to do Peat-inspired eating properly.<br />
<br />
<br />
3. "" "" "" in order to do <a href="http://www.archevore.com/get-started/" target="_blank">Archevore/PaNu</a> properly.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This might give you the idea that maybe the Omega 3:6 issue is a much bigger issue than realized and that had I done this, maybe results would be different. Who knows, maybe it is a much bigger issue.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
4. I have not tried, let me see:<br />
South Beach<br />
Body by Science<br />
Raw Meat diet<br />
Raw Vegan diet<br />
<a href="http://www.rbti.info/the-basics" target="_blank">RBTI</a> which I know zip about but journal buddies have mentioned<br />
I invented the Cinnamon Toothpick Diet, inspired by the original KimKins diets, but I haven't tried it :-)<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://jackkruse.com/my-leptin-prescription/" target="_blank">Leptin Reset</a> diet (which requires doing primal/paleo as its base)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, if you're figuring that a different approach to eating might have a different result, then a huge focus on (a) Omega 3 balance and (b) seafood -- which I don't eat -- would definitely be doing something different than I have done.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have also not had extensive testing to see if I have any of 97 possible disease syndromes, from cancer to autoimmune thyroid disease. Given my size, actually, I have 'issues' with every organ including the brain, that is a given. Hopefully not actual full blown disease. Nothing's impossible. I loathe the entire topic of medical stuff, I can barely get myself to go to the doctor for serious injuries, and my observation of the nightmare of years of friends struggling to get docs to listen/agree, testing and not getting all the tests desired, bad reading of results, docs insisting on crap like statins or artificial thyroid that just screws people up worse, hasn't improved my reaction to all things medical. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Apparently it is not an uncommon for the slightly Type-A personality defect I seem to have, to consider illness a bit of a form of weakness and to be extremely uncomfortable around it. (I hate hospitals!) That's me. So, if you go and look for every possible disease and condition and reading outside textbook ranges that you may have, that would be doing something I haven't done. Of course you'd probably end up prescribed all kinds of drugs which would kill you in some other way.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
OK my duty is done. The Evil Twin is silent! I have built a little doorway to "what I haven't tried" so if someone wants to SEE that, now they can. Moving on!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
PJ</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-26904290184378628682011-11-16T03:00:00.001-06:002011-11-16T03:04:14.530-06:00Sacrificing Competence in the Name of PerfectionMy second-biggest problem (after not-eating for a long time, then later over-compensating), is not buying/making "less than perfect" or slightly higher-carb food... only to result in my not having food at all when I don't have energy, time, money, defrosting time, or hating what I have because I'm sick of it (or more often, my teen is).<br />
<br />
So for the sake of not buying pinto beans or peas for stew, or deli meat, or almond meal, because those are not ideal foods, instead I either starved (usually), or (if I let the teen talk me into it) ordered pizza.<br />
<br />
Oh yeah... that helped.<br />
<br />
I suppose it's better to be less than ideal sometimes, than off-plan when you haven't time, money, energy, or other elements in place for the ideal.<br />
<br />
For a long time I have not had certain foods in my house like beans and peas and carrots for adding to stew (I swore off legumes for no good reason except they were 'a little' carby and the eating plan folks I like seemed to add them to grains as the devil), deli meats, almond meal, soft cheeses for making salad dressings, because they weren't sufficient protein/fat and hence were less than perfect, higher carb, etc.<br />
<br />
As a result, my food options ALL require cooking and have such a tiny range of variety that my teenager keeled over off the edge of boredom long ago.<br />
<br />
I have a lot of smart journal friends who try to course-correct me on this regularly. Being rather type-A, and a bit of the "anything worth doing is worth overdoing" sort, I am prone to sacrificing being relatively competent at my eating plan in the name of being as close to perfect as possible.<br />
<br />
Additionally, I'm neurotic about not affording grass-fed meat/eggs/dairy. I think that worsens how I over-compensate everywhere else.<br />
<br />
I can't eat enough meat/eggs/cheese to make 1500 calories and 18 carbs most the time even when I try. My food options are going to have to expand a LOT if I want to raise both to whatever 'max' level turns out to work for me. Actually right now my mind is still boggling over that concept. Short of living on bacon and avocado (which really, is not such a horrible fate...) I don't know how that's going to work out. We'll see.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>* </div><div><br />
</div><div>I've been thinking about a new approach (and more common posting) for this blog.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I think it would be nice to see more focus on Low-Carb just because it's awesome and healthy, and not just because people are despairing over being fat and hoping it will bail their ass out of it. That's great, but that's not the only reason it's cool.</div><br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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Sure, it might be great for fat loss, but it's also great for lean gain, and it's also great for health reasons that aren't accompanied by obesity, and it's also great for just being very tasty, non-commercially processed food that doesn't hurt you. It's the divine food!<br />
<br />
I also think it'd be nice to see more focus on the range of Low-Carb (let's say <80 carbs -- which is still lower than top Atkins or a lot of diabetic plans, which is what, 120?).<br />
<br />
One reason I rejected everything down to VLC or ZC, in addition to the fact that a) I like meat and b) I was desperate because weight loss and stopped and I felt crappy and I thought doing LC "harder" was the answer... is because I felt guilty about the occasional thing like almond muffins, or coconut meal. They were too low on good fats or protein to count as food at all I felt.<br />
<br />
I had the same theory about big-ass salads I might add -- my prejudice was less that sweetener was involved in some dishes, as the lack of O3/protein.<br />
<br />
Yet dropping to VLC and even ZC repeatedly didn't help me in retrospect, did it? And aside from the macronutrient element, for me at least, eating that way has a variety of side-effects that are problematic, from major food boredom, to the fact that I end up with every food requiring shopping/defrosting/cooking/cleaning.<br />
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If you look at most LC recipes online, with rare exceptions they are so LC per serving that I could eat 5 meals a day and still be in the VLC (<35) camp. When I browsed my LC forum with this in the back of my head, I realized that aside from some targeted boards, nearly everything "by default" in most of the online LC world is not just LC, it's VLC. I hadn't really noticed that before.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
So following on my previous most-depressing-post-of-all-time, and after re-reading <a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com/2007/06/web-inside-fat-acceptance.html">an old '97 post I had written about my one foray into the so-called Fat Acceptance world</a>, and after considering my planned shift in intake, I've decided to slightly change the focus here.<br />
<br />
I am going to remove the few refs to weight-loss (aside from a few great blog links and the occasional mention). This is not a diet blog, though it became one, I'm pulling that out. Lowcarb is valuable on its own terms regardless of weight issues.<br />
<br />
I'm going to add a few refs to FA stuff. I don't care what I eat, I'm never going to be thin so I might as well accept it and move on, without the angst. I'll do the best I can, with creative adaptations here and there, and the result will be whatever it is. If the result is healthier (with a little more energy), I'll be happy for that, regardless of size. If it's a smaller size, great, but that can't be my focus anymore. The fail of that 'lust for result' is pretty obvious after five years.<i> If what you're doing isn't working, do something else.</i><br />
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I'm also going to increase the focus on the larger spectrum of LC not just VLC. I would like to work on finding some more middle ground than "just meat" or "high-carb" especially for the sake of my teen.<br />
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And I'm going to start focusing more on lifestyle issues.<br />
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Ideas welcome.<br />
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*<br />
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I'm changing the blog design as well. Looks funky right now, but I'm still working out ideas.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-47276427168710865522011-11-14T00:37:00.003-06:002011-11-16T03:04:42.012-06:00The Truth About Super Obesity and Weight LossA little background on me and general stuff, before we begin.<br />
<br />
I lost 170# on low-carb, which migrated to grain-free whole-foods a-little-dairy fairly primal, minus the 'grass-fed' element which is not do-able for me for several combined reasons. I have re-lost the last 50-100# of that repeatedly. I am, by category, 'super-obese'. When it comes to being fat, there is overweight, obese, severely obese, morbidly obese, and super obese. These are based on body fat percentage.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
I have come to understand that my expectations and my plans and my approach to eating, were not realistic.<br />
<br />
I have come to understand that my experience, with the normal human variations, is echoed throughout basically all super-obese and many (not all!) of the higher-edge morbidly-obese people I have met in in person or online. I have also come to understand that what the science experts say, and the stats about fat loss and fat regain, echo my experience.<br />
<br />
In short, if you remove the starry-eyed hope from the equation, you realize that pretty much all the facts from all directions say the same thing.<br />
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That's what this post is about. At the end, I have suggestions.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Take the best eating plans out there, for health, for sanity, for satiation, for nutrition: which for me amounts to basically "from moderate to zero carb depending on the person, grain-free, legume-free, minimal-fruits, whole-foods" eating plans.<br />
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Expect to lose fat. Whether you keep that weight off is another story entirely, but you can lose it.<br />
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If you are super-obese, expect to lose 'some' weight. Probably a lot less than you'd expect.<br />
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They're good plans. It's just a matter of inappropriate expectations.<br />
<br />
<b>I've come to consider these truisms.</b><br />
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<i>1. Eating few carbs, with not-excessive calories, in whole unprocessed foods, does not solve super-obesity. It very rarely solves morbid obesity either, but that does happen sometimes.</i><br />
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There is no known solution for super-obesity. In fact, even severe gastric bypass will still only take off about the same weight you could lose just by eating awesome LC food, without screwing yourself up for life with nutrient absorption and other problems, so you might as well just eat decently instead.<br />
<br />
<i>2. The odds of losing all your extra fat are inversely proportional to the degree of your highest-weight bodyfat percentage. The odds of your keeping it off are very poor no matter what your starting weight, but are more remote in direct proportion to your highest bodyfat percentage.</i><br />
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The fat your body is likely to allow you to lose will still leave you severely if not morbidly obese. Women: up to 200 pounds, +/- around 20. Men: Up to 300 pounds, +/- around 20. It might be less. This is what can probably be 'affected'.<br />
<br />
You will find that eating well (if you stay away from grains/fructose) is easy and in fact hunger is not only not an issue, but eating enough is. These kind of eating plans aren't hard. The food is awesome.<br />
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You will have energy while losing weight, which will change your life.<br />
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You will return to having none when you are not losing weight, which will screw it up again.<br />
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You can eat carbs for some energy then, when you must because lack of fat loss means you have no energy and makes you feel crappy if your carbs are too low. The body regains weight at truly breathtaking speed.<br />
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It's a cycle. It's predictable. You can see it coming. Feel it changing. You can plan for it.<br />
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You just can't do anything about it.<br />
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It's a <i>Flowers for Algernon</i> tragedy, except with bodyfat.<br />
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*<br />
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I know most people don't want to believe it because they hope it's not true for them. I know the rest either figure their eating plan surely works perfectly for everybody, and/or works indefinitely when it does, or that -- especially given I'm a fatso after all -- I'm probably just lying.<br />
<br />
<i>(I saw a study recently that said not only did the half of the subjects that were obese lie about their intake (yes. All of them. yes. Just their half. Really.) but they all lied even to the same caloric number as well, I think it was. Given variations in gut bacteria and the inaccuracy of estimates and variability of people, I don't even know how this could be done group-wide on purpose. I mean -- Seriously? When is this going to start to seem unlikely to someone? I do believe in doubly-labeled water in trials (which this was). I do believe people do lie or mis-remember their food. But I also believe there has got to be something else going on with how we evaluate this.)</i><br />
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Now, for weight regain, I assume we are talking about a subconsciously driven increase in food intake behind this. It doesn't matter, since asking someone to willpower through a few million years of evolution is just retarded. So it amounts to the same thing: if the body wants to put the fat back on it's going to, period. We can set the stage and the play by our food, and supplements, and exercise (if you have the energy), and state of mind, but that is all we can do.<br />
<br />
The decision about weight, not entirely in the next few hours but definitely in the medium never mind long term, is still the body's, in the end, not yours. You can only kid yourself that it's yours when your body isn't one-upping you in a debate about it.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
You don't have to believe me: look at the facts, at the stats, at the research. Objective reality supports this as true, even aside from my experience or yours. It's just that most of us in food-related social areas online are too busy 'hoping' to want to pay much attention to ugly facts.<br />
<br />
All food-related social groups online, even the ones I like best, are Disney-esque. We all want, expect, demand, happy endings. We hide our eyes or leave the theatre of attention if we don't see one coming. Nobody talks about anything else but the positive.<br />
<br />
If they do, either they are at best ignored or at worst cast from the tribe-of-blog, or it's implied that lack of success is rare and must be that someone didn't really stick with it, or do it right, or hard enough, or perfectly enough.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
There is a part of my mind that overrides objectivity. It rationalizes that even if I'm deluded, feeling better about things has its own positive element, and hope has a stand-alone value. So I tell myself:<br />
<br />
<i>Perhaps these eating plans work better for the super-obese if you have more 'perfect' food.</i> The kind only wealthier people have. Everything grass-fed for example. Maybe then, some miracle would occur to make the equation work totally differently. Of course I realize that we could 'what if' every meal, forever, based on that movable goalpost of somehow-more-perfect.<br />
<br />
But when I separate my hope and faith and wishing from the more objective part of myself, and I look at what I've seen with nearly everyone of great size online for 5 years, this appears to be the reality:<br />
<br />
<b>People can lose 200-300 pounds (+/- 20, the lower # for women, the higher # for men, with some variance for height/high-weight), before their body simply quits losing fat. It just stops.</b><br />
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I don't mean it's that long before they give up. If they seemed to give up, it's because what they were doing that was working, quit working, and eventually if you aren't insane, you quit repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different result.<br />
<br />
As an online loose group community, we all assume that if someone quits losing fat it's because they gave up or messed up. We want to assume that, because it gives us hope. If it can just be the fault of the individual, it means it's possible. We can do it because we'll do better.<br />
<br />
Does the body 'want' something to happen? I'm not comfortable talking about the body like it's a whole motive of intent on its own but then, I'm in a situation where it feels like that frankly. It does seem it has a certain homeostasis and possibly this is more severe the larger the person.<br />
<br />
There are two variables: your food intake behavior, or how your body handles the food arranged by your behavior. Frankly it seems like if your body can't change one it can change the other.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Eating plan social groups on the internet (generally in the blogosphere, sometimes forums), operate like casual cliques, by sheer force of mutual longing as much as anything else.<br />
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If something doesn't work for a person, others will tell them how they obviously can't be doing it <i>right</i>, how it <i>can't</i> be so, or worst case how they are just either (a) a moron or (b) lying about it and/or a troll.<br />
<br />
This is not just applied to the overall situation of losing weight on a plan, but also to the assumption that the plan works 'indefinitely' for everyone (since sometimes, the people commenting and getting slapped around a little, were actually the success stories earlier).<br />
<br />
It's a body-based cargo cult around food. <i>If you build it, they will come.</i> If you eat this and supplement that and exercise like-so, you too can be beautiful and/or at least cool with the credentialed, like our mascot who owns the blog.<br />
<br />
I am seldom anything but positive especially on other peoples' blogs. So this is not based on anything I have said but observation of what I see happening with (and to) others.<br />
<br />
When people are very successful on an eating plan, they're held up as a testimonial for the cause. When people who are very successful abruptly cease to be, well, nobody knows what to think about that. Including the people it's happening to.<br />
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<i>Especially </i>them. Because nobody said that could, let alone <i>would</i> happen. That would have been a dose of realism in a Disney world, we can't have that. Everyone implies it can't be an actual body issue; it's clearly some moral / discipline / honesty fail on their part. It's their fault because they ate dairy or a low-carb product or they didn't do intermittant fasting or ...<br />
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Funny isn't it, that you can escape the blame-game of modern society with a group of better enlightened people in the lowcarb - paleo - zerocarb - primal eating groups, who far better understand (in general) the issues of adiposity and food chemicals and so on, but it's still there, it's just lurking at the far edge of fat, waiting to be applied to the person who becomes an outsider once keeping the faith in that plan as a solution is gone for them. Psychology doesn't change, the application point of it just moves over a little.<br />
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Everyone is sure that they ate meat and lost weight and so if you do too, you will too, and if you say it stops working for you, you're not losing weight, you feel horrible eating that way now, well you're just not trying, or you're (I am not making this up) <i>probably eating too many almonds or something</i>.<br />
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There are a tiny % of morbidly obese people who lost the weight and have kept all of it off. Even in their own class, the statistic is incredibly rare and precious. Very inspiring. There are a few more who have kept 'some' of it off. But even these people are not necessarily in the same body-response group as the super obese. In practice at least, it does rather seem like there is a sort of strata, or bandwidth of category, in how bodies respond. My totally unscientific observation over time is that it it seems tied at least somewhat to bodyfat % from the person's highest-weight. No matter at what weight they began eating lowcarb/primal.<br />
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Spend years on the internet in areas where super obese people come and go and talk about their results and you realize it is such a pattern that it is THE pattern. There isn't another pattern. That's it. This is reality. <br />
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All the just-not-mentioning-it from experts is either because they are still back in the dark ages thinking you just aren't trying hard enough, or because it isn't the upbeat keep-the-faith profile they must maintain in public, or maybe they just plain don't want to depress everybody, or dissuade the people who need to eat well most, from bothering to try at all.<br />
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Or maybe they just don't really know.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Generally, the public assumes the super obese are no different than anybody else when it comes to metabolism, just fatter. But this context also says that anything can happen, as the faith of the day. There will be rainbows, and someday, with enough primal paleo lowcarb food, you too can be a size... er, ok, well maybe a size 14, not a size 8, but it'll work out ok even if not as ideally as you hope. <br />
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Even on the rare occasion it's acknowledged weight loss may be a bit incomplete or imperfect for really big people, it's always made to sound like you know, you might have to accept a few sizes of difference. It's presented more like those last 20 or even 30 pounds might not get powered through. Nothing is ever specific or stark enough to indicate otherwise, let alone that it may well be <i>drastically </i>otherwise.<br />
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It's not anybody's fault the human body is what it is or behaves like that. The body is awesome, I'm sure it has got excellent reasons for this, we just don't happen to understand them yet.<br />
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*<br />
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I think if I hadn't built an edifice of hope on believing I could lose even the majority of fat, it would have been less traumatic.<br />
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The biggest thing is that "demoralized despair" would not have ruined me many times if I had understood that this just IS the way it IS. I could have focused differently, if I had known.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
<b>Stages of Weight-Loss Reality for the Super-Obese</b><br />
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I actually thought it was possible. I lost so much weight so fast. I was so happy. I thought I had proof. I thought I knew what worked. For the first time in a couple decades I had <i>hope</i>. I was even <i>proud</i>.<br />
<br />
For the first time in that long I had ENERGY. To make dinner, never mind get involved with life, clean the cupboards and lift weights and move brick in the yard. That alone was worth its own glory. Hell, I would trade body size wishes for some energy, that is the primary issue.<br />
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I actually started making plans for having a life. I started thinking about things I had protected myself from thinking about before, because they'd seemed impossible. I felt so good, I was sure there were no limits.<br />
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It was honest to god the most exciting thing imaginable.<br />
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That's stage 1.<br />
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Stage 2: The "WTF?!" moment. What the... wait, what happened?<br />
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Stage 3: That horrible growing fear that maybe you were wrong. You KNEW it was too good to be true. Should you have known better? But no, but it couldn't be, but this works, it really does, it's just keeping-on, right, it will work again, if I just keep doing it, keep doing what totally isn't working now, but doing it harder, yes that's it. I will eat LOWER carb... I will eat ZERO carb... anything worth doing, is worth overdoing, I will cut out all foods but beef-chicken-eggs and supplements and drink a gallon of water a day, I'll find every way I can to do it more and do it harder!<br />
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Stage 4: The adaptive response. OK, that's just not working and I can't do it any harder. I'm not losing fat and I feel like crap, I could deal with one or the other but not both. So what else is an option? Small meals big meals intermittant fasting days high fat low fat coconut oil is the answer days zero carb cycling carb higher carb lower carb no gluten no dairy no legumes no nuts extra water let's just fast a day or two a week yes that's the ticket, there's got to be an answer, it's just a matter of looking, please god let there be an answer, surely it's here, I've had 35 variants looking for a solution but I know there are more --<br />
<br />
-- and suddenly you've become a primal paleo lowcarb yo-yo dieter even if you never even dieted before.<br />
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Stage 5: Then you almost wish you hadn't hoped in the first place. Hope HURTS when it's crushed.<br />
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Rinse. Repeat.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
All this is because in our mindset based on faith, we assume there IS an answer. That even though there are few to no 5 year success stories in this class III category, that this doesn't reflect reality, there's probably just not many sure but I'll be an exception.<br />
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That even though world experts like Dr. Jeffrey Friedman actually have spelled out publicly precisely this experience, that it'll be different for me.<br />
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He could not have made it any clearer: the body of people who were huge, lost tons of weight, at which point they were still obese or morbidly obese, but then just stopped losing fat. No matter what, even when in a metabolic ward eating 700 calories a day as one example.<br />
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The body has a limit to the fat loss it will allow and that is that. It's a very high limit so it doesn't affect most people. People who are much past the morbid-obesity point, run into it. Here's humor of a sort: If they're just somewhat past that point, they might merely think it's a problem with the last 15-30 pounds, and everyone says to them, "well gosh that is what your body is happy with," or whatever.<br />
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If they are still 100-200# over any sane weight, that excuse is obviously not going to work, since nobody is suggesting 200# overweight is healthy and your body's good with that. Yet it's actually the same situation.<br />
<br />
But socially, whether people will tell you that it's <i>your body's choice</i>, versus <i>your screwing things up</i> in some way, depends on whether you tell them how much weight is 'left' to lose to be lean. Even though the equation and experience doesn't change based on that.<br />
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At that point, you see that there's something else going on. According to Dr. Friedman, nobody actually knows what's going on or why. Nobody knows why people really huge can lose a whole lot of weight but then, even still morbidly obese in some cases for example, fat loss just stops.<br />
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And obviously, when you no longer have fat cells dumping their energy into your blood constantly, your energy level changes too.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
I'm less disappointed in the fat loss part, than in the part where I haven't motive energy.<br />
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The bipedal walrus body is just horribly inconvenient and a social nightmare. That part I can deal with better; the energy void, though, is devastating, life-wide. You have no functional life if you have no energy.<br />
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My biggest issue currently, is a cycle:<br />
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1 - what appears to be an adipose-cell fog of leptin (a superstitious guess, this just makes sense to me) that makes me have no appetite 95% of the time (a situation I've had for years and years)<br />
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2 - no motive energy at all makes it very difficult to force myself to even walk to the kitchen never mind cook, especially as I am not hungry<br />
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3 - which eventually results in body nutrient-famine response punching through that fog and driving me to eat, specifically targeted at the most immediate and intense energy sources.<br />
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It would be extreme binge-behavior, and can be if I don't plan in advance for its inevitability and have things on hand. If I get <i>immediately</i> to saturated fats and a little protein and stuff it down me before my body (which is basically freaking out) starts eating everything carby/sweet in sight at high speed, I'm ok. I'm pretty good at heading it off at the pass, cheese is my friend for that.<br />
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While it calms down, I have time to cook something substantial. I can eat for a few days then, have just slightly more energy during that time to get up and cook, or more like a slight glow-reminder of it, anyway, and slightly more desire to eat.<br />
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Then the bare hint of energy fades and the appetite drops and the whole cycle begins again.<br />
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This is because I am not on an eating plan. If I were, I'd be forcing myself to eat according to plan.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
I have come to believe that the super obese are all in pretty much the same situation as a generality, at least.<br />
<br />
I feel like nobody is being forthright about this, I mean the experts we all read. There are a few likely good reasons. But either way, nobody is giving people of this size reasonable expectations.<br />
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With the super obese, we're talking about a predictable profile. Not just one person here or there that we can assume is screwing it up. It isn't, for example, just me; I can't be responsible for why gastric bypass patients in the science lab have, interestingly, about the same experience I've had, even though I've lost my weight through "eating well" instead of through surgery and starvation. I can't be responsible for what I see in others online with the same experience who even have different eating plans, or went a shorter or longer time, more or less weight, before basically the same thing happened.<br />
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And while I'm at it, I'd just like to add that this profile is not limited to the super-obese, it merely appears to be the 'given' for them. It is the norm not the exception in the morbidly obese strata as well, but there ARE exceptions in that bandwidth, there are people who lose 'all' their excess weight and actually maintain that -- they are rare but it does happen. (There is a larger % in that strata that do lose and keep off 'some' fat - a lot of it. So that one at least has more hope.) And this profile is 'not uncommon' although it's not the norm in the severely (but not morbidly) obese strata -- I use these groupings only for convenience.<br />
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So, to me this does indicate that the human body has some variation in when/why/how it applies this "cessation of fat loss without regard to food intake/exercise/etc." experience. The experience is not limited to the super-obese, it's just almost-if-not-entirely inevitable with them.<br />
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*<br />
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There are things that seem to come with this body size, experiences, that may not be the same as people with less fat lost. People have symptoms, body changes, and don't know what to do about it or what it means. Sadly, if you report such things, you're told you're wrong, that it isn't happening as you report. So... what? You're an idiot? You're lying?<br />
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One small example of several: after losing a LOT of weight, one can develop reactive hypoglycemia, even to nearly zero carb meals. Allegedly, this just doesn't happen on low-carb. I've seen it stated flatly more than once, and in direct response to someone who just freaking said plainly it did, no invalidation there...<br />
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I'm not diabetic, but I bought a blood glucose monitor specifically to figure out this issue. Was I hallucinating, when I'd nearly pass out from the blood sugar drop, after the bacon or sausage and eggs breakfast? The same one I'd eaten through losing about 130# at that point, now suddenly affecting me like a megadose of pasta would have at my highest weight and worst insulin resistance state?<br />
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So I checked. Hey! My monitor was hallucinating right alongside me! I consider its readings a more objective answer to the question. Obviously, for me, it does happen, even on lowcarb, hell even on what most people call zero carb.<br />
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This does not make me confused about what I really ate, or unable to count to 5 carbs, an idiot or a liar or whatever. It just means that this legitimately does happen.<br />
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It also happens for other people, who are the ones I've seen talking about it online (I haven't brought it up in blog comments, but others have). That becomes the one-white-crow theory of course; if it happens for anybody, then obviously it IS possible.<br />
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To me, the 'anomalies' in any science are the most interesting questions. It opens the door to understanding something that obviously, we don't yet. Why does this happen? Why does it seem to happen to people who have lost > 100# for example? Why does it seem to more often be reported when a food like eggs are involved? <br />
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(Note: Dr. Ray Peat actually has the solution to this, but you won't like it. Orange juice is tasty suicide, in the food world I've been indoctrinated with (although RP says fructose is deadly in combination with PUFA, but not for example without it). What I found impressive was that he knew about it, and had already written about it, while other experts were just telling people their reported experience of it didn't happen.)<br />
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*<br />
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It is socially awkward when experts talk the facts. Like there being in many folks an obvious but weird cap on fat loss, as Dr. Friedman talked about. Or there being, in pretty much everyone, <a href="http://www.drsharma.ca/obesity-your-body-is-happy-to-wait-for-your-weight-to-come-back.html">no known solution to avoid weight regain, as Dr. Sharma talked about</a>.<br />
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I have only my experience. It just so happens I see it echoed all over, pretty much universally in people who began super-obese, and then in smaller but still significant percentage in the morbidly obese group.<br />
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Some dysfunctional element on the part of people who don't want it to be true--that includes everyone, that includes me--makes it the thing nobody talks about.<br />
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Good eating does not solve super obesity as a problem because nothing does. That's the way it is.<br />
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*<br />
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I am forcing myself to say it publicly so it will get said.<br />
<div><br />
</div>I expect that this will make people mad, and they'll say, you shouldn't demoralize others.<br />
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Or, "just because it's that way for you doesn't mean it is for all." We all want to hope so.<br />
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I would rather people tell me the truth than just make me feel better, especially when we're talking about some very physically, emotionally, and even financially powerful stuff involved with years of effort at weight loss. So, I want others in my situation to have an honest reality check.<br />
<div><br />
</div>*<br />
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So what's it mean? Should morbid to super obese people not even try? It doesn't mean that at all.<br />
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It means that the end-result experience will be different from people trying to lose 30#, generally, and that, if we know this in advance, our approach to the experience can also be different, which hopefully will improve and extend both the initial experience and the end result for people of great size.<br />
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<br />
1. Definitely people should make an effort to eat well. Even if you didn't lose a single pound, and you will for sure, you would still be way healthier, minus a variety of medical symptoms, improve your body in other ways, it is still well worth the effort. Eat better or die, it's a pretty simple choice. Life extension is really the primary thing here. Every harmful thing you put in your body, every medicine you have to take for some symptom, is shortening your life.<br />
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It took me less than 3 weeks on meat/eggs/cheese lowcarb to discover that my severe asthma, severe allergies, severe acid reflux, acne, brain-fog, bloating, and more were gone. It was amazing. As much of that was due to wiping out gluten as carbs, I might add. But even if nothing else had ever happened, this alone would have been totally invaluable.<br />
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<br />
2. Supplement the hell out of yourself from day 1. I don't care if you don't think you need it or people assure you that just eating meat and a multi-V is plenty. You've probably years of profoundly, crisis-level nutrient-depletion if you are morbidly or super obese. Even if that weren't so, research shows your bigger body needs more nutrients. Anyway, so what? As long as you are not overdosing on the very few things that have a known upper limit, then why would it hurt? And if it IS needed, it could make a huge difference.<br />
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In my next post I'm going to give a summary of the general supplement recommendations I have collected over time for alleged best health and weight loss, from sources I respect. It'll be up to the reader to go look at the blog links I will provide, see what and how much they (or your own people) recommend, I'm not providing specifics on purpose. But I will outline the map of what's included, so you know what to search on. Bear in mind that everything in the body works together. Supplementing any one thing without the others may result in even more imbalance. (Probably much less an issue for things most people dearly need, like magnesium, Omega 3's, K2 and D3, than things some people are already too high in, like iron.)<br />
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<br />
3. It's so easy to drop low in calories, not be hungry, live on meat, lose weight and feel awesome about all of that. This may actually be an even bigger issue with bigger people because you're more likely to lose larger amounts of weight faster, than leaner people -- for awhile, of course. Not indefinitely.<br />
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Force yourself to eat more good fats and more calories, to have the maximum amount of nutrition possible in each day without gaining weight and hopefully while losing as slowly as possible. This is only my superstition, but I feel the body might react with less 'resistance/panic' to high pound weight loss if it's more gradual and there's plenty of calories and lots of nutrients coming in, than it does when it's a massive fast lost, the person is chronically undereating, and the nutrient profile is very skewed by limited food range. Doing this won't necessarily prevent a cessation of fat loss, or the regain-response; these seem to be fairly unavoidable. But it might allow the total weight coming off to go on longer/be greater, which to me seems good.<br />
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<br />
4. Shift your thinking about it, this is the most important thing. For the super-obese, the goal is completely different. The goal isn't to lose as much weight as possible, as fast as possible. That idea is based on the thought that once this happens, then wherever you are, is where you stay, and you live happily ever after. That's not the reality here.<br />
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The destination of even "most" of one's fat lost, is unlikely (if not impossible) to reach for the super obese. And whatever (usually still extremely fat) point one reaches when the fat loss stops, that usually just means the end of the road, and at that point your body will be pushing regain through one or more avenues.<br />
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This doesn't mean it's hopeless, it just means that your focus needs to be different. In this case, weight loss is truly an example of where the "journey" is the thing to enjoy.<br />
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Fat loss = energy to really fat people. One of the primary problems super obese people have is no freaking energy. This is fairly obvious, as the energy is being stored. The best part about losing weight when you are super obese isn't that you are losing weight. It's that <i>while you're losing weight, you have some degree of energy</i>, because your body is dumping fat cells (energy) into the bloodstream.<br />
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So the goal is not thin-ness, it is functional motive energy. With that energy, you can 'have a life' to whatever degree possible, and that might include getting in much better physical shape for example. Without that energy you are treading water, at best.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
<br />
Let us say that your body is going to allow you to lose, 190 pounds, to just pick a number. Now, you can lose it as fast as possible, and have lots of energy during that time; or you can eat as many carbs/calories as lets you lose weight, but no less because that increases the degree of ketosis and weight loss, and you want to take what amounts to the maximum possible time to lose what your body allows.<br />
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With the latter approach, you have some energy. You have it for as long a time as possible, while you go through the fat loss.<br />
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And as an added bonus, if #3 turns out to have any validity, this way you might even get to have even longer in the loss period, and lose even more of that fat, as a result. In fact, since your carbs and calories are also higher in this model, if #3 has any validity, this #4 would add to it even more.<br />
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With every pound you reduce from wherever you are (even if this is happening in the 15th cycle), you are a little more limber, a little more strong/light by comparison. It's all good.<br />
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The weight-loss period itself -- not the end goal but the period during which it occurs -- needs to be the actual focus. If it's slow, as long as you have a little bit of energy, it's good. The measure of 'adjustment' of your macronutrient intake should be based on what makes you feel fairly decent.<br />
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When I thought that I could lose most my extra fat, my big drive was to do so, intensely. Now that I understand that this is just plain not going to happen, and that there is pretty much some body-allowance for fat loss quantity, and then a return-reaction that most likely will increase the weight again (doesn't have to be the full amount of course--there IS a 'degree' of success possible here), now I understand that the period during which I am losing weight is the best part.<br />
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I would rather spend 2 years losing the same amount of weight, as 4 months, because that means I had two years of some energy to live my life with, before it changed. Even if not a ton of energy, even 'a little' is more than most super obese people have.<br />
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It is not healthy to lose/regain weight repeatedly. One can only hope that doing so as slowly as possible in both directions, will reduce the degree of harm.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
I believe that if I had gone into this with realistic expectations, and if I had taken the approach I outlined above as a result, that my body might have allowed somewhat more fat loss overall, that I would have spent much longer in the happy phase of feeling decent, that I would not have stressed my body remotely as much with fast lost, and with under-calories, and with under-supplementation, that I would not have essentially become a low-carb/primal 'yo-yo dieter' in my desperate attempt to find something "else", some tweak of better-perfection, to restore the initial loss and energy level.<br />
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I would not have gone through a lot of trauma of having to radically readjust expectations. For those who think this is a little thing, I'm here to tell you that super-obesity is the health equivalent of being in a wheelchair -- worse, in some respects, since even people in a wheelchair can have the motive energy and enthusiasm to make dinner or attend the kid's soccor game, and the social reaction to someone normal looking in a wheelchair is probably better than the social reaction to someone who weighs 450#. You'll just have to trust me on this one.<br />
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Thinking this problem is fixable, then suffering the cycles of trauma because apparently you're just not good enough or your plan isn't perfect enough, only to finally realize--from looking at the stats, listening to the experts, and observing people in the same situation around you for years--that actually... it isn't fixable -- well that sucks.<br />
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There is a degree of "flexible" in the middle that you are welcome to go down through, and your body will arrange your coming back up through also, and then you can attempt to go down through again -- well, that's what there is to work with. If you know that, you can actually work best with it and get the maximum happiness and health from it with the minimum harm. If you don't know, you just harm your health worse and suffer instead, because you have a completely different goal, and you think the way it's working is that you aren't trying hard enough or not trying the right thing or it isn't perfect enough or whatever.<br />
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So this is not what anybody wants to hear. Even me. But this is the truth.<br />
<br />
The Fat Acceptance people will probably say they knew this already and it supports their point.<br />
<br />
I am not depressed. I am disappointed but I'm moving past that. You know, life is what it is. I could be dead of disease, and were it not for my body's ability to allow unbelievable amounts of fat storage, I'm sure I would be. I could have lost limbs or be paralyzed, or be in chronic pain, or be stuck in some starving or war-torn country, or have my body and mind forever screwed up by horrible combat experiences -- the whole world is filled with people in situations who deal with it every damn minute, hour, day.<br />
<br />
I am huge and have no energy. I say I have no money but compared to most of the people in the world, my good job and teen I have a good relationship with and the kitties and the garden and the 3 bedroom tract home in nowhere Oklahoma, are a combined wealth beyond imaging. Frankly, comparatively, my situation is pretty damn good. It just isn't as good as some others. I'm not going to complain.<br />
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To a great degree I feel it is slightly late for me to be attempting to explore the different-approach to all this that I outlined above. I have already dug my hole in deeper with the way I have behaved with fat loss and my attempts at it over the last 5 years. But, I am ever the optimist. I'm going to take my own advice, and see if I can find a max-carbs max-calories max-supplement plan that allows a very slow fat loss with some residual energy side effect, so I can at least have more of a life than my weight-related energy-depletion otherwise allows.<br />
<br />
PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-1042750228050727172011-11-11T00:07:00.007-06:002011-11-15T23:41:49.495-06:00The 10,000 Ways That Don't WorkI've worked 20 hours a day, 7 days a week from last December 9 to May. I worked more like 16/6.5 since then. Starting just at the beginning of November, a bit over a week ago, I have actually been taking time off. I've had 1.5 weekends entirely off now, and 1.5 days (Wednesdays) entirely off now. I've gotten more sleep in the last 10 days than I have gotten in any 30-40 days in about a year.<br />
<div><div><br />
</div><div>This has led to the understanding that if you sleep 3 hours a night, you are not going to lose weight, for several good reasons.<br />
<br />
I was re-reading my blog, like a 5-year review. I summarized many of the best/worst things I have done since I began this journey:</div><div><br />
<div><a name='more'></a><br />
</div><div></div></div><div>The things that failed abysmally (cheat days aka the worst version of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">carb</span> cycling. Fruit+dairy. Lots of legumes. Anything with gluten). </div><div><br />
</div><div>The things that worked best when I was able to actually do them (hyper-nutrient supplementation. Bulk cooking of stews, quiche, and meat in general. Lifting weights, when I had the energy). </div><div><br />
</div><div>The things that were great ideas on paper but I was never actually able to sustain for more than 10 minutes (eating veggies, besides the occasional carrots/peas/potatoes in stews). </div><div><br />
</div><div>The problems that I had related to my eating (reactive hypoglycemia, particularly to things like eggs for breakfast. Addictive reactions to a lot of stuff. Total 'crisis' reaction to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">VLC</span>). </div><div><br />
</div><div>The solutions that I eventually found for those (Ray Peat's adding-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">carbs</span> if you eat eggs, like a little fresh squeezed orange juice, as if to 'soak up' the extra insulin that eggs in particular generate. Not eating the stuff I react to but more importantly not eating other things like gluten which makes me react to dairy, which I don't if I'm not eating gluten. Not doing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">VLC</span>, or adding enough <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">carbs</span> to keep me out of major <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">ketosis</span>, or not doing it so suddenly anyway and not for long-term). </div><div><br />
</div><div>The good advice I couldn't take: like Regina <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Wilshire's</span> excellent well-balanced nutrition plan which requires a well balanced person with a well balanced schedule, neither of which fit me. Like "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">everyone's</span>" advice to eat grass-fed meats/dairy because store-bought is so high in Omega 6 which causes hormonal and other problems, but it's not for sale around me, I haven't had a car for a long time (not a big deal unless you need to leave the city), I don't much like the taste of the stuff as it turns out, and I can't afford it anyway.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The bad advice I took, or perhaps, the good advice I implemented so badly: weekends are for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">carbs</span>, it's the 80/20 plan, it's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">carb</span> cycling.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The advice I still haven't figured out the value (or not, or depends on the person) for: avoid deli meats (processed food yuck), avoid diet sodas (fake sweet causes body reaction, plus it's toxic <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">chems</span>), eat veggies/don't eat veggies, eat less <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">carbs</span>/eat more <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">carbs</span>, eat on interim fasting/eat lots of small meals per day.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The foods I seem to do best on: for LC, eggs, burger patties, chili <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">verde</span>, chicken, cheese. Everything else is too much trouble. Not-more-than moderate amounts of beans/peas if in a meat stew. Whole milk, fresh squeezed OJ and potatoes and corn tortillas when on the Peat-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">ish</span> eating approach (which is not <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">lowcarb</span>). </div><div><br />
</div><div>The foods I seem to do worst on: milk as sole protein source (since I couldn't get decent meat, it was a suggestion by Peat--and it was <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">ok</span>, I just didn't feel "strong" at all. This could be partly related to additives in the milk, not the milk itself). Legumes as primary <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">carb</span> source. Gluten of any kind. Veggies which I will starve and let compost before eating. Lovely food that takes time to prepare which I will starve and let go bad before making time/energy to prepare it. </div><div><br />
</div><div>The foods that most often reflect my utter see-food diet downfall: gluten-free homemade cookie dough. Pasta with pesto. Order-in pizza with major gluten-ease pills all through eating it. Thing they have in common: they are really fast, easy, and high in both <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">carbs</span>/sugars and fats.</div><div><br />
</div><div>% of weight gained compared to % of time spent eating at least relatively <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">lowcarb</span>: direct 1:1 correlation, including "degree" based on just how far outside of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">lowcarb</span> I was, with the exception of the Peat-inspired eating approach, which lost me a few pounds despite that my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">carbs</span> were actually so high I must have been carrying my full 30-odd# of water weight. If I had only felt 'strong' on it -- and not '<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">ok</span> but oddly lacking in any motive-power' -- that might have worked. Of course, a lot of things, but for one symptom or reaction or another, whether promptly or eventually, "would have worked."</div><div><br />
</div><div>Dr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Sharma</span> has a blog post: <a href="http://www.drsharma.ca/obesity-your-body-is-happy-to-wait-for-your-weight-to-come-back.html">Your Body Is Happy To Wait For Your Weight To Come Back</a></div><div><br />
</div><div>...which pretty much says what every serious review of weight loss says: the quantity of people who lose significant amounts of weight and keep that weight off--and I don't mean for a month, or even a year, but for many years--is such an incredibly small % of the people who attempt to lose weight (and even radically smaller if you count the people re-losing it repeatedly as separate trials), it's almost ridiculous to even bother. </div><div><br />
</div><div>On this count I am starting to get a lot more sympathy with the Fat Acceptance crowd, although <a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com/2007/06/web-inside-fat-acceptance.html">aside from this post I wrote about Fat Acceptance</a> - sort of - I haven't had any real exposure to it. As I mentioned in that post, everything has a limit. Even people who are <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">ok</span> with obesity or obese people have all kinds of limits in a variety of areas that kick in, making it clear that acceptance is usually conditional and hence not really acceptance at all.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Aside from Dr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Sharma's</span> blog linked above, I have some others I have added recently:<br />
<br />
</div><div>Dr. Jack <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Kruse</span> (<a href="http://jackkruse.com/">intro</a>|<a href="http://jackkruse.com/jacks-blog/">blog</a>), a neurosurgeon who in one off the cuff sentence (saying that the super-obese and anorexics share the same <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">leptin</span> profile) won me over since this explains an element of my life that nobody believes (given my weight) but is actually my biggest problem (since sufficient eating/protein/nutrition is necessary and without it I end up 'reacting' and eating badly instead). He has a lot to say about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">leptin</span>, and adrenals. He essentially suggests what amounts to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">PaNu</span> or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Paleo</span>.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Dr. Ray Peat (website with <a href="http://raypeat.com/articles/">articles</a>), is a guy who's been involved with research longer than I've even been alive and I'm 46. He has a lot to say about hormones, and thyroid, and a lot of stuff I didn't know. He won me over when I tried an experiment based on his writing. He said that eggs have a big insulin response and eating several of them ought to be accompanied by some fresh-squeezed orange juice (my layman translation is 'to soak up the extra insulin an insulin-resistant body creates in reaction'). This seemed like Worst. Idea. Ever. to a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">lowcarber</span> until I tried it and found my 'reactive hypoglycemia' was magically cured. This one thing made me realize he might know more than some folks who had never mentioned such a thing in my years of reading their stuff. As it turns out, his articles library (about 80 of them) has so much stuff I didn't know, it's ridiculous. A good educational source even if you don't follow his suggestions.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I had previously mentioned here (I think) Dr. Kurt Harris (<a href="http://www.archevore.com/get-started/">get started</a>), a Radiologist, who has an eating plan he initially called <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">PaNu</span> -- 'new <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">paleo</span>' -- and who has what I think is the preferable insight of eating today's foods based on the ideal way of keeping the body healthy as it might have been (we dream) in ancient days, as opposed to eating foods solely based on whether they existed or were known to be used in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">paleo</span> times. So he ends up being mostly low <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">carb</span> mostly <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">lacto</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">paleo</span>. I like his stuff in part because he's just a kind of reasonable, in moderation, do what you can till you get there, kind of person in his writings, which is rare and rather nice.</div><div><br />
</div><div>*</div><div><br />
</div><div>So after reviewing 5 years of history, and considering everything I've tried (which amounts to close to everything), I have some thoughts.</div><div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div>1. Lifestyle is first. If you're working 20/7, probably your <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">carb</span> count is not really your biggest problem. Reducing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">carbs</span> or anything else won't improve you in that situation, it will merely reduce the degree of your tragedy. Which still might result in actual tragedy. Get enough sleep and solve whatever is making you stressed out. Take up regular meditation /prayer of any kind that helps you relax. The results are body-wide and ongoing.</div><div><br />
</div><div>2. Medium-term planning is needed. When I plan a week in advance I do <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">ok</span> for a week. That's all. My energy is very inconsistent and usually nonexistent. I will starve before I get up and make food if I don't have energy. I will eat crap if the teen is leaning on me to get/make something, because it's easiest and she likes it. Longer-term prep, in my case, is required.</div><div><br />
</div><div>3. Planning to eat things you don't much like is a total FAIL. Experimenting is good, but if you try it and you still think it's vile, give up. Figure out what you like that won't kill you and eat it.</div><div><br />
</div><div>4. Habits take work to form. Longer term prep/plan that gives them a chance is needed. Setting up supplements a week ahead of time for example needs doing if there are chronic problems taking them otherwise. Getting up early enough to make coffee and even food if you have trouble eating in the morning and you want to do so, is simply necessary. #1 affects this, obviously.</div><div><br />
</div><div>5. Actually research what's in the food you eat. If it turns out one of your main problems is being very estrogen-dominant due to a life of crappy food, living on foods that are 'mostly decent' but actually add to the problem is not helpful at all.</div><div><br />
</div><div>6. Outside of points 3 and 5, don't obsess. It's better to eat some beans than end up eating pizza because you knew beans were inferior and kinda <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">carby</span> so you didn't use them to make stew or chili you could have had instead so you didn't have any easy/quick/unfrozen/tasty food or energy when the demand came in.</div><div><br />
</div><div>7. Don't let your teenager determine your diet. Make a decent diet, make enough for her too, and let her starve if she doesn't like it. Otherwise you both eat like crap, she gains yet more weight, and you're mutually miserable. Good judgement and childhood do not go together for the most part.</div><div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div>I think I should spend the rest of the year (what little time I'll have before then) coming up with some kind of short, medium and year-long plan for 2012, and working on the "lifestyle" issues that directly interfere with my "food" issues. </div><div><br />
</div><div>*</div><div><br />
</div><div>I believe it was Edison credited with saying:</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.</span></span></div><div></div></blockquote><div><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">PJ</span></div><div><br />
</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-23188302229401566802011-03-31T18:06:00.005-05:002011-11-15T23:47:07.814-06:00Veggies, V-Slicers and Very Bad Ideas<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC1_OznSyL0kMb2sgKftTIuhErGfWY_tlubROb-hyODmg1skfhNtfM95SroNsvMBWTBrQL50JcvMK-P6LwOPBLLC_k5zRhu-62050Zc-ZMIjI5JVR420q6gUOur38slN-vc_Qc/s1600/snap_039.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC1_OznSyL0kMb2sgKftTIuhErGfWY_tlubROb-hyODmg1skfhNtfM95SroNsvMBWTBrQL50JcvMK-P6LwOPBLLC_k5zRhu-62050Zc-ZMIjI5JVR420q6gUOur38slN-vc_Qc/s200/snap_039.gif" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is cool.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I bought a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000632QE">V-Slicer Mandoline</a> I've wanted for a long time. It's the affordable sort but it's pretty darn good. It slices thin, thick, or tiny (matchstick) julienne, or larger (McD french-fry size) julienne. Or you can use it for slicing 'cubed' stuff. It's superfast to clean up (just rinse off), easy to use and has its own holder you can mount it on the wall with if you like. It has reduced the 'prepping veggies' part of these dishes to vastly, vastly less trouble and better outcome.<br />
<br />
I've been reading about everything from OTC supplements to illegal steroids geared toward fat loss. This is probably indicative of my state of mind in some fashion. It's unfortunate that most stuff is so much better for men than women. Everything mucks with hormones which is a big deal, but what the hell, if my hormones were anything akin to balanced I would not weigh what I do anyway.<br />
<br />
A recent agreement between the 14 year old and I, resulted in my agreement that we would go on a "mostly Salad and Stir-Fry" diet for awhile (she lasts on any plan about 3 days, sigh).<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
She just doesn't like meat and eggs enough to eat enough of them IMO or eat them 'mostly'. So I figure I will get her to take some protein powder and amino acid supplements, eat what meat I can stuff down her, she does eat cheese, and otherwise the 'salad and stir-fry' will have to do. She likes vinaigrette dressings blessedly, and <a href="http://www.penzeys.com/">Penzeys</a> provided me some nice spice mixes to add to those, and anything to rein in the amount of junk food she eats is good. Maybe if I keep her stuffed with veggies she will not have much desire to eat everything-else.<br />
<br />
<br />
Lowcarb lost me what, about 170# total. I have regained and relost the last 70# of that several times now. That is really exasperating to me. I can't believe how FAST my body gains weight. I don't even have to eat hideously. When I'm LC, I am really lowcarb and I am really low calorie too, just by default (I like meat and eggs and cheese more than I like everything-else that I could eat 'in moderation'). But if I'm not doing that, I'm gaining weight. It's so frustrating!<br />
<br />
Maybe lowcarb 'normalizes the metabolism' for some people. It didn't for me. It just got the mega chronic insulin issues taken care of. And that did work for that part of it. But obviously there is a lot more than that involved.<br />
<br />
My big wonder is why the hell it works differently at different times, I mean what is going on with my body that it is so unpredictable?<br />
<br />
I have had cycles where I went on LC, lost 13# in water weight the first 24 hours, and 25# the first week (water of course), this is normal, this is the 'extra' I carry (not all of it, but most of it).<br />
<br />
I have had cycles where I went on LC, and after 4 weeks had lost all of 8# and that includes the water weight. In other words I did not even lose the WATER -- let alone any fat. (So I did not lose 8# you understand. I lost 1/4 to 1/3 of the <span style="font-style: italic;">water weight </span>I should have lost the first week -- that is all.)<br />
<br />
Why? Why would it be so different?<br />
<br />
It's surprising how much of "drive" takes the part of "hope". If I have hope that I can lose some fat and feel better, then I find myself planning it and counting the days and that sort of thing. If my results make me feel like I have no particular hope of losing even the water weight never mind anything more at any speed where I'd reach even 300# prior to age 412 if I dieted consistently, then I completely lose all volition for wanting to bother at all.<br />
<br />
April Fool's Day is the big day. The kid and I begin her "salad and stir fry" eating plan tomorrow. I will probably live more on eggs and meat as usual since I like that better.<br />
<br />
I am hoping to resume lifting weights though. I guess I'll see how my energy does for that.<br />
<br />
PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-91064375674126832642010-11-07T15:04:00.006-06:002011-11-15T23:50:58.565-06:00Intermittant Fasting - 2 Week UpdateAlrighty then. In the end, I began intermittant fasting on Oct 24. I started 'tracking' Monday 10/25. It's been two weeks since then. The plan is a 4-hour window for food each evening. Generally, it's about 5pm-9pm. It's allowed to shift if my schedule does, but it's a 20 hour fast period.<br />
<br />
So here's a summary of the reactions and results so far:<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Hunger > I was hungry the first two days of it. This is ridiculous because normally I can fast for 1-2 days at a time without having hunger bother me. I am far closer to anorexic with occasional see-food frenzies, than anything troubled by meal-skipping. So I concluded that it was probably just some psychological side effect of telling myself I wasn't allowed to eat during the day. From day 3 on that wasn't an issue.<br />
<br />
Food limits > I did not set a limit on options except: very-low-carb, whole-foods, no grains, few or no legumes (peas and green beans in our case), and trying to keep the dairy (cream and cheese, no limit on butter) reasonably low. I could eat as much as I wanted, I have tracked in general all my intake, but I haven't worried about quantity being too high (it hasn't been, but I was willing to allow it to be).<br />
<br />
Eating to appetite > There is no issue of not being full on this. I was willing to eat as much as I wanted but, since I am mostly eating proteins/fats, that really can only be so much, anyway, until I am not only satiated but a bit stuffed, and never want to see a strip of bacon again. Well, for 24 hours, anyway.<br />
<br />
Adherence > How well did I do? Well, let's see. On Oct 29 I let my kid talk me into eating some halloween candy that night. On Nov 6 I ate at a restaurant, still only one meal, and meat/veg (fajitas), but then utterly blew it by eating a Ghirardelli's vanilla-bar and milk later that night. Aside from that it has gone ok.<br />
<br />
Problems > I'm undereating. I really TRY to eat enough to be a day's worth of calories. Even at the lowest imaginable end for someone who weighs 400#, no matter how much progress I've made from above that. But it's hard! Seriously there is just only so damn much food you can eat. Meat is FILLING. I think I need to consistently work on ingesting larger portions of my primary meat (chuck burger 80/20, commercial, or, organic chicken thighs, or commercial chicken breasts).<br />
<br />
I find that if I up my fats the way I want to, it's even harder to eat more meat. For example, if I am having a plain chuck burger patty (with Montreal seasoning -- this is salt, black pepper, garlic, and red peppers, granulated together) and nothing else, I can eat a really BIG one. We're talking, 12-20oz (the top one, I have to make myself eat, and I'm stuffed, but it's possible; I'm happy with the 12). But if I put some butter on the top and melt as much butter into it, when it comes out of the pan, as I can before eating it (which is very yummy), I eat about 6-9oz max and I'm happy. More than that seems like stuffing it down just for the sake of it.<br />
<br />
I like slab bacon, and try to eat some of that just because it's yummy. But there is not a lot of meat on bacon once it's cooked, so this is more a thing on the side than any serious meal contribution.<br />
<br />
I had this realization at one point that somewhere in my past, media has indoctrinated me with this idea that any meal over ~280 calories was hugely fattening. Of course that's because they're trying to get you to live on grains way too many meals+snacks a day. And that conveniently dismisses "real food" -- like meat and even low-sugar dairy -- from being a worthy consideration if it's in any quantity at all, as the fat content would usually kick it up to that or higher.<br />
<br />
So, I aim for getting "over 1200 calories a day". I'd like it to stay under 2300 but I won't stress if it goes higher. At this point, the highest I've ever gotten it was around 1500, twice. Usually it's around 1100-1200. Several times it's been around 800-900. This is the same problem I've always had on VLC (in the previous eras when I could do VLC), except a bit worse since I have one eating period and not 3 meals.<br />
<br />
People who do IF tell me, "You still have multiple meals. They are just spread out over your 'eating window'."<br />
<br />
Well 4 hours is not much of an eating window. If I eat a full protein/fat meal at the front of that, I am not remotely hungry 4 hours later. Plus cooking twice that close together is offputting. I have enough of a hard time doing it once.<br />
<br />
I could make the eating window longer, but I just feel like that kind of defeats the point of the fasting, aside from which since my window is at night, partly because that's where my available time is, making it longer would just take it too close to sleep.<br />
<br />
Advantages > It's sure a lot easier to only have to worry about food once a day. It's a lot easier to only have to cook once (although I might cook a few things at once). It's a lot nicer that since I can eat what I like as long as it's LC whole foods -based, I can have stuff my kid doesn't like AND stuff she does, and she is happy and I get something for a little variety. (This coming week is The Great Coconut Milk Curry experiment series, yay! She doesn't like Eastern spices so I never get them, but I think now I can have some.) There are less dishes generated (thanks a LOT for that, to me that's one of the worst parts about this eating plan, cleaning or paying someone to clean becomes a much larger issue for me).<br />
<br />
New Stuff > Apparently cheese gives me inflammation. I was so loathe to believe this, since I consider cheese the divine food, that I did some experimenting. Twice, I'd not had enough to eat that day, was either out of food or out of time, so I just ate about 4-5 ounces of block cheese cut into sticks. Both times I woke up feeling like I'd been run over by a truck in the night, my lower back hurting, and so bloated, I literally had to rock back and forth to get enough momentum to turn over and sit up (and it was an unhappy process). Both times I told myself, well yeah, but I ate it with X! or I ate it with Z! So those are the culprits! (Later note: apparently it's only the Tillamook pepperjack cheese that does this. I get gluten-reaction from it! Not from cheaper pepperjack. Weird!)<br />
<br />
Finally I realized I was in denial. So I ate early, just meat, and then ate cheese just like that (pepperjack in this case) at the end of my eating window not that long before sleep. And yep. I woke up just like that. When I just eat meat, I wake up fully awake, clear headed, and I am 'limber' and I just get out of bed. When I eat dairy or cheese, I wake up feeling like crap -- well, feeling like I *always* felt much of my life but was unaware food was the cause of it.<br />
<br />
I considered having a symbolic funeral, replete with weeping and gnashing of teeth. I know my gluten intolerance has probably contributed to a dairy intolerance, especially since I've eaten them together all my life. Still there is nothing sadder.<br />
<br />
Did this lead to the responsible adult perspective that I would immediately cease ingesting dairy since it is clearly bad for me? Of course not. It did however lead to me telling myself that I would limit my coffee (which I cannot ingest without cream and sweetener) to twice a week (that's all I've had for the last months anyway so that's no hardship), and limit cheese to maybe once a week rather than often daily.<br />
<br />
On the bright side, some inner determined part of me abruptly decided to stop eating bad oils. This is odd as I've never cared too much about that before. But there've been quite a variety of things the last couple weeks -- condiments, dressings, jar'd sauces -- that I wanted to eat and some part of my just put its foot down and said NO. I WILL NOT INGEST THAT. Gosh, maybe I could borrow this aspect to deal with the dairy issue. Anyway, it's been made easier by only eating once a day for sure since I'm not scrambling for "how many variations on MEAT" you can come up with in a day, every day.<br />
<br />
Weight > I can't really count my weight. I'm still losing some water weight, which I feel like should have happened faster, but maybe cheese is partly to blame. Technically I'm down around 18 pounds from where I started two weeks ago, but until I'm down about 25 I do not consider it past the "just water weight point," so I am still waiting for that to finish and actual weight loss to consider kicking in.<br />
<br />
Energy > The biggest point of reference in my life is how much energy I have to do things. I've been VERY excited that my body is willing to let me eat VLC (>30 usually <15) carbs a day again. But it's been two weeks and I have yet to feel that 'official' shift 'into ketosis' that we all remember from our early days on LC. The one where suddenly you have so much energy than you have had until then, and you can taste and smell the ketones, and so on. It's been 14, 15 days now, and this still has not arrived for me. Now, I'm pretty sure the body is somewhat ketogenic from LC let alone VLC with IF, by day1, let alone day 15. If my body wasn't somewhat ketogenic, I would have had the same effect I had for a couple years when I tried to eat under about 50 carbs a day -- my body would instantly have demanded I eat carbs or die. So it seems obvious that my body IS using fat as an energy source. It seems ridiculous to say I am not ketogenic, I must be, to be my size and be eating so few carbs and even few calories most the time. But my energy level has been 'different'. Now it used to be -- still is -- that if I am high carb, esp. if there is any grains or many sugars in my diet, I have no energy. None. Not, "gee it's a chore to do chores," but, "I have sat so still I could be in a coma, barely breathing even, for 16 hours, having moved only one or twice to go to the bathroom briefly." Since I went VLC, I've felt two things at once, which is very odd. First, my body thanks to better protein, feels much stronger. My body thanks to fewer carbs, feels much less bloated, more limber. My mind thanks to fewer toxins, feels more clear. Now normally, if I were VLC in the past and ketogenic, these things would be accompanied by feeling REALLY energetic. But now, although I have these effects and feel far more energetic than 'normal' eating, although I feel stronger, clearer, more limber, basically better in nearly every way -- I feel WEARY. So it's not like "I feel weak and lacking energy" which is the normal state of things. It's more like, "I feel strong and healthy -- and yet, like I'm SO weary and exhausted and need rest." That's kind of novel. I keep waiting for 'real' ketosis to kick in. Maybe my body cannot do that anymore. I don't know. Cycles > I have been tracking a few things since mid to late September. How much energy I feel on an overall day, from 1 to about 2-, with the top being 'no-sleep manic' and the bottom being 'completely non-functional', and about 9-15 being the good zone of middling-normal. What my eating was like on a given day, 0 being fasting, 3-5 being VLC-IF, 10 being LC, 15 being HC, 20 being some crazy binge like eating pizza and birthday cake (or halloween candy, sigh).<br />
<br />
I can already see clearly that when my food stopped fluctuating wildly, my energy stopped doing that too. I also see in the graph that nearly every time my food is high, my energy was low. And usually the food comes later in the day, so it's the energy sparking the food intake, not the other way around. The other two things I'm tracking for my "cycles" chart is menses, and what I call 'bright' -- a humorous reference to sexual energy, or 'bright ideas'. It's pretty interesting to see this graph starting to take shape, and see the not precise but clear 'cycles' of all these things and how they might relate to one another.<br />
<br />
Medical health > I decided to add to my tracking the following things: 1) glucose levels, and 2) temperature. I am not sure this will be anything unusual or worth noting, but I thought it might be interesting. I have a Relion Ultima blood glucose meter, little ouchy pokey things I forget the word for, and the blood strips. I've used this before when I was VLC and having serious 'reactive hypoglycemic' effects after losing a lot of weight fast (where a breakfast like bacon and eggs could make my blood sugar drop so low after awhile I nearly passed out), but I think that probably resolved itself over time as I don't think I have that effect now.<br />
<br />
I am not sure precisely when I should test my temp and my glucose although I've asked around a bit. I only eat in one period of the day. Do I test it after the first time I eat? After the last time? If I tested during that window but I'd eaten again that would throw it off, right. At what time-points should I be testing? What should I be recording about the food I ate -- everything? I mean I record all my food but I haven't been worrying about figuring out any 'specific' count when I, say, stir-fry chicken in bacon grease or coconut oil and throw in some shredded cabbage. God only knows what that would come into, if I psychically knew how much fats got its way down my throat out of all that and half the kid takes. I just estimate super roughly, not exactly. And what about temp? When I first wake up I think, before I get outta bed, right? Is there any other time that matters? Does temp have any relation at all to food intake?<br />
<br />
The kid has been repeatedly trashing her eating plan with this, and then that, and then this other, and to her it feels like she's been on the plan for two weeks with a few cheats, but from my perspective if it's a rather major cheat and it happens 3x a week then she might as well forget about the plan being all that helpful. Yes, helpful in that it would be worse without it, but that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to lose weight. That said she seems visibly to have lost a tiny bit in the hips anyway. Not on the scale though.<br />
<br />
Well, that's that. Midnight starts a new week. I hope it moves along fine and I find some kind of curry option I like. I'd love to see if I could make a cold curried chicken salad the way the thai restaurant back home (Ventura CA) did. Hope y'all have a good week too.<br />
<br />
PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-67061906679104711902010-10-21T06:00:00.004-05:002011-11-15T23:54:08.614-06:00Intermittant SanityWhen I first began serious lowcarb -- devoid of much info about nutrition or what ought to qualify as 'real food' vs. 'that will probably kill you too' but at least it was low on carbohydrates -- I wanted to try Intermittant Fasting.<br />
<br />
I had protein requirements, at the time. As I mentioned in <a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com/2006/10/dont-have-cow-man.html" style="font-weight: bold;">Don't Have A Cow, Man!</a>, they were pretty significant. And as I sadly concluded in <a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com/2006/09/if-i-could-only-do-if-and-still-get.html" style="font-weight: bold;">IF only I could do IF and still get enough protein</a>, it just wasn't working for me trying to do "induction" and at the same time get "enough" nutrients and at the same time only eat once a day.<br />
<br />
Over the last few years I've been through so many variants I'm totally losing track. High protein! High fat! Carb Cycling! VLC! ZC! LC with fruit! with grains! with legumes! Go Team Go!<br />
<br />
All of these work for people. Nearly every imaginable variant of eating plan appears to be working for at least someone, and often many someones, and often those someones have lost a LOT of weight and have kept it off a long time and their health markers are great -- so who can argue with success?<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Yet I think it's safe to say if any of those truly worked for me in the LONG run, I'd be somewhere different today. Well, wait. I don't mean that I've been perfect with something and it failed -- that wouldn't be fair to say, ok, I utterly suck as the poster child for "consistency" when it comes to good eating, and I cannot fairly represent ANY eating plan as a result. But clearly nothing was eternally right for me.<br />
<br />
SOME of these things like mostly-meat/eggs/cheese VLC worked really *well* for a period of time at least. I felt fantastic on VLC and lost a lot of weight and felt strong and everything was just rocking. Until suddenly I didn't feel ok let alone good anymore, and couldn't do it at all without my body feeling like if I didn't eat carbs within minutes it would be a disaster.<br />
<br />
Weight lifting would stop abruptly, mid-move, when my body suddenly said my battery was on E, although sometimes it would stop and I would burst into tears, feeling literally panicked. I honestly thought I had some inexplicable emotional problem for awhile. I searched for any possible internal emotion to connect to that, and of course, I found it -- see, confirmation bias works in psychology not just science! Hey, this super-morbidly-obese person DOES have a few things that cause them great emotion related to their body; gee, who knew? (Oh brother.)<br />
<br />
I finally realized this was my body's reaction to a sense of huge immediate crisis, I mean perceived as nearly life and death. Maybe in the wild of history when we were running from that predator once upon a time, it really WAS that degree of issue: find a solution within 10 seconds or you'll die from your body, never mind the tiger.<br />
<br />
I tend to ignore my body. I'm sure that is somehow related to my size, or maybe that gradually caused it. I tend to put off eating, even peeing, or even realizing I have some kind of ache or pain, until it is SO severe it's ridiculous. Whatever I am doing, I am utterly focused on that, and if that is my plan (write code for this file, lift this weight), almost nothing else even comes into my conscious awareness if it does not support that goal. If I am actually trying to do something "despite anything else" that's even more pronounced. My kid will walk into my room and say, "Mom, you're bouncing. Go pee!" I won't have even NOTICED if I'm doing something that takes focus.<br />
<br />
So that means I ignored the feelings of growing panic when I was lifting and abruptly ran TOTALLY out of energy, and finally I burst into tears, which DID get my attention and make me stop!<br />
<br />
It was at least a year before I realized that I should have recognized this pattern. When I was a kid, my dad (just a little passive/aggressive) used to tickle me, and I'd beg him to stop and he wouldn't -- it was more abuse than play from my perspective -- and sometimes to the point of making me pee my pants, then he'd be all mad and disgusted with me. (To this day I cannot abide ANY degree of tickling. None. Violence will follow almost immediately if it does not stop on command. I mean I'm a complete freak about it, sigh.) So after enough of that, I would struggle until I couldn't struggle anymore, and then at some feeling of crisis, my body would just burst into bawling all at once. Although this also pissed him off, it had the immediate effect of solving the problem I couldn't solve with physical strength or pleading.<br />
<br />
Once I realized the previous weightlifting sudden-bawling was a crisis-response, it was a long time later by then, but the next time I spent some time lifting (just a few weeks) I paid attention, and I felt it coming then--once I knew that "working hard" when you're "working out" does not mean "ignoring all obstacles for the goal." If the obstacle is your body telling you that you may die if you don't stop, that's one worth listening to. :-)<br />
<br />
I feel like it's time for me to get back to that and see what is needed with carbs or fats or protein or _______ to make serious lifting possible for me. I really love it.<br />
<br />
Back to my original point. A good deal of what works for you isn't just what makes you healthier on paper or during the moments you do it, it's what you can LIVE WITH long enough to accomplish something more enduring.<br />
<br />
I was remembering the other day how I was told as a kid, "Come out of the rain before you catch a cold!"<br />
<br />
If rain gave you illness, showers and swimming would kill us all. This is one of the zillion myths we grow up with. Maybe having a poor immune system and standing in cold rain long enough to lower your body temp a lot is bad, fine. That is not rain's fault. Rain on its own is mostly harmless and even warm in some climates.<br />
<br />
That got me thinking on what other no-brainer myths I might be living with all the time. Sorting through a surprisingly long list of possibilities, I came up with this particular dilemma, which I worked over in my head for awhile:<br />
<br />
1. Allegedly the body can only hold protein for 3 hours. After which it eats YOU (goes catabolic). This is behind the old weight thing about eating every 3 hours, even if it means waking up in the middle of the night.<br />
<br />
By 'natural inclination' I have spent most of my life eating once a day, at night -- this resulted in weight gain in some settings (my initial huge gain came that way) and a simple no-weight-loss in others (much of my life, despite being huge) -- so I am always trying to fight against this natural tendency to just not want to deal with food much.<br />
<br />
I have often told myself I should give IF a real try now, a few years later, given it would simply my food life so radically (since everything I eat I have to cook or prep). But then I think, "But wait, no! That's what made me gain weight, that never helped me lose weight, and I don't want my body eating my muscles!"<br />
<br />
<br />
2. But what little research I've read about related to intermittant fasting shows that it works surprisingly well for many and it does not appear to drain people of their muscle and vital organs at advanced pace, as #1 makes it seem like would be the case.<br />
<br />
So does your body 'start eating itself' at 3:01 from last bite? Or does it not? Or does it do so, but to such a small degree it doesn't matter? Or are there other facets of brief-duration fasting that compensate for this? Is it like worrying about some free-radicals from foods while ignoring that NOT eating them has vastly worse consequences for you?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Edited to add: </span><br />
A great post addressing these questions, I found a few hours after this post, here:<br />
<a href="http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html" style="font-weight: bold;">http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html</a><br />
I'm really enjoying that blog.<br />
<br />
I thought about all this a little more. I would eat once a day and then I was REALLY hungry when that finally arrived. So I'd eat a bunch of gluten-stuffed, bad-oils-stuffed something like 'whole wheat pasta with just some (corn) oil and vinegar and herbs' and wonder why I wanted to eat a truckload of it or why it never seemed to help (my protein-starved 300-500# frame). Or I'd just eat fast-food instead, which at least gave me some protein, but added fructose-stuffed big drinks, massive sodium and sometimes enough MSG to fry my brain as a food of its own.<br />
<br />
So in thinking about this, I think it's fair to say that I canNOT say that my 'eating once a day' in the past qualifies in ANY way as the "intermittant fasting" that is recommended by some people in the paleo/lowcarb fields.<br />
<br />
My kid and I just spent 10 days staying somewhere else while our bathroom was under reconstruction. For dysfunctional former-family living-space reasons I will not bore you with, we had no options but frozen food we could nuke (that was the least of our misery). I was kinda mad about that, but it was only supposed to be 6 days, which gradually became 10 days, and I figured what the heck, I'll live. At this point, we don't have much money, but we are back home, the good food I had evolved into new lifeforms while I was gone, we have some stuff in the freezer, and I told her I am only buying basically meat/eggs/produce a little dairy. Nothing makes me want 'real food' more than not being able to have it!!<br />
<br />
So humorously, I spent a good deal of time fantasizing about 'real food' (in particular MEAT) and wanting to come up with a 'plan' to carry out for maybe a month, just to see what the results might be if I actually did:<br />
<br />
1. Intermittant fasting (say, a 3-hr window for food once a day in the evening)<br />
2. Supplementation (need to keep that up)<br />
3. Focus on decent water intake (instead of diet soda)<br />
4. Doing a little working out, slow to start, again.<br />
<br />
I'm not so much looking for pounds lost because just dropping carbs will do a lot of that, and if I start lifting again that will add some of it. I'm more looking to see, after a month of this, how I feel at the end of it. I'd like to answer questions for myself like:<br />
<br />
1. Is IF feasible for me for appetite reasons?<br />
2. Is IF feasible for me for schedule reasons?<br />
3. Is IF feasible for me for the-teen's-food reasons?<br />
4. What kind of protein/fat/carb intake can I have off that eating window? You can only eat so much at a time... and<br />
5. Is the intake I can have enough to keep me functioning well, keep me from cravings, keep me decently fortified?<br />
<br />
<br />
My kid (daughter R, 14) has issues eating at school. She is doing this with me. We concluded that maybe rather than eating once a day, we should eat twice a day: once around 7am, protein+fat so hopefully she can last through school and not be too tempted by their 100-deadly-fried-grain foods, and then we'd eat again around 7pm.<br />
<br />
We talked about food options. She loves salad and needs less protein than I do. So we thought, "protein and fats for breakfast" so she'd be full and satiated and hopefully would stay full-enough through the day; we'd pack her a bottle of water and some nut/cheese snacks in her packback.<br />
<br />
And then for dinner, a BIG salad, with diced chicken and hard boiled egg and homemade blue cheese dressing. Yes I realize this is cheese/dairy and very caloric, but it's damn tasty. It will give her the veggies she loves and some meat. Plus some kind of plain meat-thing for me (simple small burger patty or something) so I get a little more protein/calories in than her if needed. Water, no soda (maybe a rare diet-soda treat but in general, just water).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Edited to add: </span>I forgot to mention that she's also moving to a split sleep schedule. Around 11:45pm to 6am, and 3:45pm-6:45pm. So she will get up, food is fairly close to that, and she has several hours awake that it should last her, and then another sleep cycle. She simply cannot seem to deal with sleeping at an hour to get her anywhere enough sleep--like me (maybe because of growing up with me), she just is not remotely sleepy at that point--but she is weary after school and can nap. So this "two sleep and two food times" a day is part of a single-plan.<br />
<br />
It would be helpful to me to have some ideas though. Do any of you guys do IF?<br />
<br />
If so, what all -- and how much -- do you eat during your window (and what is that)?<br />
<br />
What about eating twice a day? (7am/7pm) Is that too often to count/matter?<br />
<br />
What about coffee/teas with cream? This is 'food' not drink, right?<br />
<br />
What about target quantities and ratios for protein/fat/carbs -- do these change with IF?<br />
<br />
Even from those who don't do IF, ideas are welcome!<br />
<br />
<br />
Our official experiment is 4 weeks, starts Saturday October 23, 2010 and is ended Saturday November 20. She leaves for Maui the next day so it's good timing for her.<br />
<br />
Any advice is appreciated. Now I wish I'd paid more attention to this subject over the years when it has flown by. I wasn't doing it, so I didn't really follow the info about it, darn it!<br />
<br />
PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-81916249374625650772010-10-07T14:23:00.006-05:002011-11-16T00:07:32.874-06:00Pesto Salad v1.0<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.palyne.com/food/pestosaladv1.0.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="pesto salad" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">When finished, it looks attractively like glop. <br />
Tastes good, though.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
If it's fast and tasty, it's my kind o' food.<br />
<br />
This is just a simple thing I threw together that I thought was yummy. Kid doesn't like pesto. I have been eating once a day separately from her so it's a chance for me to eat the things I like that she doesn't (read: that's nearly everything).<br />
<br />
dairy-free, gluten-free, high-protein, high-fat<br />
<br />
6 hard boiled eggs <br />
6oz cooked chicken breast, diced (you could probably use shrimp if you prefer)<br />
6 scallions, diced<br />
7 oz pesto<br />
1 small jalapeno pepper, diced<br />
~1/3 large red bell pepper, diced<br />
<br />
Mix it together. Eat it. This is cooking at my level for sure!.<br />
<br />
Servings:<br />
normal world: 6<br />
my normal world: 4<br />
<br />
Click the numbers image to pop up one large enough to read.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.palyne.com/food/pestosaladv1.1info.png" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://www.palyne.com/food/pestosaladv1.1info_small.png" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-20602980004409381102010-10-06T20:24:00.005-05:002011-11-16T00:11:03.510-06:00Food versus "Food" for BreakfastLow-carb seems pretty reasonable, healthy and do-able until you are wrangling with a 14 year old 8 minutes before she's got to be out the door to school.<br />
<br />
Much of the time I make her a scramble, or an omelette. She doesn't like eggs much and tends to not eat more than a bite, sadly, to make me feel better. Sometimes I make grilled sliced kosher dogs or gourmet sausages (the apple-gouda or jalapeno-jack or chili or cheddar types). She doesn't really like that either. (Had I put them in a bready bun with ketchup and mustard, ok, but sliced and grilled, no.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Sometimes I make her a mock -- slang for a sort of distinctive food-ish-thing you make in a microwaveable bowl. 1 egg, 1+ oz of cream cheese depending on how much you really want to eat it as cheesecake, some flavorings, spices, sweeteners, a drop of fresh fruit puree, broken pieces of dark chocolate bar, whatever. Soften cream cheese, stir with everything else, you can leave little chunks of the cheese, then nuke -- in my microwave it's about 1.5 minutes, might vary. Note that this can also be done savory with leftover chicken and rosemary, or cumin and taco meat, or crisped pepperoni and shredded mozz, or whatever. The sky's the limit. Over at the ACL forum (lowcarber.org) "kitchen" board there are a couple threads on "mock danish" and "bowl muffins" that probably have 200 variants. Some add almond or coconut or flax meal... depending on your ingredients this can range from a heavy muffin to bread pudding in texture, from an instant chocolate cake rather molten in middle to a garlic-caraway-flax-thing you can put a topping on.<br />
<br />
I normally avoid things like the above because years of low-carbing refocused me on "whole foods." Well, mostly. I did mention previously that I'm relaxing more than I used to and being willing to do some processed meats and such for the sake of time/ease and that seeming better than ending up offplan entirely.<br />
<br />
The one I made the other morning had some sweetzfree and truvia for sweetener, 1 egg, 3oz cream cheese, a little bit of pineapple extract, and a small handful of chopped toasted macademia nuts (from the bag in the baking aisle in market). She said it was fabulous. I felt guilty because it was 'sweet' and it seems like breakfast shouldn't be sweet. What is that? I don't know where that guilt came from. Like if it's sweet or you really enjoy it, it's the moral equivalent of a cinnamon roll, it must be bad!<br />
<br />
Food for her is really a pain! She doesn't like the meat/eggs much and that is what I am just fine with and gravitate to. She likes veggies but often only if drowning in something like a dressing.<br />
<br />
Tonight I sauteed a little bacon in tiny pieces, a bunch of crimini mushrooms, and some sliced leftover baked chicken, and then gave her a tiny bowl of butter for dipping the rather dry chicken. She said it was fab. I was trying to think of what would be better for her than the (bad-oils) ranch we currently have, I guess that worked.<br />
<br />
I had my parents get me a big chunk from a roll of Amish butter recently. Honestly I did not taste anything improved over store butter and in fact I think I liked the taste slightly less. I'm sure it's healthier though. At 4x the price it should be.<br />
<br />
An online buddy gave me a recipe for a morning smoothy the kid might like, which reminded me that we have protein powder and frozen berries and, as soon as I replenish a couple more jars to bring it back to life fully, kefir.<br />
<br />
Part of me says this isn't food. I dunno, does chopping something to tiny bits in a blender make it less food? If the ingredients were eaten separately would it seem more like food? If there wasn't a bit of sweetener (which may be its own food-karma but aside from that, what's wrong with the rest of any given thing?) would it seem more like food?<br />
<br />
It seems like I have a lot of belief systems that reduce me to chicken, burgers, pork loins, roasts, occasional dogs or sausages, bacon, eggs, some fresh produce (very limited), frozen berries, sometimes some nuts or seeds, and some dairy (mostly butter and cheese and homemade kefir). To me this is fine. Although it does explain why I tend to not eat, or eat super lowcarb and nearly paleo, or eat offplan, without much in between. To my 14 year old, this is so boring that it's nearly a punishment. So for her sake I am trying to branch out. Branching out into things less perfectly healthy seems like a contradiction, when the whole point is making her food at home so she eats less crap at school.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it's hard for me to tell where food crosses the line to "food". If I nuke her sweet mocks and make her sweet or chocolaty protein drinks, am I teaching her 'diet food' that is not a long term eating strategy? Am I feeding her a lowcarb version of junkfood?<br />
<br />
Or am I being reasonably practical about feeding a teenager who often has an entire 0.8 minute to scarf down something? (Because, as I tell her, she is the slowest human alive, the moreso the more she NEEDS to hurry!) Who if she doesn't have something decent at breakfast will spend a fortune on food so horrifying at school that it looks like an institutionalized advertisement for the bad-oils and grain lobbies?<br />
<br />
I can't decide. Tomorrow I'm going to try a protein drink for her. We'll see how that goes.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-1817896479130950382010-10-03T18:25:00.007-05:002011-11-16T00:12:35.008-06:00Cooking AheadI felt like such a whiner after my last post. I nearly deleted it but it had already hit RSS and feedburner so I didn't bother. Many thanks to the commenters for being so kind and supportive. Actually, I have to say the lowcarb community is probably the most friendly genre of the several I've been in online over the last 17 years!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">F O O D F O O D F O O D</span><br />
<br />
So after thinking about it I decided the first and primary problem is that if I get lazy or work too much so I'm not prepared, I end up running out of food that is decent to eat or that doesn't take eons. Worse, it only takes going without food for awhile or even worse eating badly, to ensure I have no energy for a major cooking job anyway. I know what I can do, should do, I know a whole list of steps that are ideal for making this sort of thing easier, but following them is another story!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">The Cook-Ahead Plan:</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Chicken breasts are easy.</span><br />
<br />
Last week I cooked 5# of chicken breasts ahead and used them in stuff all week.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Stir-fried veggies are a little more time consuming. But versatile.</span><br />
<br />
Then at some ungodly hour Monday morning-Sunday night, I used the wok to sautee onions, peppers, sliced zucchini, sliced yellow squash, and sliced crimini mushrooms. I dislike veggies. I can eat peppers in any way, and tomatoes in most, and I love mushrooms sauteed, but if I'm to eat zukes or squash, it will only be sauteed so it kinda blends in with other stuff. I make zero effort to eat anything outside this group.<br />
<br />
I use organic nonhydrogenated palm shortening from tropicaltraditions.com on this. I only buy the gallon if it's on sale, when it's about half price, or I just can't afford the stuff at all. I love it though--it imparts a 'warmth' but has no real taste, is more solid than bacon grease at room temp but softer than coconut oil, and has a really high smoke point so is ideal for stir-fry. I have a slightly oversized grease-holder on the counter that I keep full of the stuff.<br />
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I'm wondering if adding it (melted but not hot) to bacon grease for homemade mayo would work. I'm not sure what the real diff is between the shortening and the oil.<br />
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I put the veggies in a storage bowl and Monday nuked a little and dropped it inside an omelette for the kid's breakfast. Tuesday did the same thing and made one for me. And Thursday I used the remainders, pureed with some water in the blender, to add to my beef stock and spiced tomato sauce/paste soup. (Even just sauteed mushrooms dropped in are awesome with that.) Friday we added shredded baked chicken and let it simmer a long time, and then it was gone. We serve that soup with some cream mixed in the bowl on serving... it's wonderful.<br />
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That worked very well as a 'food ahead'. I had thought of cooking actual 'food' ahead like the chicken, but hadn't before given too much thought to cooking 'ingredients' ahead. That worked out really well and gave me some options. For example I could have shredded a chicken breast, added some of the veggies, heated it up in a small sautee pan, and then put some pepperjack cheese over the top till melty. That would have been good too. There's lots of options.<br />
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I am hoping to do another batch of fresh veggies in the wok tonight, for this coming week.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Mountains of Pork</span><br />
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<img align="right" src="http://www.palyne.com/food/pork_03OCT2010.jpg" title="PORK LOINS FOR CARNITAS" />Today I prepped 11 pounds of pork loin for my big 8.5 quart crockpot. I am making carnitas meat. I've never done this before. I usually make chili verde with the pork, but it requires cubing it -- a huge process as there is a lot of meat -- then braising it, yet more work -- then sauteeing the onions and peppers -- all before I can even turn on the crockpot. With the carnitas recipe, I just had to add a bunch of spices to chicken stock, I cut the 5.5# loins into 5 pieces each, and put in the pot and walked away. I'm cooking it a long time, because the pork loin (as opposed to tenderloin) is a lot tougher. I have these "bear claw" things I got from amazon.com long ago (to make carnitas, ironically, and I have never done so until now!) that makes short work of shredding meat.<br />
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<img align="right" src="http://www.palyne.com/food/porkincrockpot_03OCT2010.jpg" title="CARNITAS PORK IN CROCKPOT" />Oh yeah. I thought the freezer Ziploc was chicken stock but it turned out it was beef stock. Whoops. So we will see how this is with beef stock. Actually, I had one 14.5oz can chicken stock I'd already added, and what was probably a little over a quart of the beef stock, and then a bunch of water (as my recipe was for 3# and I had 11#, and it had 4 cups of ckn stock). I am sort of infamous for my inability to make any recipe just as-is but this time truly it's just that I was mistaken about what I had on hand. The beef stock smelled pretty good (from one of my roasts) so I hope it still comes out ok!<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Need some chicken stock. Maybe a stew while I'm at it.</span><br />
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I have the other half of a dozen chicken drumsticks to cook. I don't like drumsticks. But, they were really cheap at 4.5# for $5. So I figured I will roast them, fork off just the most obvious meat, use that to make something like a pesto chicken salad (or to add to omelettes for the kid before school in the morning), and then throw all the drumsticks into a stock pot. So there'd be some roasted meat and bones. I don't know how well this will work because I've never done it before. But I feel like I need to make a better attempt to learn to cook the less expensive stuff.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">I've back-slid on my kefir.</span><br />
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<img align="right" src="http://www.palyne.com/food/kefirgrains_03OCT2010.jpg" title="KEFIR GRAINS IN QUART JAR" />My kefir's been in stasis in the fridge for quite a long time. I rinsed it off and put it in a fresh jar with some milk. I will have to do a few milk changes (not drinking that) to get them back to decent health I imagine, but I have hope. I would like to use kefir to make the occasional berry dessert -- I don't want to ingest 'milk' unless it's kefir. I read everything I could find about gut bacteria and it seemed like a good thing.<br />
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I read this article about gut bacteria. They found that (don't read this if you're eating) an actual injection of a bit of the feces of a healthy person into the large intestine of someone who is not, can have astounding effects, as the bazillions of bacteria colonize and can change the gut bacteria in a major way. I don't have any healthy donors to get that gross with me unfortunately (I can just imagine asking someone for this. Haha!), and kefir may well die in the stomach for all I know (if even a tad bit survives, it's worth it), so that's what I have for now.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Tonight's Dinner</span><br />
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I found this thing in the jar section called "Vodka Sauce." (Tomatoes, cheese, vodka, herbs.) It sounded good. There was a ridiculously expensive "home made Rao's" version so I thought I would try that. I cut up some organic boneless/skinless chicken thighs into small pieces (quite small) and mixed it in that in a pyrex square baking pan and I'm cooking it for an hour. I didn't know what else to do with it... I don't eat pasta, after all, which was the only reference on the jar. I did add a tiny bit of italian herb seasoning, and 2 diced garlic cloves sprinkled about, and just a few red pepper flakes, to it before baking. I hope it's decent. If it is, I will look into how to make my own homemade "vodka sauce." I am not real big on the taste of spaghetti sauce (not without pasta under it anyway :-)) but maybe I'll like this better. It's in the oven.<br />
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I'm hoping that all this effort means I eat well this week.<br />
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Oh yeah. I did lose a lot of water weight... 16# of it the last 7 days (current weight 404, from 420). This is not unusual by the way, so it's no big deal -- I carry about that much or more water if I'm eating high carb. <br />
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I certainly feel more limber, and energetic, as a result. Getting a lot of exercise even though the restroom is across the hall... going back on LC, for me, is a rather trying period of running to the loo every short while!<br />
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PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-11509183533158829922010-09-27T01:38:00.001-05:002011-11-16T00:16:24.905-06:00Mellowing with AgeOver time I got to where I was wiping out so many foods from my diet--and I've little experience with most any food that is 'real' so not much variety was left--that instead of feeling enthused about recipes and issues, the way I did when I began this blog a few years ago, I just felt kinda demoralized. Like, even if I were eating on plan, how could my plain burgers and plain baked chicken breasts be of interest to anybody else?<br />
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Despite my occasional success with my teen, the most common event is that she doesn't want to be on lowcarb and whether via drama-queen or pleading, eventually I make the lousy decision to agree with her 'somewhat' and then slide completely off the wagon, UNDER the wagon.<br />
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As my insane weight when I began all this makes clear, my metabolism is not particularly normal. Normal people do not weigh 520, not ever. I lost a lot of weight, not remotely enough, but I'm still pretty huge. And I don't really need to eat horribly to gain weight. I just need to eat. But it's worse because if I'm not pointedly eating lowcarb, which amounts to 'mostly fats/protein', it's not merely that I'm eating carbs, it's that I'm not eating protein, and eventually I will start to overeat, simply because my body's starving for amino acids. I know that by now. Why this is ever still a problem is beyond me.<br />
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I considered not posting. Figured maybe I should close the blog and forget it. Being somewhat Type-A in personality, I would sooner gets shots and bruises than confess to any weakness, or be forced to spend any time around medical places. I think it's important if one's going to blog for a given 'thing' -- lifestyle, food choice, whatever -- that they be a positive and decent example of it.<br />
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Right now I'm kind of an example of someone who got demoralized, gave up, got it together again, then screwed up / got careless, shrugged it off, kinda forgot about it on purpose for awhile, repeated several times and several different approaches, and then realized I felt horrible, I was fatter, and had gained enough weight to make my eyeballs fall out on the scale, bounce a couple times and roll across the floor. I'm shocked and horrified it's that much. I honestly didn't think it would be that much.<br />
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So I can't decide if I should wallow in my pathetic failing so much that I just close the blog and let people who can actually maintain the eating plan as good examples do this, and spare people my clearly imperfect example, or if I should just get over myself and start where I am and use the blog to force myself to pay more attention for awhile, to what I eat, to issues, to positive thinking about it all. <br />
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Emotionally I want to do the former, but intellectually I know it would be healthier to do the latter.<br />
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***<br />
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Meanwhile, I noticed tonight that I must be mellowing with age. Tonight I stir-fried a bunch of stuff to dump into omelettes or on burgers over the next 2-3 days. Zucchini, squash, anaheim chilies, white onion, portabella mushrooms, a small red potato. I would not previously have allowed the potato. But the kid likes them. Small amounts of small ones now and then are my little compromise.<br />
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I am working on being less extremist. Less of the "I MUST eat X and I CANNOT eat Y" and more of the "PJ, just plan something to eat that is relatively decent and move on. Nobody is going to die over 7 slices of potato mixed into a big bowl of other veggies, only a big spoon of which is used with any meal serving. If this small compromise helps the kid like it a little better, and it's not severely harmful, isn't her being content on LC more important?"<br />
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Will people relate to me? Or find it pitiful and embarrassing? (More likely, not a single person reads this blog anymore because I went so long without posting, sigh.) I don't know. But I always wanted to be honest here so there you have it.<br />
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I'm getting more mellow with age. But I'm also just going back on plan after a chunk of time that added a whole bunch of weight back to my frame. Ironically, just after I had the FIRST sign of possible weight loss I'd had in a couple of years, after the hyper-nutrient phase. I feel like a complete freakin idiot, a failure, and a horrible example. But, I'd like to do better. I did well for a long time before gaining back what I recently have.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-30800985236020798712010-04-24T16:27:00.018-05:002011-11-16T00:28:39.421-06:00Teenage Low Carb, Part 2<span style="font-style: italic;">"Why is there no cream cheese?"</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"I dunno."</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"Did you eat all the cream cheese?"</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"I don't remember."</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"Well who did??"</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"I dunno."</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"There are only two of us living here! It wasn't me. So..."</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"I was hungry!"</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"You're always hungry!"</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"Yes! I am! So what!"</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: 130%;"><br />
It's the Mystery of The Disappearing Yummy Foods.</span><br />
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Now, <a href="http://www.weightoftheevidence.com/" target="_blank">Regina Wilshire</a> once counseled me: <span style="font-style: italic;">Don't deprive a growing child of nutrient-foods; their body drives them to intake nutrients so they have what they need to grow. They need to have free access to the healthy foods so they can eat as needed. </span><br />
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I agree that seems like a sound philosophy.<br />
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But what do you do when the growing child only wants to eat all the peanut butter and cream cheese and any possible yummy snack (even homemade LC stuff), instead? In the night? Without mentioning it?<br />
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So I go to make something that for example has a little cream cheese, a quick meal on a break from work, and discover that while I bought half a dozen 8oz blocks of the stuff not long before, we now have... count them... <span style="font-style: italic;">none</span>.<br />
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And while I don't tend to put much emphasis on calories as long as the carbs are kept low, the reality is that an 8oz block of cream cheese has 765 calories and 17g sugar carbs -- her eating it like candy with a spoon is unlikely to result in visible fat loss anytime soon, that's for sure.<br />
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But if I <span style="font-style: italic;">don't </span>keep such things in my house, if I can't have any 'ingredients' like that lest they all disappear in the night, then MY diet totally sucks. It's not that I eat it a lot. But sometimes I want to have it around, dang it! I already have a diet which, compared to the cultural norm, is profoundly restricted. I already don't really care for veggies or fruits so they're minimal, don't eat grains or legumes at all, I despise seafood, must avoid gluten, and work to maintain low-carb. Sheesh, the food segment of the universe I have access to is not real broad anyway. It's important that I be able to make a quick bowl muffin or whatever it might be. When I do NOT eat, THAT is when I end up making "poor decisions" that take me offplan. When I feel angry and deprived, that doesn't help either.<br />
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It doesn't have to be this food item. It's less the specific than the overall point. Versatility and variety is really important when you're a full time job single mom trying to survive an eating plan where nearly everything involves shopping prepping cooking cleaning.<br />
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I got bent out of shape about this, because it was so repetitive and it seemed like no amount of griping on my part changed it at all.<br />
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If we had stew (it doesn't matter what kind of stew really) that I made in a crockpot? -- she would add tons of cream and shred cheese to it. By the time she is done, it is not only not a particularly lowcarb stew, but it's got enough calories for two entire days of food. The kid never met a carb or a cheese she didn't like, but she also avoids ever learning to get used to and like many foods, because she buries it in so much crap you can't taste anything but that.<br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff; font-size: 130%;"><span style="color: #000099;">Although this issue is not completely solved, it is better than it used to be. Here's the things we did to improve it at least to the point where it is now.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">1. </span><span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">When we eat, I make a point to be sure there are LOTS of proteins and fats involved </span>in our food. Not just some. A LOT. Enough that in a perfect world, she is as stuffed as possible, and less likely to be wandering around the kitchen noshing the minute I'm not looking. If we're having roast beef or steak, I put lots of butter on it, or mix butter into any sauce, to add some fats and calories. If we are having hamburger patties, I make sure to make it a good size and add cheese. If we're having various kinds of chicken, and the fat is sometimes very low in those meals, I try to find something else to add to it. For example I don't eat legumes but I keep frozen peas around for her, so I'll make her some peas with tons of butter in them. If we're having scrambled eggs, I make sure hers have some cheese, and maybe some sour cream on top.<br />
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Now, you might notice that this is greatly amping up the carbs and especially calories, and it's possible that soft-dairy isn't the healthiest thing in the world (for me anyway, which means possibly for her, genetically). I would say it's almost certain that her weight loss has been slower as a result of my intentionally upping her protein and fat so she is intentionally FULL at any meal we have.<br />
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On the other hand, when I did not do this, she ate anyway -- she ate at every opportunity and when I wasn't looking -- and she didn't eat meat, she ate cream cheese, peanut butter, lowcarb treats, and so on -- and she didn't lose much of any weight AT ALL and in fact she GAINED some.<br />
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I think this kind of exemplifies the problem a lot of people have with 'dieting': they want to lose weight 'faster' so they try to eat strictly, but then they just end up noshing or binging and not losing much weight at all, or gaining it back bi-weekly. Being willing to lose fat more slowly, by upping the protein/fats intake, if it prevents a larger degree of intake (or worse choices) as the alternative, is obviously a better choice.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">2. I try to keep things in the fridge available so she always has something she can eat</span>, that she likes well enough... she is never hungry without reasonably quick-food. THIS effort has been hard but has been something I came to understand was critically important to her progress. And if that means that she is eating too many calories, munching on deli ham and provolone on lowcarb wraps with salad veggies added, well, that's what it means. At least she is eating something semi-healthy, something with protein/fat and minimal carb and usually some fresh produce added, rather than whole blocks of cream cheese or half a jar of peanut butter.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">3. I've tried to make a point to involve more of what she obviously wants, into our food.</span> For example once in awhile I'll just mix up some fresh berries and cream cheese and Truvia / Sweetzfree as a surprise dessert of sorts. Not all the time. But enough that she gets a few more 'treats' and so hopefully won't feel as 'deprived', psychologically. Also, then if I have to say, "Oh. I was going to make you a yummy berry dessert... but there's no cream cheese..." THEN she is really mad at herself for sneaking it all, and not telling me, and now she doesn't get something she really wants.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">4. I came to understand that some of her frustration is that we are different. I needed to recognize that better. She needs/wants things I don't</span>. I could live on almost pure meat, and I can eat the same thing repeatedly for a really long time till I'm sick of it. I absolutely love hot spicy food and eastern spices. She is not so fond of meat as me, she gets sick of things very easily and needs variety, she really likes vegetables and 'lighter' feeling foods, and she likes cold-creamy things sometimes as a break from meat all the time. So I started making more things like chicken and hard boiled egg salad, with scallions and dill relish, mayo and mustard. It's cold, it's yummy, it's still got lots of proteins and fats (and if I get to the point finally of making my own mayo, decent fats then), but she feels like it's a nice change from "chicken or beef or eggs, chicken or beef or eggs" all the time.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">5. I INSIST that she have a couple bites of any food without sauces, cheeses, etc.</span> that she wants to add on beyond whatever I cooked. And I insist on hovering and nagging about not so MUCH cheese or sauce. It's annoying to both of us and a pain for both of us, but it does result in her tasting more actual food, and reducing some of the drown-it behavior, which I think over time has, actually, made her more open to the actual taste of food.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">6. I quit making the foods she abused the worst</span>, even though I love them and she liked them... only when drowning in cream cheese (such as chili, for example). The reality is, if she can't eat it without 6 ounces of cream cheese melted into that bowl, then SHE DOESN'T LIKE IT, ok. So unless I really don't mind that she's having chili "and cheesecake" for dinner, in quantity, I simply don't make it much anymore.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">7. I tamed my tendency to overcompensate with more 'fun' but less healthy food. </span>It's been a dilemma in some respects. I want her to like the food. I want her to be happy. So for example, maybe I will make her a big mushroom with ham and swiss and some sweet mayo-mustard blend. Or maybe I will make some variant on a pizza-something. But I have to be careful with this, because then I end up making food that is a little too carby, a little too processed, a little too 'special' -- a little too often. Then we BOTH end up kind of craving carbs and having trouble. So lately, I have attempted to make the weekdays pretty simple and plain, "meat and eggs" (she can always have salad stuff too if she wants) basically, and then on Saturdays we focus on cold creamy salads and more specialty foods (Saturday is "salad day"), and Sunday is "Fun Day" -- I try to do some kind of experiment that she is part of, for an LC sweet, or just something we don't have very often, like yogurt, or flax muffins, etc.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">8. I make a point to always have salad ingredients on hand.</span> I've made a point to make her prep these enough times to feel comfortable with it. I showed her how to make vinaigrette as well as we usually have bottled ranch (soon to be homemade hopefully). So she can always make a salad when another meal of meat is just not doing it for her. Plus, she can always go add some diced tomatoes and onions, or some sliced tomatoes with salt, to any food, if she feels like it.<br />
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<span style="color: #ff6600; font-size: 130%;">9. When all else fails, I make sure she suffers <span style="font-style: italic;">with </span>me. </span>I hate having fits. I don't want to live that way. I hate nagging. Actually there's a lot about parenthood that ticks me off. So rather than having a hissy fit about it, which leaves me angry, or saying little (or just griping) which leaves me resentful, I just became the Tough Mom. <span style="font-style: italic;">Guess </span>who is walking to the store just to buy us more cream cheese, at some very inconvenient time? Guess who wouldn't have to do this if she didn't eat all or most of it in such a short time? Now while she's not in her cool clothes, while she really doesn't feel like it, the two sides of the equation, consuming it and replacing it, become <span style="font-style: italic;">her </span>issue, rather than the 'problem' of it being only mine. So if it's going to be a frustrating pain in the butt for me, it's going to be one for her, too.<br />
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This is not happening if she eats some of it once in awhile, understand. Only when she's consuming all or nearly-all of something in short periods and/or not telling me when I/we are shopping so I can replace it. I'm not so much punishing her (indirectly) for eating, I'm doing it for being inconsiderate enough to eat it all without regard to me, my food plans, my meal food plans for both of us, my shopping plans, etc. I don't mind her eating it now and then. Sure, I would much rather she ate it IN something reasonable, like a bowl muffin for example, than just ate it plain.<br />
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But I'm not going to freak out if sometimes she just really has a desire to eat. So do I sometimes, and I don't ask her permission for everything I feel like munching on, and I don't make her ask me (I did, or tried, when she was a bit younger). What I also expect however is for her to be responsible, and to be considerate and aware of the fact that her wiping out any food resource causes problems for <span style="font-style: italic;">me.</span> I don't always have money for more. Or time to get it. Or transportation to get it. Sometimes I'm up at midnight on a Saturday and I want to do a fun experiment on some lowcarb item and I'm SO irked if it turns out we are out of an ingredient I was <span style="font-style: italic;">sure</span> we had, as I have no way to get it.<br />
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But as you know, even ADULTS have serious problems keeping away from some foods. I didn't keep peanut butter in the house for like two months recently, not because of her, but because of me! I just kept eating the damn stuff with a spoon -- and often instead of meals. It was easier. Faster. Yummy and instant fat/protein. But it tends to spark some noshing cravings in me when other things don't, not to mention it does not constitute "real food". And the reality is, the more I'm NOT cooking an entire meal, the more I don't have any leftovers from that. Having 'foods you can't resist' seems to be an issue for lots of people and apparently that includes me too. It's simply that the "foods she is tempted by" are wide ranging, and include nearly everything in the "yummy" category that does not require serious prep and 20+ minutes of cooking.<br />
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I tell myself that since she is young, she has also just not had remotely the same amount of practice an adult has at 'doing without something you want' (especially as I have somewhat spoiled her in 'compensation' ways over time). She'll get there. I should be understanding that all things take practice and this no different than other things.<br />
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So I don't keep any kind of lowcarb junkfood around (like LC ice cream). Well, that's better anyway, we don't need that junk. And if I make some kind of LC treat, I make a fairly small amount that the two of us can eat, plus maybe one small meal of it after that at the most, so I don't have to worry about her plowing through a ton of it in the night.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">And I try to keep up with the main list of things above:</span><br />
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Make her very full with protein/fat when we eat;<br />
keep some kind of foods that she likes in the fridge or freezer so she can easily eat something decent-er if she suddenly wants to;<br />
make treats of the things she likes best once in awhile, so she doesn't feel so deprived of them;<br />
make variety in our meals so both the repetition and the 'heavy meat' feel are not so overwhelming to her;<br />
make her taste the food to start adapting to it better;<br />
avoid the foods she abuses worst;<br />
avoid keeping LC "junkfood" around;<br />
avoid making too-carby food too-often just to try and please her;<br />
make weekdays super basic but designate weekends for novelty;<br />
always keep salad/veggie food around she has total free access to;<br />
and demand responsibility (and annoying results for her if not) for her helping me maintain 'food resources' I might want to eat or use in meals.<br />
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And you know what? A lot of this comes down to more work on MY part. More energy I have to come up with to plan, to buy, to prep, to cook, to clean, to make sure there's food for HER, not just me, and frankly keeping up with my own eating plan is hard enough.<br />
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I sometimes screw it up. Sometimes I'm lazy, or just incompetent. I'm working on my part. She's working on her part. It's not perfect yet. The cream cheese still disappears to those elves in the night sometimes. So does the peanut butter but sometimes that elf looks like me, uh oh. I forget sometimes that there's nothing to eat that doesn't take an hour of cooking so she's got limited choices if she gets hungry. So we're both a work in progress.<br />
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But we've gone from this being a chronic, insanely frustrating (even enraging) problem, one that seriously interfered with her success at lowcarb and weight loss, and even messed up my own eating plan at times, to this being a minor point that does not mess up our good relationship or available food very often.<br />
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PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-56134612776123001332010-04-18T09:59:00.010-05:002011-11-16T00:27:43.846-06:00Teenage Low-Carb, Part 1Most people have a fairly difficult time getting, and staying, on an eating plan that is significantly different than what they grew up with. Or, an eating plan that requires major changes to the lifestyle they hold. Even for adults, those "in control of" the money and food and cooking, there are many issues.<br />
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And then there's having a teenager! gah!<br />
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The way I see it, the issues fall into different categories. For example:<br />
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1. Planning. I used to eat when I was hungry which meant, "I'm hungry, let's buy some food somewhere." Now that I eat whole-foods, low-sugar, gluten-free, that isn't an option anymore. I actually have to think about it, well in advance usually, not only to shop so we have food on hand, but to defrost or otherwise plan ahead.<br />
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2. Shopping. My grocery shopping used to be a matter of walking through the store, choosing all the things that sounded good. Lots of pasta, lots of things in boxes and cans and frozen packages. Now the shopping is different and follows the 'borders' of the store. Fresh produce, then meat, then cheese, cream, eggs, then a very brief spot-check in the middle where we might pick up things such as canned olives or tomato paste. Everything we buy requires cooking, outside salads.<br />
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3. Prepping. Sometimes the seemingly simple foods take more time than the big things. I can spend 5 minutes throwing a roast and some details into the crockpot, and 4.5-6 hours later have dinner. But it can take us an hour to prepare a salad and dressing with some stir-fry chicken to dump into it. Cleaning and slicing and dicing simply takes time, and some foods require a linear process. My food prep used to consist of, "get in the car" or "take it out of the box". Now my food prep requires a decently clean kitchen, some counter space, and that both the above factors are already in place.<br />
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4. Cooking. I didn't start learning to cook until I was 40 and went low-carb. At 44 I am just starting to feel marginally competent. I can now make a steak and a roast that I love enough to rave about, after years of tough dry results. I now have enough recipes in my head to stand in the kitchen and "come up with something," whether familiar or new. We "experiment" regularly. The results are sometimes great, sometimes laughably bad, but usually edible and ok.<br />
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5. Cleaning. Being able to operate in my small kitchen requires it not be too messy. Cooking everything means that you've got a lot of dishes -- for every stage of prep, for the cooking itself, and for the eating usually. We do sometimes use paper plates and plastic spoons/forks, but most "real" food actually requires "real" dishes and silverware. My kitchen can go from immaculate to armageddon in the space of a couple meals. This is very time consuming, at the least. I have a housekeeping helper but I am gradually working on getting a good handle on keeping things clean as I go, and as we eat, so that it doesn't get to the point where I haven't got any dishes left by the time she arrives.<br />
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If you put all those things above together, what do they require? ENERGY. You have got to have energy to arrange any, let alone all, of those things. It is difficult enough for me to comfortably do all these things, but only when my protein is sufficiently high (>85g/day, preferably >100g/day) do I have the energy to do them. So my ability to pull off the eating plan is sometimes dependent on my ability to stay ON the eating plan -- and vice-versa of course. It's a cycle, and if I start to eat poorly, that cycle promptly becomes "a downward spiral," starting with my energy level.<br />
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In the middle of all this comes another complication, and a truly complicated complication to boot: my teenage daughter, R. She is 13 years old, and the greatest kid alive, but she has certainly had her own issues with eating well, and she has by proxy often done major damage to mine (it would be more appropriate to say, "I <span style="font-style: italic;">let myself</span> be poorly affected"). Learning to adapt my healthy eating to something that she feels decently good on, she enjoys, she doesn't feel deprived with, as well as that she can help with, has added a Category Six to my eating plan:<br />
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6. Must suit the kid.<br />
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It has been a long road to getting us here. We have stumbled and tripped over every possible problem a mom and daughter can have with an eating plan, and stubborn behavior issues in both people. There is the frustration of a girl who wants to be fashionable and, just like all young women, has a lot of issues with body-related self-esteem, in our culture where anorexics are the representatives and fat people are made fun of. There is the horror of a mother who of all the things she wanted for her daughter, did NOT want her to have to deal with obesity, the most terrible challenge of her own life, but apparently figured it all out too late. By then, genetics plus womb-environ plus our food habits while she was a child, had already conspired to make her metabolically challenged, at best, at a young age.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">It isn't fair, </span>she has cried. <span style="font-style: italic;">It sucks! </span><br />
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Yeah, it does. But this is the way it is. Your friends can shovel unbelievable quantities of crapfood down their throats and still wear skinny jeans. You eat whole foods and almost no sugar and still struggle to eventually see the smallest bit of fat reduce. I agree that it's not fair. I agree that it sucks. But the one thing we have learned over time is that NOT doing anything about this only leads to a worse situation later.<br />
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Every time we were in denial. Every time we didn't want to deal with it. Every time I said oh fine then eat what your friends are eating. Every time it was so much easier to give in to a carb craving, only to end up eating 'whatever' for quite awhile before I got back to a strict whole-foods low-carb again... those times just added to the problem. Nobody got thinner during those times. And both of us got fatter. What started out a chubby issue became a fat issue.<br />
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.*.*.<br />
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When R was eight years old, she was getting a little chubby. I didn't worry about this, because I was chubby at age eight also. But it fell off me later as I grew. I have a picture of me at age 12 where I was clearly not fat at all. I got a little chubby again around 13, then it went away. I got a little chubby again around 15, then it went away. I didn't become morbidly obese until my early to mid 20s. So when I saw her getting chubby, I said, "Baby fat. She'll grow, and it will go away."<br />
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But I didn't have a morbidly obese mother with blood sugar issues. She didn't have the childhood that I did. She had a childhood filled with fast food and what was fast for a single working mom to make. She had a mother who weighed ~320 pounds when she gave birth, who had major blood sugar and blood pressure issues all through the pregnancy, and who blazed through pregnancy, nursing and the next dozen years of her life not realizing that she was constantly poisoning herself with gluten grains. She didn't have the same metabolism at age 8 as I did.<br />
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So she got chubby. Oh how cute. And then she got chubbiER. Wait a minute! And then she got mildly fat. Oh my gosh, should I "do" something? Will it make her feel bad about herself? She's beautiful, she's wonderful, I don't want her to think her mom of all people is judgemental about her! But they're making fun of her at school and she isn't fitting in the section of clothes she likes and she's unhappy and she doesn't have much energy. But I said little, waiting for <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span> to make the decision she wanted to "do" something. I have friends whose moms put them on diets and it was horrible for them. I didn't want to be that mom.<br />
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Then for a brief miracle period, she decided: I want to be thinner! Back then I was eating very lowcarb, almost entirely meat. She ate with me. And she lost 5 pants sizes in record time. She was SO happy. Not thin, mind you. But back into jussssst barely 'normal' size.<br />
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But she went back to eating everything, and I didn't have the energy to make a big enough constant set of argument-fits to stop it. And she influences me, and I influence her, and the circle goes around. And time passed.<br />
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And she gained the weight back. She then went from mildly fat to basically just fat.<br />
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Ironically, by then, I had gotten nearly all the 'bad' food out of our house. I did not force her to eat low-carb though. I allowed her to have various treats. And to eat with friends. And to have carby things I didn't. And to have probably 'too much' of non-protein foods.<br />
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Of course, since she was still eating crappy food that sparks cravings and overconsumption, she just used my LC food to do it when at home. For example, cream cheese is pretty lowcarb. It's wonderful in many dishes and can be used to make a microwave muffin-ish-thing with an egg that is pretty decent if you're hungry. But I'd get up and discover a whole block (or two) of cream cheese gone. (Or worse yet, go to use it and find none, when I'd bought half a dozen not 10 days before.) You eat enough of anything that isn't meat and eventually it isn't lowcarb anymore, aside from which it has about a bazillion calories. There were other things but that was the big draw for her.<br />
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And she went from fat to morbidly obese. She weighed 235 pounds. She was 5 foot, 4 inches tall. She had no energy. And she was utterly miserable. She didn't want to leave the house lest she see someone she knew.<br />
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I knew that story too well myself. And I just wanted to separate into another body so I could beat the crap out of myself for letting it get to that point. I kept thinking it would be ok. She would GROW, dammit! Just like I did!! But she didn't. Oh sure, she grows taller. OK not much. But she just kept growing outward. I kept thinking that being a kid, her metabolism was mostly ok, and she would be fine, and she would grow out of it.<br />
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But her metabolism is not ok. It took about 8-10 years for her body to reach the same state of disaster metabolism that it took 24 years for my body to reach. And her reaction to gluten foods and milk sparks as much or more addictive eating in her as it ever did in me. There's a reason that Cheez-Its and Mac&Cheese were her favorite foods.<br />
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Her sweet little body has terrible stretch marks everywhere. She hadn't even had the chance to <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> 'a good body' before fat was scarring it for life. People were just horrible to her about her weight. She got depressed. She got mean sometimes. She just wanted to sleep sometimes. Life already sucked and she was only 12 years old.<br />
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So at that point, she "joined me" for fully healthy eating. And it sounds like that would be the end of the fairy tale, and fat would magically fall off her at lightspeed and all would be right with the world.<br />
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But that doesn't take into account slow metabolism. It doesn't take into account human nature. It doesn't take into account two people who have radically different tastes in foods. One of which has a palate shaped by almost nothing but carbfoods, and zero courage for or interest in trying new things. It doesn't take into account a kid who "can" cook but mysteriously insisted that mom be the one doing it.<br />
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It doesn't take into account a single working mom who doesn't always eat perfectly and has no energy during those periods, which affects categories 1-6 happening. It doesn't take into account every craving and frustration that two people with a different take on the same problem, different appetites, different food preferences, etc. can run into, rebound off and end up eating badly because it's so much easier, if I'm both busy and exhausted.<br />
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We are doing pretty decently now. She will be 14 in four months. She has lost many inches, more on her top half than bottom half, which is in accordance with our bottom-heavy fat storage.<br />
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She is over two inches taller than when we began and 'got serious'. I am nearly 5'6 and she is edging me out and her fingers are over half an inch longer than mine!<br />
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Everything seems like it's 10x harder when trying to do it for two people, one of whom is old enough to be autonomous, only likes the most fattening or carby foods, eats in the night no matter what I try to stuff her with in the day, and has radically different tastes so most the things I really like, I can't have, unless I have the energy to not only cook but cook two completely different meals, which is out of the question.<br />
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We're working on it though.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-44599352578310354452010-04-07T01:40:00.009-05:002010-04-07T02:54:10.884-05:00PJ's Crazy TheoriesI was talking to a lowcarb journal buddy and nearly posted this tome in her journal, and then thought it should be in mine instead, and then thought that I should post it on the blog, where a larger collection of people could kick it and tell me what's wrong with it so I can improve it.<br /><br />This is a theory. Not a theory like in science. A wild-ass-intuition-imagination from a layman who just had an idea that found justification for its own existence (funny how beautifully facts do that for all of us no matter what we think :-)). I will call it PJ's Crazy Theory since you probably will too.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Food intolerances can cause all kinds of things -- psychological, as well as physical, and then more psychological in reaction to the physical, and then your outer world reacts to your physical and psychological reactions, and it becomes a whole snowball perpetuating itself. All because your body didn't like some molecule in your bagel. Go figure.<br /><br />I am coming to suspect that severe obesity is probably almost inextricably entwined with food intolerances. It may be that, just like poor eating which affects people differently depending on genetics, maybe it is really the same as issues some others have, differently handled.<br /><br />When you think about it, society as a whole would show what amounts to a "spectrum" based on how severely or multi/complex-ly all the people in that society reacted to the common foods. Ranging from people seeming totally ok, through the spectrum to people with rashes, or the horror of cystic acne, to so-called eating disorders, psychological issues, and at the far side of the spectrum, people developing various serious disease. It would actually make sense that the spectrum of people with any given 'condition' are probably on the far side of the spectrum for something else; the condition itself is secondary.<br /><br />Imagine this model in your head where at point A is bad food, and point B is the body and genetics and history and so on, and then point C actually splits into many different paths, one being cancer, one schizophrenia, one diabetes, one obesity, etc. etc. That is how I have thought of obesity until now, mostly after reading Taubes. Basically, like obesity was a disease like cancer, so was schizophrenia. I've sort of changed my mind. I don't think of it like this anymore. Not quite, anyway.<br /><br />I know this theory is nuts. There is no science to back this. It's just some fat woman in the midwest rambling. But WHAT IF...<br /><br />Point A is toxic food intake.<br />Point B is the human body (genetics), its history (environment, plus cumulative stuff).<br />Point C is the immune system.<br />Point D has 3 segments and it is "reactions of the neuro-immune system."<br /><br />(I say neuro because I read a bunch about neuro techs as I'm into brainwave feedback and such, and I am always sort of struck by how it seems to me that in some way the brain is actually having a fight/freeze/flight response. There is no science that I know of that would put it that way. So I guess tonight is just a wild rambling journey through my deviant mind, sorry.)<br /><br />So I'm saying that I think how the brain reacts determines how the immune system reacts. But maybe that is a no-brainer (no pun intended) anyway -- maybe the brain controls everything. Who knows. Let's move on.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So we have the immune system which breaks into three branches of point D:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fight, flight or freeze.</span><br /><br />* the 'fight' point splits off into all these body-attacking syndromes like chronic fatigue, rheumatoid arthritis, celiac, things that seem to attack the body in some way.<br /><br />* the 'freeze' point (like in/under-active) splits off into all these immune breakdown (or disease overcomes immunity) areas like cancer or susceptibility to viral disease for example.<br /><br />* the 'flight' point splits off into like, rashes which is 'venting' through the skin, and obesity which is venting into fat cells, 'partitioning' the toxins 'away' from the body.*<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(* This may be the body's way of 'running away' so to speak. Much like plants don't have claws and teeth so antinutrients are what they 'do', maybe the body's 'running away' manifests as 'closing things off from it/sending them away' one way or another.)</span><br /><br />Now, seeing a 'spectrum' of response in the population would seem reasonable -- the degree of genetic response, the degree of environmental issues, the degree of cumulative problems, and the degree of "immune system reaction" perhaps, resulting in a rainbow of 'degree' which would be measured by condition, severity of condition, and timing of condition's full bloom.<br /><br />* People at the 'far side of the spectrum' for fight-response may end up with severe RA when they're 7 years old, or CF when they're 17, whereas people farther back on the spectrum may just gradually get more and more symptoms until by the time they're 40 they're starting to have some bad arthritis.<br /><br />* People at the far side of spectrum for immune 'freeze' response may get disease when very young -- *so young they may literally be born type I diabetic or get it in super-early childhood* -- or they might start finally getting schizo symptoms when they're about 20, stretching out down the milder spectrum all the way to people who seem perfectly fine until they are 86 years old and suddenly get Alzheimers/dementia. At the farthest part of that mild spectrum, people may die prior to manifesting disease--even if they would have, had they lived longer--so it 'seemed' like they were always healthy, despite eating the same foods, but really their place on the spectrum simply put their manifestation-point after their lifespan.<br /><br />* People at the far side of the spectrum for immune "flight" response may not just get rashes as skin venting, as one pathway, but more serious syndrome stuff like cystic acne, or even -- by sheer coincidence yesterday I found this wiki page talking about a rare condition that sounds exactly like cystic acne except that the cysts are literally the size of softballs and anywhere in the body, no cure, no idea to cause, severe problems with them rupturing, etc. (Horrible!). Or if the body uses the fat-storage approach to venting/running/closing-off, the far-spectrum of people would not seem to <span style="font-style: italic;">stop </span>getting fat (such as the body 'shifting' from the 'flight' response to the 'freeze' response and then adding disease), instead, they would just get huger until they were lumbering and eventually so huge they were immobilized. (Irony: you could almost think of it, eventually, as if *an entire human had been stored in a giant adipose cell and had become immobilized and inert*.) Even in some cases weighing 900# and yet they're NOT quite diabetic, or cancerous, or officially celiac -- just the far extreme of immune-flight via the adiposity-storage route.<br /><br />I know this is a crazy theory, I have zero medical or science backing for it, and it probably just sounds like I came up with something to explain away my being crazy fat or something. But this is my theory for the moment: that maybe <span style="font-style: italic;">all conditions are actually a manifestation of "one of three types of neural/immune system" response</span> to injury (rare) or poisoning (environmental or chronic food).<br /><br />OK Taubes already suggested that nearly everything was a response to toxic food. I'm just saying sure, but what if the literal responses we can measure in the body, are actually responses to/from/via <span style="font-style: italic;">the *immune system*</span> -- that this is actually the controlling point for literally everything.<br /><br />***<br /><br />OK let's get back to obesity and food intolerance. Just as an experiential comment, I think some of the compounding factors is that for many people and at least some foods, the "reaction" to a food which is essentially dangerous and damaging to their body, is like the reaction to some allergies: literally, craving.<br /><br />As if this isn't bad enough, the type of foods that seem to most often cause this craving, may also result in literal addiction, by mucking about with neurochemistry and other body chemicals in various ways both direct (e.g. non-habituating neural stimulation) and indirect (e.g. positive association with feeling good from food X).<br /><br />A nightmare cycle. The molecular-level damage is not obvious enough to 'see'. You see only the side effects that come from the toxins and the immune reaction to that. In the case of the immune-flight response via adipose-storage, so food doesn't give you hardly any of its energy for use (either because it's stored as a toxin or because it's suppressed due to its nature causing insulin highs), every iota of damage just results in more sense of need to eat more of the thing that's hurting you.<br /><br />My buddy Sara was half-saying and implying *I think* the following, which I've fleshed out into my own words and added to: The psychology might develop all kinds of neurosis that are actually just the subconscious acting-out the model of the food being toxic. What if you got a flight fat-storage response combined with the subconscious reaction to the food as a toxin, would the anorexia (lack of appetite), combine with an obsession to NOT have bodyfat because the fat *itself* is slightly-toxic and the storage point/recognition of much of the 'thing' that is hurting the body? So Anorexia Nervosa might result (much like 'schizophrenia' does, an alleged psyche issue that is definitely physiologically based). Could the combination of craving-reaction to toxic-food, and the psychology reacting to the toxin like the previous, create the binge/purge bulemia cycle? Yes, of course we assign these to emotional issues, but as a hypnotist for many years I can tell you that you can have a person do anything on a posthypnotic command and they will rationalize why they did it when you ask them no matter how irrational they have to get to do it. So in my opinion, it's not that psychology causes certain behaviors but that physiology does and then the psychology 'grafts on' a rationalized explanation of 'why'.<br /><br />I spent my entire life, literally, living almost entirely on gluten products and milk. And it looks like I have some pretty serious issues with gluten (at this point any of it gives me "severe asthma" -- which I never developed until age 35 and was medicated for until Lowcarb got me off gluten 'by accident' and made me realize gradually what was going on). And given the heroin-like more-more-more addictive response I had to milk for many years, probably that too. Eventually I refused to bring it into my house at all most the time, because the more I drank, the more I wanted, and this literally increased until I was waking up after every 3 hours sleep, in the kitchen at 3am, rushing for the milk, drinking from the carton, falling gasping in oh-thank-god-yes back against the fridge door as I got a fix. Serious junkies act like that. (I've known some... my brother died of a heroin overdose... milk is definitely my heroin.)<br /><br />Now, it's hard to imagine how eating the very things you are intolerant to, most of 3 meals a day 7 days a week 12 months a year every year of life, first because they are *the primary cultural foods* and cheap and fast and common and yummy-tasting, and second because from very young you craved 'em -- how could all this NOT have some mind-bending effects. You'd think a person in that condition would be lucky to be alive at all frankly. Weighing over 500# at one point from, we assume, the combination of chronic over-intake and chronic over-storage and chronic refusal-to-release-from-storage (due to insulin) doesn't even seem all that surprising!<br /><br />More theory... though it runs into and tackles some (hypotheses?) in Taubes's book I guess.<br /><br />If your immune system reacts powerfully in a 'partitioning' (the "flight" reaction), say it takes all those free radicals and whatever and stuffs them into fat cells like crazy to make you safe, much the way we store toxic waste in containers in the ground. The more you ingest of the problem (toxic foods), the more stuff there is to store, even when you barely eat at all, let alone if you eat a lot, which you have to do more and more.<br /><br />If you mostly eat Taco Bell as a humor example, the % and quantity of food you have to intake in order to get something that is (a) NOT toxic and not mixed in, in your stomach, with what's toxic, and (b) has protein-amino acids, which is mostly what your body wants, becomes utterly staggering, and I mean many thousands of calories a day kind of staggering. But nearly all of it's going to storage.<br /><br />So the person has no none nada ZERO energy to move, for obvious reasons (their energy is locked in fat cells, not in the blood stream making them feel energetic) and this only hugely amplifies their desperation for carbs, which are "pure energy". <-- this last part, Taubes basically explained, and the foregoing that relates is sort of implied. Anyway back to my rambling theories: <br /><br />But it turns out that the very toxic foods they crave (for reaction-reasons), and are addicted to (for intrinsic quality of the so-called food reasons, and indirect reasons of association) are the energy/carbs. So they are driven to eat more of those very things by their body's utter energy-less-ness. Plus, driven to eat more of them by the addictive-reaction. Which only makes for more toxins to store at all speed, and the person growing fatter, but each (maybe most) eating cycle(s) only makes for another round of almost no energy, so one is driven to find energy, and this cycle just keeps happening over and over. <br /><br />*** <br /><br />Total trivia aside: for the last 20 years of my being huge, and the larger I got, one sort of odd thing is real noticeable: my BRAIN has energy (although it's "fogged" a bit with gluten present) when the rest of my body doesn't. I can sit as still as someone in a coma for 12 hours, until the need to pee makes me move (everything 'cracks' when I do!), it is almost surreal how little energy I can expend physically unless I am eating gluten-free low-carb and ENOUGH (80g++) protein. I barely BREATHE; my oxygen is incredibly low during those times; I don't just have sleep apnea, it's more like apnea, period -- I started getting that way as a young teen, my boyfriend used to comment when I was 16 on how my breathing got so shallow I eventually just wasn't breathing at all for awhile. I attributed it years later to emotional issues (not wanting to 'feel') but maybe it was instead -- or related to that -- the beginning of my version of metabolic syndrome and energy access slowing down/reducing. Anyway, but even when my body has absolutely no energy, my brain has always been extremely active. I don't know how to explain this so let's just leave it at that. <blockquote>This leads however to a second thought: if my brain is used to taking nearly all the available energy--so it survives, while the body atrophies in some respects (low oxygen has SO many horrible effects on every cell of the body...) because it hasn't enough energy left over.<br /><br />I am highly 'functional' so am not, haven't been, and likely never will be, classified as anything like bi-polar. However, I have what I call 'upcycles' and 'downcycles'. They are semi-cyclical but not totally predictable. I do not have 'un-functional' behaviors like people who tend to get medicated for this. In my downcycles I really just feel like reading or listening to music or sleeping (escape and low-energy) and I tend to sort of "trance out".<br /><br />In my upcycles I am totally wired, I sleep maybe 3 hours a night and sometimes just skip sleep the first day, I invent stuff and create stuff and feel incredibly positive and optimistic and THINK so fast that ordinary conversation drives me nuts because people are so SLOW. However, in both cases, I'm behaving "within the spectrum of assumed normality" (my upcycles less so, probably) so mostly, in my life, the result is that what I don't get done during the downcycle, gets taken care of plus more in the upcycle, and in the end people just think I'm creative and accomplish a lot. They only see the "averaged end result" not the very variable-energy process.<br /><br />I'm getting to the point I swear. This just seems like a niggling thing to pay attention to, it's bugging me like I should notice it. I have (without lots of protein and lowcarb) almost no energy, and I mean that in a rather profound, barely-breathing, coma-stillness kind of way that you'd probably need to be my size to grok. But my <span style="font-style: italic;">brain</span> has energy (most of the time at least...) even then. But there are cycles when my brain -- *not my body so much, just my brain, with a little bit of spillover to my body like in insomnia* -- seems hyper-energetic, versus hypo-energetic.<br /><br />What if over the course of time, due to this toxic then immune then energy-partitioned-in-favor-of-brain model, maybe eventually the brain starts taking nearly all the available energy. Unlike the "normal" scenario of healthy life, it's not that there is a bunch of energy and it feeds the whole body varyingly as needed. Instead, there's a tiny bit of energy, and the brain has first dibs on 92% of it, the max quantity it can grab for whatever reason (maybe this varies).<br /><br />Now say that due to a shift in eating or stomach microbes or whatever, you don't even notice you end up for a day or two lower in insulin and higher in protein or fats, or lower in calories (energy), or maybe this has a 1-3 day average or lag time. And so all the sudden, the brain is deprived of some of its needed, used-to-having quantity of energy. In a healthy person, there would be enough energy, and if there wasn't, the brain would just take from the body portion, no problem. But in this case there isn't enough body portion of energy for the brain to add to its own % and come up with 'enough'. So maybe at that point the brain is having an energy crash and you get people in my case trancing out, doing anything to "not have to think much" -- and in some people's more extreme cases, you get people so depressed they can only lay in the dark, or cry.<br /><br />Conversely, say that due to a shift in eating you don't even notice, stomach microbes, whatever, you end up for a day or two much HIGHER in resultant-energy. Maybe due to the 'habit' or established reaction caused by the ongoing energy problems, the brain takes its normal 92% of that far greater pool (or the body "only takes 8%") -- even though that is actually *too much* stimulus-energy for the brain. So you get people having euphoria, insomnia, inspiration, really high creativity and intellectual work, operating far too fast, so they come off as "manic" etc.<br /><br />That is a totally separate line of wild speculation. I'm done with that now...<br /></blockquote><br />Possibly, without any shift in immune response, it could sometimes just be that a response is flight-via-fat-storage, but the repeated, massive overdosing of insulin and free radicals and more, actually has damaged the organs severely enough that eventually the immune 'defense' system can't compete and disease happens.<br /><br />Or (more theory) the immune response might shift. Maybe the body instead of stuffing yet more crap into adipose cells, simply reaches a point where it is no longer able to handle the "flight" reaction, because the growth of fat% has put the body so far out of the genetic map of how that creature (person) should grow and not-grow or what size they should or even 'can' be, that the body has to do something else. At which point 'flight' no longer works, like a breaker switch flips, and the immune system has to shift to 'freeze' and they get disease, or 'fight' and they get the kind of illness that is not so much a disease like cancer as a disease like a syndrome, like RA and CF and IBS etc.<br /><br />But the 'flight' response might often come first for some genetic lines, and have varying degrees of potential before the genetic 'body map' kicks the breaker for the creature growing too large -- which might explain why obesity is so 'correlated' with disease. It is not ONLY that the same thing is at the first point of all of them (toxic food); but it's that obesity as an immune response may have a spectrum of genetically-set limit on it, so it wouldn't at all be uncommon to see that at varying levels -- from 30# to 500# of overweight -- a shift happens and the person ends up with disease or disorder (one of the other immune reactions instead of flight). (This part I did not think up; it is "implied" by the existing idea that fat might be "protective" in some way.)<br /><br />So sure, it would totally be "more common" that if you were obese, you were "more likely" to get a disease, since the chance that you are in that tiny segment of the "far side of the spectrum population" -- whose genetic maps don't seem to have the limit on size/storage and so they can grow to 800# or something -- are very slim compared to the chance that at some point, if you don't stop the stuff that is hurting you (and hence making you fat(ter)), it's going to shift into something more socially acceptable but probably more terminal.<br /><br />So in this theory/model/framework, maybe the real problem is that we are trying to classify symptoms as 1001 different things and figure out what causes each of them. Meanwhile on the other side there are some scientists/doctors who seem to suspect already that the same thing causes all of them (chronic food toxicity). But maybe the confusingly missing part in the middle is that every condition, disease and disorder, from skin rashes to chronic fatigue to cancer to anorexia nervosa to obesity, ALL of them are actually just one of the three "immune system reactions", acting at various points on the spectrum, acting in a path perhaps determined by genetics.<br /><br />I know, this was boring, but I had to get it on paper. Then I can look back at this and laugh hahaha what was I thinking someday. But if I don't write it down, even when this thunderstorm ends I still might not be able to sleep. I feel better now. Thanks for suffering with me. :-)<br /><br />PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-24073298963708620902010-04-06T06:57:00.000-05:002010-04-06T08:01:34.918-05:00Teenage Low-CarbI'm going to be posting, over the next week, a several-post series summarizing what I have learned, experienced, still struggle with, and have accomplished, in regards to my 13 year old daughter and our whole-foods, gluten-free, low-carb lifestyle.<br /><br />Basically, a sort of bullet point and narrative summary of our ongoing attempt to improve nutrition, feel better, and reduce body fat, but specific to the issues that relate to her.<br /><br />If there are any specific questions feel welcome to post 'em in the comments section and I'll include that topic in the posts.<br /><br />More soon!<br />PJ<br /><br />.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-69836330144686120302010-03-20T15:36:00.008-05:002010-03-20T20:33:58.504-05:00VLC, Hyper-Nutrient, and MysteriesWell my first thought is, "I haven't posted on this blog in nearly six months!" Holy cats! How time flies! I didn't realize. I've lived and worked 'on the internet' for 15 years and I swear it has really mucked about with my 'time-sense'.<br /><br />I've been working nearly like an ancient egyptian slave for a long time, so my time for anything else has been super limited. Also though, I have gone off and on "serious" LC -- and had not yet fully implemented my 'hypernutrient' approach which I wanted to have some follow up to next time I posted on this blog.<br /><br />Today is day 5 on a return to more officially-sane eating. (Usually, my eating is LC by default. It's just that in some periods, there is other HC stuff too. When I go official, anything HC is totally out.) This is the first time I've gotten to my "Hyper-nutrient" approach.<br /><br />It's like ten handfuls of big pills. I do ok swallowing pills but this really pushes my limits! That is every other day. On the alternate days I take only a few of the supplements: a liquid multi (NOW brand), and dropper-bottle under-tongue doses of B-12 (NOW), and two different blue-green algaes (Klamath). I try to "think to" my body, "OK, I'm sending you a ton of elements. Pick what you want out of all these, flush the rest." I actually thought that taking this much stuff at once (always just after eating) would result in digestive surprise of some sort, but it doesn't.<br /><br />I feel more clear-headed and energetic than I have in a LONG time. I noticed it pointedly on day 2.5, and more each day since. Last night I did more stuff around the house than I have in eons, re-read a book on weight lifting, just felt a lot more proactive. Today I did a lot more house stuff, including some hard muscle scrubbing of the stove and various parts of the kitchen, we did prep cooking and then made a quiche, I did a slow lift of really light (5#) weights, sitting on the incline bench, nearly every arm/shoulder push/pull exercise I could remember, just to remind my body what it was like. If my energy keeps increasing like this, I'll be working out for real again by mid next week.<br /><br />This is an anomaly, though. There's something mysterious going on. To recap:<br /><br />About 3 years ago, VLC (that means >30 carbs a day), which I love eating and had lost a whole lot of weight on, suddenly quit working for me. I mean I seriously felt like crap eating that way, which I couldn't understand as it hadn't been that way before. The "feeling bad" was different than my ordinary "lack of energy." Normally, if I'm not eating 85+g protein daily, I have little energy. (Any decent amount of grains/fructose/lactose make it worse.)<br /><br />I don't think people realize just how sedentary someone my size can be. I don't just mean "I don't do the dishes or exercise," I mean literally you'd probably need to be in a coma to be any more "still" -- not using any more energy than sleep probably -- than I can be for really long periods of time, comfortably. It's part of the same health issue that causes the food to store its energy as fat and not give it back to you as energy. But that is not like the 'exhaustion' of an illness, and it is not like being sleepy. I have a LOT of "mental energy" -- more than most people I suspect -- just none for the rest of the body (I think maybe my brain grabs everything available!).<br /><br />But the feeling bad on VLC was more like, feeling seemingly like normal people, plenty of energy, and then at some point in the day -- alas sometimes morning -- it was like I would "hit a wall" and suddenly understand perfectly that "my battery was on zero%" and that's it. I mean there were times I was doing something -- lifting weights, doing dishes, whatever -- and I literally stopped in the middle of a motion, dropped what I was doing and walked away and sat or laid down. The "sudden" zero-energy was like being hit with something, I'd never experienced anything like that before. And after a few days, it seemed to translate into an overall feeling utterly crappy that I just couldn't stand. So I would eat some carbs -- and feel better.<br /><br />But every time I would up carbs, it had the same effect that my attempts at carb cycling had: it sent me completely offplan. I simply quit caring about lowcarb almost immediately. So I tried to break it down into a specific food. Just berries. Just beans. Just a little bread. Whatever. And one by one, determined that there wasn't ANY food that would raise my carbs to 50-60 daily (that i liked) without seeming to just change my whole chemistry, food preference, etc.<br /><br />After 3 years of this, and spending more time off LC than on as a result, I have theory#1, that it is not necessarily a given food triggering me; it's just having over a certain (unspecific) number of carbs for more than one day in a row is all.<br /><br />But now for the Annoyingly Contradictory Facts, there are two carb-foods that I can eat without it throwing me off-plan. Beans, which we ate in stews, and corn tortillas, which we fry in OrgNonHyd Palm shortening. The problem with the beans is it is so easy to overcarb, in fact we almost can't help it just by decent serving size, and it makes any weight loss whatever come to a stop. The problem with the corn tortillas (check for gluten in the ingredients, they vary) is that they're like 10 carbs each, so I tend to get too many carbs and not enough protein when I eat them. I still do on occasion but we are working on limiting that.<br /><br />We had to put a moratorium on peanut butter in the house. Both of us, if we touch the stuff, become obsessed with it and it seems to be a very 'small' almost-trigger of carb-desire. I was never that crazy about peanut butter until I went low carb, go figure.<br /><br />As usual, I have the predictable effect of getting my protein up to 85+g/day (preferably about 100-120g/day) for several days running. First I have tons of "fidget energy". Then I want to get up and cook more and get up and make coffee more and little things like that. Then I start cleaning more (I have a housekeeper so don't normally), little obvious things like the dishes. Then all the sudden, it's like my environment springs into view. I walk into the kitchen and think, good grief that spice shelf, those cupboards, the fridge, that must get cleaning! I walk into the living room and think the same thing about the big built-in bookcase and the carpet and everything else. I told some friends that the last time I was decent on protein for an extended period, I ended up like some unholy union of Tim Allen and Martha Stewart, with house and yard and garden projects all over the place. There is something amusing about the fact that when I finally get enough protein for awhile, that instantly becomes my focus. I'm a rather practical and proactive sort by nature, it's just that usually I haven't the energy to do anything about it whatever, unless it's something I can do sitting motionless at the computer. Crank up the protein, which I have a simply horrible time keeping decently high most days even after years, and everything changes.<br /><br />OK so now for the anomaly. This issue with "feeling like crap if I eat VLC" has gone on for three years. Three years! That's a long and consistent time.<br /><br />But 5 days ago we went VLC because I wanted my (13 year old) daughter to do this for awhile. She has been consistently losing weight on the "mostly except occasionally" low-carb that we've been eating for quite some time, but verrrrrry slowly. I wanted to bring it back to only-basics and see if we could do something better for her speed of weight loss. Or to correct that, size-loss: she hasn't lost a single pound on the scale although she has lost at least two shirt sizes and her pants fit very differently. I had intended to add in some other foods for me, to up my own carbs; I bought avocados partly for that purpose that I'm ripening. But then I ended up working very long hours and just not getting around to it.<br /><br />And then I realized that by now I should feel hideous but actually, I feel really good. After 3 years, suddenly I can eat VLC again and it works for me? Really?! What the heck!<br /><br />Could it be all the supplementation? That is the one thing that has changed. I don't have any easy way to parse out what element of supplementation might be responsible, unless it's just a synergy of some kind.<br /><br />I've had a lot of people tell me they were the same way. They ate VLC, felt great, lost weight, then at some point just could not do VLC at all without feeling like crap. But if they increased their carbs they felt ok again. Maybe not good but ok. Mostly women have told me that. So I know that wasn't just me, I wasn't just spontaneously imagining it, and heck, not for 3 years!<br /><br />And yet spontaneously after 3 years it suddenly doesn't work that way anymore. Suddenly VLC feels just fabulous again, I'm losing the initial water weight at decent speed, I am vastly more energetic and optimistic than I am off low-carb of course, like everything is back to the way it used to be. I'm utterly baffled.<br /><br />Could it just be time? Like the body needs some period of recovery after losing a lot of weight really fast? And in my case that's a *really* long time? I've eaten back and forth from LC to HC for the last 3 years. (As a result my weight has gone from 356-405 about 8 times in that period. I don't really take it that seriously, since 20+ of that is water weight anyway.)<br /><br />Or is it the nutrient supplementation?<br /><br />Or -- this is hilarious -- could it be that the huge quantity of supplements, all added together, plus the liquids, simply kick my carb intake every other day up 20-40 carbs? So in a way I'm getting more carbs but I'm not having to a eat a likely-triggering food for it?<br /><br />It's a mystery. I don't know, but I'm happy about it!<br /><br />PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-44966347421274650402009-10-04T23:36:00.005-05:002009-10-05T00:49:47.671-05:00PāNu + HyperNutrientI wrote in my last blog post about my Hyper-Nutrient plan. That is going fine.<br /><br />Here's a few trivias so far.<br /><br />Vitamin C is not actually a vitamin you need a little of, but a liver enzyme you need a lot of. Somewhere between 'conspiracy' and 'ignorance' is the Vitamin C subject in our world, much like the carbohydrate issue. Google it, and Linus Pauling, and read everything in sight for about 10 nights and a couple weekends, and you will be on the same page with me about it. Summary: I am taking as much of it orally as I can without flushing effects.<br /><br />How much you can take before the 'excess' starts flushing (the runs, to put it plainly) depends apparently on how much there is inside your body for it to take care of. (And it takes care of a LOT of stuff. This is one amazing enzyme.) So far I'm able to take about 16g per day, 3-4g every few hours, without side effects. This implies that there's a lot of work to be done inside I guess. I would attempt actual treatment with larger IV doses, but all the docs I see who do that are in California for the most part.<br /><br />Vitamin D is a hormonal precursor, which as it turns out you also need a lot of (especially if you're very fat), unless you are living naked in Argentina. I take around 5-10,000iu per day, but have taken up to about 50,000 without any noticeable side effects. When I first began taking it (around 5,000iu) I had a marked increase in my "sense of well-being". Haven't really noticed anything specific since then one way or the other.<br /><br />I've also been taking double-doses of calcium, magnesium, potassium, the spectrum of B vitamins, Vitamin E, and vitamin K2. And a multi which has Vitamin A (that has a toxic dose that isn't real high so I avoid much supplementing with that one). Oh yea, and co-enzyme CQ10.<br /><br />More on results further below. Tomorrow starts week three of my eating plan experiment and this is the week that I add in all the "other" supplements. I am already pretty tired of taking pills and this is a zillion more. Oy!<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" >PāNu</span><br /><br />Just before/during the first week of this current eating plan experiment I happened upon the PāNu blog. (I cannot figure out how to make that "ā" with HTML so have had to just 'copy' it from his site. I hope your browser can see it.) This is the website of Dr. Kurt G. Harris M.D. who, after reading Gary Taubes's seminal book <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400033462/">Good Calories, Bad Calories</a> </span>('The Diet Delusion' in the UK), decided to go public with a blog partly in support of the cause.<br /><br />The detail of Dr. Harris's plan is here: <a href="http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/">http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/</a><br /><br />In a nutshell, it's lowcarb, with no grains/legumes/sugars, no veggie/seed oils, fairly high-fat, with some degree of Intermittant Fasting, and Vitamin D3 supplementation. Three points on his plan that I am not abiding by currently are 9, 10 and 12, which are grass-fed meats, exercise, and removal of the last shred of dairy (cheese). All the others I am not on track with.<br /><br />Now, nearly everything on that list I have done at one time or another over the last 2.5 years (of not losing any real weight I might add). But I haven't necessarily done them <span style="font-style: italic;">together. </span>So that part, that is a change for me.<br /><br />I have added this eating plan to my "Hyper-Nutrient" plan currently going on and am doing them together.<br /><br />Since reverting back to low carb, I lost from the water-gain (404) down to what I believe is my 'real' weight (384). Anything beyond that I consider actual body mass of some kind lost, not fluid.<br /><br />My eating plan, aside from hypernutrient, had an expected problem: eating very low carb (<30 carbs/day), each time I've tried this for the last 2.5 years, I feel like crap. Just really BAD. More to the point, I cannot sustain it. I go off into carbs almost immediately, even lowcarb versions (e.g. peanut butter), anything. So over the last 2.5 years I've tried a little bit of everything. Add in some dairy. Add in some fruit. Add in some legumes. Everything I have tried to increase my carbs has led to me going off the wagon. Or, in the case of legumes, I could stay on that one just fine, but I didn't lose a single pound of weight. <br /><br />I know myself by now. In the first case there's something actually wrong and I'm miserable and my body's reacting to fix it. In the second case I'm being triggered. Nothing has actually worked very well for me and it's been a long time. Maybe VLC would still work for weight loss but that's a little like the low-fat/low-cal approach: if you cannot sustainably live on that, for whatever reason it might be (in my case, a mystery, maybe hormonal), then it doesn't matter. <br /><br />So I never really did get a clear plan of what I was going to eat except 'low carb' without stress on the low part, high fat with some stress on that just for vitamin absorption, and hope like hell I can find some way back and forth to avoid ending up under the wagon. When I found Harris' PāNu I decided to make that my official eating plan, to the degree I could, along with the Hyper-Nutrient supplementation, and this includes eating twice a day (~3pm & 9pm). <br /><br />In week 1, I lost 3.5 pounds.<br />In week 2, I lost 3.5 pounds.<br /><br />Kinda odd it's the exact same amount each week. And unlike my normal lose/gain-a-ton / or almost nothing, which is mostly fluid. I have reason to believe this is actual fat loss. <br /><br />Weirder still, I feel ok. Not energetic, but not tired. Just 'ok'.<br /><br />It has been a really long time since I specifically had weight that I felt was fat loss. Now maybe seven pounds is not damn much to be celebrating about at my weight, but it is the first genuine fat loss I have seen happening off my body in a really long time!<br /><br />So much of my existing plan was so similar to this already that it's hard to see what has changed, aside from doing all the points "at once" rather than irregularly depending on what I was trying, and adding the supplements of course, and mild IF. I don't know if I can credit some weight loss to a ton of sudden Vitamin C helping with something, to some <a href="http://mypsiche.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html">jungian body exercises</a> I've done, to the shift to some degree of intentional IF, or to PāNu having caused me to combine my habits in a certain way.<br /><br />Regarding IF, I have taken the last week to eating these coconut bites that are 1 Tbsp coconut oil each, eating just one bite with a vitamin dose, then another a few hours later, etc. so when I am not eating food I am actually getting a tiny number of calories in. Probably same/less as anyone who drinks coffee with cream. My goal is to keep my metabolism from falling into 'off' mode which it seems to do abnormally well, while still keeping macronutrients low. Since my weight gain has come from eating once a day and most my weight loss from eating many times a day, I'm looking for a compromise there to see if this works. So far, at least, it is.<br /><br />I will update this with progress.<br /><br />But given how I have kvetched about feeling betrayed and confused and lost and demoralized, I thought I should be blogging about actually trying something that seems to be working for me. Here's hoping it keeps coming together!<br /><br />PJ<br />.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-87966200145512935022009-09-24T01:27:00.007-05:002009-09-24T07:36:13.400-05:00Hyper-NutrientI have a theory that maybe the cells of my body are malnutritioned. It's not my original theory, and it's no more than a theory. But to me, intuitively, it makes some sense.<br /><br />I have thought a lot a lot about <a href="http://weightoftheevidence.wordpress.com/">Regina's Good Sense</a>, as I call it. Her functional, beautiful dietary advice that included a range of healthy foods ought to be enshrined somewhere. Of course, being reasonable, it's impossible for me to follow, not the least of which is I don't like vegetables and eating the same thing constantly is the only thing that makes lowcarb possible for me at all and it's still a pain in the butt.<br /><br />The point about getting nutrients seems important. But think about this for a minute. In today's world, with the limited food variety most people eat, with the dumbed-down nutrient version of produce we have now, and that goes for most meats as well (which often have toxic additives--my walmart chicken is 15% injection, sheesh!)--we [as humans] are not eating hearts and feet much anymore you notice--it seems incredibly unlikely that ANY person can truly get all the nutrition they need from food.<br /><br />(And I don't believe the RDA is anything more than minimums. If I waited for the government to have a clue even about getting-old science, like on Vitamin D3, I'd just expire. I think some things do have toxic levels, like Vitamin A and potassium; most overdose levels like on Magnesium will just torque your elimination experience. But I suspect most things on the official list we need way more of than anybody currently believes.)<br /><br />So even for average sized people, it seems very unlikely that they can even 'maintain' truly adequate nutrition -- especially when you add in the constant environmental toxins/stresses, and assume they're not eating a zillion calories in nothing but pure-foods -- solely on food.<br /><br />So that food could possibly, in addition to maintaining, also "make up for" a very long period of extended cellular-level malnutrition seems rather unlikely.<br /><br />And that it could do all that for a body supersized AND long-term nutritionally-deficient seems impossible to me.<br /><br />In response to this idea-set, I am doing a brief period of what I call "hyper-nutrient". This is not about eating nearly everything in sight in the hopes of nutrifying (I think I just made that word up) the body. I don't think it's possible for a body my size to get enough food to truly nutrify and "remediate existing deficits" as well as current needs, without causing, long before that point, other horrible problems like more-fat, blood sugar issues, etc. just from quantity of food intake.<br /><br />Over the last few months I have been buying, with all my spare cents, a ton of supplements. All of these are things that I have read about somewhere, and decided to try. Some are no-brainers with lots of science. Some are a few people on blogs raving about some obscure extract. Some are amino acids and some are 'alternative' at best. My idea is that I want to 'flood my system with opportunity', consistently, for a little while. Hopefully 90 days. I will be running out of most things long before that so some depends on money to buy more.<br /><br />I have a second theory that my body will grab what it wants as it's passing through. That if my fat intake is high, there is ability for absorption if it is needed, and if my water intake is high, there is ability for flushing if it is unwanted. So a high and constant fat intake combined with a minimum of a gallon a water a day is a primary part of this effort. I am simply trusting that my body will do something useful with the opportunity. I don't have much choice but to do that.<br /><br />Of course if this has any positive result, I will have no idea what might be having the effect (or if it's a synergy of 1 or more items). But I don't have 800 years to experiment with this. So I'm just dosing myself intensely, but briefly. These are vitamins; minerals; amino and fatty acids, herbs and extracts. They range from ordinary no-brainers like Vitamin D3, to some obscure Tibetan Mushroom. Heh. Let's just say that I figure the more the merrier, as long as I don't get any signs that it's hurting me. I expect that the sudden dosing of so many different things, plus the increase in my fat intake, will make my bathroom experience more interesting than usual, but I'm willing to put up with that for the cause.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" >Theories About the Hunger Reflex<br /></span><br />Speaking of theories, I have another one. I think it is possible that my dissociative bare-connection with body hunger (where I ignore that I'm starving and undereat, or overeat when I'm not remotely hungry just because I like the food) is because at some point a big body of starving cells had some mutant effect on my hunger-reflex.<br /><br />I might compare this to the ideas of Dr. Batmanjali (Your Body's Many Cries for Water) who theorized that chronic low-level dehydration gets to the cellular level and messes up the thirst-reflex, because we don't drink water but other, even mildly poisonous things which may worsen dehydration, instead, when that reflex acts up. Simple Extinction Paradigm in learning theory. Fortunately, biologically hardwired, so able to be revived merely by drinking a decent amount of water regularly for several days, after which your body starts wanting it, and specifically wanting water, too, which is pretty novel for most people who didn't even like it until then. He believes it takes drinking 'enough' water for about 3-4 months to 'rehydrate' fully. Note that in his world, things made with water usually don't count because as he describes and sketches, it changes the molecular structure of the water.<br /><br />My theory is: Maybe cellular starvation messes up the hunger reflex -- making people overhungry, underhungry, or an erratic variant of both. Maybe that is part of what goes wrong with metabolisms that end up supersized.<br /><br />I notice that the folks I know dealing with this issue are sometimes trying to figure out why the eating habits of big people are so bizarre. Some people are hungry all the time. Some people are seldom hungry. Some people eat totally without regard to hunger. It's a clear dissociation, or maybe 'random' association is a better way to put it. No matter what the individual detail, it certainly isn't "normal" so to speak.<br /><br />Of course, this makes eating plans that say, "Only eat when you're hungry, and only until you're satisfied, and only what your body really wants," completely boneheaded for anybody with the hunger-dissociate effect going on, because those things mean absolutely nothing in that case. (And if you include grains/fructose in that eating plan it's doomed anyway for most folks, as those will trigger all kinds of stuff.)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Supersized Eating</span><br /></span><br />Most onlookers, I realize, seem to think that people my size just eat constantly and hugely (I call that "the bon-bon theory" of obesity). It's just not true. For example, and this is not even unusual, Monday I didn't eat at all. Yes, I was hungry, but eating was inconvenient it so happened. Yesterday I ate three times and around 2100 calories (chuck burger, chuck burger, and eggs). Today I ate a ~9oz chuck burger patty and later a very small green apple. Tomorrow I hope to make the coconut-oil cocoa bites so that I can up both my calories and fat intake, using those little bites around whatever else I eat, in preparation for my "hyper-nutrient" phase where I need both fat and calories to be at a decent level. I have a hard time, when eating low carb, keeping my calories up, and little things of fat I can eat off and on help a lot.<br /><br />Sure, it's true that right now my kitchen's being painted so cooking is a pain in the butt, and I might have had more like a few strips of bacon and some sauteed mushrooms if my kitchen were not in empty-chaos.<br /><br />It's also true that if I eat carby food -- and that can be grains or fruit or legumes even at low-carb levels I might add -- my body seems "triggered" and historically, I find within a few days, 5 tops but usually less, I am completely off-plan and eating every carb in sight, and it takes me a few days to a few weeks to get my act together again. It is, as a friend once suggested to me, a lot like the problems newly recovering alcoholics have, when they keep letting circumstance or tiny quantities into their lives and end up under the wagon. So, had I been writing this about two weeks ago, I could say that I had eaten potato chips and a candy bar one day and pizza that night. (Felt like I was gonna die the next day just from the bloating!) Not from binging or upset, just from eating whatever sounded good. I am on lowcarb probably 85-90% of the time the last two years. The other 10-15%... you don't want to know.<br /><br />So I'm not saying I eat impeccably all the time. What I've been working on the last couple years is how to eat more carbs (because VLC got to where I felt bad on it and had no energy, nor did I seem to be losing much weight any further), without those carbs triggering me offplan (and so far basically everything I have tried has, in fact, sent me face-down into the carbs offplan entirely). I have not yet resolved that problem. It honestly seems like if the only problem was ONE problem -- carbs/calories -- that would be so much easier than having food intolerances and other issues. I swear, if it isn't one thing . . . then again maybe the "combined complexity" of multiple problems is what determines who weighs 220 vs. who weighs 520, so I should just expect that whatever the answer for me personally is, it probably isn't simple.<br /><br />So I do have to credit eating "mostly meat and no fructose/grains/legumes" for WHY I don't particularly have a problem with overeating most the time -- unless those things are brought into my diet of course.<br /><br />Back to the point:<br /><br />But despite all those caveats, you will note that despite the fact that I am lowcarb probably 85% of the time, I am not really any thinner than I was two years ago. Which at my weight, seemingly ought to happen as long as I am not ingesting a cow and a large pizza daily. Nor am I necessarily on a see-food diet during the times I'm offplan (like my worst-case example above), it just means I wasn't avoiding nearly every food in the world that wasn't "meat/eggs" is all. In theory... I ought to be thinner. But you know what theories count for when it comes to metabolism.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Best Advice</span><br /></span><br />Long ago a hypnosis/NLP group I was in had this slogan, "If what you're doing isn't working, do something else." I know this seems totally obvious. But it isn't what most humans do. If we do something and it doesn't work, we do it again. Several times. If it still doesn't work, we do it harder, pound a little and yell at it. It's kind of hilarious. Albert Einstein allegedly once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. So far, I have been looking at what I've done dietarily the last few years, and haven't done or couldn't do, and looking at what people around me have done.<br /><br />This 'Hyper-Nutrient' phase (and there are a couple other details alongside this I'll get to below) is "something else." I don't have any indication it's going to help anything and if it does, it probably won't even show up except subtly and gradually AFTER that phase. But my goal is to lose enough fat to fit in a single airplane seat, to ride a bike and carnival rides, to be able to do much more intense exercise than I can now. So, for my goals, what I have been doing is not working. So I am doing 'something else'. The details of how well it works, or works for me, or its details that can be varied -- that's another story. Who knows.<br /><br />Hyper-Nutrient or HN as I call it -- because damn I love cute names and acronyms, and this field is full of them -- has a variety of details that are simply custom to me and my beliefs, eating habits and idealism. Here are the overall points I am attempting to maintain as part of this plan/cycle.<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;">Hyper-Nutrient: Details</span><br /><br />1. Hyper-nutrition: supplementation of just about everything I can get my hands on. Consideration of not overdosing on some things (like Vit A or Potassium). Consideration of 'format'; I may have a few different types of a given thing that I trade off, or take one of each. I may have things I take 2-3x a week, not every day. Supps include vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, herbs, custom blends, obscure extracts, etc. There are some offbeat other forms of supplement too. For example, I have a number of essential oils and am making a point to occasionally have them in the air, or massaged into my skin. Part of the idea here is that everything is synergy and the body's absorption of one thing depends so much on others, and much of that is still to be learned by science frankly. So I feel the best way to get the most nutrition fast is just to supplement with everything across the board.<br /><br />2. Food intake: based primarily on fat, with some protein, so the body can absorb the nutrients as well as possible. Sufficient calories (for me that's at least 2000), fairly high fat (70%++), dominantly via coconut oil on days when I'm not eating a lot of chuck burger (which takes care of itself fat-wise). This diet may be very low carb ketogenic, simply because I'm more focused on keeping my fat up than my carbs up at the moment, but as I am trying to bring in more carbs for my kid and I feel better with a little more, it is likely to vary. I track my details, so oh well, I'll see what works. I want sufficient protein -- 80-140 is my range, I'm aiming for the low side during this period since fat is the focus. This eating approach mirrors plenty of existing lowcarb eating plans out there; I don't consider the details a big deal here, whatever works for someone, me in this case, at a given time. Obviously, foods with high problem profiles (grains or dairy for some people, and always 'chemicals' that aren't real-food) are usually better left out of any eating plan as much as is practical.<br /><br />3. Liquid intake: no caffeine (because it's a diuretic; I want my body to vent water and nutrients as it sees fit, not be sparked/forced to that, which will only leave my supplements in the toilet before my body had a chance to decide about holding onto some of that); at least a gallon of water a day (this because of my size, it'd be less if I were smaller). In a perfect world, diet drinks and their chems would not be in here anywhere. I'm likely to have a diet soda once in awhile though, to be realistic, but not often.<br /><br />4. Detoxification: to ensure the body can rid itself not only of old toxins it might be inspired to during this period, but new things it doesn't want to keep that I'm ingesting like crazy, some basic detox things are going on during this as well. (a) See #3 on water intake. (b) I'm using body/foot pads for 'alleged' detox. Like some of the supplements I don't know how legit this is at all let alone for me, but I don't believe it hurts anything but my wallet to try. I intend to try them in my other main lymph-detox area, right between underarm and breast. (c) I'll be taking a tablespoon of bragg's apple cider vinegar with mother most mornings (also in the alternative-maybe's category). I'm not doing much else for detox because I don't want to be flushing my system with anything but water during this period.<br /><br />5. Exercise: I have no rules about exercise right now, except that I'd like to do some when practical and I feel like it. I think it's always good, and important. From my armchair, I think that.<br /><br />That's about it. It's my first-draft of an idea and although I began my 12 week period last Monday, I don't start the hypernutrient period until this coming Monday. So I'm sure actually "doing it" will probably bring up things I hadn't thought about.<br /></blockquote><br />Measuring effects won't be easy, as I mentioned. This is more a hope that several months down the road, fat loss will be more efficient for me, probably for no reason I can put my finger on, but maybe something about this will have helped. As long as I'm not overdosing on the few known dangerous limited nutrients, I don't see how it could hurt.<br /><br />PJ<br />.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-60725269339438888162009-09-10T04:57:00.003-05:002009-09-10T05:19:48.784-05:00Birthdays and GoalsI turn 44 Monday, September 14th.<br /><br />I've been working hard on 'parsing' immense amounts more stuff out of my house, and the rest much more condensed and organized. The result being vastly less clutter and more space. (Is it just me or is it nearly impossible not to associate house-clutter with bodyfat?)<br /><br />We're painting a couple rooms this weekend, including my hideously dark blotchy bedroom. That is sure to change my environment drastically and cheerfully.<br /><br />Here's hoping that as a result of all this effort, I feel more accomplished by Monday. :-) Because I haven't really accomplished anything on the weight front this year.<br /><br />It occurs to me there are a lot of different ways to set goals. Not just daily but the larger stuff. What the scale says is one but surely there are many others.<br /><br />So what do other people think? What do you make as your 'goals'? What is the criteria by which you judge if you've accomplished something useful in the previous year's time??<br /><br />PJ<br />.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34953284.post-34294625724234524582009-09-05T04:10:00.002-05:002009-09-05T05:10:06.913-05:00August 09 Collected TriviaThe little things: stuff in August that wasn't big enough deal for a whole blog post.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Observations * Quotes * Ideas * Recipes * Links * Other</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Observations</span><br /><br />1. Low-carb not only makes your butt smaller, it turns your hair blonde. The larger you begin and the smaller you get, the more noticeable this effect. For proof of this theory, you need only see the impressive before & after photos of women who lost a lot of weight and got down to their normal size. (Example: the lovely, smart and kind <a href="http://www.palyne.com/rn/valeriebeforeafter.jpg">Valerie</a>. But there are so many other examples, seriously!) Someone needs to do some research on why insulin affects hair melanin. (At least it's not as extreme the effect as one gets from "fame" in the entertainment industry, which can actually turn you almost-white, no matter what race you begin. ;-))<br /><br />2. I finally sat down and worked out my weekly/monthly budget for food, as well as other sundries (from medicine to cleaning supplies to cat food to paper plates) that I buy at the grocery store. The number nearly made me just keel over like a cartoon. No wonder I have no money, I am spending a ridiculous amount on food. This has made me determined to better pre-plan everything as I think spontaneous and 'miscellaneous' spending as well as stuff I throw away for it getting out of date is worth changing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Quotes</span><br /><br />"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."<br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">-- Miss Piggy</span></div><br />"The man who does not read a newspaper is uninformed. The man who does read the newspaper is misinformed."<br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">-- Mark Twain</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ideas</span><br /><br />1. I think my eating habits may be affected by hormonal cycles. Like much of the time eating decently is no problem aside from getting off my butt and doing it. But sometimes it's much harder and I've just noticed that it seems slightly cyclical. I've long known that chocolate cravings went with PMS, but maybe it's more than that?<br /><br />2. Enzymes that help with digestion of fiber-carbs such as 'Beano' for example, actually increase the soluble fiber. That's basically creating more carbs INside the body. I'd never thought of that.<br /><br />3. Turns out the thyroid is the first stop in the immune system, cleansing blood. How is it I didn't know this already?<br /><br />4. I read several long pages detailing digestion from the point of the stomach to exit. While not an appetizing subject it's actually very interesting. It brought me to the idea that maybe the only evil more insidious than high-carbs and fructose is fiber. Who knew. Well, the people who make money on stuff that is both high-carb and fibrous, they probably knew.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recipes</span><br /><br />This month has been understated for food, at best. Mostly we've eaten chuck burger patties with something on top like cheese, or pesto, or LC ketchup. I've done a lot of sauteeing mushrooms, onions and garlic together (in bacon grease ideally) and dumping those on a burger patty. If my food life got any more predictable I could just chisel it in stone.<br /><br />I did get a chorizo-spices recipe I'm making with ground turkey but so far it hasn't gone well; will work on it more and if it works out I'll post it later.<br /><br />The only thing I've "made" that hasn't been whole foods is a coconut oil thing. It's just a way of downing extra fat/calories (and coconut oil as the source of them). I don't like it in coffee, can't eat it plain, so this is the only way I can do it. 1/2 cup very-melted coconut oil, 4 Tbsp quality dutched cocoa, a couple different sweeteners to taste. Put 1-2 Tbsp in some kind of silicon baking pan (eg mini muffin, mini donut, etc.), freeze briefly, pop out and put the pieces in a ziploc bag in the fridge. Easy to just pop one in your mouth if you need the calories/fats, or haven't time to eat, or have a sweet tooth. My kid says, "Gross, this tastes like nothing but oil and chocolate!" Yes. It is. That's why. I find it sweet and rich and handy though.<br /><br />More actual recipes next month hopefully.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Links</span><br /><br />1. Do you half-live online? Do you have 'real friends' online? Who would know if something happened to you? Wouldn't it be cool if you could arrange custom letters for online friends or forums in case that Sweet Chariot Is Swinging Low, Coming For To Call You Home or something? Try <a href="http://www.slightlymorbid.com">slightlymorbid.com</a> - a friend of mine runs this and it's a neat service.<br /><br />2. Do you spend too much time working or typing on your computer? Do you know that brief breaks -- 30 seconds to refocus your eyes to super-close and far-distance, to put your palms over them for darkness, to stretch your body around where you're sitting, to stop typing, all that stuff is really good for your health and increases your productivity? There's a nifty program that lets you set timing and actions to 'remind you' when you're typing along to take a brief break, or in larger/longer form to take a 10 minute break and go walk around briefly. Settings let you postpone it, skip it, etc., and it's free and easy. See <a href="http://workrave.org/welcome/">workrave.com</a>. I think this could be used for prayer/meditation reminders and more, in my perfect world.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other</span><br /><br />I've been doofing around for like 2.5 years now I guess. I don't stay on LC long enough to accomplish much and go off when I do. What worked for weight loss initially doesn't seem the same now but I haven't done well at carefully experimenting with what might.<br /><br />So I came up with what I call a "day-plan". This means an eating plan that spans one single day, and I simply have to do that day a certain number of times (5, 7, 10) in a row and look at the scale, how I feel, etc. in order to decide whether that particular macronutrient quantity and % is working for me. If it's not, then I can make a change in something. But at least I'd be doing the same thing consistently so there should be no wondering about whether some food intolerance or variance in numbers or whatever is the reason for anything. Maximum 10 days, it either proves itself (in weight, in dimensions, in feel-good) or it doesn't then I move on.<br /><br />My first day-plan began today. It's ~2300-odd calories, 40-50g (total) carbs, 115g protein and the rest fat (so, dominantly a high-fat ratio). I'm using some of the cocoa-coconut oil bits, pesto, and some cream in coffee, as my non-meat fat sources so if I don't lose any weight on this I can easily take out calories by removing that stuff gradually. It's a plan that only has cooking twice a day (and it's quick, ~7 minutes) and aside from one creamy coffee has NO DAIRY, the first time I have seriously tried to wean myself off cheese (as well as gluten). I drink water, iced tea, OR if I walk to the store I'm allowed one regular-sized bottle of diet soda per walking-visit. I'll let you know how it goes.<br /><br />Homeschool has begun and I swear, this year it feels like a second job. Algebra, foreign language (Japanese, for godssakes -- she couldn't just like spanish or french, right?!), political science (we do joint oral reading and discussion for that), basic science, internet research, internet studies (eg html, etc.), reading, writing, art (graphic design software as well as sketching, calligraphy and more) etc. I'm exhausted just assigning assignments, never mind going through them, never mind getting on her to DO them!<br /><br />The kid's doing ok on her eating plan. Kinda sick of her options though.<br /><br />I turn 44 on September 14th. It's really a trip to see myself aging. As I get older birthdays become more reflective for me. I hope this one lets me feel like I am doing something decent with my life.<br /><br />Hope y'all had a good month of August and that September goes well for you!<br /><br />PJ<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://thedivinelowcarb.blogspot.com">The Divine Low Carb</a></div>PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04391277875371518678noreply@blogger.com1