Thursday, October 31, 2013

happy halloween!!!

It's opined by some that our attraction to celebrating the Dark Side on All Hallows Eve is EEEEEVILLLL -- to which i reply POPPYCOCK.  These folks are inclined to be afraid of everything that is "different" from their experience.

Others are more philosophical, but equally wrong IMHO, in assuming we want to be scared as an artificial means of getting an adrenaline fix.  They remind me of book-experts of historic costume who have never actually WORN authentic clothing of a period, and therefore have ridiculous notions as to why certain practices existed.

Closer to truth, i believe, is the desire to analyze our fear of death and come to terms with it by plumbing the depths, seeing the worst, understanding it, and thereby removing a lot of the Unknown quantity that causes the uneasiness.  We aren't afraid of the dark -- it's what's hidden by the darkness that's scary.  If we know what's out there, we're better equipped to deal with it.

Those of us who believe in reincarnation are convinced that we know what's on the other side.  By and large, we're not afraid of death, but would dearly love to know more of the DETAILS of what our departed friends are experiencing.  We want more insight, and long to communicate.

Dead people are very important to the living!  We seek out their writings for access to the wisdom they accrued, for amusement, and insight into the world they walked through, ages before we were born.  This doesn't even take into account the longing we have to make one more contact with loved ones we've lost.

Play a game:  if you could ask just one question of someone who has passed beyond the veil, who and what would it be?  As you are trying to drift off to sleep tonight, ask it.  Some remarkable results have been experienced, doing this.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

oh, and one more thing....

Yesterday was the first day with just the three of us at home again -- J, Spense and me, being lazy and self-indulgent!  I watched Halloween movies (it was Mummy day, both ancient and modern), ate J's good quiche, had a couple of glasses of wine in the afternoon, and finished up some leftovers for dinner.  That might have been a mistake.

There were "compromise foods" in that meal -- a few cannelloni beans and LC pasta in the soup, and possibly more nightshades than are optimal for me.  I made little sandwiches from the (innocent) brisket and some gluten-free french bread which was not one of my usual recipes.  I spent the evening  with obviously inadequate digestion going on.  My bedtime supplements sat on top of it very uneasily.  I gave up trying to sleep at 11, but a nice hot epsom-salt bath made me feel a lot better; after that the night was short, but comparatively good.

My histamine issues have gotten a lot better over the last month, but this fortnight of higher stress and worse nutrition took its toll.  One of the things an "attack" does to me is dramatically lower my thyroid functioning.  If i eat/drink/breathe enough of the wrong things, i particularly experience poor digestion and a difficulty getting warm.

The tendency of poor nutrient absorption to participate in the cycle of poor thyroid function to poor digestion to poor absorption, 'round and 'round, is something i've written about before.  However, i have NOT yet spoken of the temperature issue in metabolic function, an inexcusable omission!  My only excuse is ... there are just SO MANY things to think about, when crafting one's best possible health-lifestyle!  :-)

In agreement with Dr. Denis Wilson's temperature theory, there will be a similar Vicious Circle of low metabolism and temperature and thyroid function.  It boils down to the enzymes which catalyze every chemical reaction in our bodies -- it has been found that a small variation in temperature can distort their shapes, and since a lock-and-key situation exists, an overly-warm "loosened" enzyme can't do its job well, and nor can a too-chilly "tightened up" one.


Wilson found that, in patients experiencing hypothyroid symptoms but showing acceptable lab values, just normalizing their temperatures with the use of T3 supplements was enough to get them functioning well again, even after withdrawing the thyroid supps.  No wonder i've always found that a hot bath helps when i feel crummy -- my temperature comes up to an appropriate level, and then my body is able to take over the job of climate control as it was designed to do.  No wonder that being exposed to prolonged heat makes me feel awful, and that i'll only regain decent function when i cool off.

This is a notion i've ONLY seen on his site, http://www.wilsonssyndrome.com.  But between this and the thyroid-lowering power of inadequate nutrition, a low-cal diet, histamine intolerance and CFS/ME, a lot of apparent contradictions in patient experience can be explained.  Symptoms can come from a huge variety of causes.  A mixture of hypO and hypER symptoms can come from mixed messages by the regulatory systems of the body -- fuel and toxin messages -- and NOT be a hint that one is better off without a thyroid at all, as allopathic medicine has sometimes interpreted it.  Unless a part is diseased or injured beyond repair, surely allowing it to heal in a nutritionally-replete and hygienic environment is to be preferred!  

...but of course, that takes WORK.


Thursday, October 24, 2013

food

Here's where i have to make a confession -- i've got my selfish side!  ;-)  In defense, we HAVE to take care of ourselves primarily, because 1) what others think is right for "everyone" usually isn't, even if you're confident they have your best interests at heart; and 2) we can't do what we need to do, which includes unselfish acts, unless we ourselves are functional, which requires taking care of ourselves first, which is ... selfish...?

For two weeks now, i've been in company with a lot of people, which is completely opposite of the position i was in, this time last year.  Without all the distractions and the need to cooperate with the "food desires" of other people, it was comparatively easy to determine and define what is best for myself.  I found how to pretty-much eat optimally for my own health, well-being, energy and weight control when i spent a lot of time by myself.  That plan is VERY hard to pursue when other people are added to the mix.

There's a big range in how much people use food for "entertainment" purposes.  Some get up in the morning and the first thing they think of is "what can i eat today?"  Some "get bored" by a diet of limited variety, no matter how nutritionally replete it is.  Some treasure their sweets* and treats to the point that they seriously endanger their well-being for the sake of sensual enjoyment.  To me, these notions range from "unworthy" to just plain loony.  Planning meals for them and otherwise catering to their amusement gets problematic;  it's hard to accommodate everyone's absolute needs, let alone please them.

Being around people with that "chow down" philosophy is difficult for those of us who would rather eat simply and eat less -- even more so when we need to cook for them!  Supplying meals for those with different requirements is a constant temptation to err.  Effort expended (energy requirements thus changed) and stress add to the difficulty.  As an OCCASIONAL thing, one little trick has occurred to me, and it is exemplified by the starch-apologists' darlings, the Kitavans.  (Of course, if one is diabetic or pre-diabetic what works adequately for ME is off the table -- pun intended).

I pig out at supper, and if it's safe-carb-heavy i don't worry about it.  It WILL be stored as fat, being in excess of what my body would currently use.  Sometime during the night my body will switch from glucose-burning to fat/ketone burning, as i have reestablished metabolic flexibility through habitual LCHF eating.  Then, i don't have anything but coffee for breakfast.  At lunch, i continue to go heavy on the fat and have as little protein as will get me through.  Nicotine gum is occasionally helpful to tide me over till everybody else is ready for their regularly-scheduled meal.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  One glucose spike a day, and the rest of the time one is running on a fat/ketone fuel system, consisting of one's own body fat.

It's not something i'd want to do as a regular policy.  I do so well on an ultra-low-carb diet of fatty meat two or three times a day, and i feel so good on it!  But long trips and houseguests happen.  I've discovered that this little trick helps me cope.

________
*  In the case of sweets-loving, i think a lot of blame belongs on the shoulders of nutritionists (as bribed by their corporate sponsors) who say that sugar is harmless in moderation.  DEFINE MODERATION.  At what point does that frequent glucose spike stop being harmless and start promoting diabetes, cancer, heart disease and brain damage?  What, you don't know?!?  Maybe you'll use the onset of serious overweight as a sign of damage -- but that doesn't help all the lean people who (SURPRISE) develop all these illnesses....

Some also say that life is too short to deny oneself dessert, as a prime example.  To this i would counter, life is too short to spend the last few years of it feeling like shit!  I think it's worth a little privation to promote good health further down the line -- wellness is more important to me than sugar.  Limiting cookies, candy, chips, potatoes, bread, desserts ... boohoo!  Frankly, i think that NOT limiting them and then having to spend one's last years incapacitated is what life is too short for -- excuse my grammar.  ;-)

Friday, October 18, 2013

revisiting Atkins

Between other diet-doctors wanting to put their own twist on the Atkins program (so THEY can sell books, too), food manufacturers wanting to cash in on low-carb products, and individuals who want to eat their cake and have it too, the original Atkins message has kinda gotten lost....

Wooo has been writing about what seems to work best for most people for weight loss, and what the current popular tweak to LCHF has become.  Other people i know have dialed back on the ADDED fat with good results.  I well know my own best formula for weight loss, too -- and it has nothing to do with drinking cream, adding butter or swilling EVOO.

The original message was, don't be afraid of natural fats.  Eat like your great-grandparents, not like a late-twentieth-century diet-obsessed yuppie.  The original fat-fast was a technique Dr. Atkins invented, then developed, with the purpose of forcing a person who was stubbornly glucose-burning into HAVING to burn fats for fuel because the usual over-abundance of carbs isn't available.  In the decade since his death, things have changed.

Maybe the first person to suggest DRINKING oil was the creator of the Shangri-La diet.  Before that, the only fat-bibbing i was aware of was the suggestion of real cream in one's coffee -- a substance known for suppressing appetite and providing energy all by itself.  There's a reason you can just drink coffee for breakfast and not feel the need for solid food for several hours!  It wasn't till much later that i heard anyone suggest adding butter to one's coffee ... but adding eggs as Sisson suggests is actually a very old idea.  When i read Donaldson i also learned about the tradition from the British Isles of adding tallow to one's tea as a laxative, apparently another antique notion.

For overweight and obese people to burn their own body-fat for energy, they'll have the easiest success if they become "fat/ketone burners" rather than glucose burners.  That's the magic of LCHF -- if our bodies still want to burn glucose, we'll get the constant hunger signals and be miserable and tired, but if our bodies are content to burn FFAs and ketones, they won't always be telling us to "eat eat EAT" like a bunch of old-world grandmothers!  :-)  The easiest way for us to know that we ARE fat-burners is to be in ketosis -- Atkins knew this, and recommended we check ourselves with the urine test strips which are cheap and easy to find and use.

But in this modern world, "more is better" to a lot of people.  If you're seeing success by walking, surely you'll see MORE success if you run; if you can eat a 1500-calorie diet and make progress, you probably expect quicker weight loss at 1200; if you're doing well with pink pee-strips, you're bound to be an even better fat-burner if the strips are purple.  ...However, if successful methods of losing weight were truly intuitive, there wouldn't be an obesity problem.  The human body is not like a car, and the laws of physics are trumped by the laws of biochemistry when it comes to what actually WORKS.

With this philosophy, we find the original LCHF method getting tangled up with conventional wisdom!  Is our goal to conform to a certain laboratory value for blood ketones, or to maximize burning of our own body-fat for energy...?

Just because we've managed to set fats/ketones free FOR burning doesn't necessarily mean we ARE burning them!  If anything, a higher value on the pee-strips are superior to higher blood ketones because if they're in our urine that means we've already wasted "calories," spilled out energy!  If fats and ketones are still in the blood, they're not gone yet, and fats at least can be sent to storage.

On a low-carb diet, we replace easily-stored energy with something which our bodies happily burn, then when the dietary source is exhausted, we switch to the endogenous supply without a lot of fuss (hunger).  The more of the dietary source there is, the longer it will take to make that switch -- ie, start burning body-fat.  So does it make sense to take in more than is required to satisfy the basic appetite, if you're trying to get rid of body-weight (as opposed to supplying fuel for a heavy workout)?

If energy-intake-restriction is a virtue (as in the popularity of the "fat fast" and its 1000-calorie goal) why do we want to add EXTRA dietary energy on an everyday basis?  The most popular sources of added fat seem to be from dairy products, and they actually have problematic aspects for a lot of people -- even butter.

If you want to lose weight, first figure out how much protein you need or can tolerate.  Then figure out how little carb you can get along with (some people need "none" and some people feel better with more).  Finally, figure out how much fat you need so that you're not ravenous.  If you find yourself losing so fast that your thyroid slows down and you feel bad (which has nothing to do with carb intake, but are merely starvation symptoms), add a little bit more protein and fat.  Your weight-loss will slow down, but that's the tradeoff you'll have to make, if the lethargy bothers you too much.

As JanKnitz reminded us, ya gotta choose your "hard."

Thursday, October 17, 2013

brilliant quotes

I'm fond of pithy quotes and epigrams, but i usually spare my dear readers.  ;-)

Today, though, i will indulge -- just read one that i got a chuckle out of, by Agatha Christie in "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw"
"A doctor's life, I always think, is so noble and self-sacrificing," said Miss Marple.
 "You can't know many doctors," said Doctor Quimper.  "Leeches they used to be called and leeches they often are!"
;-)

how to do everything wrong

The Royal Crown people are to be congratulated -- they've managed to make a first-class, across-the-board, bad-for-EVERYONE product!!!

What a pity.  Diet RC used to be the best diet cola out there, if one tolerates sucralose well (and most people do).  It disappeared from our grocery shelves months ago.  Yesterday the "new improved" product showed up at one of the shops i patronize, and i read the label.  It has:

  • high-fructose corn syrup AND
  • aspartame AND
  • acesulfame-K AND
  • sucralose
in that order.  Mind you, i didn't take notes, so there might have been a couple of other things in it that are problematic to people....

Such a brilliant plan!  Change a product which has only one substance that a few people object to, and create one that EVERYONE can hate!  Well done, RC!

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

lalalalalalala

If it's not the answer they want, no matter how obvious it is, they will not hear....

I know a nice lady who is not dumb, but she sure does and says some dumb things.  Unfortunately, when people behave that way, they make the rest of us look bad.  No wonder so many doctors write "hypochondriac" on people's charts.  They complain about feeling bad, but there's always some excuse for not implementing tried-and-true means of treatment.  They want a magic pill ... and those don't exist.

I lose patience sometimes, and despite my wish that everyone might be healthy and happy, i slip into the attitude of "if they're not willing to make an effort to help themselves, they don't deserve help."  It's interesting to observe the reactions of people asking for advice in certain forums:  some women suck up to male attention in a way i haven't observed since the sixties; some people keep asking the same question over and over, rephrased, till they get the answer they WANT.  Sorry, the least onerous and most pleasant "solution" may only be useful to people with the fewest problems.  Tricky problems in older or sicker people will probably require a tougher regimen, and the REAL solution might involve some unpleasantness.                        

You can't try Atkins one day (Oz!) and then pass judgement on it.  You can't try a supplement for three days and say it doesn't work.  You can't try ketosis for a week and expect to feel like a million bucks.  You can't get "temporary relief" indefinitely -- i don't care WHAT that nice doctor-actor said on television.  You might have to forgo chocolate or dairy, and you may have to take desiccated liver tablets if you find eating real liver "yucky."

You have to get stubborn and stick to the course for a whole month sometimes.  ARE YOU THREE YEARS OLD?  "I don't LIIIIIKE it!" is not a valid excuse for a grown-up.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

your mileage may vary

I don't think there's anything more frustration-producing for a lot of people than trying to lose weight.  There are countless diet/exercise plans and theories to choose from, not to mention unsolicited advice from surprising sources.  Then there is the desire humans have to see what they WANT to believe is true.  People WANT to think they can eat what they like and move as they like, and still get the results they desire -- and a lot of the time it just ain't true.

There's a mis-match going on, in many cases.  Trying to use a diet or type of workout that produced good results for someone else can be like changing the fuel-filter in your car to try to improve its performance because that worked for your brother -- but if the problem is a clogged AIR filter instead, YOUR car won't run any better.

I have to conclude that the best way to choose a regimen that will work for YOU is essentially how i decide which of various similar products to buy on Amazon:  you read a couple of the positive reviews, and a couple of the negative reviews, THEN think about the tone of each before developing an opinion of who is credible.  So many diet books and sites give examples of success stories and testimonials....  It's only if the good reviews come from people LIKE YOU, and the negative comments are from dissimilar individuals, that you can reasonably assume they're relevant in your case!

Then, you may have to match your key activity to an eating style that will specifically support it (or vice versa).  Again, there are SO many little tricks and tweaks that people have worked out for themselves -- intermittent fasting, supplement use, various carb-intake levels, starch VS fructose, etc.  You may simply LIKE doing certain things, but if all of them don't work right TOGETHER for YOUR physiology, they might not be right for you in an "active improvement stage" even if they're fine for maintenance.

It's a good idea to start with basics again, and become thoroughly equilibrated THERE, then add in new techniques very slowly, one at a time.  If weight loss is the aim, re-read the WHOLE Atkins book and follow the rules strictly for a goodly period of time.  Usually, when we re-start Induction we aren't sufficient purists -- we use the compromises we learned some time ago, which COULD be the stumbling block that derailed us before.  Also, the first time we read the book, it was all new and there was a lot to absorb; now that we're more familiar with the philosophy, if we read it again it's very possible we'll notice a point that didn't click for us when we were newbies.

Back when i was actively fencing, it was impressed upon us that the best way to cement one's own mastery was to teach the basics to someone else.  All the little things that are so important may be forgotten or at least placed on the back burner as we progress.  When we revisit the details that are important for the beginner to know, we tend to clean up our act and correct sloppiness that has infiltrated our style.

...I really do need to finish reading "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" -- sounds like an important key.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

on the road again, and misbehaving already

Is it the "holiday atmosphere" of taking a trip, or just the fact that side-dishes are limited in airport restaurants....  The waiter didn't blink when i asked for my bacon-cheeseburger without the bun, but the ONLY side available was fries, and i ended up eating a few.  Ah, well, breakfast was only one cup of coffee -- i can probably "afford it."  I'll just be extra good at dinner!

Yes, my husband and i are off again.  My mother turned 90 a couple of months ago, but since she and my sisters live in the desert southwest, it was opined that the official celebration should be scheduled in a more temperate season.

My mother is one of those "moderation is all you need" believers.  Of course, she grew up eating home cooking, drinking raw milk, and eating pre-goat-grass wheat products.  In latter years she's had a few significant health issues but for most of her life she's been pretty illness-free.  She was slender as a teen and young adult, put on "normal" overweight in mid-life, and now is ... medium-sized i'd say.  There aren't a huge number of nonagenarians i know to compare with her!  When your experience has been like hers, it's easy to believe in moderation....

She'll be returning with us to St. Louis -- she misses the changing seasons, where she lives now, but come winter is pleased to escape the ice and snow.  Here's hoping we have a little fall color to show her when we get back!  

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

NF:CANN part two

A continuation from yesterday....

TWO THIRDS of Americans, and almost as large a proportion of Brits i understand, are at least OVERWEIGHT.  Now, there IS reason to believe that the very classification of "overweightness" and obesity are ridiculously defined.  However, that doesn't negate the fact that, when we look around us, we see evidence of dietary misfeasance all over the place.

Look at the pot-bellies, look at the obvious bloat, look at the unhealthy skin, look at the skinny-fat limbs, look at the pasty faces, look at the proportions that scream "badly unbalanced hormones."  Whether one is technically overweight or not, food-caused ill health is ubiquitous.

"...I'll explain what happens when the brain encounters common ingredients like wheat, fructose (the natural sugar found in fruit), and certain fats, proving that an extremely low-carbohydrate but high-fat diet is ideal (we're talking no more than 60 grams a day -- the amount in a serving of fruit)."

Perlmutter goes on to tell his audience that they'll be shocked to hear his recommendations, especially those who are on a statin for high cholesterol.  From his tone and his inclusion of this kind of statement, i think we can safely conclude that "Grain Brain" is directed at the kind of audience who MIIIIGHT just think that a "serving" of fruit is in fact the thing you find in a restaurant with poppyseed dressing on it, and NOT the "one medium apple" that Madame d'Harvarde interpreted it to mean.

For the TWO THIRDS of our population (a clear majority) who are overweight, and the additional ones who are unhealthy but thin, i don't think there can be MUCH doubt that decreasing their carb intake AND INCREASING THE GOOD FATS LIKE COCONUT OIL and DECREASING OMEGA-6s would be health-enhancing, don't you?  Funny, but that's what this guy is endorsing....

So although i would not recommend this book to most of the blog-readers with whom i trade comments, here and on the other websites i frequent, i DO think it holds value for people who have tried to work with Convention Wisdom only to find that it lets them down.  I think the average person, who probably gets her/his nutritional information from tv commercials and magazine articles, would be well-served by listening to Perlmutter's suggestions.  Sixty grams of carbs as a limit would take a LOT of sugar and other garbage out of most people's diets.

If you're a nutrition nerd already, don't bother reading it -- but if someone you know is a caregiver to a person in the early stages of dementia, it MIGHT just be a good gift idea.


Monday, October 7, 2013

news flash: crossfitters are not "normal"

A certain blogger who shall remain nameless is reading a book i just finished, and so far just DOESN'T LIKE IT.  If this turns around, the blogger assures us, we'll be informed....

Where do i start?  Well, there's a reason she is no longer on my right-hand-column list -- it has to do with egotism.

To be honest, i'm rather disappointed with "Grain Brain" too.  The author doesn't provide much meat on the carcass he serves up, and he's too fond of telling us what exciting things he's planning on communicating LATER which never seem to live up to the promise.  He's probably trying too hard to be accessible to the average reader, and only succeeds in being bland and tepid.

But the biggest gripe the aforementioned blogger has to communicate at this point in her reading is -- Perlmutter suggests most people are best off eating no more than 60 grams of carb per day, and that's just WRONGGGGG!  She needs lots more than that ... and by the way, she's a young mother/professional-woman/crossfitter.

It obviously never occurred to this egocentric idiot that not everybody belongs to her demographic, although she apparently feels that HERS is the only one that really counts.  If you're not a Harvard-trained crossfitter, you obviously don't deserve to live, let alone have a book addressed to improving your health and well-being.

And by the way, she REALLY enjoyed and endorses that new book from "the trust-fund boy."

:-P

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Kurt Harris was right, too

A discussion i had this morning with Sidereal inspired me to dig out an old Masterjohn post, which led me to a study about the effect of dietary polyunsaturates on thyroid function (PubMed, BTW, is closed down right now thanks to the Republican Party), which inspired me to re-read Archivore's "no such thing as a macronutrient -- fats" post.

Ya know, just reading this article gives me a good opinion of Harris' insight.  It's only when i read his comments on other blogs that he irritates the hell out of me.

Speaking of the components of our diets in terms of macronutrients IS bullshit.  To put corn oil and red palm oil in the same category is just plain ignorant.  To equate tryptophan, tyrosine, taurine and glycine, ditto.  And to compare whole-wheat flour and swiss chard (silver-beet to my international friends) is madness.

***

The evidence, then, that i hoped to show Sidereal is eluding me right now; i can only pass on the bare "fact" and save the discussion for a later day.  :-(  A rodent study looked specifically at how different dietary fats affected thyroid use in tissues.  The "receptivity" of the cells was best in the presence of saturated fats, lower with monounsaturates, and SIGNIFICANTLY poorer when those hearthealthypolyunsaturates were fed.  

It hardly matters how much T3 is in your blood, if it can't get into the tissues to work!  

And again -- your starting point determines how much improvement you'll see when you make a dietary change.  I suspect this is why some people feel they get a metabolic boost from coconut oil while i never observed it particularly.  If you go from a high-omega6 "SAD" or Atkins diet straight to CO, yes -- i imagine you'll get a huge boost.  I came to LCHF via Atkins, but have never been a fan of vegetable oils.  I started using butter, olive oil and bacon drippings when i abandoned low-fat, and so the metabolic advantage i experienced with the lowered sugar and starch, and the raised saturated and monounsaturated fats came all at once.

I feel that my thyroid production, conversion and usage are optimal when i'm getting LOTS of grassfed beef and lamb fat.  I feel GOOD when i fast (ie, my body is burning my own stored saturated fat), but the reduced food intake causes my body to downshift my thyroid.  

I think this is where a lot of people get confused!  A LCHF diet reduces the appetite, because one gains access to one's own fat for fuel, BUT the body senses a reduction in intake whether it be via leptin, FIAF or something else, i don't know.  The "food scarcity" signal lowers thyroid production.

It is NOT that "low-carb reduces thyroid function" -- I CAN'T SAY THIS ENOUGH!!!  It's that an "underfed" body lowers thyroid production.  A carb-fed body requires more thyroid hormone to burn that potentially-harmful fuel flooding the bloodstream, so a euthyroid individual ramps up production.  An individual with a "weak" thyroid may not be able to meet the challenge.  THIS is why a low-carb-high-SATURATED-fat diet is so important to my well-being.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

redundancy

I HAVE been an enthusiastic reader of low-carb paleo/ancestral-nutrition groups on facebook, but i have to confess, it's gotten a bit stale and tedious in spots.  For one thing, i get the impression that people just don't do their homework and due-diligence.

Maybe they're just trying to stir up discussion, but the "I just discovered such-and-such -- what does everyone think about it?" SO often covers something that was talked to death long ago that one just has to roll one's eyes and move on.  Gotcha -- it's new to YOU, and you're excited about it.  That's great, and i'm happy for you -- i hope it gives you help, support and success, but a lot of us have beaten that dead horse till our arms are tired and our backs bowed.  I REALLY don't think ANOTHER discussion is going to bring up any fresh news.

Go back and read the archives.

I mean it.  Literally.  Sincerely.  Go to the blog of whomever has helped you the most and given you the most effective advice, and read the archives, including the comments.  You'll hear both sides of the argument expounded-upon at length.  That should tell you if people's experiences agreed with the concept or not.

Or are they less interested in the information, and more into conversation?  Depending on what your goal is, i suppose, you can open a topic YET AGAIN or go back and see how the long-term discussion has gone.  Me, i'm after the informational overview. ...I guess i can just roll my eyes and read on.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

driving your vehicle

Galina just inspired me with a comment....  :-)

She observed that diet/lifestyle tweaks often work for awhile and then cease to do so -- i'm sure most of us can agree with that!  We are sailing along losing weight, or feeling better, or getting stronger, then wham, we stall -- or worse, we lose ground.  And WHY (i said to myself) does this happen?

Operating your "vehicle" is very much like driving a stick-shift.  In the mountains.  When the wind is blowing.  You can't just put it in one gear and feed it the same amount of fuel and expect things to be constant -- you have to push in that clutch while simultaneously letting up on the gas pedal, move the lever to a different position, then feed gas again while disengaging the clutch pedal.  You have to speed up and slow down to deal with curves.  You have to be on top of things, paying attention to what's around you and making suitable adjustments.

Our bodies are smarter than we give them credit for, and they have a very good memory.  Some people can operate their properly-functioning bodies like an automatic-transmission vehicle on flat ground, using cruise control.  They're constantly making little adjustments of which we're completely unaware.  Have a micronutrient shortage -- they give us a craving which SHOULD take care of the problem.  When illness or midlife changes up the terrain, we have to consciously manage things more -- our vehicles require us to swap over to standard-transmission, take it out of "cruise" and DRIVE.

So we have to deal with it.  We have to "learn to drive a stick" unless we want to be stalled at the side of the road, because that is NO FUN.  If we have to call the tow-truck because we've overheated or fouled our fuel-pump or burnt up the engine trying to get up that gradient in the wrong gear, it can get really expensive and the car might never run right again.