Tag: diet

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.”

Continue reading Paradoxing

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.

Continue reading PaleoAtkinsPrimalSouthBeachZoneKetogenic

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

Recipes, The First

That’s the ultimate goal of most turkey recipes: to create a great skin and stuffing to hide the fact that turkey meat, in its cooked state, is dry and flavorless.

–Alton Brown

Pay no attention to that quote. I put it there as an illustration of what not to do. Your turkey doesn’t ever have to be dry and flavorless. If it is, you ain’t doing it right.

China

Continue reading Recipes, The First

MCT Oil

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

― Aristotle

You may recall that back at The Beginning I mentioned drinking a version of “bulletproof” coffee. As I mentioned then, the real thing is done with MCT oil, but I was using plain old coconut oil and dodging spears from the Bulletproof Faithful for my heresy.

Then a few posts back, I went on and on about coconuts and coconut oil. If you recall, I mentioned that drinking coffee with butter and coconut oil resulted in feeling full and energetic. When we ran out of coconut oil and then got some more two weeks later, I was able to narrow down that it was likely the coconut oil that made the biggest energy difference.

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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?

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ຕີເນດ

One of these nuts is a meal for a man, both meat and drink.

– Marco Polo

I’m going to talk for a little bit about the glories of the coconut. Feel free to turn away at this point.

I never grew up eating them. East Tennessee is remarkably free of coconut trees. I saw some in China when I moved there, but I didn’t know much about them, didn’t know how to open them, and didn’t really bother looking into it.

Then in the course of studying up on my high fat, moderate protein diet, I kept running across coconuts and coconut oils. Lots of people swear by it for energy, for skin care, as a cancer cure, as an HIV cure, for curing the plague, for regrowing limbs, etc. Some of the claims were so far fetched that I didn’t pay much attention to this little fruit.

But I did note in my reading that some of the people groups whose traditional diets involved very high levels of saturated fat–and yet who did not have heart disease, obesity, diabetes, or cancer–got their saturated fat from a daily diet of coconuts rather than seals or cattle. The Tokelauan diet in particular was over 50% fat, most of it saturated. If you look at the very end of the study I linked to, you see that when the Tokelauans migrated to New Zealand their overall and saturated fat intakes sharply declined: and then they started developing arteriosclerosis.

Continue reading ຕີເນດ

The China Study

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.

–Charles de Gaulle

And that’s about the quality of the information we can glean from The China Study.

The China Study is a book by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell that purportedly proves without a doubt that the eating of animal foods causes all the chronic diseases of civilization, like heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. It’s supposedly based on the results of the China-Cornell-Oxford Project which was, interestingly enough, directed by T. Colin Campbell and involved China, Cornell, and Oxford. As you can probably guess, the study followed Chinese people in rural areas of China and recorded what they say they ate, when they got sick, and how they died.

And The China Study is pretty much the “inspired by actual events,” made-for-TV movie version of the China-Cornell-Oxford project.

Now if you haven’t heard of this book, you obviously don’t have any vegan friends because this is their favorite thing in the world besides tofu. This proves, proves mind you, that if you get cancer it is entirely your own fault for insisting on eating chicken.

Continue reading The China Study