Pain, Pain, Go Away!

No dinky weights! Photo from Unsplash . After years of being frustrated by a lack of energy and carrying around more fat than I wanted to, last year I finally regained enough of my health to start...lifting weights. That might not be conventional wisdom, but it makes more sense than eating less or simply moving more to lose weight and be more energetic. I started in March of last year with a few sessions with a personal trainer who showed me how to work out without hurting my neck. Since then, I've been lifting weights twice a week at home, missing workouts only when I'm sick or doing a lot of landscaping. I use 10- to 25-pound weights and a stability ball. After eight months, I lost enough fat that I had to buy new pants , but more importantly, I've improved my metabolic health and reduced my risk of various diseases of aging. The lab tests I took five months in showed a big drop in fasting insulin--from 4.4 in 2021 to 3.7. Other metabolic markers stayed about the same.  I...

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...

I'm down to a weight I never thought I'd see again. It's not because I was trying to lose weight, but trying to gain muscle. After a couple of months of lifting weights for two one-hour sessions a week at home, I'm down five pounds and I've had to start wearing a belt. Not me--but those look like the 15-pound weights I curl. Photo from Pexels.com . This is a pleasant side effect of working to maintain strength and bone density instead of becoming weaker as I age. Body composition is something Dr. Davis and others have begun hammering home. A large portion of weight lost on a diet is from muscle--some of it in your heart and organs.  I've been using the weight training method described in the book  The Resistance Training Revolution by Sal Di Stefano. (If you're an Inner Circle member, you can watch a meetup with Di Stefano on the site.) What I love about his method is that I don't feel exhausted and beaten up during or after workouts, even though I use...

Two Steps to Improved Health Lately I see people overcomplicating their health: they ask (other people) about enemas, their HPA axis, vagus nerve, stool tests, arcane lab tests, data on calcium score reduction, what time to have their supplements, where to get exotic microbes they read about on Google Scholar, and so on. The problem with this is that 1) it's off the map and probably nobody knows the answer and 2) in most cases, they're neglecting some basic steps known to work.  Most low-carb diets have two steps: 1) stop eating poison; 2) supplement what's missing. Dr. Davis's program has the additional step of getting rid of SIBO, but for that, he mostly recommends SIBO yogurt (homemade yogurt with 2-3 strains of bacteria missing in most people).  With step 1 in mind, I whacked back the nuts, cheese and occasional junk food cheats freely available at work. And with step 2 in mind, I've continued taking more iodine and I've been eating more protein to build mus...

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...b...

USA Today reports that study subjects lost dramatic amounts of weight with diabetes drug tirzepatide. Participants in the randomized, controlled trial lost an average of 15% of their weight at week 72 according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine .  Photo by  Sara Bakhshi  on  Unsplash How does it work? USA Today's interview with a participant offers a clue: The drug prevented her from overeating, [participant Mary] Bruehl said.  If she overindulged, the food would come back up. "I've learned to stop before I get that feeling," she said...The one negative side effect was nausea, which Bruehl felt the day after each of her weekly shots of tirzepatide. She's not alone. From the study , The most common adverse events with tirzepatide were gastrointestinal, and most were mild to moderate in severity, occurring primarily during dose escalation. Adverse events caused treatment discontinuation in 4.3%, 7.1%, 6.2%, and 2.6% of participants receiving ...

Saturday, I quit taking NDT (natural desiccated thyroid) for a while, figuring my problems (pounding heart, feeling hot, lack of energy) were from taking too much. The problems went away, so I was right. Yesterday, I felt great: normal heartbeat, energetic, cheerful...then I went outside after work and felt too cold. My heart started pounding again. I woke up later that night and felt puffiness behind my eyes. This morning I was up a pound and my face was so puffy it looked like Elvis circa 1976. My stomach was rumbling after lunch and sending acid the wrong way. Not wanting to repeat the misery I went through from taking too much NDT, I waited until this afternoon, thought about making absolutely sure my iron and adrenals were straightened out this time, and finally said, screw it, if I don't like taking NDT, I'll stop. So I took 150 mg--and felt better.  My face doesn't look like I need to lay off the peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwiches. What I'm doing now...

My year-and-a-half-long love affair with take-out is over. It started when I was selling my house in Colorado: take-out kept the kitchen clean. After I got to Indiana, I started out working part-time and didn't have much human contact at work. Getting take-out brought me some human contact. I was tired of cooking, too. My weight crept up to the point on the scale where I don't let it go any higher. Even though I ordered food that sounded low-carb, the restaurant information showed 20, 30, or 40 grams of carbohydrate per dish. One Sunday night recently, I made too much chef's salad and took the rest to work the next day. I kept going--I brought my lunch to work every day for a week. Five pounds fell off. Packing my lunch hasn't been that hard--I was just tired of doing it and then fell into another habit. Now, I usually make a big dinner and take the leftovers to work, along with a low-carb dessert. What if I don't feel like packing a lunch (or making dinner)?...

If you can sell a bag of potato chips, why can't you sell 1000mg potassium pills? I've finally found an answer to my cravings and heart palpitations, and unfortunately, it's potato chips. It's not that I've jumped on the safe starch bandwagon, it's just that it suits my current needs: I tend to get low on salt and potassium. The chips have a lot of both, making my heart and energy level feel normal. I'm too wound up about moving to be very hungry. Therefore, I can eat half a bag at a time because I'm not eating much else. I've turned into one of those people who's lost weight eating potatoes. My stomach hasn't been normal since those three courses of antibiotics from my root canal. The chips feel good on my stomach if I don't eat too many. Downsides: Acne, gas, a bit of reflux, and probably a lack of certain nutrients.  Potassium isn't one of those nutrients, though. An eight-ounce bag of potato chips has 3727 mg o...

Dieticians might recommend plenty of healthy whole grains and low-fat products (maybe even "good fats" from plants if they're progressive), but my dog, Molly, knows better. Like me, she follows a low-carb diet of mostly meat, eggs and fibrous vegetables, along with vitamins. At her vet visit this weekend, she was down three pounds (though still a little chubby) and had clean, healthy teeth. The vet said she sees a lot of slimy teeth--but not on Molly. Molly's wisdom: Vegetables are fine for a snack, but meat and eggs are best for a meal. Food is supposed to be enjoyed! Brush your teeth and avoid sweet and starchy foods. I'm looking at you, paleo bro. Have a weekly treat.  Get some exercise, but don't strain yourself. Get off the treadmill when you're tired of it. Sleep when you're tired. The right vitamins will make you feel good. Ignore yappy little dogs.  Eat real food, mostly animals, but not too much.

I normally gather information, analyze things and take measurements. Lately, though, things have been too hectic to go about life like a monk: a deadline at work and family issues that have been...bizarre. Let me know if you need material for a black comedy. I've been eating on instinct, and instinct has led me to eating more protein and probably fewer calories than normal: mostly black coffee, diet Dr. Pepper (caffeine soothes me), bunless burgers, a little veg, a few egg rolls (they're comfort food), and a lot of Atkins bars. No fatty sauces--they just haven't sounded good, especially in the morning. Result: I'm down two belt holes on my rain coat from a few months ago and my shoes are slightly loose where they used to hurt my feet from being too tight. Atkins induction made me feel weird for a while, and Body-for-Life made me feel great (in the beginning). BFL is much higher-protein than Atkins induction. I noticed back in my 20s that I felt a lot better when I ...

It's been three and a half weeks since I first started Atkins induction. I had to stop for several days because of magnesium and potassium deficiencies (I unfortunately started the day before oral surgery, where I had a shot of epinephrine, which can also cause low potassium, and couldn't eat very much in the days following). I lost a few pounds right away, then another few when I restarted. Then I gained it all back due to, ahem, female hormones. That's never happened to me before. I didn't change the way I was eating: no chocolate indulgences or anything saltier than what I'd been eating, and a keto-stick showed large ketones. But I'm back to losing about 0.6 pounds a day. I started at 130; this morning I was 127 and had moderate to large ketones. My energy level is beyond what it was before I started. Sunday, for the first time in far too long, I took my dog for a long hike in the mountains, where she loves to swim in the creek. (She's doing her own ...

Do Calories Matter on Atkins? As the saying goes, just because you're not counting calories doesn't mean that calories don't count. Dr. Atkins wrote in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution that you'll lose weight faster on fewer calories, but you won't necessarily have a sense of well-being. Most readers knows what he means: low mood and flagging energy. Lack of Energy, Low Mood This was how I felt Sunday afternoon and Monday. Part of my low mood was from having to fill out an application for Medicaid for both my parents, mostly so that my father can go live in a nursing home. It's too hard for my mother to take care of him and I can't be with them enough to help day-to-day. I was thinking about my parents during yoga that evening and fighting tears. I didn't have a physical sense of well-being, either. The climb from the train station up to the street took more energy than it should have; so did the yoga class. I went back to the book for advice and r...

It's going both well and badly. My mouth is healing. It stopped bleeding after a day and the chunk my surgeon removed from the roof of my mouth (the size felt somewhere between a shotgun pellet and a pea) feels like it's mostly grown back. Both sites are still tender, though. I'm talking better; I could barely stand to move my mouth for a few days. And I'm down 4.1 pounds since I started Atkins induction a few days ago. But I spent an uncomfortable day today: my heart was pounding even though I was sitting at my desk having a slow day at work among pleasant coworkers. I popped potassium pills to little avail. My distress could have a few causes: Very low carb diet, which has given me palpitations before. Low blood pressure. Right before surgery--when I was about to have my mouth cut and sewn, and I needed a potassium pill to chill out--it was 97/60. Bleeding for a day and relaxing would have only lowered this number. Low blood sugar. I haven't taken my b...

I've run into a problem with Atkins induction: my brand new shorts are now so loose on me that I can get them on without unbuttoning them. Truly, two days ago, nothing in my usual size fit. Cue the sappy violin music. Having to have your clothes taken in isn't the worst problem. What about dental surgery, though? Back in my Body for Life days, I ate a lot of carbohydrate and ended up with a bunch of cavities, a few of them at the gumline of my bottom front teeth. As much as I brushed and flossed, I constantly had plaque on my teeth back then. Even though I haven't had any tooth decay since starting LC, the gumline there (where my old dentist had to remove gum tissue to put in a filling) has receded and I've had bone loss. Gum tissue doesn't stick to fillings, so it just keeps receding. To avoid any further bone loss, my oral surgeon (the one who gave me my dental implant a few years ago after an accident) grafted some tissue from the roof of my mouth to the gum. ...

"You might want to read The China Study ." Good lord, there's someone still recommending that book after it was debunked by an English major and picked apart by Michael Eades and Chris Masterjohn ? Recommended by someone who works in a dentist's office, no less--where they're supposed to tell you to avoid carbage? Yet the dental hygienist did today. Maybe she was worried about business slowing down. Maybe she hadn't heard that at least two of its main critics got a mouthful of cavities on vegan or vegetarian diets. I didn't have any cavities, sensitive gums or other issues that a little more flossing wouldn't fix, and told her that I quit getting cavities after I started a low-carb diet. I added that since I'm from a family full of diabetes, that's another reason to be on a low-carb diet. "Well, if your diet isn't working for you, read The China Study. " I wasn't about to argue with a vegan holding a pick in my mouth. ...

And more importantly, would moving to Colorado help you lose weight? A recent study suggested that some people in the northern US may be lying about having a svelte figure by fudging on their height and weight in phone surveys. The abstract of the study didn't mention the West, but all the obesity maps I've seen show Colorado as having the lowest rate of obesity in the US. I don't know whether that's accurate, but I think we're better than average. A few months ago, my employer held a firm-wide video conference where we could see members of all or most of the other offices. We have two offices in Colorado; the rest are in downtown areas of medium and large cities in the South and the Midwest. We all work in the same industry; the employees are mostly white, college educated professionals. As far as I know, the only big difference between all of us is our locations. I'm guessing there were a few hundred people in total on screen; we saw different offices at...

Falling off a bike, falling on your face, fracturing and spraining an arm, breaking a tooth and knocking two others loose sounds terribly painful. I certainly looked bad afterward: a lot of strangers in stores, on the bus and even on the street saw my black and blue face and arm in a sling and asked me what happened. At the urgent care center; I rated my pain a 4 out of 10 as long as I held my arm still. But 4 out of 10 isn't horrible pain. The bottle of Vicodin I got that day is still in the bag, unopened. My arm wasn't that badly injured--not as bad as my cousin's when she tripped over her dachshund and broke both of her wrists. And my jaw, despite landing on it and still having a bump on my chin, wasn't fractured or broken. Could be I'm a tough old bird--I'm descended from bull riders, homesteaders and blacksmiths. But I think diet has helped. I know that changing my diet to low-carb, taking vitamin D and later adopting the cavity healing diet made my t...

Best conversation yet: Cashier: How did you get hurt? Me: I fell off my bike. Cashier: Are you going to ride a bike again? Me: Nope. Cashier: So you didn't lose your common sense. That was Sunday. It's Friday, and strangers have stopped asking what happened to me since I'm a lot less black and blue now. I'm washing my own hair, putting on makeup and getting through a day at work without exhaustion. I don't do much at home besides cooking and dishes, and out-eating a teenage boy. Two eggs or a quarter pound of beef is a snack; either one used to be a meal. Rebuilding flesh and replenishing blood (I bled for a day when I fell) must take a lot of nutrients. I'm not wearing the extra calories--I've lost weight. The braces are working. My front teeth are straighter than they've been since I was a kid, and I can chew a little bit, very carefully. Since the tooth that broke was narrower than an implant, I'll have to have my top teeth re-aligned t...

Relative: What are you doing? My mother: I'm throwing out everything with carrageenan in it. It's really bad. Scientists use it to make [research] animals sick. That's what made Lori so sick the other night with a migraine headache. Relative: I'll take the salad dressing. It doesn't bother us. My mother: Doesn't your daughter get migraine headaches? This conversation sounds absurd, but knowing the people involved, I'm sure it happened as my mother described it. In the relative's household, there's obesity, diabetes, migraines, hypoglycemia, fatigue, acne, and no doubt some other ailments I'm not privy to. Is this the new normal? Does illness seem so inevitable that some people aren't willing to think about what's causing it? Or do anything with an answer when it's handed to them? Let me tell you how I've felt since I've been free of carrageenan poisoning for the past week. My stomach doesn't hurt, I can eat low car...