Things I've Neglected Since Reducing Carbs

Back in January, I stopped eating wheat (except for a few cookies on Sundays) and in February I cut back on sugars in all forms. A few weeks ago, I cut out starchy, sugary foods like fruit, potatoes, beans, yogurt, and Odwalla protein drinks that pack 40 grams of sugar per bottle from my diet. Along with neglecting carbs, I've been neglecting a few other things:

Sudafed. I can't remember the last one I took.
Ibuprofin. I've had two tablets in the past several weeks; I used to take them almost daily.
Gas-X (a gas reducer).
Zantac (an acid reducer).
My chiropracter.
Trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour. When you can whiz through the day on seven hours' sleep, and get by on six, why go to bed early?
Four-hour naps on Sunday afternoons. See above.
Weighing myself. My sagging jeans tell me I'm losing fat.
Expensive skin care products. I don't know whether my skin is that much better or my priorities have changed, but buying anything fancier than drug store sunscreen or lotion seems crazy now.
Mascara. See above.
Diet drinks. The other night I bought a SoBe Lean Green Tea, which I used to love, and found it had a chemical taste and slick feel to it. And I haven't touched a diet Dr. Pepper in months.
Daily workouts. I still work out just as hard, but not six days a week.

Comments

1972: Carole King, MAS*H and...Food for 2014?

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In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...

Mince Meat Pie Recipe, low carb

The star of Christmas dinner this year was made of unlikely ingredients. Fruit and beef tongue sound high carb or unpalatable, but mince meat pie was so popular 250 years ago that it was in many cookbooks from the time--and it wasn't just for Christmas. My version cuts the carbs by using tart cooking apples, cranberries, monk fruit sweetener and a nut flour crust. The main flavors are orange and slightly tart fruit; the meat and fat make it filling. Have it for dessert or with coffee or tea for breakfast. Make some soup with the collagen-filled broth and discover how tender and tasty the rest of the beef tongue is. Worth the time and effort. IMPORTANT--start this recipe the day before. Links in the recipe go to hard-to-find ingredients and directly to the cookbook with the recipe for the pie crust. (I made the almond flour variation of the crust.) Recipe 1 beef tongue (I get mine here ; look for farms or ranches in your area that sell directly to consumers) 2 Granny Smith apples 1 ...

My New Favorite Sweetener

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Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...

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