The world is your cow. But you
have to do the milking.
–New England Proverb
So what should we eat? There is still a lot of disagreement about that, even within those circles that advocate ditching grains, sugar and excessive fruit and eating lots of healthy fat. So where do we turn if we want to eat like out ancestors used to?
You can’t keep trouble from coming, but you don’t have to give it a chair to sit on.
–New England Proverb
When I was visiting Brother #3 in this summer he asked me:
Is there anything your magic diet doesn’t help with?
We both laughed–it was meant in jest, and he himself had seen some real benefits from changing up his way of eating. But what I said and thought at the time is: No. It does help just about everything.
Even though you weren’t there at the time, I’d like to clarify that statement for you. By it, I do not mean that I think eschewing grains, sugars, and Frankenfats and eating lots of saturated fat and meat is a miracle cure of any ailment. There are three things I do mean:
Ensam är stark. “Alone is strong.”
–Swedish Proverb
Forgive the long silence. I cracked my head on a wall last week and writing has been difficult till now.
My favorite Swedish proverb is actually Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder. “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.” However there’s no doubt that the Swedes are standing alone just now; they are certainly also standing strong.
Because I have been overweight for over 30 years I have heard and (mostly) read thousands of people in slimming magazines, on problem pages and in person talk about food addictions and cravings and bingeing. And in all those anecdotes, I have never heard of anyone bingeing on meat, fish, eggs or green veggies.
The person quoted above was responding to this poor woman:
I have always been the type to “polish off the whole box”. I have tried every strategy, dieting, not dieting, trying to distract myself… but I am a like a child, if there is cereal, bread, chocolate or cakes in the house I demolish them…If I’m honest, i can just polish off a whole packet of wheatgerm crackers
“Curviest” went on to suggest that the problem was carb addiction, not a lack of self control in general, and told them she’d seen these cravings disappear in 24 hours by having someone eat nothing but meat and fat for a whole day.
I used to moderate a weight loss community and we had this whole Weight Watchers trend a while ago and 20 women or so joined it. Only one that was 270lb or so was told to eat above 24 points… Everyone else was supposed to eat under 24 points. 24 points is 1,200 calories, so they were supposed to eat less than where most starvation diets begin.
This summer I met a number of people doing Weight Watchers.
I also met a number of people doing Weight Watchers for the second, third, fourth or fifth time.
[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place . . . Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.
― Steve Grand
Just a thought about how we are so much more than our atomized stuff, before we talk about that stuff.
I had hoped by now to write you a post from the bosom of Asia, home and surrounded by grass-fed meat and butter. Alas, I’m still on a plane, and we’re putting our diet to the ultimate test. We shall call it: The Delta Test.
I had a direct flight from Seattle to my home on Thursday evening. The red eye. In preparation, I ate a hamburger at the airport, sans bun or fries, but with bacon and cheese. As with all my international travels this year, I planned to just skip flight meals entirely. The flight was to take 11-12 hours, and I skipped the first meal service without any problems.
I dozed a bit and thought it was odd when the pilot started talking about making our descent only 10 hours into the flight. I’m thrilled with shorter flights, of course, but I’ve been doing this Asia flight since 1997, and it never, ever takes only 10 hours.
Continue reading That Dream Wivin a Nightmare
Andere Länder, andere Sitten.
–German Proverb
So today I was in Germany for a while. I had a ten hour layover in Frankfurt and I took off into the city on the regional trains to spend three hours hiking about Worms. Running about it, actually.
If it’s getting hard to keep track of where I am, I’m sorry. A friend gave me this trip as a gift, to go see family posted abroad for work. I haven’t seen them in years, so that’s the background to this little story.
I got off the plane after a miserable flight (note: Lufthansa seems to have the smallest seats of any airline ever, and that is saying a lot. I’ve flown all over Asia 145 pounds heavier than I am now and I was never so cramped as I was on this trup.) I wanted some food when I got off, and the first thing I found was a little restaurant in the airport advertising breakfast. More than half the breakfast choices were very heavy in fat and protein with only some token carbohydrates to go with them.
It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication, and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
–Thomas Sowell
A little insanity is good early in the morning. It keeps you young. It revives your zest for life. When I was staying with Brother 4 a few weeks ago, their 1-year-old provided that for me in the form of various games such as “Crazy Head.”
Now that I’m away from their place, I am forced to search for insanity in the news. Thankfully, it’s not hard to find. I was assaulted by an insane article a little bit ago in Time. The gist of the article is a common one:
Ask Me How It Happened 