Tag: low carb

That Dream Wivin a Nightmare

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

Served with Apologies

Chocolate says “I’m sorry” so much better than words.

–Rachel Vincent

Well friends, it has been a while. I don’t have any chocolate, either. But if you’ve been reading then you know that I’ve been on the road. I touched down from Asia on July 3. Since then I’ve been in Washington, Montana, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Germany and Greece. After Greece I didn’t have my iPad’s keyboard for a while, and I’m not one for typing on screens.

Continue reading Served with Apologies

Germany

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.

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And The Winner Is…

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.

Continue reading And The Winner Is…

Cholesterol Mythology

Not really, and actually my cholesterol was 190 when I had the heart attack. 190, which isn’t that high.

–Mike Ditka

Guess who else’s cholesterol was well within the Mythical Safe Range when he had his first heart attack? Dwight Eisenhower, who was the ideal weight for his height and was very fit when his first heart attack hit at age 64. His cholesterol was 165.

So of course he was put on the now ubiquitous low-fat diet, which included lots of healthy whole grains like oatmeal and lots of margarine, almost no meat, and no fats but margarine and corn oil. What was the result of this amazingly healthy diet? Well, strangely he started gaining weight for the first time in his life. So much so that he kept cutting his food portions down till he was nearly starving: to no avail. Even more oddly, his cholesterol just kept going up and up. From 165 to 259. Just a couple days after Eisenhower got that highest reading, Ancel Keys got his face on the cover of Time for promoting the new “lipid hypothesis,” which blamed fat for everything and advocated, for the first time, a low-fat diet as the cure for all America’s heart disease problems.

Which, as we all know, has clearly been an incredible success, since Americans have no heart disease anymore.
Continue reading Cholesterol Mythology

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

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

Ain’t Got No Home

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.

Continue reading Ain’t Got No Home

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