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Showing posts with the label low-carb

I Needed New Pants after Thanksgiving

When you have steak, salad, fermented apple/cranberry treat and keto brownies for Thanksgiving, your pants aren't uncomfortable later...unless you've been losing weight and they're starting to fall off. After several months of lifting weights a couple of times a week, I've had to start wearing a belt and cinch it two or three notches to keep some of my pants on. My other pants are just wearing out.  Lettuce and arugula in my garden in late November--can you believe it? So I made a rare Black Friday shopping trip this year. I couldn't just order my old pants in smaller size since my shape had changed--my waist got smaller but my hips stayed about the same. A nearby Ross didn't have any jeans that fit; everything at the Salvation Army store had more wear than what I was wearing. A young woman who seemed to be having a conversation with herself followed me around the racks. I left and headed for the outlet mall in Edinburgh 36 miles away.  If the crowds there were

Cereal Killers: The Movie. Watch it Here!

Yekra Player Yekra is a revolutionary new distribution network for feature films. Cereal Killers * * * * * The film follows Donal – a lean, fit, seemingly healthy 41 year old man – on a quest to hack his genes and drop dead healthy by avoiding the heart disease and diabetes that has afflicted his family. Donal’s father Kevin, an Irish gaelic football star from the 1960s, won the first of 2 All Ireland Championships with the Down Senior Football Team in 1960 before the biggest crowd (94,000) ever seen at an Irish sporting event. When Kevin suffered a heart attack later in life, family and friends were shocked. How does a lean, fit and seemingly healthy man – who has sailed through cardiac stress tests – suddenly fall victim to heart disease? Can a controversial diet consisting of 70% fat provide the answers? Losing weight, improving lipids and eliminating inflammation on a high-fat, low-carb diet? Yes--even if you have the genes for inflammation and heart dise

Little Meals aren't always Possible

Let me tell you about the assault trial I was involved in. Last Friday, I showed up for jury duty around 8 AM. Since the court was having some technical difficulties, we had to wait an hour just to get started hearing instructions from the judge. By the time the lawyers got a satisfactory jury put together, it was noon. The trial commenced after lunch at 1:30. From then until 8 PM, with a few short breaks, we listened to witnesses, arguments, lots of objections, and instructions from the court. We deliberated for about ten minutes and found the defendant not guilty on both charges. We agreed that the evidence just wasn't there (we were surprised the case even got to court), and that the three feuding neighbors deserved each other. On a day like that, needing frequent little meals would have been a major inconvenience. Our breaks weren't long enough for us to go out for a snack, unless it was to a vending machine. There wasn't anyplace to store food that needed refrig

Body-for-Life v. Low-Carb: Pictures

Ten years ago today (yes, the day before Thanksgiving), I started Body-for-Life. BFL involves eating several small meals per day that balance protein and carbohydrate and minimizes dietary fat. Daily workouts involve intense weightlifting or cardio. One day a week is a free day, where you don't exercise and eat whatever you want. Initially, I lost weight, gained muscle and felt great. Eventually, though, I gained back the weight and developed cavities and upper GI problems. The cardio workouts left me exhausted. Free day foods found their way into the other days. I developed GERD, an esophageal ulcer, chronic sinus congestion and a constantly upset stomach. I've written about the logical fallacies of BFL here , here and here . If only I'd read the book with a more critical eye back then, I 'd have saved myself most, if not all, of the misery. The endpapers of the Body-for-Life book are before and after photos taken 12 weeks apart. Let me share some photos here. F

Non-Dairy, Low Carb Hot Chocolate

My new favorite dessert: coconut milk hot chocolate. 1/2 c coconut milk 1 square (1/2 oz) baking chocolate 1 squirt (1/8 t) liquid stevia extract hot water In a saucepan, heat the coconut milk over a medium-low flame. Add the chocolate and stir it as it melts. Add the stevia, stir, and pour into a cup. Add hot water to fill the cup. Net carbs: 6.3g. Don't tell your lipophobic loved ones there's 32g of fat (25g of it saturated). 

Good News about a Binge Eater

Last month I blogged about my friend's grandson "James," a ten-year-old binge eater who was nearly 40 pounds overweight. James's grandmother is a force to be reckoned with; I've been whispering in her ear. She's been reading books from my health collection, and then some: Why We Get Fat, The New Atkins for a New You, Heartburn Cured, The Vegetarian Myth, and Slow Burn.  I also mentioned Dr. Atkins' advice for binge eating, which he treated: binge on protein and fat. Disabused of the notion that fat is bad and eating less is good, she's gotten James some snacks like Crystal Light (a no-calorie drink), boiled eggs, celery and peanut butter and apples and yogurt, and labeled them with his name. It seems he's caught on to low-carbing: his grandmother saw that when he fixed a plate for himself, he skipped the hamburger bun and just took meat and salad. She said he played outside all day Sunday (he didn't have that energy before) and looks well. He

Celebrity Endorsements

"I am not a role model." -Charles Barkley  Possibly the wisest words any celebrity ever said: And so it is with all entertainers flogging drugs, diet and fitness programs: they aren't paid to actually know how any of these work. An entertainer may not know any more than you do about diabetes, losing weight or getting in shape. What these entertainers have that you might not is stage training, the gift of gab, and a contract to shill for a drug company, weight loss program, or food manufacturer. I'm not accusing anyone of lying, but do you really think someone like Paula Deen, as spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk , is going to tell you how to keep your blood sugars under control without drugs? (Novo Nordisk is a major insulin manufacturer and sponsors flawed research supposedly showing that low-carb diets aren't any more effective than high-carb diets for controlling diabetes. See this .) Are some doctors paid shills, too? Oh yes. In fairness, a lot of p

Meditation for Heartburn?

A recent message on the elevator TV in the building where I work said that meditation could relieve mild heartburn. A better message would have been that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I can see how relief from stress (which may or may not result from meditation) could relieve heartburn: if tensing the stomach muscles pushes acid into the esophagus, relaxing them will keep the stomach acid where it belongs.  Problem: people are often in situations where they can't meditate. The larger issue is that if something about your lifestyle requires a lot of maintenance such as meditation, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the lifestyle. An easy way to prevent heartburn is with a low-carb diet. Try it for a few days and see for yourself. Limit foods like bread, cereal, pastries, cookies, juice, noodles, cake, sweets, potatoes, rice, fruit, and other high-carb food, and see if your symptoms subside. Next post: how to politely turn down holiday food.

A High Principle Diet

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. I spent a pleasant afternoon last Labor Day weekend at a fair canoodling with someone I'd just met. It ended awkwardly when I wouldn't go to his house, and he didn't offer any other suggestions. I don't go home with people I've just met, period, no exceptions. It's a first principle of mine. This, and a post by Dr. Richard Feinman about portion control really meaning self control made me think about sticking to a healthy diet.  "Most people know not to eat too much," Dr. Feinman says in the comments. "The question is how?" Tactics like eating a small portion and waiting to see if you're hungry for more, filling up on good food before going to a party, and taking healthy snacks with you all help. So does getting moral support from other low-carbers. But there will be times when you're hungry, surrounded by carbs, and without snacks or a nagging spouse. Or worse,

Atkins on Salad

"...you're allowed green salad with your lunch and dinner. Yes, even though this first week of the diet is called a carbohydrate-free diet and lettuce contains a tiny bit of carbohydrate....Given the amount of carbohydrate in these two salads, what happens in the body is approximately the same in 99 percent of dieters as if no salad had been eaten. So why not eat those salads? They are a lifesaver. To eat just protein and fat without the garden-fresh crispness that salad provides is a drudgery. So I thank the Lord that greens contain so little carbohydrate. Those salads make all the difference between a diet that's aesthetic, appetizing, human, and one that's an uncivilized drag." --Dr. Robert Atkins(1) Dr. Atkins also said, "A patient christened the [Atkins Diet] the steak and salad diet--and that does rather sum up the plot of it."(2) So much for low carb diets in general and Atkins in particular being all-meat diets. Most people I see commenting onlin

Cigna is Making Progress

Yesterday as I put my lunch in the refrigerator at work, I noticed a bunch of unfamiliar people in the break room. One of them, Pepe, started in: they were there for the health fair, they would check your cholesterol, the sugar in your blood, your height, your weight, and it would just take six minutes. A coworker asked him if he'd ever considered a career in sales. Just for blog fodder, I participated. They really were fast, and one even found me at my desk (in an office nearly half the size of a city block) after the tests were finished. My HDL cholesterol was 65--up from 42 from a year and a half ago, and up from 57, where it was last year when I'd been three months a low-carb diet . A level over 60 is considered good. I haven't taken any medication to make this happen. I went on a low-carb diet and eliminated wheat. I also take vitamin and mineral supplements in addition to a high-nutrient diet. What impressed me more, though, was that the nurse (and Cigna) said that bl

Smackdowns Galore

Pity the proponents of high-carb diets and calorie restriction. They've had the roughest week since Denise Minger dismantled the China Study. First, Jimmy Moore of the Livin' la Vida Low Carb blog dropped the bombshel l that a member of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Committee (U.S.) publicly stated that there was no scientific basis for the U.S. dietary guidelines. Excerpt below--see Jimmy's blog for the whole jaw-dropping scoop. Joanne Slavin, PhD, RD, professor of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota, was the head of the Carbohydrate Committee and on the Protein sub-committee for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Scientific Advisory Committee. She was invited to be one of the guest speakers at The 9th Conference on Preventative Nutrition in Tel Aviv, Israel on May 18, 2011. Perhaps Ms. Slavin felt more at liberty to express her true feelings about the final version of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines being overseas and didn’t realize that I’d have eyes and ears l

Is Eating Dessert for Breakfast a Key to Staying Slim?

" Could yogurt be a key to staying slim?" asks the Washington Post . They look to Harvard for answers. But instead of looking to the priests of nutrition, let's see if we can answer this for ourselves. What is yogurt? According to this fact sheet from Dannon, The basic yogurt recipe is simply fresh milk, sweeteners, cultures and flavors or fruit. Plus acesulfame K , Aspartame, cornstarch, fructose, gelatin, malic acid, pectin and/or phosphates. According to this site , 4 oz (half of cup) of Dannon Activia yogurt contains 110 calories and 19 grams of carbohydrate, 17 of which are sugar, none of which are fiber. Compare the yogurt to 4 oz of ready-to-eat chocolate pudding : 153 calories and 25 grams of carb, 19 of which are sugar. Except for a few extra calories (think two bites), these products are comparable. While I'm loathe to quote doctors, one of them told me that I should take lactinex (a probiotic) while on antibiotics, and that the quantity in yogurt wasn't

Beat the Heat: Beyond the Barbecue Grill

It's hard to believe that last Monday, it was so cold and rainy I wore my winter coat. Today, it's 96 degrees outside, and 79 degrees in my house. There's no central central air conditioning to crank up, just a very slow-growing shade tree on the west side of the house, a medium sized catalpa tree on the south, and three ceiling fans. Need I say I don't want light the oven? If you want to avoid heating up your home in the summer, low-carb is great: there's no pasta to boil, no potatoes to roast, and not much bread, cookies, cake or other baked goods to bake. So what's for dinner? Deli meats, kippers, salad, olives, tomatoes, liverwurst on celery, cheese, dip (just add Mrs. Dash to sour cream) and some tasty parmesan chips I just discovered at Whole Foods. Some of these are prepared foods that are pricey. If you want to save by cooking your own meat, cut it into small pieces or make a thin patty if it's ground so that it cooks faster. Consider using a pressur

Hitting it Over the Plate

Have you seen the new government food plate? What do you think? Here's my food plate. It's pretty typical of what my best friend and I ate during our vacation of biking, dancing, clubbing, shopping, and generally running around . (Full disclosure: she ate quite a bit more carb than I did.) Clockwise from the top, we have the fatty meat group (pepperoni), the full-fat dairy group (the caramel colored food is a bit of sweet Norwegian cheese), the fatty vegetable group (olives), and the carby vegetable group (tomatoes). To the right is the wine group (Sterling syrah from California's central coast; we also loved Bicyclette from southern France). My weight gain on the vacation: nada. Except for the wine, this is how I normally eat; I just upgraded for my best friend's visit. How it works: carbs aren't the only source of energy for your body. It can run on dietary fat, too. (In fact, your body needs dietary fat for maintenance and repairs. Unless your blood sugar is cras

Break from Blogging

Over the past few weeks, I've been on a break from blogging. In anticipation of a visit by my best friend (from out of state), I whipped the yard into shape. I weeded, planted, trimmed, and hauled about 10 lawn and leaf bags' worth of trimmings to the alley. It still looks a bit like a "before" picture, but an unusually cold spring has put everything behind, and the yard is designed to explode into blooms in summer. I've also been painting. The last time I painted the living and dining rooms was almost 15 years ago and it was time for a fresh coat. I didn't finish, but I'm off to a good start. Since my friend arrived, we've been cycling around Denver, shopping, dancing, clubbing, drinking, and eating gourmet food (her generous description of my cooking, and honest assessment of most of the meals we've eaten at restaurants--from a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place on Federal to a high-end Italian wine bar on Wynkoop). We've even had time to do some

Weight Gain/Loss on the Cavity Healing Diet

It just goes to show that we all react differently to the same diet. My dog, Molly, and I eat pretty much the same thing: a lacto-paleo, nutrient rich diet that I hope will heal our minor cavities. I've lost one to two pounds, but Molly has gained weight: she's 73 pounds and I had to loosen her collar. Of course, it may be that her owner is simply feeding her too much; even on a low-carb diet, some people and dogs gain weight with too much food. It could also be a thyroid problem, which the vet is checking. Looking around the web, it seems a 60-pound dog (which I'd like Molly to be) should eat around 1100 to 1200 calories per day. Molly may be eating a little more than that, but she probably needs fewer calories on the diet we follow. Another site recommended about 1.25 pounds of meat per day for a 60-pound dog. (The vet recommended diet dog food to get the calories just right. I didn't ask him if he weighed out his own food and counted calories to avoid going over.) In

Potassium Power and the Dry Skin Epidemic

Just over a month ago, I (along with my dog) set out on a cavity healing diet : low in carb, grain-free, high in vitamins A and D, and high in calcium and phosphorus. I've made some changes along the way and listed what Molly and I are now eating at the end of this post. Potassium Power The potassium pills seem to have put the pep back in my step. This weekend, I worked both days helping the tax secretary, whipped my house back into shape, and I'm ready to go out and tear up the dance floor tonight. The Dry Skin Epidemic Since starting this diet, after I stopped eating raw eggs (since I seemed to be allergic to them), my skin has looked better than it ever has. My skin improved last year after I started a low-carb, high-fat diet (more resilient, less callousing, and lot less dry), but now I'm cautiously optimistic that my niggling adult acne is completely gone. A diet's effect on skin was brought home to me while I read an article in People magazine (no jokes, please) t

TMJ and Palpitations

A couple of unexpected consequences have occurred with my new, (mostly) lacto-paleo, high-nutrient diet. My TMJ has almost disappeared. Let me tell you how my case of TMJ came about. It was a Sunday night in November 2006. I was on my way to a dance when an SUV came flying out of the Walgreens parking lot and broadsided my car on the driver's side. Once I stopped my car (which was totaled), the teeth on the right side of my mouth felt like they'd shifted from being clenched so hard. A few months later, the pain in my jaw was so bad that it kept me up nights. I couldn't fall asleep on my right side. Splint therapy helped, but as recently as last October after a dance workshop weekend , my jaw was painful for weeks afterward. So, why didn't I just stop clenching my jaw? When I realized I was doing it, I did, as far as I was able. But it's kind of like telling someone to stop having a tension headache. Things like relaxation, pain relievers, massage and a

Fiber FAIL: Why you Don't Feel Full on Salad

I keep hearing that fiber is filling. I can just picture it: my father (in his younger days) coming in from a day of baling hay or elk hunting or welding and saying, "Betty, can you fix me some broccoli?" I don't exert myself nearly that much (I work in an office) and I could eat salad all day without getting full. Why? Because fiber is more or less indigestible. That's why low-carb plans like Protein Power allow you to subtract fiber from total carbs, resulting in net carbs, which is the thing you're supposed to limit on a low-carb diet. Probably, people who say that fiber is filling are speaking in relative terms. Sugar and starch--which are very digestible--can cause your blood sugar to spike and then drop one to three hours later, making you hungry. (Starch is the old fashioned name for those wonderful complex carbohydrates we're constantly told are good for us. It's the same thing that in bygone days, people avoided, along with sugar, to lose weight.)