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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
― Mark Twain
Greetings from the United States of America, where I just arrived about 24 hours ago.
I’ve made the trip from Asia to North America many, many times in the last 15 years. This trip was by far the easiest, and I’d like to talk briefly about why. I should state first of all that I did get a direct flight, which did cut the total travel time, door to door, to about 16 hours. That’s pretty quick. It’s not unheard of for Asia to North America trips to take over 24 hours door to door, depending on which cities you travel.
However, the biggest thing was the eating.
Before I left, I had a mug of butter and coconut oil coffee, a 4oz ribeye steak, and some bacon. I didn’t eat again for 16 1/2 hours. And I felt absolutely great.
Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, ‘No thank you’ to dessert that night. And for what?!
― Erma Bombeck
In a previous post, I mentioned seeing an old, sugar-addicted friend who had some snarky things to say about my dislike of sugar. That’s a common reaction from some people. Whether they label it “Atkins” or not, they treat what I’m doing as “a diet.”
I dislike this.
There are several reasons why.
This is your last chance to go over to awkwardfamilyphotos before I get into it. Run.
Ask Me How It Happened 