Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Anthropology professor Brian Fagan on diets of human ancestors: The Neanderthals were expert hunters, but when did hunting begin? Once again, the answer lies in Africa. Homo ergaster [a human ancestor from two million years ago] was an omnivore, completely accustomed to quite drastic environmental changes in the distribution of open grassland, forest, and semiarid terrain and the dietary shifts that went with them. Unlike their predecessors, these people were serious hunters and meat eaters--because they dwelled for the most part in open country, where meat was the dominant, though not, of course, only food source. We know this because the bones of numerous large mammals appear alongside stone butchering tools in some of the archeological sites that document their wanderings, whereas none appear in sites that predate them. .... Brain size is largest among species that hunt large mammals opportunistically while cooperating with and depending on one another. Brain size also correl

A commenter on another blog said, "Calories count: ask any woman over 40. Oh wait, you notice LCHF never mentions them or shows their success stories." I'm not sure where this person got that idea. Maybe he's new to LCHF; it seems to me like there's a lot of us out there who eat this way without counting calories. Three years ago, at age 41, 20 pounds fell off when I whacked back the carbs. I've kept it off and stayed pretty close to what I weighed in high school. Amy Alkon , Mary Dan Eades and Jackie Eberstein come to mind as LC ladies of a certain age; I'm sure I'm forgetting dozens more. Here's a photo of me taken June 3, 2013, age 44. (I wanted to show my best friend what I wore to see Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson, since she pictured me in a lavender shirt, white linen pants, and starchy bag with a bottle of Perrier.)

Living in an area with hot, dry summers and poor soil, the plants in my yard live in spartan conditions. I don't constantly water them or use chemical fertilizers. And look how skinny and healthy they are! Festuca glauca. California poppy. Achillea 'Moonshine.' Iris. Clockwise from top: tansy, iris, lavender cotton, California poppy, indigo, juniper. Sundrops. Legacy buffalo grass. Love in a mist. Kidding aside, the plants don't have thin leaves because they live on scant rations in harsh conditions. They thrive in those conditions because they shed heat and collect water well with those thin leaves. California poppies have a tap root and irises have shallow tubers, which help both of them thrive in poor, dry soil. Buffalo grass has a short growing season--it doesn't green up until late May. Most of them come from places like the Sonoran Desert, the western Great Plains and the Mediterranean that have hot, dry summers. They

It's day 2 of being back on a very low-carb diet. I'm off the sweet potatoes (you know, those wonderful safe starches) and I've cut back the dark chocolate. I thought it would take a couple of weeks to keto-adapt and get back to feeling good, but I'm already feeling like my old self: no more upset stomach, no dragging myself out of bed late this morning, no nap on the bus tonight, and no mid-afternoon grogginess. And no more humiliating thought that Alice Cooper , who started his band before I was born, could probably run circles around me. Blogger Kia Robertson could use some shame. She's the activist who made a useful idiot of her nine-year-old daughter at a McDonald's shareholders meeting. Mrs. Robertson, through her spokeschild, whined about McDonald's food and marketing. I doubt the Robertsons are shareholders in McDonald's. Call me a traditionalist, but a shareholders meeting is for shareholders, particularly grown-up ones who understand the b

Dark chocolate and sweet potato fries are taking up too much of my diet--so much that I probably got up to about 70g of carb a day. That's probably too much carb to make ketones and too little glucose to feel energetic. Walk down the middle of the road, Margaret Thatcher said, and you get hit by the traffic from both sides. This might be the reason I've been tired and my stomach is upset so often these days. (Upper GI problems were the original reason I started a low-carb diet.) I overslept by an hour this morning after forgetting to reset my alarm, even after nine hours' sleep and my dog trying to get me up. My dog is going on a stricter diet, too, since she's up to 70 pounds. She eats low-carb home cooking, but needs to eat less of it. Bye-bye, balanced diet. I'm going to use pork rinds and emulsion sauce* instead of sweet potato fries as a vehicle for fat and salt. And no more denial about my chocolate habit. I was good today--I had about 30g of carb--and

I hope I have this much energy when I'm 64. I know people my age who complain that they feel old. I just hope I look better and don't have to get any body parts chopped off.

What a relief to be finished!