The Circle of Gluten and Bad Decisions

Today I'm thinking about the things that ought to make me "think", but usually have to glide by, fly by, and then finally bite me on the butt before I actually make the trouble to think about them.

Like:

No matter what I eat that is lowcarb, I don't usually overeat, if anything I have trouble eating enough per day of nearly any nutrient. EXCEPT. If I eat something like tacos or burritos using lowcarb tortillas, I overeat. I know I'm overeating because I feel 'dark inside' and too stuffed to move for quite awhile after.

Why do I overdose on this and not other things? I had to think about it for awhile.

I think it's possible that the combination of hamburger meat (spicy in this case), shredded cheese, and the fiber from a lowcarb tortilla, is simply a lot. ONE medium burrito, or two medium tacos, is PLENTY. Yet, I usually eat twice that. Why? Because I can. Because I love the taste. Because once you get the basic stuff made and set out, it's easy.

But really, it doesn't matter why. What matters is that I get conscious enough about my eating habits to say, "Hey, will you look at that. I consistently overeat if the meal is tacos or burritos. Next time I make those dishes, I will be sure to plan my portions in advance." That wasn't so hard, was it?

***

Gluten-free stuff is high carb. Lowcarb stuff is higher in gluten. This is God's way of telling me that rather than finding a way to have "cheat-breadishes" I just need to adapt my diet so I no longer think I NEED that kind of thing.

Here's proof that I have not adapted to kicking sugar 'really': when I do carb cycling, why do I want to have high protein pasta, rather than extra broccoli?

Heh.

***

I think I can now say with some certainty that the chance of my choosing to eat something lousy when I am officially lowcarbing, is nearly always trackable not to what is tempting me, not to my mood, not to anything in that moment --

-- but to what I ate 24-48 hours PRIOR TO THAT MOMENT. Yes. I'm saying that I think the body totally sets us up. I eat something and I think I am ok with it, it did not throw me out of ketosis, it did not cause instant cravings, all appears to be well. But then, 1-2 days LATER, I end up making some decision about food that is, shall we say, not the kind that is easy to "own responsibility for" later.

So when people are talking about how to stay on plan, how to be disciplined, how to resist temptation, the answer is not really, "when you have an overwhelming craving to go face-down in the pie, don't do it." By the time they have that overwhelming craving, there are physiological issues behind it... it's mostly too late for moralizing about willpower. The real answer is, "Get so far off sugar in every form and anything else that saps your energy that you will not GET to the point of that overwhelming craving."

Willpower starts at the 3-carb level.

***

When I eat gluten, it gives me asthma anywhere from 12-36 hours LATER. Not at the time! Before I went lowcarb, I never tracked gluten to asthma because I ate it all the time, so it was a chronic condition. After I went lowcarb, I knew that asthma was from something I was eating previously, probably the breads, because lowcarb forced me to stop them entirely (the first time I went lowcarb there were incredibly few 'lowcarb' breadish products).

The irony, of course, is that my entire life I've lived on bread products. "Whole grains!" I was a vegetarian for nearly 5 years. Gained weight, mostly lived on bread products and dairy since I didn't much like fruits and vegetables. Probably torqued my hormonal balance good through serious amino/protein deprivations.

Once I was lowcarb and controlling that kind of thing better -- rarely eating a breadish product, and only the lowcarb variants -- I was finally able to begin to find the correlation. Eat gluten -- and lowcarb bread products often have MORE of it because of the way the grain is processed to favor the protein -- and not that night, but the NEXT night, and the day after that, I'd be wheezing totally.

Now, take a person who has sleep apnea -- scratch that, just "apnea," I've had "shallow breathing" problems even when I was a teen and thin, I think it's a subconscious emotional suppression thing, totally aside from the physical issue that causes breathing problems mostly in overweight people -- and then add heavy lung wheezing to the equation, and you get someone who is seriously oxygen deprived.

Tip: oxygen deprivation, while quite fascinating especially in serious degree, has the same effect as things like a thyroid problem or low potassium can. It can make you exhausted, sluggish, seriously forgetful (short term memory really gets blitzed, the sort of, "yes and -- um -- what were we just talking about??" sort), etc.

Not surprisingly, when people feel exhausted and sluggish, they don't move as much. That doesn't just mean they don't run marathons as often. It also means they are less inclined to get up and go make eggs or a protein drink... if they aren't really hungry, they might not bother. It also means they may be less inclined to do any number of things that contribute to their eating well, or a tad bit of exercise that has other life side effects (like a cleaner kitchen for example, which may affect whether 3 hours later they decide to make gluten free lowcarb highprotein muffins, vs. not doing so).

Of course, when I eat insufficient protein, I'm less energetic, I'm not retaining my muscle mass as well, and so have some of the same not as inclined to be energetic side effects.

It's a downward spiral! It's a catch-22².

No-brainer: When I am more exhausted, I am more inclined to seek energy from food. Read: carbs in one form or another.


***

OK, so there it is, the thought at the back of my brain trying to get my attention:

1. I eat gluten and I shouldn't, which
2. Causes lower oxygen a day or two later, which
3. Causes more exhaustion, which tends to up my carb intake as I seek more energy, which
4. Brings on more rounds of #1 until several spirals are operating at once here, which
5. Eventually means I'm not energetic enough to go make divine lowcarb foods because either I'm too exhausted, or not energetic enough to clean my kitchen and don't feel like cooking when it's not clean, or I just don't bother eating at all, which then drops my protein and nutrients, further depleting my energy, adding more to the spirals, which
6. Eventually means I'm likely to eat something offplan or simply go off lowcarb entirely.

This could be summed up like: Lowcarb is where you have lots of energy because you're living off your plentiful fat cells. Screw it up, though, and you will naturally start eating more because humans are primal-driven to eat more when they lack energy.

Lesson: Don't screw it up.

Additional note: the very food that has the gluten that keeps screwing it up for me (lowcarb tortillas) also happens to be part of the main meal that I am most likely to seriously overeat.

I grew up on tacos and burritos. You'd think I was mexican, in fact until lowcarb, mexican food of a variety of things was the only thing I knew how to cook! Not 'real' mexican food (half a roasted chicken and black beans, or spicy pork in masa wrapped in corn husks, or homemade 1/2" thick little breads called tortillas) but 'American' mexican food (thin tortillas from a package and a ton of cheese! rinse and repeat in 14 variations).

I'm trying to be repetitive to get it through my own brain here.

GLUTEN IS KILLING ME. It seems like no big deal when I eat it! It seems like only a little thing even when "Oh, I have stuff in my lungs, asthma" a day later. But the SIDE EFFECTS are part of an overall downward spiral-cycle that is consistently taking me OFF/OUT of lowcarb eating.

All because... wait for it... I feel like I can't possibly be expected to survive lowcarb if I can't have, as a regular meal, the easy to make, kid likes 'em too, burritos.

I should make a sign, WILL DIE FOR BURRITOS. Would this make it clear enough?

Maybe I should reframe it. Would I be sad to go overseas, be in a war, and get killed for the sake of a long list of relatively good reasons ranging from freedom to economic survival of my country? Yes, I probably would. That would be scary! That would seem like such a tragedy for me, for my family losing me. And yet, I'm willing to continue on an eating plan lifestyle that is just as certain to kill me, but in some slower, more expensive way, all so I can have a freakin BURRITO?

Am I CRAZY?!

PJ

Bon Appétit! Independence Day '07

For years I've made a habit of implementing major personal changes around Independence Day. Sometimes it's starting something new, sometimes it's ending something I've done for a long time. It just seems like an appropriate time for things like that.

I use Independence Day the way some people do New Years. Which is a good thing, since my score at keeping New Year's Resolutions is abysmal!

***

The last year has been a real pain in the butt for me, but mostly in constructive ways. I've started dealing with some of the more major issues in life.

In the last 12 months I've re-initiated lowcarb again, which I suspect is the only reason I'm currently alive. I've lost around 100 lbs, I've improved my mobility by a few orders of magnitude, I've ditched several medical symptoms like acid reflux, asthma and allergies (in direct proportion to how much I ditch eating grains).

I got my seven-years-ex husband to move the hell out again, since he wasn't my mate, didn't pay rent or any expenses, didn't spend time with the kid, and severely over-occupied the entire house. That made a huge improvement in my life too.

My ten year old gained nearly 40 lbs of pure fat in the 18 months he lived here, in part under the agreement he'd make healthy food for her I didn't have time/energy to (but mac&cheese, McDonalds, etc. was the reality of his efforts in the end). Her eating plan is now a lot more sane, and has almost zero junk/fast food or carby/ sugary stuff. Meanwhile she recently attained Jr. Brown Belt in Gojo Ryu Karate.

In short, my life has improved radically in nearly every way since last Independence Day, mostly since last mid-September. I have a long way to go in every way, but I've made a solid start on good things.

***

So this Independence Day, I decided to come up with one thing -- just one -- that I consider a thing I need freedom from. It has to be something that will require actual work, and that is very important, yet just ONE thing. Not a whole complex of stuff, not a need for perfection starting now, just one single solitary point that I feel I should focus my attention on: physically, metaphysically, psychologically, spiritually, you name it.

I thought about it for awhile. I've had a lot of insights the last several weeks about my troubles with eating; that is, my tendency to NOT eat, which does nothing but help maintain the spare-nothing/ store-everything metabolism that made me huge in the first place.

I believe there are a number of pretty serious psychological issues behind this, most amounting to decades of behavior based on severe PTSD from my younger life. To some degree I think I use food as a "control issue" with myself. I think I've been deeply repressing an 'institutionalized rage' much of my life, which gets turned in on myself, and my refusal for most of my adult life to eat, until hunger finally drove me to eating carbs at night, is an adaptive response to that.

I don't kid myself that I can cure the degree of PTSD my childhood brought about just because I want to lose weight. I'm not that optimistic. But I do believe that consciousness creates, and that we do have control of ourselves if we focus our intent in that direction.

This one issue, EATING, weaves into the larger web of my life. I believe that as simple as it may seem on the surface, my difficulty with doing it often enough over the last six months suggests it's nearly to the degree of 'eating disorder'.

Thing is, I don't lose fat if I don't eat enough and frequently. Period. The last six weeks proves that well enough, though I've seen that evidence before. If I can't get myself to EAT, my body is not going to let go of the extra fat. If I don't let go of the extra fat, my fitness and functional level will never get anywhere near where I want it to be.

I want to live. I want to feel good and be able to do cool and fun things with my kid and my friends. So in a way, it all boils down to dealing with "first things first": I gotta eat!

I want to be free from the chronic psychological stress that runs under the surface of me and causes distortions--I'm sure my issues with not eating are really only one of several issues that probably relate to it.

It's a big job, dealing with something that is deeply psychological... emotional as well as physical. It's not just about the numbers I make each day. It's not really about protein grams. It's about being free and loving enough with myself that I WANT to take care of myself and do so.

***

So, freedom from whatever inner long-term drama is screwing up my eating habits is what I wish for this year.

From now until next Independence Day, I want to be working on that. I want to meditate on it, pray about it, and pay close attention to it. If there is one thing I want to be sure is changed, improved, and taken care of by next Independence Day, this is it.

Bon Appétit!

PJ

But That Will KILL You!

The low-fat crazed world is convinced that my eggs in the morning and my pork stew is going to kill me, sooner rather than later. If the official party line about health had any truth to it, I would have already expired from veins clogged solid and blood pressure in the stratospheric count.

But funny enough, even in the lowcarb world, there's a whole cornucopia of warning labels people hang out for education. And they are probably all correct. But as a friend of mine pointed out, sometimes it seems there is no end to it!

A talk came up about yummy chorizo. Which led to my pointing out it is pig lymph nodes, which are the toxin collectors of the body, and I find it too gross to eat.

So I eat Soyrizo, a substitute that is nearly indistinguishable from chorizo. But this leads to posts about the many deadly dangers of humans ingesting soy.

OK, so maybe a reader thinks, "OK then! I'll have some bacon or sausage with those eggs instead." But no, then you get to hear about all the terrible nitrites in those, or the horrible Omega-6 balance.

"Ok, ok!" our fictional lowcarber protests. "Then I'll just have a small burger patty, that's simple and quick." But wait, there'll be a whole page about how well-cooked meats are not so good for you and really we should be eating them nearly raw.

(And don't even THINK of doing serious reading about Mad Cow Syndrome or you may never eat meat again.)

"That does it!" you hear. "I'll just have a freakin protein drink already!" No babe, don'tcha know, that is PROCESSED and not really "food"?!

***

And this is on top of the fact that most anything that ever even thought about being a grain, mating with a grain, or residing in the same package as a grain, is probably doing damage to a huge chunk of the population through grain/gluten intolerance.

Oh yeah, and about a zillion people are sensitive to caseine, the protein in milk.

And if you make all those yummy foods you're using artificial sweetener. You just know that no matter how great sucralose (what's in splenda) seems today, in 10 years (if that) we'll be hearing about how it kills you.

But wait, there's more. Turns out there's plenty of suggestion that merely the sweet "taste" of something can cause insulin spikes by association.

For godssakes! So we have Pavlov's Pancreas, too. Great.

***

Recently I posted here about making processed foods in the home -- using eggs, butter, protein powder, flax seed meal, etc. etc. to create high-protein cocoa muffins, for example. I was saying, is it any worse to do that, than to have eggs fried in butter, a teaspoon of flax seeds and a protein drink? If so, why?

Here on the blog the comments were like, hey whatever keeps you on plan. On my LC journal the comments were more like, that's the wrong direction man, you should be eating real food.

But most 'real food' isn't portable in a ziplock without refrigeration for a couple of days, for instant-grab yummy munchy food that is also good numbers for my daily eating goals. And eating muffins, or mock danish as a friend of mine does (and she certainly lost weight), regularly, doesn't mean one is not also eating meat and veggies.

It might mean, though, that you stayed on-plan.

Though I guess, maybe it wasn't a very good plan. Maybe.

***

I think in a perfect world, we would all live on turkey, broccoli, pecans, avocados, and some fresh herbs and lots of water. (I'm ignoring the many things that could be warnings, even about those.)

But in the real world, I don't have a butler, so I live on what I had the time, money, and energy to make for myself. The easier something is to make, the longer something lasts, and the easier it is to eat the leftovers, the higher a rating it gets in my Worthy Foods Book.

I think the better people get at eating 'real food', the healthier they're likely to be. Then again, if food or time or money or frankly, energy to do something proactive is limited -- or appetite, or foods you're not sensitive to or don't dislike, are limited -- then you take what you've got.

You do the best you can with the options available to you, and hope to live another day to work toward that perfect-world dietary plan. Chances are, soy and chorizo and bacon and processed protein powder are not going to kill you done in moderation.

If eating protein donut holes or a mock danish every day for a year is your idea of a high protein breakfast, well, if it helped keep you on plan, got you enough protein, kept down your carbs, kept down your calories if necessary, and helped you get healthier, then I'd say it turned out to be a good thing, didn't it?

Who knows? Less weight and sufficient protein for the long term might mean more energy for more focus on whole roasted chickens in your future.

Wait, don't tell me. That stuff will KILL me, because . . .

It's the New Year!!

Year 2007 Resolutions

SECTION A: Me Me Me

A1. I resolve to stop for at least 15 seconds within the first 30 minutes of waking up each day, to concentrate on FEELING GRATEFUL FOR MY LIFE, and FEELING LOVED, and FEELING HOPE ABOUT MY FUTURE. And to say, "Please help me" to the Divine. 15 seconds. How hard is this?

A2. I resolve for one year, this year, to care more about myself than others. My first duty is to myself. When I am happy and cared for, I can be of better help to all -- and a better, stronger example for my daughter. My motto is WWXD: What Would Xena Do?

A3. I resolve to bring regular exercise, at least 3 times per week to begin, into my life. This may have to begin with little more than counting how many seconds I can hold a half sit-up and things like that: that is fine. But it has to be something.

A4. I resolve to make a genuine effort to get at least 6 hours of sleep per night. If this means I don't get as much done and see my best friend less, then that is what it means. My health, my weight loss, my attitude, my mental clarity, are paramount.

A5. I resolve, when affordable, to get my nails done regularly. Though the left hand must be super-short, keeping the right hand short to moderate length but strong will be great for guitar, and keeping them up and painted will be a small concession to luxury and taking care of myself.

A6. I resolve to do at least one archetype meditation per week that is specific to either weight/size-loss, health, or something else important in my life. It doesn't have to take a long time. The impact of these on my reality is profound. There is no excuse for not taking 15 minutes for this.

That is all for the ME category.

I COME FIRST.

SECTION B: Kid Kid Kid

B1. I resolve as of February on to bring my entire house into lowcarb eating. I will supply fruits for snack, LC bread and LC tortillas, but otherwise the child will have to learn to eat lowcarb. There is no excuse as a mother for feeding her crap because it is faster/easier/she begs. She's nearly fat. My responsibility as a mother is to her health, more than to my convenience.

B2. I resolve to get the kid to bed at a decent hour nightly and without bedtime carbs. She is chronically sleep deprived, often unsupervised during the night, and has learned disrespect for my efforts on this front. Aside from which it probably greatly affects her HGH output and metabolism. I will do what is needed because that is my duty as a loving mother.

B3. I resolve to make the kid do stuff with me. Allowing her to play video games or whatever instead of helping me cook, allowing her to do no chores but be messy, is just bad for her, and it diminishes time spent together and her sense of contribution to our mutual life.

That is all for the KID category.

BETTER PARENTING NOW.

SECTION C: Food Food Food

C1. I resolve to use a kitchen timer so that every 90 minutes from waking to sleeping, I am reminded to drink as much water as I can hold. At the most this should involve approximately 6 minutes per day. Six minutes to greatly improve my weight loss, my skin hydration, my health. I can do this. This means filtering water and filling water bottles at night or morning. YES, I can do this.

C2. I resolve to take at least two days per month to do some major LC cooking that can be stored in the freezer. Examples: chili verde, chicken stew, a big turkey, big meatballs, LC burritos. It can make the diff between LC turkey and pepperjack with fresh vegg quesadilla for me and kid vs..... junk or starving.

C3. I resolve to at least mention my food a minimum of 5 out of 7 days per week in my lowcarb journal. Inattention to my eating (and to eating at all) contributes to poorer upkeep of the matter.

C4. I resolve to arrange for my breakfast the night before, so it has pre-planning and is more likely to happen. This is the hardest meal of the day for me so far, but it hugely affects how hungry I am and the effort I will make to eat the rest of the day. Now that I know several foods I can prepare in bulk, there is no reason why I can't arrange for something, even if it's just a couple mini-muffins, a couple meatballs, whatever.

That is all for the FOOD category.

FOOD IS A TOOL: USE IT WISELY.

SECTION D: Others Others Others

D1. I resolve to make a list of the people I need to communicate with and to make a point to email or write them something at least every six weeks. I am falling out of touch with people who care about me and hurting their feelings. It does not take much effort! Just a little organization.

D2. I resolve to visit my grandmother for a couple hours at least once a month. She's old, she lives 5 blocks away, there is just no excuse for not doing so. Ry must come. She can read a book if she's bored but she needs to learn that this is a family responsibility. When I am old I hope someone visits ME.

That is all for the "others" category.

CHARITY STARTS AT HOME.

And that is my 2007 list of resolutions!

I AM QUEEN OF MY DESTINY! RULE WELL.

Here's to a fabulous 2007!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.

PJ's Induction Cycling

It's taken me a month but I've finally solidified my own personal "eating plan" that I think is workable and appropriate for me.

It is based on several factors, including:

1. Because I'm so heavy, I need to stay at lower-carb levels than most folks for a long time. That has several built-in considerations, though:
   
   • I need to stay lower than some of the lowcarb eating plans recommend for post-induction. Yet,
   
   
   • I can't make it so low, that my food range is drastically limited. If it's going to take me years to lose the weight, I really need as much variety in my diet as possible.
   
   
   • There needs to be some 'allowance' of deductions for fiber and SA carbs, as part of hugely expanding the menu. Yet there should be a cap on them, because SAs in particular can really get out of hand when you're "not counting" them.
   
   
2. Because it is very easy to 'slide out' of ketosis or at least slide into very light degrees of it, I need to ensure that if this should happen for any reason, it is shortly curtailed and my level of ketosis brought back to something good for weight-loss, carb-craving suppression and appetite suppression. Beginning every month with a few days (or whatever it takes) of "core food only" regularly brings me back to that.

I call it "PJ's Induction Cycling." (Added my name just in case the term is used anywhere else and I don't know about it, don't want to get it confused with other stuff.) Here's the basics: (click the link to see the image)

PJ's Induction Cycling

Warning: If your browser is set to "resize images" it will make that unreadably tiny! Take that setting off! LOL!

This addresses some 'issues' I've observed in the field at large from reading tons of journals, as well as in myself and my own experience.

Now that I know what I'm doing and plan ahead, induction is easy. And given I'm doing it a few days every month based on the eating plan cycle, it no longer seems like such a long-suffering major thing anymore.

---

Changed it to 20 on standard (stage 2) after discussion with another LCer.

OK I thought I was done but that's not it.

Q. Do you do protein powder on the first-stage?
A. Yes, protein powders, protein puddings.

Q. Why no grains, mushrooms or cheese?
A. The first for bowel reasons, the second two for herbalism reasons. Basically just to make it so there's a few days each month I detox from such things for sure. And because I know if I don't rule it out I will be eating mega amounts of cheese during the induction period, as I love it, and I really want to force the protein-fat meat/seafood/poultry emphasis instead.

Q. Isn't 20 carbs + 15 deducted carbs a lot compared to 10?
A. Yeah. Monthly re-induction ought to make me appreciate what I get the rest of the time.

Q. Not counting fiber/SA carbs has an effect. You lose more weight if you do.
A. I agree. However if I'm going to be on this eating plan the rest of my natural and unnatural life, I have to have a decent variety of good tasting food to eat. So for me there has to be some middle ground between 'keep it lowcarb to lose' vs. 'keep it enough carb to enjoy it and not feel deprived'. I made it 15 carbs + 15-MAX deducted because that is a different result than just saying '30 carbs'. The deductions will allow me to make little crepes I can use as a bread-replacement of sorts, and a sweet now and then, and have daily fresh garden peppers for example (broccoli stir fried in peanut oil with garlic and ginger, YUM!). But the limit on the deducted carbs per day will probably keep me from ODing on a whole day of food that is "invisible" carbs and calling it a good day... even if carbquick and flaxmeal and my sugar alternatives can make me a ton of food with almost zero net carbs, how much "not quite basic" food I can eat is pretty limited due to the cap on the deductible carbs.

Q. The calorie range is rather large.
A. I have a hard time making 1000 calories half the time. And due to my weight, theoretically I could eat a helluva lot more calories and still lose, but it varies by food choices - drastically. A day with bacon, butter and mayo will skyrocket calories into the 2000 zone while other days I'll be struggling to meet the 1100 minimum. Unfortunately the highest cal stuff is carby sometimes. If I could eat my extra calories in peanut butter without the carbs I'd happily do so! So I leave that a variable option because my mood, food, weight, protein intake and exercise will make me vary the calories. I put 2000 there as a 'maximum' -- not a goal.

Q. Keto sticks don't always measure ketosis.
A. Yeah, I've heard that. If I'm drinking 2 gallons of water a day (I wish) I won't worry about that, it'd flood the ketones. If I still have decent energy, little appetite and no major cravings, and I'm losing weight or size at all, then I'll have to do the three day minimum and call it good. Right now I can't taste, smell or feel ketones and every other time I've been on lowcarb, it's major and obvious. Yet I'm losing weight steadily, have energy, suppressed appetite, no cravings, and I turned a keto-stick purple, so I'm going to have to figure it's ok.

Q. How come you allow yourself nuts/nutbutters but not cheese? The Atkins OWL doesn't bring in nuts until much later.
A. True. Bear in mind this is a maintenance plan not a starting-out plan. But the main reason I allow them is because peanut butter is the only 'sweet' I'm willing to allow myself during stage 1. If I can't go three days without Splenda I've got a problem!

Q. Doesn't this seem like an arbitrary rearrangement of Atkins/Eades/etc., similar to KimKins for example?
A. Sure, everybody comes up with what works for them. Because my weight is so high and my weight-loss efforts will take so long, because my protein demands are so great and my resultant calories tend to be so low, and because I want to experiment with food and not worry quite so much that a 'gradual slide out of ketosis' will lead to my ruin, I felt I needed an approach customized to me.

Best,
PJ

Pushing the Plow

There is no time like the present, as they say.

It helps to realize the present is a gift indeed. The point of power is NOW, as Seth once said.

Today and yesterday I've run into the much more mundane side of my eating plan (don't say diet). Coincidentally (is there such thing really?), I've also gotten some great advice spontaneously from a couple others just at the very time I needed it most, about how to deal with it all even when the chips are down. Not that we would dream of eating chips, hahaha. (Thanks you guys.)

I've always thought that the big things in life were the easier things. You know, give me the do-or-die challenges, I'll bleed for the cause, no problem. I was the kind of teen that casually read the whole textbook in the first two days, aced the tests through the term -- and nearly failed for a lack of homework points (in part caused by reading Robert Heinlein et al. through the rest of the course). I think in some respects this sums up my life in many ways. I love big jobs and big tests. It's the long term stuff that makes me groan.

The real work of life is the day in, day out, seemingly endless stick-to-it-ness that defines "persistence" and "consistency." Those things are so much harder. The dogged day-by-freakin-day of it. It doesn't matter if we're talking about working on an eating plan or working on building a boat, working on a talent/skill or working on being a good parent. The toughest works in life for me are not the gigantic challenges to courage, competence or creativity that come along sometimes, but the death by a million papercuts of getting up and 'dealing with' it, whatever IT is, every day ... by endless day.


I always admired pioneer women. I always wondered what was in it for them. Work insanely hard through childhood, marry young, have too many kids, be essentially a slave from dawn till dusk with the kids and house and farm and food and usually die in childbirth. Nothing against men, but I think if it had been up to men to be that stoic our whole civilization would have died out before it even began. The ability to do the long-term shouldering of the drudgery of daily life and still be wily in bed and happy at holidays and sweet for the little ones is a distinctive quality of humanity of either gender, but throughout history, women have really borne the pain of it, in more ways than one. Sometimes when I am whining about feeling like I spend all my daily minutes on kid, house, food, work, and have no time left for me, for "a life" as I call it, I think about what my life would have been like born 200 years sooner. Or even 100 years sooner. Or for that matter, even 50 years sooner! All in all, I guess I have it pretty easy.


When you turn off the volume from all the philosophy and all the hype and enthusiasm about anything, including the great enthusiasm many share (and thank goodness for that!) about a shared eating plan, you find yourself standing in the deep puddle of The Now. Every moment is a decision. To eat, not to eat. What to eat. Even how to eat. Every day is a new start; is the first day of the rest of your life. Every meal is a chance to confirm your intentions for yourself vs. undermine your own confidence. There is no such thing as history except in our heads. In the real world, it is always the NOW. Decision is always in your court, every moment.

And some days, the decision has to be just to keep on keeping on. Even when nothing is going right in your life or on your scale. Even when nothing sounds good, when you're out of half your ingredients, when you haven't time to cook a meal, when you're exhausted, when it would be so damn easy to walk right across the street and have Taco Bell or McDonalds instead. When you stand in front of your open refrigerator until your eyeballs are getting frostbite and still nothing looks or sounds good, but knowing that maybe for your metabolism, skipping meals packs on pounds, and you better find something no matter how uninspiring. Consider it body-parts in teamwork: you gotta get it down your throat for the sake of your thighs.

When you are not inspired, when the scale makes you want to cry, when your journal buddies are ignoring you, when it seems like the world keeps going around and every day you just have another day of the same damn foods you've been boring yourself into culinary comatose with... you just have to be stoic. We are the pioneers of the brand new territory of our own potential. We are the frontiersmen of what we CAN be, if we can focus not on what we fear we might be lost in eternally, but on what we dream we could be eventually, and we start by being that, acting as-if, right NOW.

Every decision in the Now wears a groove in our forever.

Every moment is now. Right now, reading this, you are in the NOW. The present is the only place where you can change your life: what awesome opportunity! This is your point of power, of decision, of inspiration -- and yes, sometimes, of putting your shoulder into it and plodding on another mile when you already feel like you're worn to the bone. Sometimes, just eating another freakin egg or salad feels like getting up at dawn to push the plow. But we don't have to look at the road behind or the years ahead. We don't have to look at every food we've had and will have. Narrow the focus to the present: life is only the small segment of momentary awareness we call the NOW.

If I can start at 482 pounds and some days be crazy-weary over food and want to hide my head about the scope of my journey, I think other people can start wherever they are and survive the down days too. We're a stoic sisterhood (and brotherhood) of people who've pushed the plow of eating-plan determination in the ever-present Now long enough to know it's worth it. I will make good decisions, because it's me in control of making them, because living in the present allows me to change my life.

Every good decision we make wears a neural pathway in favor of our tenacity, in favor of our determination. Every decision in the Now wears a groove in our forever. "Be here, now," as the Eastern sages say: every moment is now, and the now is always.

I'll push the plow another day.

There is no time like the present... and the present is a gift indeed.
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The Joy of ... a good kitchen

Not to be picky, but if your body is a temple, surely your kitchen is a divine location of sorts.

The source of nurture on occasion as well as nourishment, the kitchen holds the building blocks of our determination, our inspiration, and our dedication. When you eat real food, it doesn't come in a fastfood bag... it comes from the kitchen.

Yesterday I paid my housekeeper/friend a whole lotta money to--while I was working--'deal with' my kitchen in more than the ordinary way. The endless odd plastic containers DH has collected we either threw away or, in the case of a couple dozen half gallon coffee containers, tossed in the backyard garden for seed starting or whatever. Every pan and utensil that had rust (!) on it, we threw away. Every appliance got cleaned, the appliance & lowcarb shelves got cleaned, all the cabinets got wiped out, many of their dishes got rewashed, and so on. It's not done. Well that part is, but there is more. But it's a great start. By the time I finally got back to the kitchen (at nearly midnight when I returned with groceries) it was looking downright CLEAN for the first time since I mistakenly, in my single mom exhaustion, handed it over to the SO, who is becoming more the IO by the day.

I still have a massive fridge-freezer cleanout to do, and big table/counter cleanup, and some shelves I want to get rid of -- I have to walk sideways to get in my kitchen. This is going to stop. -- and the spice cabinet, but I'm not picky. Already it is a place where I actually WANT to prepare food. Unlike the last couple weeks of avoidance, now finally, it's FUN to be in there!


This leads me to more armchair theorizing. We generally avoid stuff we aren't fond of, even subconsciously. And I'm starting to think that the degree of respect that we have for what we eat shows, not only in what we buy and what we eat, but also in how we prepare it.

Recently on a lowcarb forum a woman was saying that prior to lowcarb, she was obsessed with food, ate all the time, and that LC had saved her from that, made her full all the time, killed the carb addict cycle, etc. I found that interesting, because with me, it is just the opposite. I've never really even cared about food. If it's in front of me and I like the taste I'll eat it. If it's not, I won't eat. I've never respected food, I am realizing. I hardly even paid attention to it. If I had food, I scarfed it down with barely a shred of notice, while programming usually, or on the way somewhere, or standing in the kitchen. If me and food had a 'relationship', you might say I severely took it for granted as a result, treated it very poorly.

The idea of actually planning a yummy meal, and preparing that meal, and sitting down and really ENJOYING that meal, is something I haven't even considered in... well, since my mid 20's when I lived alone (the only period of my life I've lived alone).

And a nice kitchen is part of that. I just realized how many cool versions of baking pans I have, like muffin pans but in tons of shapes and sizes and molds. I forgot! They've all been up on an unreachable shelf for a year and a half. Now suddenly I see them and I think of all the great recipes I've seen online that could be made in them. I was eyeing my rotisserie, my deep fryer, my yogurt maker, my ice cream machine, my food processor, my dehydrator, and more appliances, all of which were covered with dust from disuse (many never used at all, bought in the last 1.5 years), now which are gleaming white on the white 'appliances' shelf just outside the kitchen, and I was thinking: gosh, so many great things to make! I bet the kid would love this, and that! And wouldn't it be great to make this other thing for thanksgiving, so the diabetics in my stepmom's family would have something yummy they could eat? And imagine doing this or that as a treat for the kids' classroom! And I could invite my parents to dinner and make -- oooh, yum!

There is some part of me that feels like cleaning and organizing my kitchen, is cleaning and organizing a part of myself and my life on a larger and deeper scale as well (sort of a Feng Shui result). Much like the ritual of prayer, it's a small thing on the outside, but a galaxy of meaning on the inside.

Tonight I have planned a chicken and spaghetti-squash primavera dinner, with a small side salad with avocado and pecan and homemade blue cheese dressing, some corn on the cob for the kid and dh, and if I have time, some zucchini cobbler-ettes (that's the stuff that tastes amazingly like apple pie) for dessert. I'm excited to make it, it'll be fun to have the kid help me, and I think eating it will be awesome.

Now I am realizing: I don't have a table! The dining area is taken over by DH's computer testing station and ebay inventory. The other 2/3 of the living/dining room are split between he and my workstations. My dining table is in the small kitchen pretending to be a counter. The only room for even the smallest table for eating would have to be outside!

It seems dysfunctional to me that we don't have any place to eat! It reminds me of that movie "Mermaids" (Cher, Winona Ryder, Christine Ricci) where the dysfunctional single mom makes nothing but finger foods and they all eat while sitting on counters and whatever. The first time they really sit down at a table for a family dinner, with her new boyfriend, it's wonderful, and she realizes abruptly that he is 'making them a family' (and flips out, feeling threatened).

I wonder if on some level this relates to our rather un-family situation. That we don't have a family table or anywhere that we can sit down and 'be together'. Probably.

But enough psychoanalysis. Back to the kitchen. I cleaned off the rolling cart-thing for food prep, and now it actually stores lots of useful stuff at hand. Last night while shopping I also got a couple new pans and tools (to replace those icky that we tossed) and some cooling racks. And two nifty rectangle wooden trays (molded a bit bowl-like but flat at bottom) I thought were really nifty, that I thought would be cool for holding food instead of a normal plate and less likely to spill (given our lack of table) for wettish foods. And I think I have finished shopping finally. I got all the stuff we were missing (basic kitchen stuff, we were out of like everything!) and lots of stuff for cooking.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the butternut squash I decided to buy and look for some moderate-carb recipe for as a side dish; is there a way to make it sweetish, I wonder. I'm starting to look at veggies, given we have a major garden, and think, "What can I grow that I could eat?" That would surely save money!

It's kind of exciting. It's like a whole new interest in life.... FOOD! And a great part of that is now thanks to having a clean, organized kitchen I want to get creative in.
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Lowcarb and Learning Theory

"Learning theory" is a phrase used to describe the (ongoing, ever-evolving) results of a field of study about how humans perceive, process, and respond to information. It relates to what causes change in the human based on information processing (for better or worse).

As a layman's paraphrase of the generic basics for an example, let us say that the "action" we wish to 'train' is throwing a basketball, aiming to get it through the hoop.

• If you provide accurate feedback to a human following an action, the body/mind perceiving the information -- such as "when you threw it exactly like that, it went in" or "when you threw it exactly like that, it bounced off the rim to the left" -- will be able to "learn" from this. The feedback is corrective or confirming, both of which 'teach' us. So: practice improves most anything, we all know this.
• If you provide inaccurate feedback to a human following an action, the body/mind will learn just as well -- it's simply that what it learns is wrong. For example, if a basketball hoop were specially designed to ever-so-slightly move to the left just after the ball left your hands for the throw, eventually you would use that "corrective" information and begin throwing the ball slightly to the left, in order to succeed.
• If you provide feedback that is highly negative, e.g., every time you throw a basketball someone comes and punches you in the head, then you create an aversion effect, where mysteriously you seem to be losing your desire to shoot hoops (I wonder why!).
• If you don't provide ANY feedback following an action, or if you provide feedback that does not directly relate to the goal-attempt of the action, eventually you train-out the behavior. If barking at the moon did not get you strawberries, you'd have no reason to do it, and when you wanted strawberries that is not an urge you'd have, as it'd be unrelated to your getting them.

The lack of feedback, and even moreso, "inconsistent" feedback -- sometimes accurate, sometimes wrong, sometimes none, sometimes negative -- can literally train-out a quality or skill. I believe this is called an Extinction Paradigm. You have basically extinguished that tendency or skillset in the human.

Dr. Batmanghelidj, author of Your Body's Many Cries for Water, has an interesting idea. He believes that our culture, over time, feeding ourselves and our children drinks that are not water---the body doesn't by nature know anything but water--we have programmed-out our own innate thirst-reflex. He suggests that when the body asks for water and we give it other stuff, from slightly-off (like koolaid or coffee) to massively-off (like sodas), the body eventually is "entrained" to not ask for water because it isn't going to get it.

So eventually, the body quits asking. If a desire for clean water brings the minor poison of a soft drink cola, that is not only an inaccurate feedback for 'thirsty for water', it's actually a 'negative' aversion feedback.

He believes that over time, we become dehydrated literally to the cellular level. As it is gradual and has been happening over such a long time, we are oblivious to it. All the cells make do with a little less eventually, until finally, side effects start showing up, and then major problems.

He described a linear serious of ailments that can result from chronic dehydration, immensely aggravated by 'fiber' supplements that allegedly deal with the symptoms that dehydration caused in the first place, but leech massive water from the body when used, making it worse, making one yet-more dependent on them. I might have been more skeptical about his book except that my father has had every single one of the symptoms and ailments he described, in exactly the same order. I mean what are the odds. Most of these are things that the medical system has no good explanation for the causation of, except "bad luck."

By the time the body finally asks for water, it is only because it is so incredibly desperate for it, that it is simply is doing anything it can, no matter that the approach seldom works, to try and get your attention to get some.

The doc believes that replenishing the body all the way to the cellular level takes several months of drinking sufficient water daily. Like sleep, it is not something you can just make up all at once.

Soda is NOT water despite that it has water in it. It has to do with how the body processes the water -- he has nice little diagrams and simple explanations that even I was capable of understanding. (Although I felt he attributed too much to dehydration, in terms of health problems, aside from that I felt it was a book well worth reading.)


So, let's look at food. We need nutrients and protein most of all. Our body gets hungry. It starts in childhood, with many. And so we feed it -- mac&cheese? A happy meal with fries and coke? At best, that is somewhere between inaccurate feedback and non-feedback if it doesn't have the nutrients we needed. At worst, given the content of the food and affect on the body, it may be actual aversion training!

Not on a conscious level though. On a conscious level, we love sweet, we feel happy, we're inundated with marketing, McDonald's has the Star-Wars toys!, and the sheer mass quantity of sugar/carbs in the meal makes us feel "up-up-up!", while the drink is cold and fizzy (feel the burn! yeah!). Consciously we're getting nothing but positive feedback -- at first.

Unfortunately, the negative feedback of exhaustion, allergies/asthma, and more don't come until later, and as learning theory studies have always shown, the sooner the feedback, the greater the likelihood of learning from it. So, 30 minutes or an hour later when your blood sugar might drop is too late for that feedback to do any good for the conscious mind; we don't necessarily even correlate the two events. Our meal is already long past and forgotten by then.

So at a subconscious level, we have a body-function that eventually is trained out of bothering to really ask for what it wants because it doesn't get it, or seldom, and often gets something quite bad if it dares ask. No different than a family with an alcoholic angry parent, eventually the child, not sure if they'll get a kindness, ignored, or often abuse, in response to a question, is just going to avoid asking questions at all. So our bodies learn to avoid asking for what they want.

And at a conscious level, we have a body-psychology that is eventually trained into craving sugar, carbs, cold fizzy drinks, hot coffee, and the feeling of comfortable oversatiation that only eating too much bread-based carbs can give you.

We force the dissociation between body and mind from a young age.


The good doc Batman believes that you can rehydrate your body, heal it, and that gradually when you drink a lot more water regularly, your thirst -- for water, not soda or coffee -- will actually begin to gradually return. I have experienced this myself. It's not easy to do since in my case I didn't like water. I liked soda. But after drinking at least 3qts of water a day for about 10 days, the actual thirst-response started coming back. I started getting thirsty far more often (despite all that water!) and specifically for water, not sugary-carbonated junk.

I correlate this with the fact that some lowcarb docs note that insulin resistance can be lessened, and even Type 2 diabetes lessened greatly, as one eats low-carb and adequate-protein and nutrients finally, and the body gradually begins to heal.

(Not, mind you, that it's ever going to revert to what we think of as normalcy, as LC Dave points out.)


I am coming to believe that the basics of human learning theory are, unintentionally perhaps, working against us in our culture from the moment we start eating solid foods.

Some think -- rightly I suspect -- that placing importance on food such as a 'reward' is the wrong message to send to oneself, as it ties into the "emotional" issues with eating.

But on the other hand, food is central to physiological survival, and since the dawn of time man's been generally obsessed with it for necessary reasons. We may not want to have eating tied to our psychology, but the fact is--it is. I don't think we can wish that away. I think it's hard-wired into our biology, even if every human culture didn't steep its people in it.

So my armchair philosophy for the day goes something like this:

• The more that we make lowcarb food important to ourselves;
• the more enjoyment we get from eating it;
• the more positive feedback we get from self or others from experimenting with it, cooking it, sharing with others about it, etc;
• the more we literally create a 'celebration of food' gestalt with lowcarb eating;
• then the more we are working to "correct and re-adjust" the psychology about food.

If we eat what we don't much like or what bores us because we "should," we are not only NOT working to "correct" our psychology (as much as our insulin-response), we are actually contributing in a negative way to that level of things.

And it seems to me that while we are healing ourselves, we have to consider the mind as well as the body. Our reaction to food goes from the most primal survival level to the most abstracted marketing inference: food doesn't just move through us, it moves us through and through.

So here's to creative culinary efforts; to sharing recipes and social bonding over that; to learning to enjoy food preparation; and to making food something special. Drink that protein shake in a princess goblet. Make that chicken with peppers dish or array of veggies and deviled eggs pretty on the plate, it can be done. Those are small ritual elements, but it's more our effort to pursue them, to take the time to make food a luxury for us, that matters.

Make lowcarb food for the mind and heart, as well as the body.

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The Yum-Factor and Lowcarb Obsession

When you look at humans in tribal environments, you see that aside from sleep, human rituals and care of the young, nearly all their time is spent working on getting food or in some way dealing with food. For eons with humans, in terms of what one's time and mind are focused on, there has been a dominant obsession with food. NOT as a 'concept', outside of Christmas carols, but as a direct relationship to what you were going to put in your body. The two things -- food, and what goes in your body -- were not separate.

Nowdays, it's hard to be bothered with food. We often rush from the moment we get up and get kids to school and get ready for work and work all day and do errands afterwards and outside of our lunch hour or whatever we arrange for dinner, usually we are paying no attention to food. When we do put food in our bodies, it is often based on available time and available energy to prepare, or what is in arm's reach, or what someone else likes (a kid, mate, etc.).

This is no small issue. Looking at the protein requirements for the average person, and at what they actually eat, I'm willing to bet that most people don't eat anywhere near enough protein. So they don't have sufficient energy.

When you have less energy, you get less exercise because you haven't the gumption to get up and go. When you get less exercise and you're lower in energy you're more likely to eat carbs because carbs are energy-in-food. Protein is like power that our body translates into energy internally. Carbs are like external-energy we're pulling into us to help.

Too many carbs, not enough exercise, lead to weight gain and eventually to insulin resistance, which inevitably amplifies things into more weight gain, which leads to vastly less energy for obvious carrying-it-around reasons, so more craving for carbs to support the body and more insulin resistance and more weight gain -- it's the modern insulin-hamster-wheel of obesity.

So if you 'track it back', it seems that a great deal of all the carb-obsessed, nutritionally-deficient, exercise-inhibited problems in our culture, all start at the doorstep of insufficient protein.

Which means if I'm lowcarbing and not getting enough protein, that's a big deal.


Now, not to be obvious, but in order to get protein, ya gotta EAT. Which I at least won't do unless I like the taste of what I'm eating. So lowcarb better be yummy or I'm not lowcarbing, I'm fasting.


I suspect the lean-body-mass starvation that is chronic throughout much of human life in our culture, due to protein deficiency, may well contribute to a whole host of medical (and possibly even mental and social) problems far more extreme than just obesity.

Unlike every "natural" culture of humans, who for survival are forced to put a huge emphasis on the acquisition, preparation and storage of food, many people pay incredibly little attention to the detail of the food we put in our bodies.

But it seems almost inbred to humans since the dawn of time, that food's an obsession with us. And it seems marketing takes advantage of this. You'd never know we weren't obsessed with food to look at any form of marketing! Magazines and stores and TVs are nearly overwhelmed by the obsession with food. Even the obsession with beauty, health and sex fall second to the obsession with food. (Well, the sex obsession may be catching up, particularly as men become a higher % of the population doing even grocery and furniture shopping.)

So, oddly, it's as if we are still obsessed about food as a concept, we're just not really obsessed with the food we put in our bodies.

It's a form of dissociation.


If we asked our body what it wanted to eat, it would probably give us sexy dreams about steak or fish, broccoli and avocados, strawberries and cold clear water. Somehow, I doubt that apple pie, hershey bars and french fries are of any interest to the body -- and to the degree they are chemically bad for the body, even harmful, quite the opposite.

But they're of huge interest to our brain. Why? Because we've been indoctrinated with an obsession about the concept of food, devoid of the context of what we actually put in our mouths.

They're of huge interest to our palate as well. Why? Because we've been eating that way much of our life, in some cases when our parents ate badly all our lives, and we've learned to associate that food with 'getting energy' we lack, with positive reward from our parents, with sex and fun and other abstracted pleasures in a lifetime subjected to marketing.


Some people feel they have emotional reasons for eating. Personally, I think nearly everybody has emotional reasons for eating (or sometimes for not-eating, which is really the same issue just a different reaction), because nobody in our culture who hasn't grown up in the closet could have avoided the pervasive influence, since early childhood, of the many messages about and associations with food.

If Jane is thin and eats when she's upset, nobody even notices. Nobody cares. Jane doesn't care. She's thin, why should she care? But if John is obese and he eats when he's upset, it's considered a major psychological problem.

If this is a problem, I'd suggest it's a problem that the vast majority of our culture has -- it's simply that we only notice it or care about it when the metabolism of the individual fails to "compensate" for that.


Since I went back to a lowcarb way of eating, I've been almost forced to obsess on the food I put in my mouth. I rather have to, because my normal way of eating is completely different.

To start with, prior to lowcarb, I often ate only one meal late in the day, that's been my norm for decades. Secondly, whatever I ate was carb-laden and too much (although almost any mega-carb meal is 'too much' unless you're about to work out hard or run a marathon). My family's idea of food has been fast-food or packaged food with an occasional home cooked meal--rarely. I work and my husband handles the food, animals and garden, and we share the kid duties. He really isn't interested in cooking every night, let alone to deal with daytime food, let alone even more than that, for arranging snacks or whatever.

This makes my getting sufficient protein very difficult -- it's even difficult to get enough calories, unless I eat something massively high in fat. It means I need to take off work (I work from home, more than 8 hours a day) and go do something about my food.


I am pretty stubborn about food. I can be hungry, and standing looking at a refrigerator stuffed with wonderful fresh foods, and if I don't feel like eating those foods, I will go hungry and walk away. I'd rather be hungry than eat what I don't like or don't feel like. Maybe this means that my psychology has more sway with me than my body... I think that would probably be a fair statement.

I have to like the food that I am eating or I'm not going to eat it, period. Maybe if my parents had forced more veggies on me I'd be different, who knows. I'm finicky as hell. I tend to obsess on a certain food and eat it constantly and then am totally sick of it and can't eat it for a long time. I get weary of foods easily and really need variety. I behave similarly with other subjects, like music, and personal interests, so I think some of this is just personality.

And perhaps because of my lifetime of eating, my body-psychology (not function) feels a genuine need for something that at least can function-as breadish foods (tortillas and bread) since a ton of other food options -- variety! -- open up when you have those.

And sometimes, I want sweets. Do I need them? My body doesn't. My mind apparently does. And maybe that will change. But right now, pretending that is not so would only make me feel deprived and result in me eventually eating off-plan carby-crap that would blow it for me.

So staying on lowcarb is profoundly dependent on my ability to make foods that I like, and enough variety of them that I can stand it. Including breadish stuff and sweets.


There is a good chunk of the lowcarb world online that is fiercely dedicated to the meat-eggs obsession. And it works for 'em, I'm telling you, most of these people drop weight the way I can drop money at amazon.com -- so they've got a lot of leverage for respecting their opinion.

But I can't eat like that. Not sure I can afford it for one. And the "heavy darkness inside me" when I do that is something I really dislike. And I don't have time for the required cooking, for another. And I just flat out can't stand it! Perhaps I will evolve into some kind of paleolithic hunter who really just wants to eat meat and steal eggs from nests and forage for roots and berries, but it certainly isn't that way right now.

Right now, if I'm going to eat twice a day -- let alone more often -- and if I'm going to get anywhere near the protein and calories I'm supposed to have -- I must have good tasting food. Yes! I expect food to be decent tasting! Sue me. Call me a baby. I don't think it's a lot to ask. In today's world of year-round food options at the grocery and online-sales of specialty ingredients, I don't see why this should be such a big thing to ask for.

I think that I am not alone in this. I think this issue is greatly behind why so many people cannot maintain lowcarb in the long run.

People go offplan dominantly because they want to experience a certain taste that is not on plan. They just can't stand it, they have got to have the garlic bread and mashed potatoes at the family barbecue, they've got to have the cranberry sauce and apple pie at thanksgiving. Now, they might have resisted just one or two things. They would have suffered without their favorite yams, for example. But suffering without all of it -- left with plain turkey (gravy is usually made with corn starch) and a few green beans and iced tea, when everyone else is eating richly and drinking eggnog and having warm pies with ice cream -- come on.

Let's get real. This takes monumental willpower on most people's parts. And if the person has not been eating enough protein, and worse if they've been eating stuff like lowcarb bars and other stuff that can spark cravings, their own body is going to be working against them.

If you don't want your employees to steal, your child to do drugs, and you know they are massively exposed to opportunity and encouragement, you wouldn't just shrug it off as their problem if they give in to temptation. You remove temptation, or you do something that helps mitigate that circumstance. Usually both.

So in lowcarb, you arrange it so you don't need to go to the lunch truck for your food. Because let's be honest, even if they offer a couple very simple foods you could eat, the smell of the spicy deepfried burritos and onion rings is going to whack your whole body hard. The olfactory sense is supposed to be the most powerful memory and pleasure stimulating sense there is, and anybody on a diet who ever smelled something they couldn't have will easily vouch for that.

And, when you can't help but be in a situation of massive carby food like family holidays, you provide an alternative: Make your own cranberry sauce, turkey gravy, mashed potatoes, apple pie, and eggnog. Can you do all that on lowcarb?! Sure. OK, it's true, your "mashers" might be from a different veggie that tastes amazingly like potatoes when done that way; your apple pie might be zucchini pie which also tastes amazingly great in a similar way to apple pie, and there might be a couple specialty ingredients like thickeners and sweeteners to make some of the stuff lowcarb instead of highcarb. So what!

If you eat it all at once, won't you go over your daily carb limit? Yeah, all at once, almost for sure. But you could have some of all of that, and all together still ingest lest carbs than a 'small', one-dish 'cheat' on normal carby food. That much won't toss your ketosis generally, and if it causes a few days of carb-cravings you have to beat with protein until they recede, it still is unlikely to have nearly the effect that falling completely off the wagon would.


Some people's lives depend on staying on lowcarb eating. Going off the wagon (as they say) is not just an issue of blowing a diet. It's an issue leading to horrifying ailments in diabetics, and horrifying health and lifestyle issues in obese people, and death to both. This is not something that flippancy is appropriate for, or casual reference to 'well they oughtta have willpower' or anything like that. That is not a proactive way of approaching the question of how to save lives and pursue health for people. If we want to save the lives of the people, we need to look at the reality of how people do eat, how they need to eat, how they can eat, and do everything we can to work out a plan for ourselves, or our families in need, that lets them have a good food life, while being healthy as well. No eating plan works if they are not on it!


What works for me is food that I want to eat. Sometimes that is steaks and chicken and salad and broccoli and a few berries in a protein shake, perfect for lowcarb. Sometimes, it's waffles, or something on bread, or chocolate.

There's only one solution. I have to do enough cooking, experimenting, and gathering recipes, to make myself familiar with a wide variety of lowcarb food options. So if I really want chocolate or lemon or I really want spanish rice or pancakes or eggnog, I have an option to deal with that need.

That need is probably more emotional than physical. But as noted above, it's likely there are few people who don't have some degree of psychology involved in their eating, we just only notice it with the overly- fat or thin people. It is still just as real and it still needs to be addressed if the goal is to keep a person eating on-plan.


I'm reading recipes endlessly. I'm collecting favorites like a new fevered-hobby. I'm experimenting daily with what might be edible for me. I'm imagining new variants and possibilities. I got "Rye flavor" bakers use to add to the flaxbread with a little caraway seed for better bread to have open-topped sandwiches with. I'm trying to get this "Oatmeal flavor" to add to flaxmeal cereal with a little brown sugar extract for a hot cereal-like option.

My mouth and my psychology want the taste. My body doesn't need to really have oatmeal or brown sugar. If I have some of the taste, while I am chewing and swallowing, I am happy. If I try to build in some protein to that, and if other meals better make up the protein/nutrients I might not be getting from that, what difference does it make?? Maybe eventually I can develop more love for what is yet-better food, and less love for stuff that is carbish. But right now, I need to be on the eating plan.

Just like Richard Atkins was not real worried about whether induction phase of his diet was short on veggies, because there was a vastly greater danger of the patient keeling over from a heart attack long prior to a lack of green beans doing them harm -- in the same vein, I am just not so worried about whether it is better to only eat proteins or avoid all forms of artificial sweeteners. The bottom line is that if I am staying on plan, then every single day, I am one step closer to saving my own life. Isn't that really the first and most important thing?

Maybe if I could just ditch a lifetime of breadish-obsession and sweet-needs and chocoholism, I'd be healthier, I'd lose weight faster. But if I want to lose weight at all I have to stay on-plan right? And 'm not sure that can happen at the moment unless I have more variety in tasty food.


I see a lot of people online when I read various lowcarb forums. A surprising number of the food lists on journals are so dull my entire appetite falls asleep from boredom.

Since I started lowcarb, suddenly, I love food!

I paid almost zero attention to food before this. I ate whatever I felt like that was fast and close at hand. If it wasn't, I didn't eat. I ate while doing programming work, while standing, while in the car, with no attention to the detail. My husband learned that if he brought me food I ate and if he didn't, I didn't eat. If he brought me two of something, I ate that seemingly happily; if he brought me six, I ate that the same way. If it was there at hand I would eat it. I've never really cared much about the detail, except that it has to taste good to me and I can't be sick of it. I am very focused on whatever I am doing, and food usually has to interrupt that.


My best friend recently pointed out that not only had lowcarb not made me restricted but it had blossomed my entire interest in food. It has! I find it so exciting to go through the options!

Now like humans of old, I am being forced to put a lot of time and attention toward acquiring what will enable me to survive. Far more than normal. At least till I get handle on this. Some may think it's unreasonable or obsessive, the amount of time I've spent on it (I've heard this complaint recently). Let 'em!

My food is gonna taste good, and it's going to have variety. I insist! I can do this.

Off to the kitchen to experiment. I hear flax pancakes calling me. Viva la Low Carb!

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Good Morning! Have a Carb Craving!

So it was 3am but I was wide awake, and two big boxes of lowcarb products were sitting in my living room, waiting to be unpacked into the Official Low Carb Wall Unit. As I was starting the project I was noting that I was actually kind of hungry, which is rare. I needed more protein, but I didn't want more cheese and didn't want to cook anything as I figured sleepiness would hit any moment.

Unwrapping Netrition's excellent packaging (I rave because they only charge 5 bucks no matter what you buy, so it's fair to be appreciative), which is kinda like lowcarb christmas only much more work getting to the goodies, I came upon two boxes of Atkins "Morning Start" bars. I bought these just to try them. They seemed to have fewer carbs than the other bar-versions and I thought well, maybe now and then I'll need some protein quickly. I thought it might be nice to have stuff like that on hand for emergencies.

I decided right then would be a good time to try one. They were lower on protein and higher on carbs than I suspected, but frowning fiercely at it didn't make that change, so I went ahead and started eating it. I admit, I couldn't help thinking of the sheer quantity of food I would have been able to eat had I not been wasting carbs on this little thing about half the size/weight of a snickers.

The taste wasn't bad. But then it hit me. SWEET!! Not just sugar-sweet or fruit-sweet or cream-sweet but specifically, "carb-food-sweet". Must have been the granola in there. I felt as if I could feel 'carb cravings' starting in me literally as I ate the darn thing, as if it triggered something in me. I chalked it up to my imagination and sleep deprivation, finished it and finished the project, which took awhile, and went to bed.

This morning I woke up hungry. Cranky and hungry. I wanted chocolate; pastries sounded ideal; but mostly I just wanted food and a lot of it. Wanted to eat everything I even thought of.

Didn't have time for a real breakfast before work, so I dragged out one of the many toys netrition brought me -- Designer Whey chocolate peanut butter caramel protein powder (is that decadent or what?!) -- and added some of Blue Diamond's chocolate almond-milk-stuff with a tablespoon of DaVinci caramel and a splash of cream.

Eh. It was ok. I may never be truly fond of anything that contains protein powder, I think it is vile to the molecular level no matter what its brand disguise, but it was drinkable and I'm guessing most people would say they like it, given the endless waxing poetic I hear about protein shakes in all the lowcarb places online.

I was still hungry. Or maybe I was just driven to eat. I prowled the kitchen like I had food-lust and finally found a tiny bag of pecan halves I'd gotten at the store, and ate them. All of them. Then I continued prowling -- and suddenly stopped and said, THAT DAMN BREAKFAST BAR!

In nine days I haven't even been hungry, even despite not eating every other 24hrs! I have had zero cravings for anything. I have not even been tempted by carby food, not because I don't like it but because I've had no appetite, I'm full of protein and water all the time.

Yet I eat one "lowcarb breakfast bar", I actually feel the effects even while eating it, and within six hours I am foraging like an animal fearing starvation!

I should give the rest of them away.

{Bars claimed!}

IF I could only do IF and still get enough protein

I've been doing the IF (intermittant fasting) aspect of my plan since I began lowcarb induction on the 18th. Unlike some who've talked about their experiences with IF, I'm really not hungry during the fasting periods. Of course, I'm in the induction phase, which tends to kill appetite.

The problem is, I can't seem to get the protein I need each day, or anything else for that matter. Since I'm only eating either the first or second half of the day, I have approximately half the food each day that I normally would. A little more the first half, as my change-point is 5pm.

Even without IF, the last time I did LC I found it difficult to eat enough protein in a day. I believe I've been chronically protein deficient for much of my life. I like meat, but it's usually been something only eaten for-sure at dinner and even then in limited portions. Suddenly I'm eating lots of meat yet even with an added protein drink I can't make even 100g per day let alone the 140 or so recommended for my body weight (which is at the highest end of the scale of PPLP's recommended amounts).

4oz of a given meat averages 25g protein. This would suggest six meals a day each with a dose of meat. That is just not going to happen without a drastic schedule and food revamping. This is going to require that I adapt more shakes, or some homemade protein-bars, that much is clear. Still, even assuming I have mega protein at hand, on demand, who the bleep can ingest that much of it in half a day?! Hell it's a major effort to ingest that much in a whole day!

I'm wondering if maybe the IF is not really appropriate for me at this time. NOT because of any quality of the IF itself, which I expect is just as beneficial as suggested by Dr. Eades. But because of being on induction, where perhaps the body chemistry is a little more unpredictable in terms of energy levels (my experience), it's hard for me to know whether I'm weak because my blood sugar has dropped from not eating, or because that's just some side effect of induction.

Mostly, because of being such a high body weight, where the immediate need to get sufficient protein in a day outweighs the longer-term benefit of IF. (Rather like Atkins not caring about his patients on inductions having fewer vegetables, as his primary concern was to get them to drop enough weight, they wouldn't keel over long prior to having time to worry about their vitamin balance!) If I could appropriately arrange my food, IF would work fine, I'm just having trouble with it.

Perhaps some different arrangement of hours, giving me more 'eating hours' per day, would help. Or perhaps, a less than 24 hour period of fasting would help. I don't know. My current IF ended 45 minutes ago; I just had a lovely dinner. But I am thinking of making this my last IF period, until I can get "the habit down" of sufficient protein per day even on a regular LC eating plan... get more familiar with the foods and possibilities so that kind of thing is a breeze.

Maybe new-induction is not an ideal time for IF, not because of anything about induction or IF, but because people just beginning the eating plan may not yet be as good at combining LC things to reach their daily nutritional goals.

OK. Until such time as I can be responsible enough to at least meet 80% of my protein goal most of the time on regular LC, I don't think I should be doing IF, which (due to my own schedule, cooking and eating imperfections) seems to be resulting in me only getting 40-60% of my protein goal each day.

This is NO reflection on IF -- I respect science, and I think the research seems strongly in support of the values of intermittant fasting. I would like to incorporate this into my eating plan at some point in the future, perhaps when I weigh less so my protein demands are lower, perhaps when I'm more experienced with LC so my ability to "flex my food to fit" nutritional demands is greater.

I feel a bit badly about it though, 'cause I wanted to do it long enough to give Dr. Eades feedback on its use during induction and by someone of my weight. Well, I guess that's the thing about any kind of experiment -- no matter what answer you get, it's still an answer, for whatever it's worth.

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