Lowcarb Freedom of Speech

Recent events in the lowcarb online world -- insert here endless quantities of ranting, whining, defending, attacking, reasoning, pleading, and more -- have made it clear that one of the problematic issues in this 'online field' is that of censorship.

Now, it's pretty normal that any forum has the right and NEED to keep their forum sane, and on the more contentious and/or long threads that is an even bigger deal. But sometimes that is a bit overdone. And sometimes the editorial problems go on at blogs, as well.

Recently, an editor at one allegedly public and fair lowcarb place took a comment that was very negative toward him, in response to a certain post, REWROTE IT to be fawning over him, and then thanked the person for being so nice (and "God bless you" as well, sheesh). The person making the comment had no way to edit it--and finally changed his username to something that made it clear what had happened, as his only defense.

I think this makes clear that what the lowcarb world could really use is a single, centralized place where ANYBODY can post things that have been edited, deleted or banned, from online lowcarb areas. (I am referring to lowcarbers here. Not to trolls.) They can make 'tags' of their own usernames so they'd have a direct link not only to each post, but to a category that was entirely their own contributions. Any author can add a link back to their own blog(s) as well.

Editorial 'fair policy' as well as actual 'abuse' prevents sometimes important points or information from being provided to the public. I think if eventually multiple authors contributed to this, it would be pretty interesting reading.

So I made this blog: LOWCARB FREEDOM OF SPEECH

It is open to anybody who requests it. You need a gmail/blogger account, I can invite people to gmail if needed. Email me at thedivinelowcarb@blogspot.com or post a comment here and I will give author access.

If you don't want an account but still want your content posted, email it to me with the date/time and location posted, your username at that place and what happened to it, and I'll post it on your behalf, or other authors there can.

Seriously, I think this is important to our field, and I hope people who have blogs will consider linking to it and using it themselves if they encounter 'editorial' issues anywhere online related to lowcarb.

PJ

Midnight Munchies and the Ode to Carbs

I know. Me of all people. Mistress of forgot-to-eat-fulness. I actually had an appetite a little bit ago. And I wanted to be bad. I wanted to be a frozen taquito ho. My body said yes, yessss, YES! And I actually got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I stood in the darkness in my bare feet in the center of the kitchen. It was 1:14am in the morning and I was humming a few bars of "Ode to Carbs".

Ode to Carbs

They slither here through quantum dimensions of cold
Through the magic of cupboards, now nearly bare
Which call in the night to their playmates of old
Come pasta, tortillas, and chocolates so rare!

I hear subtle shuffling of boxes and bags
The cellular memories are filling my room
'To all of the cookies I've loved before'
--and anything frozen I ate with a spoon

My body is yearning for thick pizza crust
For garlic bread toast and fresh cookie dough
For waffles with light powdered sugar as dust
And frozen taquitos you nuke till they glow

Oh, carbohydroxilatechemicalstuff!
Ingredient glories I cannot pronounce
You're still somewhere deep in my heart.

You fuzz up my brain so I fail to remember
All the good reasons why just last September
I emptied my household of starch.

But how I recall when we were still lovers
Oh pasta, your flatulence moved me so!
Your gluten ensured not a pound would desert me
For 10 minutes high and a 2 hour low.

O carbs how I long for the thrill at my peril!
I lust for eclairs though my oversized heart
Beats quickly while insulin slithers into me
And says 'I'm ready! Last dance in the dark?'

It's night. So quiet.
Clock clickedy-ticking.
I'd abandon my diet
For canned frosting-licking.

I want me some CARBS!
In the MILLIONS! Sounds GREAT!
So I foraged, house-wide --

...but I only found steak.



Friggin low carb.
Thanks to this stupid eating plan,
I might actually live another day to whine about it.

-- PJ

I seldom suffer carb cravings. Or any appetite at all for that matter. Must be hormonal!

Sweetbread Bowl (aka 'Mock Danish')
version 162 out of at least 1.7 million. Ideal midnight munchie.
(original 400+ message recipe/variant thread is here.)

1 large egg
1-2 oz cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon fiberfit powder (or 2 tsp sweetener equivalent)
some kind of extract or flavor (tonight I used vanilla & blueberry)
some kind of LC jam or berries (tonight I used frozen wild blueberries)

Use a cheap round plastic microwaveable bowl.
Nuke cream cheese till soft (if it isn't already).
Mix up well with egg, with fork.
Add all the other junk but leave some jam/berries out, mix with fork.
(There'll be little chunks of cream cheese. That's fine.)
Nuke it for about 1.5 minutes.
Add jam/remaining berries to middle, nuke another 30 seconds.
Let cool slightly.
Eat.
Live another day.

.

The Anti-Food Dilemma

We're pretty much culturally indoctrinated to think that all weight problems relate to too-much-food intake. That the real exercise needed for weight-loss is "push-aways". So it seems like a no-brainer that if you want to be thinner, you eat less.

This concept is so ingrained in most of us that even when we KNOW, intellectually, that we need to eat calories 'near' our basal metabolic rate in order to prevent our metabolism slowing down, it is often difficult to do.

Even though we may KNOW that for our body (this is my case) we need to eat regularly throughout the day, the more often the better, still, STILL!!, it is difficult to do it. At least for me. I'm working on that.

So, from late May to earliest June, I actually ate food. Not perfectly, no, forgot my supplements, should have had more water, failed the eat-every-3-hours test, but in general, every day I ate around 3 times. I was just restarting lowcarb eating. My calories should have been higher but they weren't terribly low.

I recovered from my months of high carb eating, and lost 24 lbs the first week, which is merely water/glycol of course, not fat. When I dropped the carbs, my body dropped the water it holds to process them.

From early June to the end of June, my eating sucked. There were a few days that I ate a few times and made it to nearly 2000 calories, but by few I mean... maybe three days out of that month. Most the time, I forgot to eat... I might get a couple slimfasts down a day... I just wasn't getting nearly enough calories. The new ketosis had killed my appetite, plus I'm lazy for cooking, and I have some issue with not-eating as a control thing I think (working on it!), so suffice to say, my calories were way too low and my eating frequency was too.

On June 5 I weighed 379. But in the whole of June, I varied from around there to 390, all over the map of that range, back and forth, as if my body couldn't decide what to do, and refused to go much under that. Usually when my eating fails like that, I don't vary so much, I just don't lose anything at all. Period. By the end of June, my weight was 378. Four weeks, 1 pound. For someone who allegedly has a BMR of nearly 4000 calories a day, and was only eating <1000 for nearly a month, that is not quite simple math.

Late on July 1 I decided to get with the program and really start eating more regularly. It still was imperfect, my calories still low, but I made more of an effort to eat more often and/or to eat more food each day. The next day I began that time of month, so my weight went up 10 lbs which is normal for that. I kept on working on eating more regularly. Even if that meant having a couple tablespoons of peanut butter, I tried to eat SOMETHING every few hours.

As of today, five days later after I began eating halfway decently again, my weight 'whooshed' from 388 (well, 378 if you remove the TOM water gain) to 370 -- finally for the first time breaking that seeming roadblock range. The only difference is that I finally started eating more calories, and more often.

I have seen this repeatedly over my several cycles of lowcarbing. If I don't eat enough, I don't lose weight, even though my BMR is allegedly over 4000 calories (hahahaha). When I make a POINT to eat many times through the day, and at least a couple thousand calories, the weight begins coming off.

Since this contradicts the idea that if we just eat fewer and fewer calories we'll get skinnier in no time, I thought I'd make a point to post about it.

***

Click on the pic for Pink's Video. It's a spoof of modern females in the media and the body obsession.

What do you guys think about the blog in blue and green? I'll probably change it back eventually to the red/white/orange/yellow it used to be.

370 is a new record for me. The last month, with my weight seeming to go up more often than down, and me having the worst reaction of not-eating partly in response to that, I was getting SO demoralized about it all.

I'm excited for my progress again. Finally!!

PJ