Having one's own blog is so therapeutic! I can bitch and moan, and nobody has to read it if they don't want to. ;-)
I've been on a roll against facebook so far, on the site and ABOUT it.
Now i'm going to rail about BLENDERS, and against people who test and report about them.
I need a new blender. I have two that "work" but they really do a piss-poor job at frappes, margaritas and daiquiris. I've been reading reviews....
"This model does a great job on SMOOTHIES! It purees beautifully! Is wonderful for soups!" WHAT FUCKING BLENDER DOESN'T??? ANY CHEAP K-MART BLENDER DOES THAT!!! WHAT I NEED IS A POWERFUL MACHINE THAT STAYS SHARP MORE THAN TWO DAYS. SOMETHING THAT DOES SOMETHING YOU CAN'T DO BY HAND. SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T HAVE A HUGE DEAD SPACE UNDER THE BLADES. SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T LEAVE YOU WITH MELTED ICE AND FUCKING FROZEN-WATER PEBBLES IN YOUR DRINK.
grrrrrr....
Are we all so used to inferior appliances that don't do what they're supposed to, that we can't tell a good product from a pathetically non-performing one? Or are some people so fucking stupid they don't realize that some things are so easy to do that it's no "accomplishment" when they're done?
grrrrr again.
It's probably both things. I'm all for appreciating the bright side (if there's one that isn't merely a reminder of how far short something falls). I think that "showing up" is not a thing to deride, even if i think it's overkill to award a trophy for it. I just don't find it meaningful to give a product five stars because it MAKES A FUCKING SMOOTHIE.
SMOOTHIES. Jesus. Worse, GREEN smoothies. Talk about drinking your calories.... Talk, rather, about drinking unreasonable quantities of things that might not have been a good idea to consume raw in the first place.
grrrrrr....
Sunday, July 6, 2014
water
I've never been an enthusiastic water-drinker. When trying out dietary schemes in my long history of trying to reduce fat-weight, if they required the GALLON of water/day that has become the standard recommendation (which is, in turn, based on faulty reading of an actual scientific paper) -- the worst part of said diets wasn't the food but the damned WATER.
I can't drink ice-water. I can SIP ice-water, but it'd take a LO-O-O-O-ONG time to down a gallon of it. I can chug tepid water, but it's no fun -- and it makes my stomach feel as though there's a rock in it. And unless one wants to do nothing the whole damn day but DRINK, one has to chug.
Fortunately, we've learned that the statement, "people need somewhere around 8 8-oz glasses of water per day" SHOULD have appended to it "but a good deal of that is contained in the foods we eat." We've also learned that the truism, "by the time you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated" is drivel. The only reasonable interpretation of the latter which might come close to truth is, "by the time you GET AROUND TO DRINKING WATER ..." because it's a human failing to not obey our bodies' calls for action when we first hear them, but when we're willing to take a break from what we're doing, and respond.
No, the cultural chorus of "drink water constantly" may be important where the climate is REALLY dry and hot, but to normal people who aren't flapping their jaws constantly (because that IS dehydrating), who aren't panting on the sidewalk or treadmill, who aren't literally singing for their supper ... it's just another unscientific meme. My sister in Phoenix who smokes does well to carry her water bottle everywhere she goes. I, in St. Louis (currently 81.5 F. and 58% humidity) ... not so much.
A couple of years ago while I was implementing "paleo" quite strictly in an effort to improve my health, I got myself a reverse-osmosis filter for our kitchen needs. Here where they poison the entire populace with fluoride in the water, it may be the healthiest step a hypothyroid can take! Chlorine in the water is bad enough but understandable -- it's a powerful decontaminant and it's easily filtered out -- hell, it even volatilizes off, if you let a vessel of tapwater stand in the refrigerator awhile before using it. Not so, fluoride and a lot of the other toxic waste which is allowed to enter and remain in public water sources just because they don't reach some putative significant quantity. Even though the dose makes the poison, I don't trust our regulatory agencies to either choose a tolerable dose for EVERYONE, OR to make sure that cap is never breached.
My RO filter serves the kitchen sink and the ice-maker in the fridge -- for any other household purpose we have to take pitchers-full to the site of use, for example the coffee-maker in the butler's pantry and the bathroom sink, upstairs (where we take our supplements). Therefor, there's always a small pitcher of filtered water in the bathroom, which shows how much water can be drunk per day without even really noticing. When J was working out-of-town, I refilled its approximate-quart-and-a-half capacity about every other day; a swallow here and a swallow there adds up surprisingly fast. When I do Strong Medicine strictly, and am required to drink three cups between breakfast and lunch, and again between lunch and dinner, a certain mark on that pitcher is my guide, and it sits beside me until it's empty; at the time I put my burger on to cook, if it hasn't been drunk up, i'd chug the rest. We hypo's NEED to make sure we don't dilute our stomach acid excessively at mealtimes! I've learned that water-drinking at meals (OR iced tea, OR soft-drink) is a BIG mistake. Hot coffee is acceptable, as is no more than 8 oz of wine.
Since we joined Costco and discovered it sells San Pellegrino at a good price, I've been using mineral water a lot more often. Something about it just feels better than still water -- I suspect it's the lower pH. The irritating qualities of sucralose-sweetened beverages aren't there, but the satisfaction IS. I can sit down with a glass of it and feel as refreshed as if i'd had a glass of wine, but with significantly less nutritional baggage (carbs and alcohol).
If only SP weren't owned by Nestle!!! Meretricious outfit.... I need to find another brand that tastes as good but doesn't have THAT kind of baggage. EDIT: Evian is also carried by Costco, and doesn't seem to be owned by an outfit that claims that people don't have a RIGHT to safe sources of water.... :-P Looks like i'll change to them when my current case of SP is empty! When I did a side-by-side tasting of Evian and San Pellegrino, I liked the latter a little better -- but it was close.
I can't drink ice-water. I can SIP ice-water, but it'd take a LO-O-O-O-ONG time to down a gallon of it. I can chug tepid water, but it's no fun -- and it makes my stomach feel as though there's a rock in it. And unless one wants to do nothing the whole damn day but DRINK, one has to chug.
Fortunately, we've learned that the statement, "people need somewhere around 8 8-oz glasses of water per day" SHOULD have appended to it "but a good deal of that is contained in the foods we eat." We've also learned that the truism, "by the time you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated" is drivel. The only reasonable interpretation of the latter which might come close to truth is, "by the time you GET AROUND TO DRINKING WATER ..." because it's a human failing to not obey our bodies' calls for action when we first hear them, but when we're willing to take a break from what we're doing, and respond.
No, the cultural chorus of "drink water constantly" may be important where the climate is REALLY dry and hot, but to normal people who aren't flapping their jaws constantly (because that IS dehydrating), who aren't panting on the sidewalk or treadmill, who aren't literally singing for their supper ... it's just another unscientific meme. My sister in Phoenix who smokes does well to carry her water bottle everywhere she goes. I, in St. Louis (currently 81.5 F. and 58% humidity) ... not so much.
A couple of years ago while I was implementing "paleo" quite strictly in an effort to improve my health, I got myself a reverse-osmosis filter for our kitchen needs. Here where they poison the entire populace with fluoride in the water, it may be the healthiest step a hypothyroid can take! Chlorine in the water is bad enough but understandable -- it's a powerful decontaminant and it's easily filtered out -- hell, it even volatilizes off, if you let a vessel of tapwater stand in the refrigerator awhile before using it. Not so, fluoride and a lot of the other toxic waste which is allowed to enter and remain in public water sources just because they don't reach some putative significant quantity. Even though the dose makes the poison, I don't trust our regulatory agencies to either choose a tolerable dose for EVERYONE, OR to make sure that cap is never breached.
My RO filter serves the kitchen sink and the ice-maker in the fridge -- for any other household purpose we have to take pitchers-full to the site of use, for example the coffee-maker in the butler's pantry and the bathroom sink, upstairs (where we take our supplements). Therefor, there's always a small pitcher of filtered water in the bathroom, which shows how much water can be drunk per day without even really noticing. When J was working out-of-town, I refilled its approximate-quart-and-a-half capacity about every other day; a swallow here and a swallow there adds up surprisingly fast. When I do Strong Medicine strictly, and am required to drink three cups between breakfast and lunch, and again between lunch and dinner, a certain mark on that pitcher is my guide, and it sits beside me until it's empty; at the time I put my burger on to cook, if it hasn't been drunk up, i'd chug the rest. We hypo's NEED to make sure we don't dilute our stomach acid excessively at mealtimes! I've learned that water-drinking at meals (OR iced tea, OR soft-drink) is a BIG mistake. Hot coffee is acceptable, as is no more than 8 oz of wine.
Since we joined Costco and discovered it sells San Pellegrino at a good price, I've been using mineral water a lot more often. Something about it just feels better than still water -- I suspect it's the lower pH. The irritating qualities of sucralose-sweetened beverages aren't there, but the satisfaction IS. I can sit down with a glass of it and feel as refreshed as if i'd had a glass of wine, but with significantly less nutritional baggage (carbs and alcohol).
If only SP weren't owned by Nestle!!! Meretricious outfit.... I need to find another brand that tastes as good but doesn't have THAT kind of baggage. EDIT: Evian is also carried by Costco, and doesn't seem to be owned by an outfit that claims that people don't have a RIGHT to safe sources of water.... :-P Looks like i'll change to them when my current case of SP is empty! When I did a side-by-side tasting of Evian and San Pellegrino, I liked the latter a little better -- but it was close.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
lies, damned lies, and nutrition blogs
A self-described scientist, another self-described scientist, and a self-described trainer -- what do they have in common? No picture on the internet. No business link on their profile. LOTS of time spent trolling the blogosphere.
Almost from the earliest days of AOL and CompuServe, people learned to game the internet because anyone can claim to be anything, and who's to know? Middle-aged cops pretending to be 14-year-old schoolgirls entrap cyber perverts and predators. GOK how many marriages have been ruined through virtual affairs. Real-life failures can pretend to be the people they wish they were....
But think about it, why do people lie in the first place? To impress people, to try to come across as a better individual than they really are, ... and the most sociopathic do it because they enjoy victimizing and manipulating others. It's NEVER pretty.
And most of the time, lying is pointless and futile. It MAY help get you out of the hole you're in, in the short term, but you WILL be found out. Eventually she WILL learn that you're not F Lee Bailey but a cheesy traffic lawyer living from one paycheck to the next, and with tens of thousands of dollars in credit-card debt. He WILL learn that you're older than you say you are, that your boobs aren't real, and you have twice as many children as you admit to. Your ugly, shameful character flaws WILL come out, because that's the kind of person you ARE.
I actually had a boss once who faked his college degree and was working for a world-class chemical company using wits, hubris, and elementary chemistry books. Amazing -- he must have had a first-class brain to carry it off, but also the SOUL OF A CON-MAN. He was forced to resign when it came out, of course. One has to wonder what became of him afterward -- did he do it again somewhere else? Or did he devolve into serious crime?
It all tends to make one very wary of whom one can believe. Sometimes the quality shines through, but at others the spottiness of believability plants the seed of serious doubt. Maybe the response to questions is the best gauge. If you ask for photos and they never come, if you ask for a business card and the purported professional never has one on him, if you ask how many patients/clients s/he has and you hear nothing but equivocation in return, I suspect that suspension of credulity is distinctly in order. ;-)
People with a lot of real-world experience (like us old people -- wink!) are less wedded to inflexible formulae and more invested in a list of possible choices which have been known to work for differing situations. Those who insist on a hypothesis which SEEMS common-sensical but which doesn't pan out in real human beings living in the real world cannot be trusted to have sound opinions on any subject.
Almost from the earliest days of AOL and CompuServe, people learned to game the internet because anyone can claim to be anything, and who's to know? Middle-aged cops pretending to be 14-year-old schoolgirls entrap cyber perverts and predators. GOK how many marriages have been ruined through virtual affairs. Real-life failures can pretend to be the people they wish they were....
But think about it, why do people lie in the first place? To impress people, to try to come across as a better individual than they really are, ... and the most sociopathic do it because they enjoy victimizing and manipulating others. It's NEVER pretty.
And most of the time, lying is pointless and futile. It MAY help get you out of the hole you're in, in the short term, but you WILL be found out. Eventually she WILL learn that you're not F Lee Bailey but a cheesy traffic lawyer living from one paycheck to the next, and with tens of thousands of dollars in credit-card debt. He WILL learn that you're older than you say you are, that your boobs aren't real, and you have twice as many children as you admit to. Your ugly, shameful character flaws WILL come out, because that's the kind of person you ARE.
I actually had a boss once who faked his college degree and was working for a world-class chemical company using wits, hubris, and elementary chemistry books. Amazing -- he must have had a first-class brain to carry it off, but also the SOUL OF A CON-MAN. He was forced to resign when it came out, of course. One has to wonder what became of him afterward -- did he do it again somewhere else? Or did he devolve into serious crime?
It all tends to make one very wary of whom one can believe. Sometimes the quality shines through, but at others the spottiness of believability plants the seed of serious doubt. Maybe the response to questions is the best gauge. If you ask for photos and they never come, if you ask for a business card and the purported professional never has one on him, if you ask how many patients/clients s/he has and you hear nothing but equivocation in return, I suspect that suspension of credulity is distinctly in order. ;-)
People with a lot of real-world experience (like us old people -- wink!) are less wedded to inflexible formulae and more invested in a list of possible choices which have been known to work for differing situations. Those who insist on a hypothesis which SEEMS common-sensical but which doesn't pan out in real human beings living in the real world cannot be trusted to have sound opinions on any subject.
Friday, July 4, 2014
an example
I had a friend with a weight problem....
Now, lest you call me the pot which calls the kettle black, i'll tell you what my own weight-history has been. Having been diagnosed with hypothyroidism at the age of six months, I spent my entire childhood hungry for meat but raised on white bread, margarine, 2% milk, cereal and sandwiches, school lunches and a real home-cooked dinner -- the usual stuff for the '60s! I was chubby till puberty, but not obese like the kids one sees nowadays. At that point, coincidentally, I got fed up with the nerd-harassment I received from the "cool girls" at the bus stop, and started walking the just-over-a-mile to school, and that helped my conditioning considerably.
Through my teens, eating when I wanted and spontaneously fasting when not hungry, I got quite lean but was never skinny; my grandmother observed once that I was "becoming quite willowy." At 5'3.5" I weighed between 110 and 115. This continued into my twenties, but it was during my second pregnancy that I got actually "overweight" and the scale didn't want to dip below 130.
From then on, my weight followed the predictable pattern -- 130s in my 30s, 140s in my 40s, 150s in my 50s. At one point my weight went up to 165; I looked in the mirror and to that resemblance of my (obese) grandmother I said, "Grammy, we need to lose weight!" I learned about low-carb, and the rest is history.
But the point is, i'm not one of those naturally-thin people who can eat ANYTHING, and I never was. To get back to the subject of my obese friend:
She struggled with her weight by conventional means, and got her doctor to prescribe every pharmaceutical that came along that promised loss. On speed, she got down to about 160, but couldn't maintain it -- her downfall was always having a naughty food "just this once" every single day. I've never asked her what she weighs and she doesn't volunteer it. When I found how effective LC is, I excitedly told her about it and she reluctantly promised to read the Atkins book -- the next time I saw her, she told me her brother said there were kidney problems in the family and none of them (all at least overweight and some grossly obese) should ever try low-carb. I didn't expostulate.
She's a bread-lover and she's not about to give it up. It's things like this that make me HAVE to believe in the addictive qualities of wheat and sugar! Sure, I like them both, but they do such horrible things to my body, I have no temptation to suck it up and keep "using." Call me a hedonist -- feeling "normal" with energy and no bloat and painlessness of joint and gut is FAR more important to me than being "one of the gang" and eating all the things that make me feel horrible!
I try not to rub in her weight-control "failure" though i'm sure she feels it -- and i'm a dozen years older than she, with far more metabolic baggage. I saw her last some three years ago when she invited me to do a history program with her, and she hasn't invited me back OR accepted my invitation to visit here. She's bigger than ever, and is going further down the scary road (which she started down early) of living through her daughters.
But the thing that called her particularly to mind this morning was a similarity to another obese person of whom we know, and who also loves to sneer at those she wants to consider inferior to her -- "inferior" DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY'VE CONQUERED THEIR WEIGHT ISSUES, BECOME HEALTHY, AND HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE WORLDLY SUCCESS.
These people DESPERATELY need to feel good about themselves, as we all do. The problem is, their means of doing so lies not in saying "I have estimable qualities" but by saying "YOU are a LESSER person than I." Now, my friend HAS estimable qualities -- she has outstanding talent in a variety of fields! ONLY the fact that society treats overweight people badly causes her to focus on that one negative, and not on the many positives! It dims and skews her perception of EVERYTHING in life. She simply does not see straight, with balance and sense of proportion.
Comparing ourselves to others, instead of looking at ourselves in isolation, is productive of nothing but misery. If someone out there has defeated the demon which is still plaguing us, what is the rational thing to do? Whine, that they're luckier? Hate them for having a quality that we don't? Or maybe, studying their method, and see if it's something that might work for us too, even though we may have to do a little sacrificing?
CS's unbounded venom against carbohydrate-reduction advocates is nothing but a measure of her own pain. She strikes out to distract herself, to keep from looking within, and her self-delusion is her armor. She has NEVER debunked ANYTHING despite her claims, nor is anyone jealous or afraid of her. People dread her certainly -- just like we dread the approach of every unpleasant person we know. They spoil the mood of every happy get-together ... because they don't know how to behave so as to receive positive attention, and they can't stand to see others GETTING that kind of attention or having a good time while they're NOT.
Funny -- my friend always used to claim that people were jealous of her, too. On what basis they were supposed to be jealous was the unanswered question.
Now, lest you call me the pot which calls the kettle black, i'll tell you what my own weight-history has been. Having been diagnosed with hypothyroidism at the age of six months, I spent my entire childhood hungry for meat but raised on white bread, margarine, 2% milk, cereal and sandwiches, school lunches and a real home-cooked dinner -- the usual stuff for the '60s! I was chubby till puberty, but not obese like the kids one sees nowadays. At that point, coincidentally, I got fed up with the nerd-harassment I received from the "cool girls" at the bus stop, and started walking the just-over-a-mile to school, and that helped my conditioning considerably.
Through my teens, eating when I wanted and spontaneously fasting when not hungry, I got quite lean but was never skinny; my grandmother observed once that I was "becoming quite willowy." At 5'3.5" I weighed between 110 and 115. This continued into my twenties, but it was during my second pregnancy that I got actually "overweight" and the scale didn't want to dip below 130.
From then on, my weight followed the predictable pattern -- 130s in my 30s, 140s in my 40s, 150s in my 50s. At one point my weight went up to 165; I looked in the mirror and to that resemblance of my (obese) grandmother I said, "Grammy, we need to lose weight!" I learned about low-carb, and the rest is history.
But the point is, i'm not one of those naturally-thin people who can eat ANYTHING, and I never was. To get back to the subject of my obese friend:
She struggled with her weight by conventional means, and got her doctor to prescribe every pharmaceutical that came along that promised loss. On speed, she got down to about 160, but couldn't maintain it -- her downfall was always having a naughty food "just this once" every single day. I've never asked her what she weighs and she doesn't volunteer it. When I found how effective LC is, I excitedly told her about it and she reluctantly promised to read the Atkins book -- the next time I saw her, she told me her brother said there were kidney problems in the family and none of them (all at least overweight and some grossly obese) should ever try low-carb. I didn't expostulate.
She's a bread-lover and she's not about to give it up. It's things like this that make me HAVE to believe in the addictive qualities of wheat and sugar! Sure, I like them both, but they do such horrible things to my body, I have no temptation to suck it up and keep "using." Call me a hedonist -- feeling "normal" with energy and no bloat and painlessness of joint and gut is FAR more important to me than being "one of the gang" and eating all the things that make me feel horrible!
I try not to rub in her weight-control "failure" though i'm sure she feels it -- and i'm a dozen years older than she, with far more metabolic baggage. I saw her last some three years ago when she invited me to do a history program with her, and she hasn't invited me back OR accepted my invitation to visit here. She's bigger than ever, and is going further down the scary road (which she started down early) of living through her daughters.
But the thing that called her particularly to mind this morning was a similarity to another obese person of whom we know, and who also loves to sneer at those she wants to consider inferior to her -- "inferior" DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY'VE CONQUERED THEIR WEIGHT ISSUES, BECOME HEALTHY, AND HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE WORLDLY SUCCESS.
These people DESPERATELY need to feel good about themselves, as we all do. The problem is, their means of doing so lies not in saying "I have estimable qualities" but by saying "YOU are a LESSER person than I." Now, my friend HAS estimable qualities -- she has outstanding talent in a variety of fields! ONLY the fact that society treats overweight people badly causes her to focus on that one negative, and not on the many positives! It dims and skews her perception of EVERYTHING in life. She simply does not see straight, with balance and sense of proportion.
Comparing ourselves to others, instead of looking at ourselves in isolation, is productive of nothing but misery. If someone out there has defeated the demon which is still plaguing us, what is the rational thing to do? Whine, that they're luckier? Hate them for having a quality that we don't? Or maybe, studying their method, and see if it's something that might work for us too, even though we may have to do a little sacrificing?
CS's unbounded venom against carbohydrate-reduction advocates is nothing but a measure of her own pain. She strikes out to distract herself, to keep from looking within, and her self-delusion is her armor. She has NEVER debunked ANYTHING despite her claims, nor is anyone jealous or afraid of her. People dread her certainly -- just like we dread the approach of every unpleasant person we know. They spoil the mood of every happy get-together ... because they don't know how to behave so as to receive positive attention, and they can't stand to see others GETTING that kind of attention or having a good time while they're NOT.
Funny -- my friend always used to claim that people were jealous of her, too. On what basis they were supposed to be jealous was the unanswered question.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
temporal milestone recap
Wooo has finally posted again -- YEA! I always look forward to reading new blog entries from her; you can never predict what it will be, a rant or a detailed description of hormone or neurotransmitter function, but it's always either educational, entertaining, or both. I disagree with her from time to time, when my experiences contradict something she learned in college or when her young-body observations are different from what this old body finds, but it's a good thought exercise nonetheless.
She speaks today of scales and calories and CICO.... All these things are red herrings in the world of LOSING FAT through dietary intake and physical behavior. Mere "weight loss" IS illusory -- starve awhile, and you'll lose "weight" all right, including heart-muscle tissue. No, I prefer to work on losing my subcutaneous FAT, not my organs and bones.
One thing she did NOT mention was the usefulness of the scale in keeping an eye on maintenance, as Karen finds valuable over at the Garden Girl blog. We regain-control veterans find weight monitoring to be very useful -- we can see when we start to slip. It's also helpful when those of us with food intolerances reintroduce something -- one easily-observed phenomenon is that some inadvisable items in our diets can manifest themselves through how much water they cause us to retain. If scales do nothing else, they REALLY point out the amount of water we hold onto -- nothing else will make the reading fluctuate by POUNDS from day to day.
When we feel waterlogged and bloated, losing superfluous water is a good thing, but by and large it's FAT we want to lose. And fat-loss is indisputably hormonally regulated. If there's too much insulin floating through your veins, your fat cells WILL NOT turn loose of their cargo (unless your metabolism is so FUBAR you've got bigger problems than mere swimsuit-readiness). If your system is so malnourished or sick (think infection) it thinks it's starving or otherwise threatened, your thyroid WILL gear down to the point it MAKES you rest to conserve resources. Leptin's actions are STILL being ferreted-out. Intestinal microbiota, too, exert their effects in ways that only recently have been appreciated. Innumerable other hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters et al are involved in this chemical stew, minutely adjusting uncounted processes all the time....
But certain simple, black-and-white minds all around us can't seem to get past that lowest-common-denominator concept that we abbreviate as CICO, or ELMM. Eat less ... and your body slows down its processes so energy expended is reduced to match the fuel available! Move more ... and your appetite increases, your cortisol rises, and chance of injury skyrockets, especially if you're like me and you have an aging body with accumulated damage.
No -- to lose FAT, you need to learn to manipulate the hormones that encourage fat storage AND usage!
Lower fasting insulin. Peter (at Hyperlipid) describes FASTING insulin as the leading partner in the fat storage/usage dance. Lowering it is done through a continuing low-carb diet.
Encourage healthy thyroid function. This means being vitamin/mineral/protein replete, eating ENOUGH (because low-CAL diets cause a slowdown) non-toxic foods, minimizing omega-6 PUFAs while maximizing saturated dietary fats, being as stress-free as possible, and ... a continuing low-carb diet.
An incredibly-huge flood of verbage has washed through recently, talking about feeding those good gut-bugs!!! ... :-P I think all those starch-lovers need to go back and read Peter's series on FIAF! "Whose fat is it, anyway?" Theirs, when it comes to allowing YOU to burn it or not. What makes them send the signal to let it go? You guessed it ... a continuing low-carb diet.
While "what makes us fat" AND "what makes us lose fat" are intensely complicated formulae, there's a simple work-around -- a reduced-carb diet. HOW reduced is a purely individual thing -- some do great if they drop carb grams to under 100/day, and others need to be much more restrictive. It depends on activity level, your sex-hormone status, the condition of your mitochondria, your genetic heritage, your liver's capability of gluconeogenesis ... LOTS of things! "One size fits all" is the epitome of the bad joke, in clothing as well as dietary regimen.
She speaks today of scales and calories and CICO.... All these things are red herrings in the world of LOSING FAT through dietary intake and physical behavior. Mere "weight loss" IS illusory -- starve awhile, and you'll lose "weight" all right, including heart-muscle tissue. No, I prefer to work on losing my subcutaneous FAT, not my organs and bones.
One thing she did NOT mention was the usefulness of the scale in keeping an eye on maintenance, as Karen finds valuable over at the Garden Girl blog. We regain-control veterans find weight monitoring to be very useful -- we can see when we start to slip. It's also helpful when those of us with food intolerances reintroduce something -- one easily-observed phenomenon is that some inadvisable items in our diets can manifest themselves through how much water they cause us to retain. If scales do nothing else, they REALLY point out the amount of water we hold onto -- nothing else will make the reading fluctuate by POUNDS from day to day.
When we feel waterlogged and bloated, losing superfluous water is a good thing, but by and large it's FAT we want to lose. And fat-loss is indisputably hormonally regulated. If there's too much insulin floating through your veins, your fat cells WILL NOT turn loose of their cargo (unless your metabolism is so FUBAR you've got bigger problems than mere swimsuit-readiness). If your system is so malnourished or sick (think infection) it thinks it's starving or otherwise threatened, your thyroid WILL gear down to the point it MAKES you rest to conserve resources. Leptin's actions are STILL being ferreted-out. Intestinal microbiota, too, exert their effects in ways that only recently have been appreciated. Innumerable other hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters et al are involved in this chemical stew, minutely adjusting uncounted processes all the time....
But certain simple, black-and-white minds all around us can't seem to get past that lowest-common-denominator concept that we abbreviate as CICO, or ELMM. Eat less ... and your body slows down its processes so energy expended is reduced to match the fuel available! Move more ... and your appetite increases, your cortisol rises, and chance of injury skyrockets, especially if you're like me and you have an aging body with accumulated damage.
No -- to lose FAT, you need to learn to manipulate the hormones that encourage fat storage AND usage!
Lower fasting insulin. Peter (at Hyperlipid) describes FASTING insulin as the leading partner in the fat storage/usage dance. Lowering it is done through a continuing low-carb diet.
Encourage healthy thyroid function. This means being vitamin/mineral/protein replete, eating ENOUGH (because low-CAL diets cause a slowdown) non-toxic foods, minimizing omega-6 PUFAs while maximizing saturated dietary fats, being as stress-free as possible, and ... a continuing low-carb diet.
An incredibly-huge flood of verbage has washed through recently, talking about feeding those good gut-bugs!!! ... :-P I think all those starch-lovers need to go back and read Peter's series on FIAF! "Whose fat is it, anyway?" Theirs, when it comes to allowing YOU to burn it or not. What makes them send the signal to let it go? You guessed it ... a continuing low-carb diet.
While "what makes us fat" AND "what makes us lose fat" are intensely complicated formulae, there's a simple work-around -- a reduced-carb diet. HOW reduced is a purely individual thing -- some do great if they drop carb grams to under 100/day, and others need to be much more restrictive. It depends on activity level, your sex-hormone status, the condition of your mitochondria, your genetic heritage, your liver's capability of gluconeogenesis ... LOTS of things! "One size fits all" is the epitome of the bad joke, in clothing as well as dietary regimen.
breakfast
When can two eggs and a couple of ounces of Canadian bacon actually satisfy significant hunger? WHEN THERE'S HOLLANDAISE ON TOP! :-D
Stunningly-Easy Blender Hollandaise Sauce
3 eggyolks
1/4 t. salt
1 T. lemon juice
sprinkle of cayenne pepper
1/2 c. butter
Whirl the yolks, lemon juice and seasonings in the blender for half-a-minute. Melt the butter in the microwave (or on the stove), and carefully heat it till very hot and bubbly -- if you don't keep an eye on it, it can boil over! With the blender running, slowly pour in the butter. It's done!
Hollandaise, like mayo, has the reputation for being a very capricious sauce -- and so it probably was in the day when the additions and beating were done by hand! But this sauce is a piece of cake if you have a blender -- I've been making it for decades. My son, at eight years old, once asked, "Cauliflower's for dinner? CAN WE HAVE HOLLANDAISE ON IT???" I was proud, when all their little friends thought Kraft Mac & Cheese was the ultimate sauced food....
The addition of the right herbs and spices turns Hollandaise into Béarnaise sauce. The additions of others makes this an infinite-possibility vehicle! If you've never tried it before, I hope you will now!
Stunningly-Easy Blender Hollandaise Sauce
3 eggyolks
1/4 t. salt
1 T. lemon juice
sprinkle of cayenne pepper
1/2 c. butter
Whirl the yolks, lemon juice and seasonings in the blender for half-a-minute. Melt the butter in the microwave (or on the stove), and carefully heat it till very hot and bubbly -- if you don't keep an eye on it, it can boil over! With the blender running, slowly pour in the butter. It's done!
Hollandaise, like mayo, has the reputation for being a very capricious sauce -- and so it probably was in the day when the additions and beating were done by hand! But this sauce is a piece of cake if you have a blender -- I've been making it for decades. My son, at eight years old, once asked, "Cauliflower's for dinner? CAN WE HAVE HOLLANDAISE ON IT???" I was proud, when all their little friends thought Kraft Mac & Cheese was the ultimate sauced food....
The addition of the right herbs and spices turns Hollandaise into Béarnaise sauce. The additions of others makes this an infinite-possibility vehicle! If you've never tried it before, I hope you will now!
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
last day at 58
... and on my birthday, I intend to be BAAAAADDDDD! ;-) With breakfast I intend to open a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. I think i'll have eggs benedict, but i'm not entirely committed to it yet. For dinner, lobster tail, maybe artichoke hearts, and i'm actually considering picking up some organic sweet-corn. Home-made ice cream after, of course. But I haven't decided if i'll make a tiny cherry pie or get a small watermelon -- we haven't had either for a long time.
When we become adults (and get beyond that count-every-penny stage), we have a tendency to treat ourselves more regularly to things that used to be rare. Then, of course, they tend to become mundane things rather than real "treats"! When I think of the things I used to eat in my twenties...! My blood-sugar rises merely from the contemplation of it.
It's certainly no privation, eating the way I do nowadays, most of the time: beef ribeye, filet mignon, rack of lamb, spareribs, wild-caught seafood, butter and rich sauces, asparagus and other low-carb vegetables, cream-based desserts occasionally.... I feel better and suffer less bloating by strictly limiting fruit, so fruit becomes SPECIAL. A treat.
This is what fruit should be, in my opinion -- an occasional and seasonal splurge, not a three-times-a-day common occurrence.
So the rather modest carb-binge that's going to occur will be that "rare treat" which only another low-carber can appreciate. When a lot of my contemporaries would have a sugary, artificially-flavored cake and ice-cream, rife with industrial-seed-oils, my unaccustomed taste-buds will be reveling in their [gasp] fructose frenzy! I think I can safely guarantee that i'll enjoy mine much more than they will theirs.
When we become adults (and get beyond that count-every-penny stage), we have a tendency to treat ourselves more regularly to things that used to be rare. Then, of course, they tend to become mundane things rather than real "treats"! When I think of the things I used to eat in my twenties...! My blood-sugar rises merely from the contemplation of it.
It's certainly no privation, eating the way I do nowadays, most of the time: beef ribeye, filet mignon, rack of lamb, spareribs, wild-caught seafood, butter and rich sauces, asparagus and other low-carb vegetables, cream-based desserts occasionally.... I feel better and suffer less bloating by strictly limiting fruit, so fruit becomes SPECIAL. A treat.
This is what fruit should be, in my opinion -- an occasional and seasonal splurge, not a three-times-a-day common occurrence.
So the rather modest carb-binge that's going to occur will be that "rare treat" which only another low-carber can appreciate. When a lot of my contemporaries would have a sugary, artificially-flavored cake and ice-cream, rife with industrial-seed-oils, my unaccustomed taste-buds will be reveling in their [gasp] fructose frenzy! I think I can safely guarantee that i'll enjoy mine much more than they will theirs.
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