Skip to main content

Sustained Energy with More Iodine; Nuts and Cheese FAIL

Some weeks ago, I boosted my iodine dose to 1,000 micrograms a day (over Dr. Davis's program recommendation), and for the first time in several years, I've sustained a workout program. I'm back to lifting weights a few times a week and found a dance exercise channel on YouTube I like. I even overdid my workout one day--I had a pounding heart that night and felt jittery--but you don't know your limits unless you push yourself. 

As most readers know, iodine is needed for thyroid function; without enough of it, you can suffer from fatigue, cold, depression, mental fog and weight gain.

Meals will be looking a lot more like this. Photo from Unsplash.

Despite the extra iodine, I gained some weight. Last week when my pants were uncomfortably tight, I had acid reflux, and my face looked like the moon, I stopped ignoring the fact that nuts and cheese put weight on me. I'd been eating biscuits and gravy and an apple-cranberry tart. These were made using compliant recipes...but they're full of nuts and cheese. I went back to bunless hamburgers, salad, sausage, eggs, coleslaw, etc. instead--and dropped three pounds in two days. The acid reflux is gone.

I'm also a lot less hungry. Ricotta cheese (a major ingredient in the tart) contains a lot of whey, which provokes insulin in some people. Insulin lowers your blood sugar, making you hungry. Nuts have a lot of omega 6 fats, which is inflammatory in too-high amounts. The combination was a recipe for puffing me up like a dinner roll. So it's back to a more caveman style diet of mainly meat, eggs and vegetables, with lard, bacon grease and olive oil for my main fats. Hard cheeses and butter have little to no whey, and I'll probably use them in small amounts. I'll still eat the yogurt and prebiotic fibers like green bananas and inulin too, of course. But I really need to leave the nut-flour goodies for special occasions. 

I have a new video, too, this one on forum tips and tricks. It's really a template for finding out anything: 

  1. Read the directions.
  2. Search for an answer.
  3. Then ask for help. 
  4. Make it easy for people to help you instead of communicating in dribs and drabs or expecting them to do detective work. And read their responses. 

Dr. Davis's forum is better than most. Elsewhere, people will supposedly ask for help, but really want justification for choices they've already made. People at Dr. Davis's actually want to get better. 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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...

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...

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 . ...

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...