Tag: low carb

Bringing Good Cheer

Now grocer’s trade
Is in request,
For plums and spices
Of the best
Good cheer doth with
This month agree,
And dainty chaps
Must sweetned be.
Mirth and gladness
Doth abound,
And strong beer in
Each house is found.
Minc’d pies, roast beef
With other cheer
And feasting, doth
Conclude the year.

–”Poor Robin” 1677

As you head into Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and then New Year’s and all the attendant feasting, what kind of a plan do you have?

I can’t tell you what plan will work for you; I can only tell you what my plan is. Read it if you like; ignore it if you will; adopt parts for yourself and throw out what you don’t like. It’s up to you–just don’t go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house with nothing more than a vague hope that you’d like to “eat well.”

To develop a good plan, you need to know the ground. It’s no good figuring out how to arrange the cavalry if you don’t even know in which direction the enemy is. In our case, the preliminary information we need is from our new, and better, understanding of reality.

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Mass Confusion

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are many confusing things in the world today. Just scroll through the headlines.

I know I’m confused. For example, I’m confused about why anyone cares if Alec Baldwin yelled at someone again? And I’m really perplexed about why anyone with the sense God gave a squirrel–celebrity or not–would take a picture of themselves naked and then put it into a “cloud” of digital information that is out of their own control. And why are people confused that nations who have been enemies for all of their existence are shooting at and invading one another? And those are just the first three questions that popped into my head after scanning this morning’s headlines.

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I’m Ok, You’re Ok

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
― Dale Carnegie

Every morning I get a slew of articles on health. I read them when I have time, which unfortunately is not often these days. But today there were several that were just too good to pass up. To start us off right, let’s read about this poor woman:

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A Tale of Traveling

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

–Mark Twain

So now I am out of Asia and back in America, and I would like to report on the continued success of the Anti-Jet Lag Diet.

I think I should call my regular consumption of food by this name.

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Results

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

― Clive James

I would like to explain to you today the results of my personal test of the Resistant Starch Craze. I wrote about this starch in this post, which also contains links to both pro- and con- arguments about the stuff. I’ll very briefly summarize here. The craze is largely in the Paleo world, and what everyone is saying is that resistant starch is starch that doesn’t get digested; thus will not spike your blood sugar; is found in potatoes, rice, green plantains, bananas, and a few other things; and will feed your gut biome and result in better energy, blood sugar control, sleep, digestion, weight loss, etc. I believe the gut biome will also volunteer to babysit your children if you feed it enough. I also believe doctors have known about this for ages, and call it indigestible starch.

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Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
― Voltaire

I was going to write about salt today, but before I could sit down and do so, I found an interesting article. Two actually. One is from the New York Times, the other from the LATimes. We’ll start on the West Coast since that’s closer to me.

You’ll be thrilled, excited, and basically all-around adrenalized to see the headline: “FDA Approves a New Artificial Sweetener.” I know I’m beside myself.

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Aww, Nuts

Worldly riches are like nuts; many a tooth is broke in cracking them, but never is the stomach filled with eating them.

–Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

If you putter around the low carb world for very long, you’ll see that we have a strange relationship to nuts. On the one hand, you’ve got people using pounds of nut flours every day in their cake-that-aren’t-cakes recipes. On the other hand, you’ve got spear-throwing Paleo types talking about them like they’re almost as bad for you as grain. So what’s the truth?

Well, if you think I can tell you, you’re nuts.

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More Stuff To Read

Thus it appears to be the necessary duty, and the interest of every person living, to improve his understanding, to inform his judgment, to treasure up useful knowledge, and to acquire the skill of good reasoning, as far as his station, capacity, and circumstances furnish him with proper means for it.

–Isaac Watts

There’s always things to read. Keeping up with it all is impossible, but keeping up with some of it is good for you! An educated mind is not easily coerced, enslaved, or deceive; and by “educated” I don’t mean “got a degree in business administration” or “went to plumbing school.” I mean a mind that seeks to know what it can about as much as it can. With these salutary thoughts in mind, let’s look at what’s going on in the world as you head into the weekend.

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Where Angels Fear to Tread

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

–Leonardo DaVinci

If you read any news from the low-carb/Paleo sort of world, you can’t help but have been assaulted recently by all the screaming about resistant starch. It’s the New Big Thing.

Now, don’t let my sarcasm fool you. There might really be something to it. The theory seems sound. It’s just that a lot of stuff remains unproven and is down to personal experience. That doesn’t mean everyone promoting it won’t be proven correct in the next few years. It just means a lot remains unknown. Plus, I’m always leery of the New Big Thing. So let’s talk very briefly about what it is and what’s going on. I’m just going to do a basic rundown because there are far better, in-depth analyses of this that have been done by others. If you want to really get into this, I recommend these:

Continue reading Where Angels Fear to Tread