Skip to main content

Many Refuse Bread & Other Good News

Pre-low-carb, a Sunday afternoon would have found me taking a four-hour nap. Since I no longer need them unless I'm sick, I've been working in the yard today.

A couple of women came by while I was trimming the front yard. The hedge trimmer seemed to frighten them, but they stopped anyway and offered me some bread, which I told them I couldn't eat. One of them said quite a few people had told them that.

The new portion of lawn I planted last year is still going, despite my lack of caring for it after I fractured my right arm in a bike wreck last year. The two roses I planted are sprouting leaves as well--they should look like this in a year or two:

Salet, introduced in France, 1854. Photo from http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/factsheets/roses/salet.htm


Mortgage Lifter tomatoes (an heirloom variety) are coming up in seed trays in the basement, and there's already volunteer lettuce growing out back, even though it snowed a few days ago.

Yesterday, I bought a manual push mower through an ad on Craigslist--and I've had a ton of fun using it. (That's how I should have spent $50 last year instead of buying a bike.) Shredding grass is fun when you don't have to listen to a roaring lawnmower. I mowed a little bit of the neighbors' yard--the place is owned by two blind women who've let the place go to seed, and since there's no clear marker between our yards, their dump looks like it's part of my place. (They used to mow the weeds themselves--I swear I'm not making this up--and ended up destroying several plants in my yard.) Another neighbor says he saw a real estate agent taking photos of the place. We're both hoping it'll have a new owner soon.

Finally, while cleaning out my garage today, I found a pair of prescription sunglasses I thought I'd lost on the bus two years ago. They're a bit out of style now, but it's nice to have a backup pair.

Labels:

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…
Now that's what I call a productive afternoon. Those roses should look great once established. Must admit my Sunday afternoon was spent in the garden but not doing anything just enjoying great family company and a buffet of meats, cheeses, tuna, and plenty of salad. We were blessed with good weather, although some areas in the UK were not so lucky. And you had snow a few days ago!

Take care
All the best Jan
May 05, 2013
horfilmania said…
Isn't it amazing what you'll find when you're not looking for it?
May 05, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Jan--productive, yes, but the buffet sounds like more fun. Right before the snow, it was 80 degrees (~25C). That's springtime along the Front Range.

I was flabbergasted when I saw those sunglasses.
May 05, 2013
Galina L. said…
It looks like Dr.Davis with his "Wheat Belly" managed to make the biggest impact on the bread consumption in the English-speaking countries. He was very harshly criticized for some of his wild claims by several respectable paleo bloggers, but he just brushed it off. It looks like he was mostly concerned about carrying his message through and he knew haw to communicate with patients . In my native Russia most people believe that bread is a holy and sacred food, and I can't imagine it would be easy to convince masses that bread and gruel are not healthy foods. Most old folks there live on a sweet tea, bread, gruel and some soup. However, I managed to convince my mom to ditch bread and to eat eggs instead of oatmeal for her breakfast.
May 06, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Wheat Belly was heavily marketed, and the glossy ads my parents received looked like they were aimed at people who wanted a miracle cure for various ailments. While I agree with much of the book, the trouble with using a pop-medical approach is that people who know better may not buy in, and the work isn't going to age well.

Asia, too, will likely see a lot of resistance to low- or limited-carb diets because of their traditions. (I think of Russia as part of Europe.)

I got my mom to eat LC as well--she still craves cereal, but even two bites of oatmeal send her blood sugar over the moon.
May 06, 2013
Galina L. said…
The blood sugar reading was exactly what convinced my mom that oatmeal was not the healthy breakfast. She misses the rye bread the most, but the normalization of her blood pressure was a strong signal that her body approved the limitation of the diet.
Dr.Davis's claims were too wild for my own standards, there is no chance I will buy his book or borrow it from a library, but I know better already, and it looks like he addressed mostly the medically ignorant population . In the light of it, I am not so sure now that his critics were 100% right, however I understand that such situation may and probably will backfire.
May 06, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Dr. Davis was the first person I found in the LC online world. I suspected that wheat was an appetite stimulant--based on my own experience, I know that part is right. I know it's bad for bloating and acid reflux as well.
May 06, 2013
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

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...
24 comments
Read more

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these  from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese  with no emulsifiers  Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Getting Over Palpitations

Note to new readers: please note I'm not a health care provider and have no medical training. If you have heart palpitations, I have no idea whether the following will work for you. Over the past several days, I've had a rough time with heart palpitations and feeling physically jittery. I was wondering if I was going to turn into one of those people who can't sit still. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be a major lifestyle change. Kidding aside, something wasn't right and I really needed to get back to normal. I tried popping potassium pills like candy. I ate more. I doubled up on my iron dose. I went to yoga and even got on the treadmill at 6 AM yesterday. I tried the nuclear option of eating more carbs to stop peeing away minerals. Most of these things helped, but the problem kept coming back. A comment from Galina made me look up epinephrine, one of the drugs my surgeon used to anesthetize me Friday. First, the assistant at the surge...
16 comments
Read more