Category: weight

More Fun With Nutritional Insanity

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

–Harold MacMillan

This morning I opened my news feed, then ran to get my shotgun.

My barrel of fish had arrived.

This headline was purportedly about cancer, not about nutrition, but you’ll see if you read it that nutrition, exercise, and obesity all play an important part in the article. Thus it got my attention. The title of this wondrous piece is “Americans Confused About Cancer Risk” on Philly.com. (And elsewhere.)
Continue reading More Fun With Nutritional Insanity

Why I Can’t Overeat

Hunger is insolent, and will be fed.

–Homer

Ever since I started eating this way, I wanted to eat eggs. I know they’re relatively cheap little powerhouses of fat, protein, and nutrition. But I’m allergic. Finally I ran across a mention that most people with an allergy to eggs don’t show allergy to raw egg. It’s the “scrambling” of the cooked proteins that makes them indigestible to some. Sure enough, that turned out to be true for me.

Continue reading Why I Can’t Overeat

Experimental Fun

While you are experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things.

–Ivan Pavlov

In the last post you’ll perhaps recall our Calorie Math™ conundrum. I had exercised about 400 calories worth and then eaten over 2,800 calories that day. Despite being told that I should eat 1,300ish calories to lose a pound in the course of a whole week and 1,660 calories to stay at the same weight, I somehow managed by the next day to reach the smallest number I’ve yet seen on the scale.

After eating all that, I wasn’t particularly hungry for a few days. I ate what I wanted; and I have now gone to the trouble of figuring out that it ran around 1,500 calories a day. Yet despite under-eating for several days, I didn’t lose any weight. Stayed the same. This is fairly typical.

The other day, however, I wondered: What if I ate 2,800 again, only this time with a large proportion of carbohydrates?

LET’S SEE!!

Continue reading Experimental Fun

Fallout

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.

Continue reading Fallout

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, 2

Some of you may remember a previous post, where I directed you to the website of Sam Feltham. Mr. Feltham conducted a little personal experiment whereby he over-ate an incredible number of calories worth of fat for twenty-one days straight. He did not eat carbohydrates, and he ate sufficient, but not excessive, protein. He changed nothing else about his lifestyle for those twenty-one days.

By “overeat” I mean that he consumed more than 5,700 calories a day.

The Gospel According to Nutritionist Fatphobes says that he should have put on more than 16 pounds. What actually happened is that his mean weight on day 21 (he weighed morning and evening and averaged the two, to try and get around the up-to-5 pound daily weight shift that everybody sees) was 2.8 pounds higher than on day 1. Not only that, but his waist shrunk by 1.18 inches.

Continue reading Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, 2

Weight Watchers Scam

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. 

–JV1311

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.

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Continue reading Weight Watchers Scam

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.

Continue reading Frustration

It’s Not A Diet, Actually

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.

Continue reading It’s Not A Diet, Actually

Holy Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Batman!

Tradition is an explanation for acting without thinking.

–Grace McGarvie

He’s at it again! SOMEONE STOP HIM.

I’m talking about Dr. Oz trying to scare you about eating high fat foods. This time he was on with Piers Morgan talking about the untimely demise of an actor: James Gandolfini. Mr. Gandolfini died recently of a massive heart attack.

First I would just like to say that I find it highly reprehensible to use the tragic death of a relatively young man–who left behind a widow and two children, one of them an infant–in this way. Mr. Gandolfini’s death also apparently occurred while he was on the toilet, something which hardly anyone would even know had not Mehmet Oz (which is an awesome name for a comic book villain, by the way) told the entire world about it on Piers Morgan’s show.

Continue reading Holy Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Batman!

Sugar

I love to eat–Kit Kats or cookies-and-cream ice cream. I need sugar like five times a day. –Kim Kardashian

Doesn’t that quote rattle your brain a little bit?

I mean, would anyone argue that a diet like that is healthy? I don’t think so. And yet do people publicly denounce Ms. Kardashian as unhealthy, or suggest she needs to change up her diet? No. Why not?

Dare I suggest it’s because she’s not fat?

Continue reading Sugar