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.

another seeker doesn't tolerate meat-only diet

Because of one thing and another, i'm slow in presenting the news -- my husband gave the Strong Medicine protocol the ol' college try, and concluded that it isn't for him.  He faithfully played the game for three days, and got thoroughly bored with it ... AND said he wasn't feeling very well either.

Of course, three days didn't get him past the low-motility phase (i was doing it with him, and nor did i adjust in that fashion).  However, i "allowed" him to quit at the point he did because of his first objection -- if the dietary tedium got to him so quickly, there's no way he can do this long-term.  Sustainability is immensely important when choosing a dietary plan to live with for (essentially) the rest of your life.

I came up with a new way to compromise in our shared dietary future:  he gets an additional side of bagged salad with home-made (low-omega6) dressing to add fat calories and bulk to every lunch and dinner we have at home.  He's much more fond of salad than i am, and tolerates lettuce just fine (while i don't).  Since i learned the stick-blender method of mayonnaise production, it'll be quite simple to churn out plenty of good dressings, especially since my daughter gave me the MDA recipe book of sauces and dressings for my birthday (thanks, L!).

For my part of the food landscape, i'll continue to go meat-heavy while being careful of what vegetable-matter i use by way of garnish.  Realizing that some of my intolerances may be related to my intestinal flora, i recently began a probiotic containing C. Butyricum (and a couple of other "bugs" -- thanks for the inspiration, George!) in hopes of improving diversity of population in there.  I've also been inspired by Kindke's recent post to increase my intake of carnitine, and i just ordered a bottle of a high-potency liquid version....

We'll see how these tweaks succeed!  As Wooo pointed out, there's still a couple of months to profit from summer's seasonal benefits before autumn's fat-encouraging qualities descend on us again.

physiological/dietary hint

"If a woman is fat, fair and forty, and has borne some children, she is the type most likely to be full of gallstones," reminisced Dr. Donaldson of "Strong Medicine" after a long and successful career.  I believe this fact contains hints about perennial truths of modern life as well as compelling dietary advice.

If you want to keep your figure, having children is one of the worst things you can do to your body.  Between Nature (flooding you with hormones and robbing your body of nutrients) and Conventional Wisdom ("chow down! you're eating for two!"), it's a rare individual who comes out the other side without laying down body fat which is progressively more difficult to get rid of after each pregnancy.

Middle age, through the niggardliness of enzyme secretion and even MORE bad hormonal signals, piles on the pounds all by itself.  Women who had remained effortlessly normal-weight up to perimenopause finally get an idea of what some of us have dealt with all our lives, when with no change of diet or habit their body composition goes straight to hell.

As for those of us who were willing and able to fight fat-growth, well, we have tended to spend decades in calorie-counting and non-fat consumption, losing some pounds and gaining some back, over and over till our metabolisms are thoroughly confused about whether it can afford to let us burn body-fat or not.  And we know what causes gallstones -- yes, all those low-fat-eating years when bile sat in storage in underused gallbladders.

This brings us to the "fair" portion of the introductory sentence -- women whose forebears have spent thousands of years in northern climes, where their ancestrally-dark skin, hair and eyes have been bleached by countless generations of seeking to absorb optimal quantities of sunlight.  Women who are, genetically, separated by millennia from large amounts of plant foods in the diet, until agriculture finally reached the "frozen north" (which was significantly later than in places like the "Fertile Crescent").  Women who have no business eating a year-round load of concentrated carbohydrates of ANY kind, let alone the garbage that passes for food these days.

RIGHT BEFORE OUR EYES we have seen what happens to this kind of people when "novel modern foodstuffs" are introduced to a gene-stock not accustomed to a high-carb diet -- Cleave wrote about it, Stefansson wrote about it, countless missionaries wrote about it....  People in North America and Pacific islands and other places that were not invaded till comparatively recently, who took to the addictive and easy-to-prepare carbs of "civilization" and twenty years later WHAM -- unprecedented diseases completely destroy their well-being!

"Fair" women should not eat industrial and agricultural foods on a regular basis.  To put that in LESS archaic and exclusionary terms, women, even more than men, should eschew the neolithic agents of disease, ESPECIALLY women whose ancestors have most recently adopted an agricultural lifestyle.  We have fewer hormonal buffers to protect our bodies from the damage that these things wreak.  Our bodies have built-in protections for survival of ourselves and our children, but they are no match for the sheer destructiveness of modern life.

If we could find an objective and unbiased jury before whom we could present our evidence, i believe they'd come to the same conclusion i have:  products of agriculture as well as the kind of society that agriculture (including pastoralism) has empowered, are SINGULARLY bad for the health and welfare of women.  We've been encouraged to breed excessively while undermining our ability to do so in a healthy fashion.  We've lost our individual dignity, autonomy and sense of sorority because of the "need" to compete for high-quality mates (i.e., capability of passing the best genes to the next generation).  We've been indoctrinated to believe that the very things which are "killing" us are in fact good -- like paternalistic religion, libertarianism, nationalism ... and wholesomewholegrains, antioxidantfruitsandvegetables, hearthealthyvegetableoils and the low-fat diets which undeniably give us gallstones.

it's always something, second edition

Yesterday, J decided to have a coffee-fast day.  I did a simple high-fat day which, when i entered it into FitDay last night, turned out to be very low in protein -- less than 40 grams -- though the energy consumed (1700 kcal) was within what i consider a reasonable range.

I woke up this morning cold and hungry.  We know what that means!  SOMEthing about yesterday's menu was severely inhibitive of thyroid function ... and my body wasn't properly satiated (though my stomach was) with what it received.  I think the lack of protein nourishment answers both questions.

Although i BELIEVE i took in enough energy to keep my body from slipping into conservation-mode, i may be mistaken.  During my periods of being able to follow the Strong Medicine protocol last year, i wasn't consuming a VERY different amount of energy.  It seemed that i was losing WELL on about 1 g. protein per pound of LEAN tissue (which is not the same as 1g/lb. WEIGHT), and a not-extremely-different proportion of protein to fat (23:77% by kcal).

So today, i'm increasing my protein intake and trying to keep my fat intake high, as well.  (Time to try out another dessert or beverage recipe from FFcookbook!)  ...It sure would be easier to tweak diet for well-being and fat-loss if all these systems weren't so entangled!  ;-)

more fat/calories in the diet IS working better!

After the decades of low-cal dieting that i did, it's psychologically VERY hard to increase the amount i eat.  When i'm eating a ketogenic diet, making progress, and experiencing the lack of hunger i do, it's VERY tempting to take the energy intake lower.  This, however, is a big mistake.

Whether it's because i have a "weak" thyroid to begin with or merely normal response to under-feeding, going too low in energy-intake quickly puts me in "conservation mode."  Lowering intake further -- no matter what the CICO-promoters think -- also lowers fat-burning by the body.  (This SHOULD be good news for some of the obese bloggers we know, but they're so invested in their paradigm they're not even willing to trade their egos for improved health.)

My husband derived determination and inspiration from the LC cruise seminars, and when we got home last month we started applying some new techniques to our diet-and-lifestyle practices.  We procured a blood-ketone meter and found that our ordinary LC diets didn't get us to the range recommended by Phinney and Volek.  Using recipes from the "Fat Fast Cookbook" (adding to our regular regimen, not doing A fat-fast), we managed to raise our fat intake from sixty-something to eighty-something percent of energy, and this has done the trick.  We're BOTH losing.

Additionally, i find that by eating to appetite, i'm not taking in enough food to convince my body it can afford to "waste" fat to fuel me adequately.  Upon the 1200-1400 kcal/day intake, WHICH SATISFIES MY APPETITE AMPLY, my body prefers to being in starvation mode.  When i ADD TO my desired intake by drinking bulletproof-recipe coffee in the morning and consuming a very high-fat dessert, i DO lose.  At a moderate-protein, VLC, VHF level of eating, the body is willing to burn body-fat generously at 2000 kcal -- for me, this is astonishing.

Not only am i writing this as a progress report for a pair of overweight middle-agers, but as a refutation of the confusing information provided to mature women by young male paleos on sites like facebook.  The LAST thing new female low-carbers need is input from half-informed individuals about how little an obesity-resistant representative of an entirely different demographic has to do to achieve success!

omega-6 fats are responsible for "thyroid resistance"

When i first heard of "thyroid resistance" (as compared with that of insulin or leptin, for instance), i thought it might be a made-up malady, just like "restless leg syndrome."  It subsequently occurred to me that it might simply be the perceived lack of function which comes with excessive O6 intake ... because the latter DOES interfere with thyroid receptors.

Googling "linoleic acid interferes with thyroid receptors" will produce a plethora of hits, ranging in credibility from PubMed to jock-blogs.  The concept is neither new nor terribly controversial (though there's always reason to question in-vitro rat studies).  So why do we hear so little about it?  Until i found the concept (buried in an old book review by Chris Masterjohn), the closest i'd come to learning this was reading "saturated fat in the diet is good for thyroid function."  ...I love how so many sites state absolutes like this without any kind of reasoning or discussion....

Considering this, it's no wonder some people feel crappy on a low-carb diet -- they're doing it wrong (and god rest Dr. Atkins, but he told them to).  Yes, i DID just say THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG, and i meant it.  Much as i dislike the blame-the-victim mentality implied by those words, it IS possible that a lot of failure in the LC world has to do with mistakes that can be pure innocence or outrageous stupidity (like getting one's few allowed carbs from CANDY, like one outspoken "anti" did).

We NEED our saturated fats, BECAUSE those seem to be the best choice for thyroid-challenged people in maximizing function.  Monounsaturates are better than polys, but still inhibitive.  And we need fats, in general, because it BOOSTS CALORIE INTAKE, which is GOOD for our thyroid function*!  Learning this, i'm beginning to rethink my strategy in making mayo and other salad dressings.  I love a good olive oil, and ditto for avocado, but hey -- certain things (like well-being) are more important than others.

It becomes important for hypothyroids, even if they're not low-carbers, to avoid omega-6 fats to the best of their ability -- because they're ubiquitous.  EVERY time you dine out, you ARE getting linoleic acid, no matter what you eat.  It's in your meat, your eggs, your cheese, your fish, your coffee-creamer, your vegetables, your ice-cream and ronaldmcdonald only knows what else!  In our beloved grass-fed beef and lamb, it still comprises a significant amount of the fat involved, though in better proportion than in CAFO meat ... and there's also a goodly amount of thyroid-inhibiting monounsaturates in there.  Among our best friends, ironically, are the fruit-based oils such as coconut and red palm, and palm-kernel (SEED!), and their artificially-isolated cousin, MCT.

Eating a low-carb diet is soothing to a hypothyroid, because the less dietary glucose we have to dispose of, the farther our limited supply of hormone will go.  People who claim that it's "stressful" to us aren't looking at the big picture.  However, we absolutely positively MUST do it correctly, by minimizing disruptive poly- and monounsaturated fats, and maximizing all those heart-healthy SATURATED fats we've come to love!

(And by getting our allowed carbohydrate intake from a garnish of low-starch, low-fructose, low-toxin vegetables instead of from a chocolate box.)

______
*  nothing seems to inhibit even normal thyroid function like calorie-restriction!

according to THIS body, the best fat is ... [drumroll...]

GRASSFED BEEF TALLOW.

Don't get me wrong, i love ALL the "good fats" -- they have personalities of their own and have particular applications which no other can usurp (in my kitchen, anyway).  Hell, i even like some bad fats!  Just compare the FLAVOR of corn versus soybean oil....

The much-vaunted coconut oil, which has the virtue of being tolerable by the bile-challenged among us, has been a wonderful addition to my culinary repertoire, though i never felt the energetic boost from it which other people report.  Virgin red palm oil is the fat i like to marinate my tenderloin steaks in, and it's even pretty.  Olive oil -- that goddess of the vegetable oil world -- is almost a sine qua non!  Avocado, sesame, goose/duck schmaltz = LOVE.

Naturally-occurring animal fat is a treat that most people in this country have forgotten.  Ya wanna know why?  I think it's because the universal 20th-century grain-fattening of meat animals made their fat NASTY.  It sits in the stomach like a rock and has an unpleasant mouth-feel.  One ends up feeling queasy instead of well-fed.

Of course we know that grassfed meats have a better fatty-acid profile.  There's a lot more omega-3 and conjugated linoleic acid, and it came from a less-stressed, healthier animal than CAFO meat.  Better for them, better for us....

We once did a side-by-side of grassfed and conventional (but very good quality) beef tenderloin steaks.  The latter were bland, and the texture was altogether different -- rather watery and spongey.  The GF steaks were denser but not less tender, richly-flavored, satisfying.  My husband repeated the experiment on our daughter and SIL, and the results were identical.

But it's grassfed GROUND BEEF which i like to eat on an almost-daily basis, and it's all about the fat.  The big difference between last week (original Atkins induction) and those weeks when i was sailing along on the Strong Medicine protocol, was the generous amount of beef and pork fat i was consuming (along with no lettuce) on the SMp.  My gut thanked me.

the "metabolic advantage" everybody has looked for?

...Well, except for the CICO-apologists.  ;-)

One of my link-following adventures led me to THIS paper, which led to THIS magazine article, which i can't read in its entirety for less than thirty bucks....  :-P  Aw well, such is life.  The abstract probably says the important stuff.  (It's got enough acronyms in it -- Kindke might find it worth interpreting for me if he gets bored sometime!)

Bile acids induce energy expenditure by promoting intracellular thyroid hormone activation.

Watanabe M, Houten SM, Mataki C, Christoffolete MA, Kim BW, Sato H, Messaddeq N, Harney JW, Ezaki O, Kodama T, Schoonjans K, Bianco AC, Auwerx J.

Source

Institut de Génétique et Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, CNRS/INSERM/ULP, 1 Rue Laurent Fries, 67404 Illkirch, France.

Abstract

While bile acids (BAs) have long been known to be essential in dietary lipid absorption and cholesterol catabolism, in recent years an important role for BAs as signalling molecules has emerged. ...  Here we show that the administration of BAs to mice increases energy expenditure in brown adipose tissue, preventing obesity and resistance to insulin. This novel metabolic effect of BAs is critically dependent on induction of the cyclic-AMP-dependent thyroid hormone activating enzyme type 2 iodothyronine deiodinase (D2) because it is lost in D2-/- mice. Treatment of brown adipocytes and human skeletal myocytes with BA increases D2 activity and oxygen consumption.  ...  In both rodents and humans, the most thermogenically important tissues are specifically targeted by this mechanism because they coexpress D2 and TGR5. The BA-TGR5-cAMP-D2 signalling pathway is therefore a crucial mechanism for fine-tuning energy homeostasis that can be targeted to improve metabolic control.

It looks to me as though this may be the secret of the success of Dr. Donaldson's fatty-meat diet, and possibly the Shangri-La (oil-bibbing branch) as well -- it's all about fats which prompt a squirt of bile for our bodies to process.  I was "promised" a boost from coconut oil which i never observed to benefit me (although i love the stuff and intend to keep using it generously); this could be the big secret.  Coconut oil doesn't require bile for digestion.

It turns out, then, that the fat IN THE MEAT of the Strong Medicine regimen is the trick -- and modern science tells us why.  Donaldson clearly stated that dietary fat was important, as he had learned from Vilhjalmur Stefansson (all-lean-meat diet = BAD).  As a matter of fact, his suggestion was that if you choose to eat a leaner kind of meat than his recommendations, you should buy extra SUET and chop/grind it into your choice to make it appropriately balanced.  As an interesting aside, he observed that most of his patients adapted to a fat-burning metabolism in about five days.  Also, his only recommended exercise (except for special stretching for certain conditions) was a daily half-hour walk.

So forget the low-fat diet (as if we haven't already)!  Put the coconut oil on the back burner!  We've already forgotten heavy exercise and calorie-counting.  To lose fat weight and increase our energy, what we need is enough fuel to convince our bodies they can afford to rev up a bit ... and the best fuel of all is good old-fashioned animal fat.

Sure sounds like a LCHF metabolic advantage to me.

it still works -- rebop

With a secondary title, "...and i MEAN fatty meat!"  :-)

My husband stands in the way of my losing weight -- no, that's an excuse for being more careless with my intake when he's around.  We go out to eat often, i have more wine and cocktails when he's in town, he likes to cook, and he can eat a lot more carbs than i can and still lose weight....  On and on.

Having him out of town for a few days, i'm making hay while the sun shines.  I'm doing the "strong medicine" regimen with the tweaks i learned the first time around (MORE SALT etc) -- and it STILL still works.

When i picked up ground beef over the weekend, however, i didn't go to Whole Paycheck for their outstanding grassfed ground beef in the family-pack -- the St. Louis store is horribly laid-out, and so a weekend-size number of customers make for an unbearable traffic situation inside.  I didn't want to face it, so ended up at Schnuck's, and their "regular" ground beef isn't the same:  it's too lean.

My body doesn't like a reduced-fat diet!  I wonder if other hypothyroids have a problem with constipation AS A RESULT of doing what conventional wisdom tells them to -- eat more fiber and drink a lot of water.  My intestines HATE that!  BUTTER TO THE RESCUE!!!

A tablespoon of butter on top of your freshly-made all-beef patty....  Your colon will thank you.

another "duh" moment

My mood, energy and well-being vary significantly, depending on what i eat.  If i eat like "normal people" for awhile (i'm out of town, eating in restaurants a lot, snacking, or at the mercy of some other person's cooking), i lack vitality, i tire easily and take a long time to recover, and tend to be crankier.  Now, by most people's estimation, i'm STILL EATING LOW-CARB (under 100g/d), but far more than i'm used to ... and some of the food is FRIED.

AHAAA, shouts the mainstream, it's that high-fat diet!!!

NO.  It's that omega-6 overdose.  ...In ME, who has NO industrial-seed-oils in the house AT ALL.  Can you imagine the imbalance in those poor overweight devils who try to live on salad ... with commercial dressing?

In one of those blinding-light-on-the-road-to-Damascus moments, i "saw" last night that the reason i FEEL SO GOOD eating my at-home diet of grassfed/pastured meat and eggs is ... the additional omega-3s.  I take cod liver oil every day and eat salmon and sardines regularly, but obviously in my case more is better.  My thanks to Wooo and Sidereal for pointing out recently what a difference O3 makes to the brain.

It wouldn't be the first time....  I need to supplement all kinds of things that properly-functioning individuals safely assume they get from food.  Iron, B12, carnitine....

We're going out of town again as a Christmas treat -- the first vacation J and i have enjoyed ALONE together without him having any work duties, in over a decade.  I'll be eating out for over a week.  Tell ya what i'll also be doing -- loading up on fatty fish!  I considered leaving the CLO at home, but that ain't gonna happen now.  If i have to fill the hotel fridge with lox, i WILL do it!  ;-)

another "wow" moment at Hyperlipid

Peter's post this morning gave me another OMG-problem-solved moment.  That guy ought to get the Nobel Prize for Blogging!  (Wait, isn't there one?  May i propose it?)

So simple, so elegant, so complete!  Perpetrator of obesity is linoleic acid, and carbohydrate is accessory to the crime.  Case closed.

Now, if only we could get industrial seed oils those heart-healthy polyunsaturates out of friggin' EVERYTHING in the food supply....

calories are good (from the right sources)

After decades of trying to minimize the number we can be satisfied with, in the course of a day, i find myself a delighted contrarian on the subject now.  Who'd'a' thunk it?

Calories, carbs, fat-grams, points -- it seems to help people focus on what they're doing, to have something to count.  In fact it's an old esoteric secret, using something that's merely emblematic to focus concentration where it's needed to do a job (think voodoo doll, or an icon, mandala or candle-flame).  Also, measuring things and mathematical gymnastics are "scientific" tools that help us to feel that what we're doing is based on solid, reliable FACT, rather than the shockingly-bad ideas which have gifted us with the "obesity epidemic."

It's easy for me and my contemporaries to remember back, and see how things have changed in the diet-and-health realm.  When i was a child, there were darned few "fat kids" in our school; nobody but "health nuts" went out of their way to get exercise, and yet before the age of menopause/andropause few people were particularly overweight.  These were the days when everybody ate white bread and drank whole milk, we weren't afraid of sugar, our home and school meals were full of fats AND carbs, and the only reason we used margarine in our house was because it was significantly cheaper than butter and we weren't very well off.

My kids, however, grew up in a society in which we were rather afraid of eating the "wrong" foods.  In search of health, their generation has enjoyed a surprising lack of it:  obesity, diabetes, infertility, mental disorders, ... i don't know where to stop.  Suffice it to say, our dietary changes seem to have wrought a sad result -- all in the hopes of IMPROVING health.  :-(

So here we are today, struggling to fix the damage done by the mistaken or greed- or fanatically-inspired diet advice of the last half-century.  It's truly and disgustingly absurd how we have clung to some of the most archaic, simplistic non-science -- like the obsession with calories.  Ironically, the Mephistopheles of my dietary-morality play, Ancel Keys, did a piece of early work which shines a beacon of brilliance upon this murky subject.  The "starvation study" showed that low calorie intakes (higher than a lot of diet plans dictate) caused some nasty psychological effects, as well as other health issues.  Calorie restriction was pretty well proven to be a bad idea -- yet that is the CONSTANT advice one is given for weight loss, improved health AND longevity.

For millions of years nobody counted calories, and the human race thrived and multiplied.  Then suddenly people started paying attention to the situation in large numbers, and the situation went straight to hell.  To me, this is just confirmation that whenever mankind sticks meddling fingers into natural processes, we fuck it up.  Science thinks it knows a lot more than it really does -- be skeptical of its sweeping pronouncements!

So ignore calories!  The only good use for paying attention to them is in making sure you're getting ENOUGH FAT.  YES.  This is opposite everything we learned before ... but we can all see where THAT idea has gotten us.

supplements (and foods) i missed

Since i got back home from my trip to NOLA and Houston, i've been trying to realign my nutrient intake to what i found optimal before.  It certainly has been interesting, but also complicated by my husband's pleasure in eating out, and the low energy which came with that damned head-cold.

One thing i can state with confidence is that EATING OUT = OMEGA-6 OVERDOSE.  Unless one eats nothing but wild-caught seafood while dining away from home, the 6:3 balance is totally gone.  And as my favorite bloggers taught me long ago, excess omega-6 + fructose OR alcohol = an unhappy liver.  Kids, an unhappy liver is a REALLY BAD THING.  ;-)

How to make one's liver happy again?  Eat those yummy saturated fats, preferably wrapped up in grass-fed ruminant flesh, or as coconut oil.  When we eat in, no matter which of us cooks, the balance is acceptable (with the addition of cod-liver oil).  J made another meatloaf, a crust-less quiche, his wonderful cauliflower gratin, and some miscellany; i made lots of coffee, bread from the Paleo Comfort Foods book, a pot of oysters-rockefeller bisque ... and various restaurant suggestions.  And a few cocktails.

I've been adding my supplements back in, too.  I traveled with the bare minimum -- my thyroid glandular which also contains small amounts of iodine and selenium, betaine HCl (which i didn't end up needing), melatonin (ditto), and coconut oil caps which i hardly used at all.  Tell ya the truth, it was pleasant not taking handfuls of pills, but i would have benefitted with more than i had.

Overtly, it was the iron i NOTICED missing.  The hair-shedding that increased progressively during my trip has tapered back to normal again.  I assume i used up a good deal of stored iodine, and i'm replenishing it now, but i don't PERCEIVE a lack -- unless the cold is a sign.  I probably should have carried along the mag-zinc supplements as well.

The supplement i'll probably not replenish when the bottle is empty is vitamin-c.  I eat such a low-sugar/starch diet most of the time, i believe the quantities i get from tomatoes, peppers and other vegetable substances should be enough.  I'm of two minds when it comes to the coQ10; probabilities say i'm likely deficient in it as well as things like b12, but i can't say that i FEEL any difference between supplementing and not supplementing.  Considering its price, it's likely to hit the skids too, at least for a bit.

I'm having a love-hate relationship with the carnitine and tyrosine.  On the one hand, i do feel more energy, but a lot of that energy comes through as "mental restlessness."  Not the most comfortable thing!  Perhaps i should only be using them on an as-needed basis, and not as a regular thing.

Most of the rest of the things i take belong to the BALANCING category.  Extra selenium to go with my high-dose iodine, copper to go with the iron, magnesium and zinc....  They definitely need to continue.

So the tweaking goes on!

potty mouth

The scale is down a LITTLE from yesterday, but more progress is to come.  Right now, i'm here to talk shit about vegetables!

;-)

Just like with the Salad of Doom a few months ago, the increased "good" vegetable fiber i had over the last week is STILL making me feel weighted-down.  The paleo world is inclined to damn the insoluble fiber from grains -- it's like taking a wood-rasp to your villi, they say -- but to praise in very CW-like fashion the soluble stuff in fruits and vegetables.  My colon begs to differ.

Just like Donaldson said, when i'm eating a diet of meat and fat i don't have a retention problem -- my gastrointestinal system is like a greased chute.  I would be tempted to say that it IS a greased chute, except for the fact the fats are ABSORBED, not just sent straight through.  But although i'm eating my usual healthy quantity of nutritious satfats and omega-3s, they're not able to do ONE of their jobs ... because of the interference of the foods that Mark claims should be the major part of my diet.

If i ate "mostly plants" as ALMOST EVERYONE says, i'd be utterly miserable.  There's no excuse for needing additions of magnesium or probiotics or such aids to push out the waste-products!  Thank god i finished the soup last night, which was merely flavored with a small quantity of carrots, onions, celery and mushrooms -- today will be solid meat, fat and coffee, just what has a track-record of making me feel good!

PROTEIN!

When it comes to figuring out our optimal macronutrient intake, we get reports of a wide range of ideals.  Most agree, limiting protein becomes important when the low-hanging-fruit of the controlled-carb diet has been harvested.  Once you've cut all the carbohydrate-rich foods you're willing to forgo, reducing the amount of protein-foods adds that extra fillip necessary to get the fat burning again.  More fat is added to the diet, and the scale starts measuring downward anew.

This seems to be pretty universally applicable in the LC community.  The truism that low-carbing allows ad-libitum meat-eating is, like most of its logical kin, only true up to a point.  Ideally, eating the appropriate meats will fill you up long before fat-burning is threatened, but in practice (especially as one approaches one's goal) it seems to be easy for some people to take in too much.

There seems to be one great big exception, though -- the closer to zero-carb you go, the more protein you NEED.  Even though it's been documented that the body CAN make glucose out of fat, it appears to be easier for it to do so with protein.

Also, there are many beneficial effects of insulin that are stimulated in the ZC enthusiast by protein metabolism.  Insulin is far from being "the enemy" to people who have trained their bodies to burn fat and ketones as the primary fuels!  Going ultra-low-carb induces physiological insulin-resistance in muscle cells, particularly.  To drive amino acids into cells for muscle-building (important in us old broads), we do need a bit of an insulin spike from time to time.

And it seems to work spontaneously.  My husband, neighbors and local acquaintances see me too often to notice those body changes which happen over time, but when i was with some friends in the spring who hadn't seen me since last autumn, i was made aware of something:  after a round of hugs, somebody said, "You're turning into quite a hardbody, aren't you?"  I was surprised -- i have been very remiss when it comes to intentionally seeking a gain in strength.  My goal is ENERGY ("vitality") gain as well as fat loss.  It got me thinking....

Just as "the paleo diet becomes the fail-eo diet if you don't add enough fat," a ZC diet is not going to be healthy without sufficient protein.  And ironically, it may be all about the insulin.

this one's for you, kids!

Toward the beginning of this week, when my daughter and her family converged with my husband and me in SF, i heard the news that my granddaughter had recently had several cavities.  She's five years old -- this needs to stop.

I still had a few sublingual K2 tablets from my last bottle, so decided to see if the kids would be willing participants in dosing them up.  Their mother being amenable, we gave it a try, and to my surprise and delight they didn't find them "gross" ... or even "YUKKY!"  (If there's going to be a perpetual struggle, it's sometimes a better idea to conduct a guerrilla-style nutritional war....)

Where they live, there's a significant drive involved in acquiring raw or pastured milk, and so i'm resigned to the fact that it's not gonna happen.  My daughter is interested in providing superior nutrition to her family, but with their busy young lives, there are limits to how much pastured and organ-meat, obscure vegetables and alternative-carb sources are going to be utilized.  Getting vitamin K2mk4 may just depend on using a supplement.

I find it's most effective to conduct my nutritional brainwashing in small steps; even here on vacation, i managed to get my daughter to watch "FatHead" via Netflix and my laptop -- and i was pleased that my SIL seemed interested, as well.  :-)  There's a virtue in having a talented presenter like Tom Naughton helping one conduct the education!

Next, i'll try to get her to read Chris Masterjohn's exposition of the vitamin K story -- that's the reason for today's post, to make this information easily available.  After that ... hmmm, should it be Mary Enig on fats, or J Stanton on protein, or That Paleo Guy on D...?  I'm so devious!!!  (She already knows about Mark's Daily Apple as an all-purpose site -- love those definitive guides.)

So anyway, when i reorder K2mk4, i'll get one for myself and have one sent to the kids as well.  The next thing i get my daughter to read or watch might depend on any challenges the children encounter.  That's a very powerful incentive for her to make progress in her nutritional education.

back in the saddle

Okay:  i'm fired up to start being perfect again!  :-)

It's SO easy to eat and sleep the way i should when i'm by myself ... it makes me feel guilty!  Selfish.  When others are around, even my husband who is supportive of my choices, i frequently sabotage my ideal diet.  THAT is my weakness, MY failure of willpower.

Every failure, though, is a learning experience.  What i learned on this last trip is that even though i know where to go and what to order in restaurants to get a low-carb meal, i have to be careful to get a large enough serving of protein, and i need to ask for butter to augment the usually-low fat content of commercially-available meat.  I would have thought that i'd learned that before, but it took the Strong Medicine regimen to teach me what satiation properly feels like.  Red-meat protein and saturated fat.  Period.

The fact that i can SENSE additive ingredients in certain meat products is a clue to how i should order meals.  I have to ASSUME that even a hamburger in a respectable restaurant is going to contain more carbs than one i make at home, and reduce vegetables in my diet accordingly.  ASSUME that bacon will be sugar-cured (ditto for ham), and that "cheese" won't be like the stuff i choose at the grocery.  ASSUME that the seasoning on a steak will contain suspicious ingredients, and the steak itself will be "select" grade*, rather than "choice."  ASSUME that the olive oil EVEN IN SUPERIOR RESTAURANTS will actually be a blend.  Disgusting but true.  :-(

On the road, i'm going to have to assume that they're sneaking carbs into me, so the only way to be truly LCHF is to order like a ZC.

_____
*  it's an interesting thing that, when i was in college taking animal-science classes, the grade which is now "select" used to be called just "good."  the low-fat propaganda caused the industry to redefine its terms.  "good" just doesn't sound good ENOUGH.  :-P

conspiracy theory

Restaurants, food manufacturers, producers and grocers want us to eat more.  Grains and other starches make us do this, via a number of pathways, including opioids/addiction, ghrelin stimulation, insulin-induced hypoglycemia, glp-1 and FIAF suppression, ... and more that i'm not feeling anal enough to enumerate right now!  :-)

Saturated fat, accompanying protein, fills us up fast.  The entities listed above don't like that.  (I noticed, on my trip, that restaurant meals are skimpy with good fats; best thing you can do is ask for real butter, and add it to EVERYTHING.)

Advertisers for those entities, furthermore, know that people dread illness, especially the kind that comes from aging and overweight.  They're not above playing on those fears to try to get us to consume massive quantities of their CIAB, as they've convinced the modern world that a LFHC diet is "healthy."

(Have you ever noticed that "sick" people in commercials look like ... people, the sorts of people you see every day on the street?  When they're hawking their cereals or snacks or pharmaceuticals or whatever, the "patients" are now thin, active, happy and attractive specimens of their age-groups?  Real people with COPD or erectile disfunction don't actually look like that -- at least, not in my experience....)

So yeah -- i'm inclined to believe that a lot of businesses KNOW DAMNED WELL that their products are ruinous to health, in individuals and societies, economic and physical.  Some dare not back down for fear of humiliation and litigation, and others are too contemptibly selfish to care about anything but their own bottom-line.  It's nice to subscribe to a belief-system which tells me they won't get away with this kind of behavior forever.

when is a fast not a fast?

Hint -- this is like when Peter asked "when is a high-fat diet not a high-fat diet."

When Dr. Atkins prescribed a "fat fast" for people who are extremely resistant to losing weight, it was incredibly low in calories, and he only recommended doing it for a few days at a time.  It had enough fat to suppress the appetite, and it forced the burning of body-fat for fuel, because it certainly didn't supply enough protein to convert to a LOT of glucose.  I feel sorry for those on it who didn't have the metabolic flexibility or gut-bugs to get ENERGY from fat, and yet had to go about their daily business....

I assumed that the fat-fast was all about getting into ketosis ... until recently.  There are a few blogs where isolated posts give hints on why eating like this may promote weight loss by other pathways, too. 

In one of Peter's posts, he speaks of intestinal biota which prompt the brain to eat "fiber" and store fat, or to release stored fat for energy (so the host can go out hunting) ... and fat ingestion signals the latter.  The use of fatty foods during an intermittent fast (like drinking coffee with cream) is suggested by the Drs. Jaminet as "not counting" as food....

Here, too, is an explanation for the benefit of oil-swilling in the Shangri-La regimen!

Now we have this discovery that eating fat-with-no-carb spurs glp-1 production, which in turn turns off appetite and turns on spontaneous movement.  I find this very exciting.  In the average human, excessive energy "wasting" -- i.e., going to the gym -- is discouraged by our very beings (see Naturally Engineered); as a result, forcing yourself to exercise when you don't want to is more stressful and less effective.  But by this pathway, the urge to move is instinctive rather than a choice.  One gets the benefits of movement on the tissues and the mood-enhancing aspect of exercise in the brain -- all with no hunger or nasty cascades of BG and insulin.

So, yeah -- i now see the fat-fast as being a LOT more powerful than i believed possible, just reading Atkins.  ...I'll be sure to eat MORE CALORIES of it than he recommended, though!

BIG discovery

Kindke finds the missing link.  I am in awe -- quite literally; i sit and stare into space while contemplating the simple elegance of it. 

It's very fashionable in some circles to sneer at what Dr. Atkins called the "metabolic advantage."  However, for those of us who not only lose weight better on low-carb diets but FEEL significantly better on them, we know it's real.  Dr. Lustig (who also works with REAL LIVE PATIENTS, not mice and rats) made a point in his talk at last year's Ancestral Health Symposium that quality of life is directly associated with the amount of energy one manages to burn.  As a hypothyroid who has always had vitality limitations, i believe this wholeheartedly.

Finally, Kindke points out what the mechanism is.  What makes it easy to "eat less and move more"?  Eating the right things -- duh.  For many of us, eating those lauded starches, those healthywholegrains, those FRUITSandvegetables, makes it HARD to do both.  His discovery fits in tidily with Dr. Donaldson's observation that, round about the fifth day of his "Strong Medicine" regimen, his patients found their morning walks a lot more do-able.

You gotta go read it in Kindke's words....

Oh -- and by the way, you should read Fred's article, too.