The Theosophy of Produce

I swear.

I had this idea I wanted to do carb cycling and document the results, much like Big Daddy D and his wife have done.

But I suck at doing anything consistently, apparently. It's been like a month and I think I've actually had a proper number of calories and carbs only a few times. No, I'm not overeating, you know me, I've hardly been eating at all, which is just as much screwing up any kind of decent cycle tracking as anything else -- not to mention that since eating and frequently is what causes weight LOSS in me, I've not lost a pound the last month.

That always makes me want to use my scale to whack some "calories is what it's all about!" theorist upside the head.

Today my weight dropped back to 379, which didn't really cheer me up much, since that's what it was a month ago when I started this! My last entire month of calories ingested equals maybe a week's worth if I were eating properly. I so irk myself. Or as Pink so rightly said in a song,

I'm a hazard to myself
Don't let me get me
I'm my own worst enemy

So today we went grocery shopping, as last Friday was my payday. It was, as usual, an overly long, utterly exhausting super walmart trip and put-away project, replete with my always-pleading-for-something ten year old fashion-zombie drama-queen.

I realized while shopping that I was craving fruit. The blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. Green grapes, black grapes, and I stared at the bing cherries like they were little clusters of religious inspiration. The grapefruit and lemons and limes and mandarin oranges. My eyes rolled up in my head.

Of course these are all carby, though the berries less so, so I passed them by thinking, "I'll live without them."

I reached the area filled with pies, cakes (I love buttercream frosting more than sex, is that wrong?), cookies, and really more importantly to my heart, bread of every imaginable kind. Now, if I have the slightest cravings, if I am hungry, if I am vulnerable in any way, this is the section I avoid. These are the aisles I could find myself standing in like a walking coma patient, gently drooling down the chin.

Fortunately, since I don't eat carbs much, I don't really have craving problems.

Oddly, I didn't today either. I stopped in the middle of an aisle and thought about that. Why would I be craving every kind of fruit if I wasn't even blinking over the foods filled with carbs and sugar that dependably haunt me if I'm in "that mode" when I shop? That WAS odd. Usually I can be utterly sure if I crave anything whatsoever, that the high-sugar/carb foods my taste buds love most will give me insulin shock from three feet away.

I looped back into the produce dept. to get my vegetables. Some romaine lettuce, green onions, regular onions, roma tomatoes, poblano peppers, anaheim chilis, banana peppers, red bell peppers, jalapeno peppers -- you may start to suspect I like peppers -- and cilantro. I stood next to the asparagus thinking, "Mmmmm, Asparagus." (You'll have to imagine Homer Simpson's voice for that.)

I don't actually like asparagus.

Now, when I start craving foods that are (a) any shade of green, and (b) that I don't even like, I know only two possible things have happened:

1) I have reached some carb-starvation point after being out of ketosis, and have not yet transitioned back into it, and am so desperate for carbs I'm about ready to go graze on my overgrown lawn.

I don't think this is the case right now.

2) My body is deficient in God knows how many elements, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, etc. and is trying to get me to eat foods likely to have some of them.

But most those fruits are {insert theme from JAWS} CARBY! {theme from Psycho}

And everybody knows that Carby is my equivalent of Cooties. Don't want those!

***

After traversing half the store for everything else imaginable, from lip gloss and eye drops to 5 dozen eggs (only on lowcarb is every other week Easter!), I got to thinking about what some of my journal buddies call "Intuitive Eating."

Basically, that you work on listening to what your body is saying, and you eat that.

Generally, my body is on "no-speakies" terms with me. If I ate intuitively I'd probably starve to death. Or rather, just enough to ratchet the metabolism down yet FURTHER and gain yet more weight, sigh!

Seriously. I think if researchers could figure out my body-fat storage we could save the entire third world from starvation.

Shoulder-Angel gripes at me. "So! Now that your body is finally TALKING TO YOU, after nearly two weeks of almost zero appetite, your only response to this is to ignore all its requests and walk away?!"

Pop!-goes my Shoulder-Devil. Damn that man is ALWAYS on time.

"You'd be eating too many carbs if you had much fruit, and what you CAN have is hardly enough to count. Besides, what if you were so inspired by all that sugar that you {gasp of horror} ATE FRUIT ALL DAY?! I mean, who knows where it could lead? One minute you're eating a cherry and the next minute, bam, you're being heli-vac'd from the bread aisle floor of Super Wal-mart to the Tulsa Cardiology Unit."

Shoulder-Angel snorts. He thinks Shoulder-Devil is a ridiculous drama queen, and that even my child is entirely my own fault, merely living up to that age-old curse of all mothers: "I hope you have a child JUST LIKE YOU!" He seldom seems sympathetic to my side of things, frankly.

He makes his case. "Your eating sucks anyway. Do you honestly think it is better to do the same mostly-foodless habits that made you huge in the first place, than it is to "eat fruit all day because your body probably needs whatever healthy chemicals they may contain?" How many days do you think this could last, anyway? You compost more produce than you eat."

Hmmn. He has a point. Since he is telling me a little of what I want to hear, which happens approximately once every seven years, I'm surprised at how I seem to be on the side of all that's good for once.

SD gets that LOOK that I hear some Weight Watchers leaders get when someone weighs out heavier than last week. (That look, for the record, was the sole province of catholic school teaching nuns until 1967, when they offered franchising.) "You weigh five pounds lesssss than yessssterday," he hissed, with smug satisfaction at having discovered the deep inner core of evil in me: just as things are going well, how could I have such unholy wants, like to EAT A CHERRY?!

"You should be NOT EATING now, so as to keep up that momentum!" he dictated.

I considered it. He's right. I really should. I'm not usually hungry anyway, so why not keep those carbs REALLY low.

Yeah, he's right. I'll get protein! You know, I've been thinking of getting one of those pre-seasoned pork roasts, my kid loves those. Sure, a few carbs, but it's easy to cook in the crockpot after all. I cross the aisle and grab one off the shelf.

I turn it over and read its ingredients, which look like an only slightly abbreviated listing of the current Library of Congress catalog. I see this little fine print that says, "With up to 30% of flavoring solution."

Thirty percent! And I thought the "10%" solution in most modern packaged meats was bad enough! No wonder it felt so... er... mushy, like I was squeezing a silicone breast implant rather than a solid piece of meat.

(Not that I would have ANY idea what those feel like. I am not that kind of girl. Which seems like a real shame sometimes.)

"Ah," said SD, "But hey babe, it's protein! Carbs baaaaad. Protein gooood, right?"

SA rolls his eyes. "Don't you SEE how STUPID this is?!" he says in exasperation.

***

I went back to produce, bought one of nearly every kind of fruit they had, and left.

This week, I'm going to be eating fruit and greek salad and some protein -- I have tons of grass-fed organic beef in my garage chest freezer.

And if a week of eating way too many carbs because I am ingesting fruits kills me, well, it will be all my shoulder Angel's fault for the advice. I trust that if this happens, he will be forced by some kind of Culinary Karma to be my personal driver for the first several years of my time in eternity. Surely he's right. He wouldn't risk that. Would he??

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Edited to Update: So I ate 'a little' carby fruit a few times that week. And the world did not end. And it didn't throw me from ketosis though it did seem to have a delayed effect in possible carb-cravings.

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 . . .

10 Reasons Low Carb is "Dangerous!"

Over on the LowCarber.Org forum, there was a thread based on a linked article about the 10 reasons that lowcarb is allegedly bad, wrong, a problem, etc. (The original link is here.)

Well! There are just SO MANY things to worry about when you're lowcarbing that coming up with a list of only 10 reasons of my own was tough, but I managed it.

So this is my own list of 10 best reasons why a low carb diet can be downright dangerous to the uninformed. BEWARE!


10. If I eat low-fat/high-carb and stay fat, I can insist those around me be my servants (due to my obese helplessness) the rest of my natural life. Low carb has already dropped 85 pounds off me in 3 months. Not only do I not require someone else do my shopping now, I actually FEEL like doing it myself. Low-carb has already deprived me of some of my life of ease. They never warned me about this.

9. Thanks to lowcarb wiping out my acid reflux, I no longer am forced to sleep sitting up, and no longer wake up several times a night, staying up for hours. Do you have any idea how much email I'm not getting done that I used to? I know my dear family misses terribly my 3am tomes about the most miniscule details of my thoughts about my life. This is sure to cause a great rift between us any minute now. The bonds of family are precious, and low carb is ruining it for me by letting me sleep blissfully through the night! Just one more nasty side effect those lowcarbers never warn you about.

8. Now that I eat lots of protein, avoid starches and carby stuff it turns out I'm mildly sensitive to, and I stay in benign dietary ketosis all the time ("BDK" for short, or, "It isn't diabetic ketoacidosis you moron" for long), I find my desire to eat useless junkfoods that I loved but helped me weigh nearly 500lbs has gone away. No more am I gasping like a heroin addict getting a fix with the milk carton at 2am. No longer am I eating enough carbs in pasta to overdose a marathoner and still knock me out from the blood sugar drop a short time later. But do we not call on God to help us fight such trials? Lowcarb has already come between me and my Divine Pleading by making it easy for me to eat healthy food all on my own. Lowcarbers hide the spiritual risks or nobody would dare try this. We're talkin' about the fate of your SOUL, man.

7. Recently I discovered that having mental clarity all day during my job went a long way toward hearing and understanding what everybody around me was saying -- and sometimes, not saying. Did anybody ask me if I REALLY wanted to know that kind of information? Did it not occur to anybody that "ignorance is bliss," and that being a space cadet has been proven to lower job stress? Sure, I'll lose weight and be healthier but what if I die of the added stress that "comprehension" of what my boss wants has forced on me? Yes, it's these kind of insidious little things that those fad lowcarbers will never tell the newbies.

6. Last week I was traveling, and as I noted in my blog, a young cabbie spent half my taxi ride making eyes at me and suggesting he liked "big women." Had I not felt friendly and energetic and, may I add, had lowcarb not restored my complexion to its former healthy glow, I seriously doubt I would have been faced with this kind of ten-minute-temptation. Do people really understand what kind of danger to a married woman lowcarbing could be? There may come a day when people actually look at me without sneering, looking away, or bursting into uncontrollable laughter. This could definitely loosen my morals in a matter of minutes just from the novelty of it, frankly. And do you suppose this constant challenge to Moral Integrity is ever mentioned by lowcarbers? Nooooo. You'd think people ALWAYS looked and felt better and it was no issue at all. Well I disagree. People considering lowcarb should be warned of this potential!

5. Now that I have more energy, my child is getting to bed on time more often, and my husband is actually having to answer to having a relationship with me. Neither of them are particularly happy about this. I find the better I feel about myself, the more I actually expect other people to treat me decently. This kind of imbalanced lack of subservience on my part is causing all kinds of ripples in my life. Family strife! Social dissent! Lowcarb actually reminded me I was worth something and had the right to make my life what I want it to be. I'm sure my more dysfunctional family members would like to 'deprogram' me from this lowcarb cult so they could live comfortably with me being appropriately yet quietly miserable. Yet another wide-reaching side effect that few people ever mention when discussing carb counts.

4. Since going on lowcarb, I actually wake up in the morning. I don't feel like I am 20,000 leagues under the sea anymore. I am even capable of getting up and functioning without a major injection of some kind of drug like caffeine. The water drop and weight loss has made me more limber, and I move around a lot less like Frankenstein or Egor than I used to. My shift into being a bit more of a morning person has grossly offended my family, my coworkers, and all eight (!) of my cats. Do other eating plans cause this kind of interpersonal contention? I think not. Lowcarb ought to come with a warning label.

3. Now that I eat lowcarb, I'm ingesting more vegetables than I ever have in my life. I've begun depending a lot on my garden for fresh vegetables and strawberries and scallions on demand. Thanks to low carb, Walmart is making that much less money off my shopping every week. Does nobody even care about the impact that more financial self-sufficiency and healthier food might have if everyone ate like that? How many jobs could be lost just because of millions of backyard chili peppers? Our country's economy depends on us to buy Mac & Cheese, McDonald's and deep-fried Fish & Chips! (Not to mention our medical industry's financial well-being.) Lowcarb must be downright un-patriotic.

2. With all my new energy and enthusiasm, I have begun to think about sex a LOT more. A lot. More. Do I really need to elaborate here. Baby you just have NO idea. Nobody ever warned me that eating steak and eggs instead of fruit loops would turn me into a brazen hussy. (Maybe it was really The Forbidden Steak all along. Which would explain complaints that the opposite sex is perceived as meat.) Did I mention... a LOT more? Hmmmn. Maybe I should have made this reason #1.

1. Assuming I continue this questionably-sane eating plan known as lowcarb, there's a very real possibility that, just as my doctor warned me, down the road, I might actually live to see my little girl grow up. I might not keel over dead before she's 12. I might not even develop any major diseases. I might, while we're on that subject, actually live long enough to have her bad mouthing me as a teen -- or, heaven forbid, pawning her squalling little babies off on me someday. That's a whole lot of life and stress between then and now that I'm probably going to have to put up with, since DYING becomes so much less an option, short of swan-diving into traffic, the longer I low carb.

Let this list serve as a warning to all.

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