Category: diet

That Dream Wivin a Nightmare

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

Served with Apologies

Chocolate says “I’m sorry” so much better than words.

–Rachel Vincent

Well friends, it has been a while. I don’t have any chocolate, either. But if you’ve been reading then you know that I’ve been on the road. I touched down from Asia on July 3. Since then I’ve been in Washington, Montana, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Germany and Greece. After Greece I didn’t have my iPad’s keyboard for a while, and I’m not one for typing on screens.

Continue reading Served with Apologies

Germany

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.

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And The Winner Is…

Grass fed beef.

Yup, sorry, but it is.

Back home in Asia, I can order grass-fed beef and lamb directly, in bulk, bypassing the middle man. That enables me to afford it. Just. Sometimes I have to compromise and get some grass-fed and some grain-fed. It’s just cost.

But since I’ve been back in America I have not been able to eat one bite of grass-fed meat in about six weeks. I’ve also not been able to find any grass-fed butter. I’m sure I could if I was in one place for long enough, but in six weeks I’ve been to ten different states. So I’ve had to subsist on “organic” butter, which though it is from cows not fed weird things, it is from cows fed grain.

Back when I first started doing this, I wondered aloud how important the grass-fed, grain-fed argument really was. There seems to be evidence to suggest grass-fed is the superior nutrition, but the reality is that it is more expensive. It’s out of the reach of many people and eating even grain-fed meat is still better than eating a lot of carbage and calling it healthy.

Continue reading And The Winner Is…

America

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

― François de La Rochefoucauld

I haven’t been able to post as much due to being on the road in America for weeks. Either I have no internet, ala the World’s Worst Hotel, or I’m just not in one place more than a night or two and am trying to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in years and won’t see again for more years.

Oh, and I’m eating.

Everything.

In sight.

You see, Americans have this habit of eating constantly. Since I hopped off the Blood Sugar Express myself, I don’t need to eat like that. In fact, I actually prefer not eating a lot of the time.

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Cholesterol Mythology

Not really, and actually my cholesterol was 190 when I had the heart attack. 190, which isn’t that high.

–Mike Ditka

Guess who else’s cholesterol was well within the Mythical Safe Range when he had his first heart attack? Dwight Eisenhower, who was the ideal weight for his height and was very fit when his first heart attack hit at age 64. His cholesterol was 165.

So of course he was put on the now ubiquitous low-fat diet, which included lots of healthy whole grains like oatmeal and lots of margarine, almost no meat, and no fats but margarine and corn oil. What was the result of this amazingly healthy diet? Well, strangely he started gaining weight for the first time in his life. So much so that he kept cutting his food portions down till he was nearly starving: to no avail. Even more oddly, his cholesterol just kept going up and up. From 165 to 259. Just a couple days after Eisenhower got that highest reading, Ancel Keys got his face on the cover of Time for promoting the new “lipid hypothesis,” which blamed fat for everything and advocated, for the first time, a low-fat diet as the cure for all America’s heart disease problems.

Which, as we all know, has clearly been an incredible success, since Americans have no heart disease anymore.
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Everybody’s Different

Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.

–George Bernard Shaw

This is another common reaction I get when people ask me what I’m doing that is so obviously making me healthier: That’s wonderful that you found something that works for you.

They then go on to explain why obviously it wouldn’t work for them, because they are completely different.

Now when someone says this to me and they are in robust good health themselves, I have nothing to say. But I don’t meet too many of those. What I normally meet are people who are not healthy at all. But they’re pretty sure that even though they don’t feel well, and even though they have a lot of health problems, that however they’re now eating is the best way to eat. Many seem to attribute certain things to old age, even though they aren’t actually all that old.

I know about this. I used to do it too.
Continue reading Everybody’s Different

Paradoxing

Vegetables are interesting, but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.

–Fran Lebowitz

I spent some time this week with The Vegetarian. I just met her, but I think she’s due her own capitalized title. A lovely person and not at all evangelistic about her food choices. Credit where credit is due, after all. She doesn’t do it because of any religious or ethical scruples, but because she believes it to be the best way to avoid cancer. But when you’re eating butter, oil, and steaks, and she’s eating chips and salads, one of you is bound to notice something. We didn’t argue or even really discuss, but we did briefly explain our opposing views.

She got where she is by reading, if I recall the title correctly, The Food Revolution. In another post we’ll take a look at that book, but for now let’s go paradoxing, shall we? It’s a little like parasailing, only not at all.

I would like to promise it’ll be fun, but as I’m now in a plane at 38,000 feet crossing the entire United States–and we are currently over North Dakota–I’m afraid we’re shockingly short on fun. And room. And food. Thank goodness I don’t need to eat every two hours, because I don’t have $17 to shell out for a tiny box of “food.”

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PaleoAtkinsPrimalSouthBeachZoneKetogenic

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

― Dwight D. Eisenhower

All the time I hear it: “Oh, so you’re doing ________.” Usually the blank is filled in with Atkins. Sometimes with Paleo. And when I answer, “Not exactly,” I then get questioned about how what I’m doing is different from one of the aforementioned diet plans.

So let me answer that question first and then try to elucidate the differences in some of these plans.

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Frustration

Patience and time do more than strength and passion.

–Jean de la Fontaine

Over the time I’ve spent eating high fat, moderate protein and few to no carbohydrates, I’ve noticed a lot of awesome benefits. I’ve detailed most of them here. But I noticed a couple new ones recently.

My grandmother was one of those older ladies who started slowly shaking as she aged. My mother was getting it too, till cancer took her in her early 50s. Every year you could see it a little more–a slight shake, especially when trying to do some kind of very fine motor skill work with the hands.

And I was getting it. I saw it when I tried to write with a pen for too long. No big deal there, since no one writes with pens anymore. Might as well just carve your words in blocks of stone. But it also affected me when I put anything in the kitchen into a measuring cup or spoon and tried to carry it to a bowl. With the little things, like a teaspoon, I’d end up spilling half of it before I got it to the bowl.

Just a couple days ago I realized that was gone. I tried to make it come back and it wouldn’t. Apparently…it was carbs? Or too little fat? Or not enough meat? I don’t know what, but I’m glad about it.

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