Pain, Pain, Go Away!

There are some wacky people commenting on LC sites. Over at Perlmutter's blog (Dr. Perlmutter wrote Grain Brain ), someone going by a name that sounded like a plant-based doctor was trolling, poaching and writing in ghetto English. Doctor, my eye. On another site, someone else pointed out that there was, indeed, a reference to calories that wasn't in the index of a certain biochemistry book. Thank god we were alerted. And a groupie warned me not to look to Jimmy Moore for information (after I'd mentioned that he started losing weight again by limiting protein). This was right before Rick G. had a terrific success using that strategy. To all you wacky ones, I dedicate my $25 gift of a share of a water buffalo through Heifer International. (I'm donating $1 to the organization for every troll comment I read.) These animals not only make life easier for subsistence farmers in Asia, but they're promoting peace between warring tribes : In 2008, the International Ass

Last time, I addressed some misconceptions and pitfalls of Atkins induction. It's a simple diet, but it doesn't work with some current fads. First, a word of caution: if you take amphetamines, diuretics (including high blood pressure medicine) or diabetes medicine, you need medical supervision on Atkins induction. Low-carb diets increase your adrenaline (not good if you're already cranked up on amphetamines), flush out excess fluid (bad in combination with diuretics), and normalize your blood sugar (you can get a hypo with LC plus medication). If your doctor objects to your doing Atkins, just ask him or her to monitor you. You might say that low-fat, low-calorie diets haven't worked for you and exercise hasn't worked for you either, but you've given low-carb diets a lot of thought and want to do a two-week trial. If you use insulin, I'm sad to say you'll probably be on your own. I can't tell you how much to use, nor can anyone else on the inter

In the article, some prominent researchers point to the many flaws in the lipid/diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis and blame refined carbohydrate for soaring rates of overweight and diabetes. Others urge caution in eating saturated fat. Ornish says eating meat will damage the planet. There have been many recent clinical studies exonerating LC diets, but the science has been there since Atkins wrote about his diet in 1972. The end is in sight for the disastrous experiment the government performed on America, and later the rest of the English-speaking world. *To highjack the lead is to take over the leading in partner dancing.

Over the years, I've read some strange ideas about what the Atkins diet is: All meat A crash diet Not low-carb, high fat High protein An eating plan where you gorge yourself Wrong on all counts. A friend of mine was curious a few weeks ago about what it really was. I described it to her, and she can't stop raving about it now: Friend: What do you eat? Me: Meat, eggs, cheese, non-starchy vegetables, and fats like olive oil, mayonnaise, lard and butter. Friend: How much do you eat? Me: You eat until you're full. Friend: When do you eat? Me: Whenever you're hungry. You should also take some vitamins. There are more details, of course, but that's it in a nutshell. How does such a simple diet get so convoluted in people's minds? I blame fads in eating and thought. A trend now is to eat vegetables by the pound --no exaggeration. Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution specifically says not to fill yourself with vegetables--that's a tactic of tradi

Some readers have remarked that they're having a hard time leaving comments. I've changed one of the settings from "embedded" to "full page," having read that that should help. 

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and

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

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.

Last time I wrote about getting jittery and having a rapid heartbeat on VLC (very low carb). I cut way back on nuts a few weeks ago and felt remarkably better: more energy, and I can tell I lost a little weight because of the way my shoes and watchband fit. As I mentioned, taking a potassium pill helps the jitters and rapid heartbeat, and if it gets really bad, I can just eat a candy bar (we don't have safe starches at work). So for the first time, I tried Atkins induction. Why Atkins induction? It started with shorts. I'd been shopping for shorts and everything was very short (think Officer Jim Dangle on Reno 911 ), wildly patterned, ridiculous (where do you wear lace shorts if you're not starring in a Korean drama?) or knee length. There was even a high-waisted, pleated, acid washed pair from circa 1985. So when I saw a gray pair with sailor pant buttons, I bought them--even though they were pretty short (but not tight). Think Officer Dangle again. Being conscious of wea

A commenter brought up something today that made me think of the radical view that we need to get rid of all industrialization and live like...I don't know what. Following herds that don't exist in any great number and living off the land with skills almost nobody has anymore? Living like Mennonites? Like gentlemen farmers, who (it has been argued) needed slave labor to have the leisure to pursue scholarship and culture? I have nothing against going off the grid if that's what floats your boat, but people who would, say, blow up dams to force other people off the grid remind me of a TV series called Death Note . In the series, a high school student finds a notebook that kills by heart attack anyone whose name is written in it. He starts writing the names of criminals in it because he wants to create a world with only good people in it. "So," someone predicts, "you'll be the only bastard." Sure enough, the student (Kira, taken from the English word f

Dear Trolls, I can't thank you enough for trying to set me and my poor, misguided low-carb and paleo friends on the right path. It must be painful for you to read blogs and articles about eating things like bacon-wrapped shrimp , coconut chocolate tart , juicy barbecued ribs, and full-fat lemon ice cream . Nevertheless, you soldiered on to show us the way to vegan/low-fat/CICO/food reward/MMEL enlightenment. Your kindness and time and effort you've shown are appreciated. But I do have two things to say. First, you're wrong. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there it is. Nearly all of us have already tried eating less and moving more, or reducing calories and fat, and the community is full of former vegetarians. In fact, hunger and fat accumulation are driven by hormones. This isn't the gospel according to Gary Taubes, it's in endocrinology textbooks (see this and this ). High-carb diets aren't the answer to diabetes, a disease of carbohydrate intoler

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

I love vegetables. There are so many foods that I can't eat that meals would be boring without them. In fact, I like them so much that I planted five kinds of lettuce and two kinds of tomatoes in my garden today. All the same, stuffing yourself with vegetables (or anything else) isn't good. 1. Fibrous vegetables can drive up your blood sugar if you eat enough of them. In one of his books, Dr. Richard Bernstein discussed a patient who ended up with a very high blood sugar after eating a head of lettuce. There are stretch receptors in your intestines that, when they sense you've eaten a big meal, release hormones that can end up raising your blood sugar. Bernstein calls this the Chinese Restaurant Effect. 2. All food is inflammatory. As Michael Eades put i t, Eating is an inflammatory process. A number of scientific studies have shown that eating a meal, regardless of the macronutrient composition, causes acute inflammation, which makes sense when you think about it. F

Coconut in a Can This can of Natural Value coconut milk from Natural Grocers (fka Vitamin Cottage)... ...looked like this... ...and made a gloppy, eggy mess out of a custard dish I've made successfully many times. (I added 3T lime juice to the custard, which I hadn't tried before, but I don't think that would have ruined it.) From now on, it's Thai Kitchen coconut milk or Sprouts premium organic. Thai Kitchen coconut milk (full fat). Sprouts premium organic is similar. Kale Chips Today I ruined a bunch of lacinato kale making kale chips. 500 Paleo Recipes says to cook the chips at 375; some recipes on the web call for 300 degrees when using lacinato kale. They're probably right; at 375, the chips filled the kitchen with smoke and tasted exactly like you'd expect burnt leaves to taste. Red Russian kale has worked well at at the higher temperature, though. With some salt and dip made of mayonnaise, chives and lemon juice, they were way be

I've decided to adopt a troll. What does that mean? Every time the troll leaves some troll dung on a blog I read, I'll donate a dollar to charity. (I'll send a check at the end of the month.) Heifer International seems appropriate. HI provides livestock and other agricultural projects to needy people around the world for income, self-sufficiency and more protein in their diet. An example of their work: One of Heifer International's biggest projects is EADD - the  East Africa Dairy Development  project. It was started in 2008 with a $42.8 million grant from the  Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation . It's helping about 179,000 small-scale dairy farmers to double their incomes. Now, we're happy to announce that we've received a one-year,  $8.5 million grant  from the Gates Foundation to continue that work. The grant will support existing projects in Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda and explore possibilities for expansion in Ethiopia and Tanzania. “We are excited f

Nuts seem like the perfect snack: they're portable, they keep well, they don't need to be cooked, and they're tasty. Problem: I don't feel good when I eat too many of them. Recently, I started snacking on macadamia nuts, which are high-fat, so I thought they wouldn't be a problem. But my stomach was upset, I got a bit of acid reflux and nosebleeds, and generally didn't feel up to par. Nuts have phytates, which bind to zinc and other minerals. This might have caused my nosebleeds. And I don't know what it is about macadamia nuts, but they don't seem to digest well for me; they felt like they were sitting in my stomach causing bloating. I've felt pretty much the same way eating more than a little bit of nuts or goodies made with nut flour. It could be that nuts are seeds and don't "want" to be eaten. Like grass seeds, they defend themselves by sickening those who ingest them. 

After four years eating mostly real food, I'm having the opposite of junk food cravings. For awhile now, a lot of foods have no longer looked like food to me--noodles, pastry, cake, most snack foods that come in plastic bags. (Cookies and brownies still do.) Later, most fruit didn't smell good. I recently made the mistake of getting some shea butter liquid soap, not noticing "honey-citrus" on the label. It smells bad, but I'm too cheap to throw it out. Pizza has long smelled like a wet dog, which is unpleasant but tolerable, but today the pizza in the break room smelled disgusting. So did the burnt toast. Has anyone else had this experience? I never imagined I'd prefer steak tartar to pizza, but steak tartar looks, smells and tastes great to me. A bonus: I've never eaten anything that sat so easily on my stomach. I get full, but it's like there's nothing in my stomach. Steak tartar and salad with Doreen's dressing. Recipes from 500 Paleo

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the  American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually

I'm on vacation, and it's wearing me out. Yesterday, I laid down insulation in my parents' attic, had a meeting with a Medicaid consultant, and fixed my toilet. My father may need to take out Medicaid, and I wanted an accurate picture of what the options were. Home care and a nursing home are viable; assisted living is not since the facility would take nearly all of my father's income. The Medicaid consultant said we may have to open yet another account to keep a minimal amount of money in my father's name. I'm still transferring direct pays from US Bank to the credit account that Mom opened a few months ago (since US Bank charged fees left, right and center). As of today the insulation project at my parents' house is finally finished. I'm relieved that I never have to see that attic, feel its sharp little nails, or breath its dust again. My next project at my parents' house is to landscape an unirrigated hillside, but it'll have to be rototil

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

It happened recently on the morning I finally learned how to make hollandaise sauce. I'd just watched Julia Child make it on Youtube and got so into it I that before I knew it, I'd used the whole stick of butter to make my sauce. It was just enough for two servings of eggs benedict. What can I say, I was hungry. 

I think of my twenties as the years I spent working my butt off and my thirties as the years I spent dancing. I don't want to think of my forties as the years I spent playing video games. To that end, I took one of the video games (Atlantis Pearls) off my computer a week ago. I still have a few others on it; I'll explain why that's OK in a minute. Since I took the game off, I've been doing more of the things I wanted to do--karate, playing  fold.it (a game that helps scientists) , and playing the recorder. And even though I haven't been getting any more sleep, I've slept better and felt a lot more rested. It's not because I'm off the computer earlier, or getting less light exposure; I think it's because I'm less stimulated when I go to bed. To me, this makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. We've had fire for 300,000 to 400,000 years , and our ancestors may have regularly slept in front of a campfire. For at least tens of thousa

Most of us know the challenge of avoiding wheat, dairy, grains, potatoes, and high-carb foods in general, and a lot of people find it tough, especially at the beginning. But to avoid all added sugar in food--I hadn't guessed how hard it would be until I started reading A Year of No Sugar by Eve O. Schaub. Specifically, Schaub and her husband and two young daughters avoided all added fructose and most artificial sweeteners (fruit was OK), making a few exceptions: one dessert with added sugar per month, one personal exception with a bit of sweetener (such as ketchup or diet soda), and for the kids, they could choose for themselves whether to indulge at school, parties, etc. I can relate to the difficult transition to a non-whatever diet. Back in the 90s, I found out that almost everything contains wheat--not just bread and noodles, but almost anything in a box or a can. Same for sugar--salad dressing, most sausage, bacon, yogurt, cereal, pasta sauce--it's in there. Put on a

This post from the USDA's blog brings back some memories. The post is about how grandparents can help their grandkids form good eating and exercise habits. It urges grandparents, Take your grandchildren shopping at a farmer's market and the grocery store. Talk about the choices you are making--choosing the juicier oranges or the fresher vegetables. Help them learn cooking skills, which will benefit them them throughout their lives. Encourage them to be active throughout the day.  Spend time walking in the neighborhood, planting a vegetable garden, or shooting a few hoops. Dance, run, or play hopscotch and soccer with them when they're full of energy... Up until I was twelve, my mother and I visited my grandparents every year in Missouri. After a daylong drive from Colorado, an orange sunset would find us on the dirt road in front of Grandma and Grandpa's house. Everybody hugged, then we dug in to a savory spinach salad Grandma made for the occasion. During our