Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
–Laurence J. Peter
You knew it would happen. Thanksgiving is over, and now we must be subjected to a slew of articles about how to lose that holiday pound. Some of this advice is even packaged in implications designed to make you feel guilty: if you/us big fat Americans didn’t eat all this meat and all this fat at the holidays and get all fat and lazy and gorge yourselves/ourselves on fat and meat the whole world would be a better place.
…High cholesterol levels are really a symptom, not a cause of cardiovascular disease. Not understanding this fact, a lot of people take medicine to try to lower their LDL cholesterol levels artificially. Attempting to control through medication the enzymes that produce elevated cholesterol is analogous to playing pool with a rope.
–Dr. Doug McGuff
Let’s review.
We’ve already discussed how both LDL and HDL are lipoproteins that carry cholesterol around the body. LDL carries it to areas damaged by inflammation; HDL carries it back out.
When LDL particles are big and fluffy in size, they can easily be carried away by HDL and they are not so susceptible to oxidation, human “rusting,” that damages them and you. Very small LDL, sometimes known as VLDL, is very susceptible to oxidation and cannot be easily carried away by HDL. (Of course all this is very simply put.)
Continue reading The Earth is Flat and Cholesterol Will Kill You
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.
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.
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.
Ask Me How It Happened 