It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
–J.R.R. Tolkien
Especially if dragons make good eating. I’ll have to check on that.
I’ve gotten a few requests to be more specific about what I eat and especially to discuss the proportions and “how to” of it all.
Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.
-Aesop
We’ve been without bacon for the last 24 hours. It’s been hard, but I’m happy to report that the meat delivery arrived and we’re again swimming in hog fat. It was scary for a while, but we made it through.
Still afraid of bacon?
Here’s some reasons you shouldn’t be:
1. Bacon is a great source of B1, 2, 3, 6, and 12, as well as zinc, riboflavin, and phosphorus, and a good source of magnesium and iron.
2. Nitrates and Nitrites are an idiotic non-issue. You have more of those in your own saliva than you could ever eat, and those “healthy” nitrate-free bacons are just injected with celery juice (because vegetables are our primary source of that stuff, not bacon or pepperoni) and end up with more nitrates/nitrites in the end.
3. The fat is the best thing about it. 50% of bacon’s fat is monounsaturated, mostly oleic acid…remember that one? That’s the miracle stuff everyone’s telling you to glug olive oil for. Lowers inflammation and blood pressure. Another 3% is palmitoleic, which is antimicrobial. 40% of the bacon is saturated, which is what your brain, nerve endings, immune system, and hormone production are dependent upon, and though it does raise your LDL a tiny bit, its main effect is to raise your HDL a great deal and improve your triglicerides to HDL ratio–which is the only thing about your cholesterol report that really means anything.
4. If you are fortunate enough to find bacon from pastured pigs, it’s stuffed full of vitamin D–one of the few dietary sources available to you of that vitamin in any quantity.
5. If you’re not eating grains, sugars and tons of fruit, you need plenty of salt. Bacon’s got you covered.
And don’t throw away the grease. It doesn’t go rancid easily and was a treasured cooking tool for our ancestors all the way up until Ancel Keys rigged his study to make it appear that his lipid hypothesis was true and made us all afraid to eat fat.
So eat your bacon in peace.
Plato says he’s hungry
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A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.
–A.A. Milne
Another big question I get in eating this way is, “what about exercise?” This is a good question. If you read at all, or are able to hear, you’d think that exercise was the magic elixir that solves all of life’s problems. You can’t open a web page anywhere without seeing it lauded in glowing terms as the key to weight loss, heart health, and even longevity.
Of course you can’t find many centenarians who exercise, but we’ll just call that a paradox and pretend it doesn’t happen. The key for you to live a long life is obviously to exercise.
Only maybe it isn’t.
Because there are enough paradoxes lying around here to build our own gym with.
I think every woman should have a blowtorch.
–Julia Child
Hi folks! More tomorrow, but for today just one: a recommendation.
If you’re looking for good recipes, head over to the Low Carb Jabberwocky, who has some amazing ones.
Goodnight from Asia!
Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.
–Lao Tzu
Have you been waiting for the other shoe to drop? Well don’t worry: it won’t. This bad news is some of the easiest bad news you’ll ever get.
Eating this way–avoiding grains, sugars, vegetables oils, and excessive amounts of fruit, while embracing real animal fat, meat, and other fresh, real foods–has been one of the easiest things I’ve ever done.
It was certainly easier than spending half my life kneading my “healthy” whole wheat bread dough.
‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’
–Lewis Carroll
When I first read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes, and even more so when I delved into his longer book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, I felt a kind of mental relief, as if someone had removed a splinter from my brain.
…corn is king for fattening cattle.
–Charles Sanders
Charles Sanders’ prescription for what to add to your cow’s hay to make sure he fattens nicely for slaughter:
1000 lbs. corn
100 lbs. beef supplement (protein)
50 lbs. molasses feed
Ingredients in a popular “Organic” (healthy!) breakfast cereal:
Whole Grain Corn, Organic Dried Cane Syrup, Salt, Organic Molasses.
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
–Galileo Galilei
Today I trot out a couple more questions that I commonly hear after I reveal that I’ve stopped eating the Food Pyramid and started eating what’s healthy.
In case you’ve just joined us, that means I stopped eating whole grains, excessive amounts of fruit, and very low fat foods and instead started chowing down on animal fats and meats.
A ship is safe in port, but that’s not what ships are built for.
–Grace Hopper
I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’m stuffing myself with saturated fat and finding my lipid profile is improved and my blood pressure is down. Weight is melting off and my shape is changing.
But I’m only eating when I’m hungry.
On an active day that ends up being around 1500 calories. On a sedentary day, I can easily eat 1000 or less. On a really active day, I might eat well over 2000.
Ask Me How It Happened 