MTheads

LCHF Still Rules My Life

God, still doing the LCHF thing.  Not that I mind a diet of filet mignon and bacon, but it's a difficult diet to keep going.  I generally have to go shopping 3.5 times a day in order to keep all the fresh food needed to feed six people in the house. There can be no boxes or cans.  

And then, my children have gotten the idea from somewhere that home-cooked, fresh food is actually a sneaky substitute for the real food that comes out of boxes.  OK, we ate a lot of mac and cheese in the old days.  It's a challenge to keep them eating high quality food.  So that's something to keep me busy.

Years ago, Denis Leary had this hilarious riff about the morphing of modern man into some kind of soft sandal wearing, tofu eating, meat shunning, full contact football abhorring, sun avoiding, Oprah watching creature. I think about that while I'm clicking through my three thousand paleo/LCHF web sites everyday. I think about it because sometimes an image of Paleo man comes unbidden to my mind, an image of a man similarly struggling to live forever.

Paleo man wears finger shoes when not earthing, wears special colored lenses to help him maintain his circadian rhythm. Only sprints. Moves often and slow. Lifts heavy things. Checks his glucose and ketone levels obsessively. Eats spoonfuls of organic unrefined coconut oil. Eats exactly five brazil nuts a day. Intermittently fasts (the thinner the faster, the more the fasting). Drinks bone broth. Eats the perfect diet which only requires supplementing with Vitamin D3, fermented cod liver oil, magnesium, iodine, CoQ10, resistant starch, probiotics, and prebiotics.  

Now this sounds more like an eating disorder. Perfect control perfect life.  And the acolytes all want the primal/paleo gurus to tell them exactly what to do to get themselves fixed -- what to eat, what to take, how to sleep, walk, breath, and think. It's kind of worrying. But they're just people looking to feel better, live forever, cure something. Like us all.

Of course, there're plenty of sciencey LCHF blogs out there too -- less orthodoxy and more studies. I like best the blogs by actual doctors and scientists. I like the blogs which are helping to disseminate the studies debunking the low fat dogma and trans fat insanity.  And I still read all the others, just in case.

So, still in this for a penny in for a pound of pork.

 

LCHF Diet Extraordinaire Update

I'm still eating LCHF and eating any kind of diet with a catchy name means I have to write excruciatingly detailed and personal posts about my "journey" and personal transformation following this new doctrine, I mean, diet.  Luckily for you, I'll be skipping the bathroom details.  Let's just say all is A-OK and on the boring side. 

From reading other people's blogs and books and testimonials though, I have to ask, "Why am I so untroubled in the bathroom department??"  It's like a rite or something on any new diet to finally be regular, stop being regular, stop everything, never have a minute's peace, wonder what the hell that is, ask strangers on the internet if they've ever seen anything like what I've described, and maybe even take pics of it to bring to the doctors.  Instead, I'm just sailing through life without purpose.

So nothing tantalizing on that front.  What is different for me on this new way of eating?  Actually, not much.  I think I eat less because the fat fills me up.  I seem to be more likely to skip meals, but then, I did before.  I do notice less energy after hard weight workouts, but I'm also still making progress and getting stronger.  I'm thirsty more often, but that's probably the kidneys groaning under all the red meat I'm eating.  Suck it up, waste strainers!  We all have our little challenges.

I have not gained any weight.  I sleep the same.  I look the same.  I spend five times as much on food.  But, who knows, I have no proof that this diet has not made me resistant to all illnesses, and perhaps immortal.  That's something.  More updates later.  If you're lucky, I'll post pictures of my fat drenched meals. Instead, I'm posting this:

Low Carb High Fat tips I've learned from the internet

LCHF tip #1: If it's a floaty, you're eating fat mostly.

(sorry...)

Hungry, Again.

There are several aspects of my new, experimental LCHF diet that I find difficult.  The most difficult is getting enough to eat.  You'd think it would be easy to eat all the bacon and steak one wanted.  It ain't.  For one thing, fresh meat and high quality bacon means constant grocery shopping.  And we're a family of six eaters.  Imagine the amount of bacon we have to buy to satisfy all of us.  For six, we need at least a pound and a half at a serving, and that leads to a few of us pining for just one more piece.  And to fights.

And because I truly believe in the importance of buying high quality meat -- as in grass-fed, free-range, home-schooled -- we spend a small fortune on meat.  Again, six eaters means two chickens, or eight breasts, or several pounds of ground beef for every dinner.  Of course, I give it my best newbie meat eater try with meatloaves and stew-type meals to help mitigate costs.  I know tenderloin for six is stupid planning.  I'm learning as fast as I can.

Another problem is I'm the only one in the family with a taste for the more "flavorful" end of the meat spectrum.  I eat all the cheap (and delicious) offal, I eat all the bone marrow.  I'm the only one excited to try the tripe soup.  My husband does bravely give anything I make a try.  But, God forbid my children taste something not sanitized out of all recognition of its origins.  While our girls won't even look at raw meat, running away in horror, they have no problems eating bland white meat with a breaded exterior.  Our boys play it more cool but still won't try much of anything that looks like the animal it is. 

My husband and I created these children, but I'm not sure how we did because we have never been your typical American eaters, having been tofu-eating vegetarians most of our adult lives.  Maybe it's a result of them growing up in America.  All we can do is keep making healthy food and hoping their tastes mature sometime.

Back to the problem of not enough to eat.  I do my best to make meals using fresh ingredients, but they run out quickly, as do leftovers, if we have them.  So I'm left trying to put together a LC meal from pantry ingredients and whatever is left in the fridge.  The kids and my husband still eat carbs so they can just make pasta or rice or pour a bowl of death carbs, I mean, cereal.  I'm stuck making myself eggs, again.  Or eating salami and cheese and olives, again.  Sometimes I just give up and don't eat.  

This problem of running out of food is due to my inexperience with dealing with fresh, whole meat products.  I have to figure out the balance between maintaining stock and not wasting food by not eating it in time.  Yes, I know, all you experienced cooks, especially all you working moms, that's what the freezer is for!  I'm learning.  Eventually I'll have it down.  But for now, I miss the convenience and long-term storage of high carb foods!

My little LCHF eating buddy.  He's got my back.

Tax on Fat was Going to be Just the Beginning...

In case someone out there isn't a fanatical data collector on the low carb diet and hasn't kept up with the case of Denmark's government taxing "unhealthy" foods, here's an article in The Economist on it: A Fat Chance.

Let's just say it didn't work out.  In the comments, some people surmised that the Danish government is always looking for things to tax and it just categorized fat as a health risk in order to extract more kroners.  Or they really really cared.  This time the populace fought back. 

Fast Facts on Denmark

1) I got married in Denmark.  So, I'm quite the authority.

2) Denmark is surrounded by LCHF countries.  Around 25% of Swedes eat low carb.

3) Everyone speaks English better than most native speakers of English.

4) If you get married there on one of their wedding packages, you will be asked at least five times if you have ever had relations with a family member.  Relations means sex.  Not sure if this is how they see the rest of us, or if they themselves have a problem with it.

5) They will spike your complimentary bottle of champagne with sleeping drugs so you'll miss your dinner reservation and be forced to eat at a Chinese takeout on your wedding night.

6) They are all good looking.  What have they done with all the unattractive people?  (Read Uglies by Scott Westerfeld....)

LCHF Log and Book List

My LCHF diet:

All and any meat products.  Cheese, salami, and liver pates.  Eggs, cream, and bacon everyday.  Lots of vegetables like greens, cabbages, and cauliflower.  Butter, bacon fat, and coconut oil.  Coffee, water, and wine. 

No grains.  No legumes.  No sugar.  Little processed foods.

That sums it up.

Books I've read on this topic:

Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

Why We Get FAt: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes

The New Atkins for a New You by E.C. Westman, S.D. Phinney, and J.S. Volek

Wheat Belly by William Davis

Rich Food Poor Food by Mira and Jayson Calton

The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by S.D. Phinney and J.S. Volek

The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf and Loren Cordain

The Paleo Diet Revised by Loren Cordain

My favorite books are Gary Taube's --- so stuffed with facts and studies.  I also enjoyed Rich Food Poor Food.  I learned so much about hidden ingredients and how to choose various products by quality characteristics.

My least favorite books have been the Paleo books.  They're heavy on ideology in a way that reminds me of my vegan and vegetarian days.  In Paleo world, food isn't simply good or bad for you, food either heals or sickens.  Good food pulsates with warm wishes and healing substances while bad food corrupts and sickens. And which does which depends how we choose to weave their foody roots into our pre-historical Eden, called the Caveman Days.

But, I still enjoyed the books.  Paleo eating has a lot to offer the low carb eater, if you can get past the rituals and new age optimism.

The Hungry Beast Within...

I've tricked, er...encouraged my husband into eating low carb with me.  Considering I do all of the cooking, that wasn't hard.  And he doesn't even realize it yet.  No, he suspects. 

His problem with the diet so far is the inconvenience of making quick meals low in carbs.  When you're running out the door, it's much easier to eat a quick bowl of cereal or grab a sandwich.  Now, he throws some pre-cooked sausages into the microwave.  But that'll get old eventually.  I'm good with cheese cubes, liverwurst, and coffee, but he wants something more...traditional.  Pussy.

But the biggest change in the townhouse has been our daughter's change from strict vegetarian to meat eater.  Now, she was a vegetarian in name only because she really didn't eat any vegetables.  Cerealtarian or carbotarian or crappofoodoterian would have been more accurate. 

When she started waking up with black circles under her eyes, I was done with her diet.  I bought her a double quarter pounder and barely got my fingers out of the way in time.  So now I work very hard to make sure she is eating high quality meat almost everyday.

Unfortunately for my family when I think I'm right about something, I go on an unceasing propaganda campaign that can only end when they have all converted to my way of thinking, or I've been done in Murder on the Orient Express style.  But I never sleep.  I just keep sweeping the world like the eye of Sauron looking for ever more obscure documentaries, books, and blogs to make them watch and read.  Oh, they will turn, they will turn.  Or they can make their own damn dinner.

Diet Ruminations, Part I

I'm eating so much fat on my diet!  I drink coffee with cream now. And I'm talking 1/2 cup or so of cream.  I slather on the mayo, baste in butter, cook with bacon lard, eat marrow, eat liver, and chew the fat, literally, off my rare steaks.  So far, not fat.  My dh thinks it's because I'm genetically unable to gain weight.  I don't think so.  I like to think Taubes and company are correct and a LCHF diet is nourishing while not being fattening.

I've always been someone interested in eating for health. I believe that food acts on us like any chemical or drug.  One has to eat well to be healthy.  The trick is to figure out what to eat!

But at the same time, I fully appreciate eating for pleasure.  I like virtually all foods.  Name it.  Kimchi, umi, natto, intestine, marrow, liver, roe, brussel sprouts, sauerkraut, raw oysters (God's food), fish eyes, tongue, and so on.  Good luck finding something I don't like to eat.  So, for me, being vegetarian became too limiting.  I needed to find a new philosophy for eating. 

And it's too easy to say, "Eat moderately, not too much, move more, etc."  But what's moderate?  If one was raised on the pyramid eating scheme moderate is different than if one was raised before the 70's.  One has to have a baseline to determine moderate. And what to make of our ever increasing rates of obesity and diabetes?  I suspect many of us are already trying to eat "moderately."  Many of us are watching what we eat, choosing low fat alternatives, eating skinless chicken breasts, and getting enough fiber. 

Yet we're getting fatter and sicker.  What's up?  Maybe it's the junk food and processed foods.  Many of us eat mainly by fat and calorie counts.  If it comes in a box but is low fat, it's alright.  If the calories are around 100 per serving, we throw it in the cart.  A "moderate" diet based around skim milk, low fat yogurt, and Special K doesn't appear to be working.  So, as Taubes called his original essay for the NYT's, What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

What if everything we were told about what is healthy to eat is not true?

Doctrine Creep

If a diet can be compared to a political ideology, the LCHF diet would be near the libertarian end of the spectrum with veganism and raw foodism planted firmly on the fascist end, really firmly.  The whole low carb movement reminds me of the homeschooling movement -- same kind of non-conformist slightly geeky people, same disregard for cultural norms, and the same self confidence that the individual is more than capable of steering their own lives.  (This is where anti-Homeschoolers will sarcastically ask if we think we can DIY our own brain surgeries, too, implying that teaching children is as difficult as surgery, brain surgery, and that only teachers should be allowed to operate on children.)

I love information, but I hate dogma.  As soon as I read anything anywhere in whatever area I'm interested in, and I come across preachy instructions on how to apply their general POV to every aspect of my life, I get highly skeptical and irritated.  A completely lame example:  In a macrobiotic diet book by Michio Kushi, which I read maybe 25 years ago, there were detailed instructions on how to  take a proper shower.  Scrubbing that caucasian off was the basic idea.  You just want some dietary advice and guidelines and you end up in a Japanese cult. 

While exploring my new perfect forever diet, I'm also learning a lot about the Paleo movement.  There are similarities btwn the two diets, and their followers even take cruises together.  But whereas the LCHF diet is about following science blindly to whatever absurd method of eating is shown to be the most efficacious, the Paleo movement encompasses your entire life.  Food has to be pure.  Eating has to be clean.  Sleep has to be 7.5 hours in duration in a cool and lightless room.  Shoes are buffers btwn you and life.  And one should leap and frisk along wave swept shores like heathen cannibal island children.  Admittedly, primal eaters do seem a happy group, always smiling and baring their perfectly toned bodies in a bonhomie kind of way.  I think it's the excess of omega-3s in their diet.

He Maketh Me to Lie Down in Green Pastures...Scratch That, Meaty Pastures.

From the enchanted bower of pure rainbow vegetables glistening with organic goodness to the grassy plains of tawny prey oozing omega 3's, I've travelled from end to end of the utopian diet world.  Both of these worlds guarantee the true believer immortality if they but have the strength to fulfil every stricture which has been carefully copied down straight from the lips of angels -- diet books.

I have to admit, for young me the appeal of vegetarianism was in its promise of health and vitality.  For God's sake, just look at vegetables and fruit:  They're so bright!  So colorful!  Personified good health!  Then look at meat:  Gray, lumpy, dead.  Might as well eat a plate full of cancer.  Yes, with the science part of vegetarianism pretty much summed up thus, I felt I was eating the best possible of all diets, like the one in the Garden of Eden.

But vegetarianism hasn't quite lived up to its promises.  First, I kept coming across results of studies involving millions of nurses and mormons and Ivy League alumni which did not show any benefit to eating vegetarian or of even eating low fat and healthy.  The participants still managed to die like everyone else in about the same time.  And carrying a few extra pounds.  WTH??  Not even thinner??  So, what is the point of rinsing and straining quinoa for 45 minutes if it is not going to transform my cells from within into beautiful butterflies?

And vegetarians as a whole are a humorless group.  Even as vegetarians, my husband and I made fun of them -- dogma and purity of motives, comrade.  Vegetarians often do well while young, but a transformation occurs after one turns 35 years old or so.  Then we start to look a bit strained and lined and frazzled.  You know I'm right.

Now, twenty years later, I've come across a different set of facts that proclaim eating only fat and protein is the secret to immortality.  I'd like some of that, or at least a fighting chance to avoid or mitigate all the degenerating and debilitating illnesses which start to haunt us in our forties.  This is the low carb/high fat diet which is diametrically the opposite of my earlier diet.  But what I like about this "new" diet is the science.  It's less emotional.  Food is good or bad for you based on chemical reactions and body response, not on an item's touted purity or goodness or ability to heal global warming.

Over the last several years I have cut down on carbs.  Last month I went really low carb.  It's been four interesting weeks eating only eggs, steaks, sausage, butter, cheese, cream, pork, lamb, liver, and greens for every meal.  So far, so good.  No evidence I'm not immortal, yet. 

Someone approves of my diet change!