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Showing posts from June, 2013

It Doesn't Have to Be This Hard

If I'm ever in a trench defending my homeland from barbarians, I want Linda Wells, Editor-in-Chief of Allure magazine, next to me. She's spent her last couple of vacations at a boot camp eating vegan food, sans booze, caffeine, gluten and sugar and going on five-hour hikes, getting blisters along the way. She doesn't feel (or sound) self-righteous. She's lost eight pounds, but says she's ready to "re-tox." The same issue of the magazine describes the program of a weight loss clinic called Medi-Weightloss: 500 to 800 calories a day of protein (around 125g to 200g), supplements, laxatives, and a prescription appetite suppressant called phendimetrazine. Jesus wept. Starvation diets--and this diet is well into starvation territory--have been well studied. They're known to cause weakness, fatigue, loss of libido and psychosis . Low-fat diets can cause depression, among other problems . And what's with the heaping helping of protein? Plugging in th...

Cereal Killers Documentary Reaches Milestone; Breakfast without Cereal

Re: the movie Cereal Killers , a documentary about a man who starts researching heart disease and puts his own hypothesis to the test, has reached a milestone. This just in: We are delighted to report that Cereal Killers has reached the 100% funding milestone on kickstarter folks! To each and every one of the 183 persons who have carried us over the line and into new terrain - THANK YOU! SO...What happens next? Well for us, we just take a deep breath and we keep going.... The momentum, awareness and goodwill generated by a successful kickstarter campaign is only bettered by a super successful kickstarter campaign. Sometimes projects REALLY catch fire and that's where we're aiming next. Kickstarter promotes projects that look like they're gonna take off, and they do that based on the number of pledges and the hype a project is creating on the internet. Now that we have reached our target, every £1 pledge or tweet or facebook share adds weight to our visibil...

Should your Teeth and Heart Follow Two Different Diets?

There's a lot of conflicting dietary advice around, but conventional wisdom contradicts itself on diet for a healthy heart v. diet for healthy teeth. The commonly recommended heart-healthy diet is low-fat, little meat, lots of whole grains, and fruits and vegetables. That doesn't quite square with "Foods and Drinks Best for Your Teeth" from that pillar of medical dogma, WebMD.com: The best food choices for the health of your mouth include cheeses, chicken or other meats, nuts, and milk. These foods are thought to protect tooth enamel by providing the calcium and phosphorus needed to remineralize teeth (a natural process by which minerals are redeposited in tooth enamel after being removed by acids). Other food choices include firm/crunchy fruits (for example, apples and pears) and vegetables. These foods have a high water content, which dilutes the effects of the sugars they contain, and stimulate the flow of saliva (which helps protect against deca...

I Eat Sugar, They Eat Sugar, Why Can't You?

The polite brush-off answer: because I'm not you or them. Answers that require more thought: Metabolism doesn't improve with age. I could eat crap, or have nothing but a bun or soda for lunch, when I was nineteen and it didn't bother me. Much. Most people that age can say the same. Now that I'm 44, I usually can't fast and more than a little carb makes me tired and hungry and gives me a stomach ache. A high-nutrient, low-carb diet and three meals/snacks a day is my way of dealing with it. Genes. I'm from a family full of diabetes and hypoglycemia and used to have most of the symptoms of hypoglycemia listed in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution. Expecting someone like me to do well on a "balanced diet" (i.e., lots of starch, little meat) of three meals a day is like putting gasoline in a diesel truck and wondering what's wrong. Natural and Artificial Selection. Richard Dawkins has written about animal species undergoing natural selection wi...

Hot Ex-Vegans; Donal O'Neill Can Turn a Phrase

If you read Fathead , you've heard of exvegans.com and the documentary Cereal Killers . But if you didn't follow the links, you've missed out on some great stuff. Want some eye candy or a good laugh? You must check out www.exvegans.com . The site is a directory of "ex-vegans" and "vegan sell-outs" that names names gives the cities, descriptions and photographs of vegan apostates. Where can I meet one of these ex-vegan guys? Most of them look like magazine models and sound more interesting than dating site bios that try to sound interesting. Raw Brahs, San Diego: "Pretty boys who make videos famous-for-being-famous but not much more." Sean Dunaway, Las Vegas: "Originator of 30 bananas a day sucks.   Was vegan and 'got too skinny' so is now a meat-eater and body builder.  This guy plays favorites on the forum and takes sides.  He is  very cruel how he socially manipulates the forum and you get a sick feeling around him .  He...

Frosted KrustyO's

Tom Naughton's post on breakfast cereal inspired me to post photos of a box in the window of my neighbors' house down the street. Click photos to enlarge. Almost makes crap-in-a-bag sound good.

All Better? Why go to Rehab?

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no. -Amy Winehouse My mother is home from the hospital, where she arrived weak and dehydrated last Thursday. She thinks that an antibiotic made her ill.* My mother uses a wheelchair but she can stand up and she can walk with a walker. She couldn't use her legs when she went to the hospital, but by Monday, she could transfer herself from the bed to the wheelchair with no help, just someone to spot her. The hospital wanted her to go to rehab, but like Amy Winehouse, she said no, no, no, for good reasons: She felt well enough to go home. Rehab is expensive. They feed you a crappy diet at rehab--crappy meaning full of carbage. It's especially unhealthy when you're diabetic, like my mother. Got normal blood sugar? They're johnny-on-the-spot with the orange juice to jack it back up. Mom was assaulted at a rehab center a few years ago. The person was never brought to justice. Being home and careful about her diet...

One Reason Diabetes is Out of Control

Short answer: many health care providers don't attempt to control it. Reading medical literature from the early 20th century, it looks like doctors of that era fought diabetes with everything they had: low carb diet, urine testing for diabetics, a hospital stay with a strict diet if there was sugar in their urine, and yearly testing of family members of diabetics. Insulin started being used in the early 1920s. Now? Some health care providers call a low-carb (diabetic) diet "old dogma" and don't counsel patients on diet or blood glucose testing. This was the case with a friend of the family, who was recently diagnosed, and my parents. While my mother was in the hospital recently, she was allowed to order any breakfast from what was basically a dessert menu: cinnamon rolls, cereal, juice, bread, waffles, french toast, pancakes, fruit, etc. Hopefully, patients who want to control their blood sugar aren't allergic to eggs, the only LC option for breakfast. Some...

Complaining that Hospitals Don't Serve Health Food...

...is valid. Click photos to enlarge. Menus from the hospital where my mother is staying.

The Decadent Diet

Dedicated low-carbers like to describe their way of eating as nutritious, filling, healthy and traditional. But what about people who want to eat decadently, not Puritanically? Who are sick of busybody goody-goodies and diet police ? Low carb is good for them, too. On what other diet can you eat dip for dinner and dessert for breakfast? Guacamole, pork rinds, crispy fried pork (fried in lard, seasoned with salt). This isn't a cheat meal--you can have this every night and eat until you're full since there are hardly any carbs there. (Note that you can't substitute corn chips--they're too carby. And don't get guacamole that's full of carbs.) If the dinner looks a little skimpy, it's because I saved room for dessert. Low carb, non dairy chocolate ice cream. It does have carbs in it, so go easy. Recipe here . I'm not sure if this is what some people call "rewarding food," but I'm full. Granted, I was never obese, but I'm from a...

Starch Tolerance: From Ancient Genes?

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...

Does LCHF Work for 40+ Women?

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.)

Skinny Plants

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...

Hold the Fries; Shut up, Lady, Don't Upset Us*

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...

Carb Creep

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 ...

From the I-Thought-He-Was-Dead Files

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.

New Crown!

What a relief to be finished!