philosophy to the rescue

Fred has found that ancient Greek philosophy is helpful in coping with a difficult situation that can't be solved.  My fondness for Patanjali is good for coping with PEOPLE whom I wish didn't exist.  ;-)  Civilization insists that I MAY NOT kill them, despite our ancestors' predilection for pushing the incurably-antisocial off the edge of the ice, so SOMETHING is needed to keep them from soiling our nests.

The 33rd sutra reads:

By sympathy with the happy, compassion for the sorrowful, delight in the holy, disregard of the unholy, the psychic nature moves to gracious peace.

When we are wrapped up in ourselves, shrouded with the cloak of our egotism, absorbed in our pains and bitter thoughts, we are not willing to disturb or strain our own sickly mood by giving kindly sympathy to the happy, thus doubling their joy, or by showing compassion for the sad, thus halving their sorrow. We refuse to find delight in holy things, and let the mind brood in sad pessimism on unholy things. All these evil psychic moods must be conquered by strong effort of will. This rending of the veils will reveal to us something of the grace and peace which are of the interior consciousness of the spiritual man.

Modern thought tells us that all that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good people to do nothing.  I'm sure that's true -- but it also causes a lot of stress when we are subjected to the constant stream of bad news that IS the modern world.  We join social media to try to increase contact with distant friends and relatives, and we get trapped into seeing examples of wickedness, greed and power-mania.  We "should" be doing something when we see all that's wrong, we think -- but there's so much of it we feel helpless.

I'm finding that the way to make internet communication work is to approach it with a hefty dose of Patanjali.  It works for the problem of trolls in the comment-sections of our favorite blogs, too.  There is no reasoning with them -- their joy is to stir up shit, though why they find that enjoyable is more than I can imagine.  They obviously want the attention and to show how clever they are (despite their mistaken impression of their own wittiness).  The best way to deal with them is to I-G-N-O-R-E, or to use the yogi's term, disregard them.

If nobody argues or engages, they'll go away eventually.  If they don't experience the joy of having the last word because their comments are deleted, they're bound to find that their attempts are in vain.  "Do not feed the trolls" should probably be the motto of all comment-sections, for the peace and happiness of writers AND readers.  That leaves plenty of room for sympathizing with the happy, displaying compassion for the suffering, and delighting in the "holy" -- the good, kind and up-beat people who ARE out there, despite the competing noise.

taking it out on the grunts

There's a good reason why a certain comedian's site was removed from my blog list ... but if it hadn't happened long ago already, today's post would have been the LAST STRAW.

[comment] -- I went out to lunch and could only find ‘lite’ mayonnaise so I asked for full fat and was told by the (slightly overweight and very young) server that I should be watching my calories! ... I used vinegar.

[blog host] -- By which I hope you mean you sprayed vinegar in her face and told her to mind her own @#$%ing business.

I MEAN REALLY.  I'm into a good rant myself, but the constant anti-government bitching ... you might as well stop calling yourself a comedian and get a job with Faux News.

EDIT:  that's right -- he became a starch-eater, so it must be the carbs talking!  ;-)

on the road again, again

We're heading back toward Texas together, with the pup and tweeter this time.  We're waiting for the concentrated WORK to begin in the back yard, so are taking advantage of the lull to let J "get away from it all" for awhile.  In our family, the driver gets to choose what plays on the stereo, so whereas i was listening to classic rock'n'roll and vintage radio-shows when i drove alone, today it's BBC World and other news and financial radio.  Boring to me for the most part, alternating with IRRITATING.  (The LIES!!!)

One brief blurb spoke of some company willing to donate to a cancer charity, dependent upon customer purchases.  Now, health "charities" get my goat at the best of times, but this one claimed that "a cure for cancer is in YOUR HANDS"....

You're damned right it is, but not in the way they mean.  You could bankrupt the country and not get any closer to a cure for cancer, or heart disease, or diabetes or any of the "diseases of civilization" for the simple reason that they aren't working from the right paradigm.  No drug is going to cure these illnesses, when the causative factors -- modern diet and lifestyle -- are not addressed.  And the pharmaceutical companies would implode if we did that!  No, they want the donations to keep pouring in because THEIR BUSINESS is the SEARCH, not the discovery.

It's a terrible thing that we have to watch our loved ones suffer and die from these dreadful diseases, just because they refuse to listen to the latest and most illuminated views on them.  We're wackos, you know!  How dare we doubt the omniscience (DIVINITY) of their voodoo-medicine-men -- i mean DOCTORS!  Having lost two dear friends rather recently, and unnumbered relations for uncounted years, i have a really bad attitude about patient trust and medical hubris, but more than that a raging fury against groups which claim to be working to help the ill, but in fact do everything in their power to maintain the horribly ineffective status quo.

The only way we can expect to have a respectable quality of life -- let alone length -- is to cover our asses and take care of ourselves.  Nobody cares how you feel or how you function outside a very small circle.  The more difficult your physical problems are to deal with, the more your MD just wants you to GO AWAY.  Sure, if you'll quietly agree to submit to and pay for your treatments s/he will continue to test and try and treat, but s/he doesn't really have a horse in that race!  If you complain that you've spent a fortune and suffered a lot and not made any progress, you're no longer even appreciated as a source of income....

WE have to be our own researchers and tryers-out, and make sure the physician knows that s/he WORKS FOR US, doesn't just autocratically run the show.  By being passive, trusting the experts to know what they're talking about, we assume that there is someone out there who WANTS us to be healed ... and that's a BIG assumption.

MORE THAN THAT though -- we have to be willing to do the work and put in the sweat, long hours and elbow-grease.  WE have to implement the lifestyle changes properly.  WE have to be disciplined. Just because we've read an article, too, we CANNOT assume that we DO know better than our GP ... BUT if we do our homework and bring up the subject, we shouldn't accept a brush-off sort of reply.

WE ARE in the driver's seat when it comes to our own health, and that entails a lot of responsibility.  If we abdicate it, and let others decide what is true, and blindly follow, the situation looks hazardous to me!  Is our "decider" a forward-thinker who spends his/her spare time reading PubMed, or a plodder whose hobby is more important than the patient and who believes everything the drug-rep spiels out?  We've been brought up to trust our professionals, but the more i learn about the medical industry the less i'm inclined to believe.

There's SO MUCH to know!  Even the brightest AND most caring, CAN'T know it all -- and people often do expect that.  The average Joe doesn't seem to realize that an awful lot of physiological detail is UNKNOWN -- and the "powers" in the medical world want to maintain that illusion!

IF people realized that their "sins" of dietary and lifestyle "commission" were insufficiently understood, and that there is no real treatment for the underlying problem besides CHANGE, would they be more careful in preserving their health and well-being?  If they knew that their chances of becoming seriously ill were LESS to do with their genetics and MORE to do with food-choices, would they depend so much on science to provide a magic bullet?

Those of us who have become renegades from the usual patient role are the bell-wethers of a new demographic;  time will tell if we're right (as we think) or deluded (as others consider us).  But that time is hurrying upon us!  The latest new cancer patient in my reenacting circle is a dozen years younger than i am.  His condition is so rare, they can't give him much idea as to what's going to happen next, but he's on chronic and acute pain medications.  :-(  IF we're right, we're going to be a group of "last leaves" ... which is not without its melancholy aspect, as we lose loved ones whose early deaths are theoretically postponable.

pleasant surprise

I got on the scale for the first time since before my trip, and i was stunned to see several pounds of loss.  Seven pounds to my goal of 140!  HUZZAH, as they used to say!

I expected a pretty good number, considering the way my "skinny shorts" fit....  A whole lot of different causes probably contributed to the process, but some of the FASTING is most central to it.

When i got sloppy and ate "naughty food" i followed it up with a 24-hour fast.  I pretty much did the Kitava thing!  A couple of times i ate canned fish as easy meals, and i also ran out of cashews early-on, and lapsed into macadamias -- that probably helped as i find them less moreish.

I will certainly NOT actually TRY to do the same thing again -- there is probably a lot of unrealized accident in the combination of circumstances surrounding my success!  I'll just celebrate progress.

PROGRESS.  When one exercises the discipline to be perfect on a dietary plan and does NOT get good measurable results, NOTHING is more discouraging!  Where is the incentive to forgo nontoxic foods that are merely fattening, if one doesn't get anywhere by so doing?  No -- as far as i'm concerned the "fast after indulgence" technique seems to solve a lot of problems.

fasting and not-fasting

Another "we're all different" discussion:

I was happy to spend some time with my long-time friend Meg while we were at "Cowboy Town*."  She and I met in 7th-grade music class, almost FORTY-SEVEN YEARS ago!  Now that's some connection....

Meg, whether because of my advocating it or because she heard about it somewhere else, has given up wheat-eating for the most part, too.  She did an elimination/refeed experiment, and she finds that her minor health challenges are much better without it -- like so many of us do!  She's one of these high-energy people I envy so, who has the power to "get things done yesterday."  :-)  Meg has always been slender, but nowadays wears very loose-fitting clothes because she doesn't like what mid-life has done to her shape. 

We've corrupted her with our Sunnyland Farms nuts always in the house, and Meg sends off regular orders for them.  She eats more fruit than I, but that's only fair -- I'm sure she burns a lot more energy.  At "Cowboy Town" she rarely sits down for meals, but nibbles a little on-the-go -- for our Saturday night traditional steak dinner she usually sits, but this time she was a bit late, and the only steaks left were overcooked;  she ended up circulating through the room, chewing off bones that were still pretty well-endowed with medium-rare meat.  :-)  They buy big bone-in ribeyes for us these days!

One thing that I do, diet-wise, that she doesn't ... is FAST.  Meg feels the need to eat about a half-dozen small meals each day, as opposed to the two large ones that I prefer.  Sometime, I need to quiz her on exactly why she does it -- does she feel poorly when she eats larger meals, what?  I can understand that -- on the unusual event that I eat a little too much quantity, my digestion feels as though it can't handle it.  Lettuce is frequently involved, or I've consumed too much liquid with my food (this is why I no longer like to order iced tea with meals -- if I can't have a glass of wine to sip, I order coffee).  Perhaps Meg has a stomach-acid issue, or maybe a shortage of digestive enzymes...?

The short version (too late!) is that she feels best eating frequently, even though to most people she's a low-carb eater -- she evolved this style not because she ever needed to lose weight but because LC foods are what make her feel best.  Before he retired, she had a wonderful holistic MD who encouraged herbs and "food as medicine," and she took that ball and ran with it.  She's a middle-school science teacher by trade -- very much a cool scientific thinker.  If it WORKS, then it doesn't matter to her that Conventional Wisdom is against it.

So "all middle-aged low-carbers are overweight, red-faced plodders" -- not quite!  There are many reasons to go LC, and my friend Meg, just like Jan at thelowcarbdiabetic, finds that a low-starch and -sugar intake provides plenty of fuel for their high-energy styles.  There's plenty of room in the tribe for their types, too!

here we are, with another friend...

______
*  I'll call it what a friend's children used to, because I'd prefer to keep its true name quiet -- long story! 

it's not WHAT so much as HOW

All it takes is a title, sometimes, to set me off....

Those people pushing the boundaries of what "everyone should eat" may have part of their story right, but as usual there are a lot of loose ends fluttering in the breeze.  Yes, our free-living ancestors ate plant material when available and convenient.  But they weren't eating it the way most modern folks do.

From "tubers are okay" to "pan-fried in nut oil" is a big jump.  Do we sun-dry and ferment our potatoes?  Of course not (we probably wouldn't like them if we did).  But that's how Andean potato-eaters were doing it, and apparently thriving.

The vast majority of Americans (i haven't sufficient knowledge of everyday practices to indict preparation techniques elsewhere), even if they DO cook their own legumes from dry instead of just buying them in cans, more often than not only soak them overnight, or use the quick-soak method.  Softening -- that's the reason to soak beans, isn't it?  HAhahahahaha....

When it comes to subsistence vegetable foods containing protein, HOW they're prepared is absolutely critical.  If you say "legumes are okay" you HAVE to append that statement with "when you soak them to the point that they're beginning to ferment, because if you don't you're not only NOT getting the food-value you expect from them, you're also robbing your body of the nutrients in the other things you eat alongside."

I just don't understand the drive to get people to eat second-class forms of nutrition!  Beans and potatoes really don't taste good enough to be worth the bother!  They're useful as hell if you're in a survival situation, but my friends and i ain't THERE (yet).

The message seems to be coming from individuals who have gone out of their way to diversify their gut-bugs, and they're intent on feeding them.  I strongly suspect that "a good microbiome" is a SYMPTOM of health, not a determiner of it -- despite what happens when you put skinny-mouse bacteria into fat mice.  Just as obesity and naturally-occurring hypothyroidism are symptoms of malnutrition and energy misappropriation -- causality and DIRECTION-of-causality are sometimes tangled.

If i can get liver and oysters and lamb-chops, why the hell should i waste my appetite on BEANS?  Especially as we get older -- we have less appetite and less power to digest!  What we SHOULD eat for well-being are easily-absorbed nutritional powerhouses, not the scratching-the-bottom-of-the-vitamin/protein/mineral-barrel foods that fatten and bloat and promote inflammation.  Soaring blood-sugar and insulin spikes?  They may not be harmful in isolation ... but YOU can have them, not me.

Now, in the case of people who need to make the most of their food dollar, as we discussed yesterday, beans and potatoes are far-and-away better choices than the day-old-baked-goods aisle.  For conscientious vegetarians who don't care about the small animals that are killed in wheat-fields as much as cows, chickens and pigs, tubers and legumes are better than tofu, too.  And you can't beat a well-prepared Cajun-style red-beans-and-rice either, every once in awhile.  But all things equal (tolerance-wise), to go for the latter instead of the mussels in home-made tomato broth?  Insane.  ;-)

One could make an argument for all kinds of modern foods being "paleo" in character -- it means NOTHING.  Paleo is only a template for a healthy lifestyle that omits modern practices and foodstuffs which are KNOWN to be deleterious, like staying up half the night watching television, and eating things that require processing which destroys food value.  This is why nut-flour-based desserts really aren't "paleo" even if they only contain nuts, eggs, honey and natural flavorings -- they've violated the healthy spirit of the game if you eat them EVERY SINGLE DAY....

So YES, tubers and legumes are ancient foods, just like the nuts, eggs and honey of my example.  BUT THEY ALL HAVE TO BE EATEN IN CONTEXT.  If YOUR digestion can stand them, they're potentially nourishing.  BUT....

All vegetables "are trying to kill us," as they say.  Some people are killed more easily than others.  For the hard-to-kill to insist more delicate constitutions emulate them is self-aggrandizement, hubris and selfishness.  It's exactly like lactase-persistent people advocating milk-drinking in people who don't have the genes for it.  Like celiac people being told they just have to take their RS, and they'll be fine -- bread is the staff of life, after all.  ...EXACTLY.

 Like others before me, i find the "paleo" part of my blog-title to be misleading to others, and containing unintended connotations.  I'm too stubborn to change it, though, and i'll persistently defend the concept of non-NADism.  "Is it paleo/primal?" however, is a question not worth asking.  Say, rather, is it non-NAD -- the LAST thing i should eat regularly are the Neolithic Agents of Disease.

"food insecurity"...?

I followed a link to a National Geographic article about "the new face of hunger" in the US.  I only read a few paragraphs, because of my mounting irritation -- this time, not at our broken system that gives billions to profitable businesses but shorts programs that help the working poor -- but to the state of ignorance in this country when it comes to food savvy and making the most of our dollars.

I noticed a similar situation when a friend was having financial problems years ago -- she and her husband both had full-time, decent-paying jobs, but were facing bankruptcy.  They had NO idea how to handle what they had. 

"Hungry" children don't refuse food -- the child in the article who DID was obviously not HUNGRY.

It's an insult to STARVING people to call these brats "hungry."  Conversely, it's an insult to the hard-working poor to cut off the assistance which is making it possible for them the scrape by.  Hand-me-downs can be deceptive.  Poor children receive gifts too. 

People who "know how to be poor," i.e. to MANAGE on a small budget, don't buy Coke, fruit roll-ups, and other snack foods, and they don't let their kids take one bite out of an apple then set it aside ... like my friends did.

The malnourishment of "poor" Americans has a distinct air of spoiled children refusing to settle for second-best.  THIS IS NOT TO SAY THERE ARE NOT TRULY IMPOVERISHED AND STARVING PEOPLE HERE ... but the families of four unable to feed themselves on twice the minimum wage (as in the NG article) are squandering their resources, not using their brains.

It really seems to be time to restore life-skill-teaching in schools.  Do any of us recall details of our "social studies" classes even a year after learning them (so we could regurgitate them on a state-mandated test)?  What would happen if we compressed classes to contain more essential quantities of things a modern human NEEDS to know, and leave unimportant minutia behind?

I'm reminded of that '60s classic movie, "To Sir With Love" with sadness -- what Poitier's character did would never be allowed today.  However, that sort of class would provide benefits to all society, not just help the students deal with the real world when they have no choice but to face it.

lalalalala...

Just like Mr-i-have-to-eat-what-i-like-to-eat, who died of pancreatic cancer last year, there seem to be a LOT of people out there who don't want to know that their choice of diet is literally killing them.

I suppose there could be a lot of reasons for it.  I just think they're stupid.

EVERYBODY likes yummy food.  For some it's sweets, and for others it's savory snack foods.  There's the surprising case of the "low-carber" who was willing to take all her carb-grams in the form of candy, and the case of my mother who virtuously "dislikes" sugary things but has a significant addiction to potatoes and popcorn.  My next-older sister has never been into food, but it seems to me that everything she likes is low-fat and starchy.  My eldest sister has had appalling triglyceride numbers for a long time, and was told by her doctor that she NEEDS to go low-carb, but can't (or won't) make herself do it.  It's always something....

But THINK ABOUT IT!  People who are UNWELL, but don't want to even hear that they can FEEL BETTER by changing their diets....  My mind boggles.

People who are otherwise very intelligent and insightful.

People who jeer at the idea that wheat -- "the staff of life" -- is problematic, and DON'T WANT TO KNOW that modern wheat is very different from classic varieties.

Lalalalalala -- i can't hear you! -- lalalalala ....

On the Low Carb Cruise, a surprise speaker (Dianne Sanfilippo) encouraged us to NOT PROSELYTIZE, and it made a lot of sense.  I agree -- trying to convince others of ANYTHING when they're not interested is futile, a complete waste of time, and to me it's productive of sadness because i know how powerful food and supplementation can be.  I see young people with burdening overweight and bad skin, and realize how much their lives would be transformed by removing the deleterious ingredients from their daily fare.  I hear of cancer, heart attacks, and other serious illnesses afflicting my contemporaries (and often people a decade younger) -- two of my favorite people of the crowd i associated with over the weekend have recent diagnoses of T2D -- and i KNOW how they could be protecting their health by only knocking back their consumption of glucose-producing components of their diets....

"It's an orange!" ... "No, it's the juice of eight oranges, separated from the part of an orange that has the power to fill him up." ... "It's an ORANGE."  [sigh]

People don't want to know.  They have been brainwashed to think that fruit is a perfect food, and don't want to KNOW that it's all been a marketing trick.  They've been told that bread is the staff of life, and they can't imagine that the USDA, FDA and AMA are not on their side.  Even these people who live and breathe History don't realize that twentieth-century diseases like Alzheimers are not normal consequences of aging -- even these people who SHOULD know that old statistics of longevity are artificially low because of infant mortality.

Even people who eschew religion as mythology, superstition and irrationality have their illogical beliefs.  They think Science is performed as it should be, and that peer-review has the power to weed out the bullshit, not that what they hear via the media is a form of academic cronyism dominated by inflated egos.  They believe in Genetics, and have never heard of epigenetics -- they don't WANT to.  Just like a fundamentalist (of ANY form), they want to believe their fate is in the hands of some supernal entity and that if they follow the rules, that's all they can really do.  From my point of view, it's just as unreasonable to follow dietary dicta from the McGovern committee as to obey the reproductive advice of the pope, or handle rattlesnakes at revivals.

busy days!

I'm taking off for Texas again tomorrow.  During the last few days I've been scrambling to get my sewing finished while we're getting our plans finalized for the construction/renovation of the back yard -- WHEW.  Talking to the last contender for landscaping this afternoon, but I think i'll put the sauerbraten (I've been marinating for the last couple of days) on to cook before we leave....

My sewing machine started to misbehave yesterday afternoon -- AAAAARGH!  It's gonna have to go back to the repairman, because unlike the antiques, you can't reach the problem that needs solving in a modern machine ... just like automobiles!  The last half-hour before I gave up last night, I disinterred a middle-aged machine I inherited, just to see if it was in any condition to make buttonholes -- [moan of frustration] buttonholing is one of the most magical things my Bernina DOES!  Making them using an outmoded technique on a machine i'm unfamiliar with won't be fun!  And making them by hand is something I avoid as much as possible.

Unlike the old days, I won't be cooking anything special to take along.  I won't bring car snacks;  being well adapted to VLC, I no longer need them.  I'll probably let my husband take me to breakfast, then not eat for 6 or 8 hours, and pick up an early supper on the road.  I'll take a couple of cans of fish (tuna, salmon, sardines and kippers), a few nuts, a couple of bottles of champagne and lots of mineral water to see me through the weekend.  ;-)  Meg suggested that British tropical classic, the gin'n'tonic because of the possible heat, so I have some New Amsterdam decanted into an appropriate bottle and a period-reproduction label ready to paste on....

It'll be a quick trip this time, because I need to be back home NEXT Thursday, but i'll try to fit in as much fun and socializing as possible.  Talk to you all later!

secret weird trick for a flat stomach

^^^  personal joke -- I HATE those ads....

We just visited the grocery while out running another lumberyard-errand.  For decades, it's been nothing but amusing to read the headlines on the checkout-counter magazines -- "lose 15 pounds in four weeks" will be on the same cover with a close-up photo of cake or cookies.  Do they really expect nobody notices the inconsistent message?  What DID hit my funnybone today was a cookbook devoted to "flat belly" recipes.

I can tell people how to flatten their bellies -- or at least improve their condition -- in four steps,  but I doubt if i'd get a lot of takers.

1. Eliminate omega-6 oils and fructose from your diet, to get rid of that NAFL that causes your liver to take over your midsection (of course, if your FL is not of the NA variety, dropping the A is in order);
2. Stop eating things that bloat your intestines;
3. Do slow-burn-type leg lifts; and
4. Persistently follow a diet that's effective for YOU to lose weight -- not your trainer, not your doctor, not your nephew, not your granddaughter, and certainly not the diets that failed Tara Pope.

I didn't LOOK at the little cookbook, of course -- it was published by one of those magazines which are rife with Conventional Wisdom uselessness.  I can imagine that it was full of lovely low-fat salads and vegetable dishes which keep you full for all of twenty minutes, as well as some "satisfying protein" entrees calling for lean meats which keep you full for maybe thirty.  ;-)

Trouble is, stuffing your belly with large quantities of vegetation is not only non-satiating, they cause an outsized insulin response MERELY FROM THE STOMACH DISTENTION.  Then when those vegetables reach your small intestine, if you have bacterial overgrowth there (as a lot of people do, who are recovering from a high-carb diet), that portion of your gut will bloat.  When the contents get to your colon, anything that your microbiota don't like (or like too much) will create even more fermentation, gas and inflammation.

Fructose malabsorption and FODMAP problems, dysbiosis and food-poisoning -- a lot of things cause bloat in your gut.  It's THOROUGHLY STUPID to insist on continuing to eat foods which are DAMAGING YOUR BODY simply because "you have the right to eat anything you want."  Sure you have the right to eat whatever -- but is it actually a good idea to do so?

waste not

This evening I put some chicken feet and "trimmings" into the crockpot to make stock.  To prepare the feet, you have to cut off the claws;  I think I wrote about this a couple of years ago;  it's a rather weird experience.

I put the feet into a sinkful of cold water, got my poultry shears and went at it.  Chicken feet look like little witchy alien HANDS!  Only three "fingers" and a "thumb," cut off at the "wrist;"  the whole shebang being about four or five inches long.  You cut off the little fingertips, toss the foot in the pot and go on to the next....

In a land where our animal flesh comes in tidy trimmed pieces, it's educational to do jobs like this.  Most children, we hear, don't really have a firm idea of where their meat comes from, and heaven knows they won't get any hints if all they eat are things like chicken nuggets, tuna from a can, and hamburger neatly pressed into patties.  During my kids' growing-up years, they never even saw me cut up a whole chicken -- it's something I learned to do early, but ceased to NEED TO in the '70s.  Anyone my age or older will remember the awe we felt when we began seeing WHOLE BAGS of chicken breasts!  One used to have to buy a whole chicken to get a comparatively small amount of white-meat, and chickens used to be more of a luxury than it is now.  OF COURSE they used the rest of the bird for another dish -- people also used to be a lot more careful about waste in "the old days."

People who grow their own animals for meat (and some of the rest of us) I HOPE have a special sense of appreciation for the creatures we sacrifice so we can eat.  Remember in that charming movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy," it was explained how the hunter apologizes to the animal for killing it, explaining how his family needs the meat....  So it should be with us, too.

We should acknowledge what we're doing when we eat meat, though we don't have to dwell on it like conscientious vegetarians do.  When it's possible, i'm sure we'd all feel better buying no products that weren't very humanely raised and slaughtered, but not everyone can afford grass-fed beef and its equivalents in other species -- until "the world changes" a lot of people must get along on feedlot meat and battery eggs.  I don't believe they should have to apologize to the finger-pointers ... but mentally apologizing to the pig, chicken or steer might be in order.

We should have respect for the animals we eat -- and ONE way of doing that is to waste as little as possible.  If another creature has to die to feed me (as I will feed the bacteria, etc, when I go), the LEAST I can do is have an attitude of gratitude.

primal "win" restaurant for today....

I should have taken a photo before we started but we were hungry and it didn't occur to me.  Oh well!

The Scottish Arms pub in St. Louis has a new seasonal menu with a cheese and charcuterie platter that is TO DIE FOR.  A couple of very mature cheeses, house-made terrines, apricot preserve and duck-breast prosciutto, local salame, etc!  Topped off with a few pickled vegetables and fresh berries....

YUM!!!  After the appetizer, i chose the salad-of-the-day -- field greens, roasted summer squash, tomatoes and green beans,  with a smoked-salmon add-on.  Also a couple of little ricotta fritters (that much wheat and oil won't kill me).  

St. Louis isn't N'Orleans, but it's not to be sneered-at, as a restaurant town!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAN!!!

... and happy anniversary too, Eddie!

Nuff said. ;-)

more lies

It pops up every time i google "best dietary source of _____" -- the website lists a whole sluagh* of vegetarian-type foods and ignores animal sources (except cheese -- preferably low-fat) completely.

THIS may be one reason that superficial readers are convinced plant-based diets are healthier.  PLANTS, they read contain AAAAAALLLL these nutrients, and what's in animal-sourced foods?  Saturated fats and protein ... which you can get anywhere!  I mean, there's more protein in broccoli than in steak!

LIES ... and equivocations.  On a per-calorie basis, there IS more protein in broccoli, but do you know how many pounds of it you'd have to eat to get enough?  Gotcha.

On one scientific site, i found the information that phosphorus is most abundant in animal products but is so ubiquitous that if you get enough protein and calcium you'll get enough P.  There's a lot in whole cereal grains, but it's a storage form which the human body neither absorbs nor uses well.  But go to a certain POPULAR (rather than fact-centered) site and you hear that THE BEST source is whole wheat.

LIE.  No equivocation.

The nutritional-information world is full of this kind of misinformation.  I've no doubt that most of the sites pass on their fallacies in good conscience, having sourced them from sites THEY trust.  The onus lies on the smug egos of people like Campbell and Ornish -- they publish, as "SCIENTISTS" that meat causes harm and vegetarianism is ideal.

MORE LIES.

Sorry, boys, the best dietary source of almost anything comes from animals.  If it isn't contained in liver, oysters or steak tartare, you don't need it.

TRUTH.
_____
* pronounced "sloo."  it's an Americanism derived from Irish Gaelic and it means "a host" -- ie, a lot. has nothing to do with imaginary creatures.

kitchen toys, needed and not needed

Around the Christmas season, the variety of small appliances for sale becomes absolutely ludicrous.  I always wonder -- what makes a person think that, ooh yeah I really really want a dedicated brownie-cooker!  How can anybody's kitchen even store that much STUFF?

Somebody gave my daughter a quesadilla-cooker once.  It was huge and took up a lot of space in her cupboard ... and I think she only used it once, when she first got it.  She finally let it go in a garage sale.

Being competent at the chores that our great-great-grandmothers (or their kitchen-maids) used to do, as I should be as a living-historian, I know most cooking tasks can be done with nothing but a couple of good knives, pots and pans, and a fire.  The number and variety of tools and accessories owned by prosperous households in those days, though, is surprising to a lot of people.  Do you think dedicated rice-cookers and egg-poachers are modern inventions?  ;-)  Nope.  Mechanical slicers and graters, ice-shavers, even a "magic milk shake machine" are in the 1895 Montgomery Ward catalogue.  In 1897, Sears offered mechanical cherry-stoners and raisin-seeders, a divided sauce-pan so you could cook your entire three-item meal on one burner, ... the wonders go on and on!  Alas that the 1886 Bloomingdale's catalogue doesn't include cooking equipment.

The kitchen-toys you "need" depend on the products your kitchen turns out.  Make a LOT of quesadillas, and maybe that garage-sale find was your thrill for the day!  Broil a lot of chicken breasts and tender vegetables, like my MIL used to in the house where she rarely used the A/C, and you'll love your Foreman Grill as much as she did hers.  Me, I have an oven and a 30+-year-old Jenn-Air grill on my stove -- I don't need no stinkin' Foreman.  I have knives, baking pans, and saucepans, too.

But I DO have my toys!  For the last forty years, the one sine-qua-non of my kitchen (beyond the sheer basics) has been my Cuisinart food processor.  Blenders (see previous rant) have come and gone, and have NEVER impressed me, but do come in handy for processes like making hollandaise sauce.  My last toaster (and the big coffee urn) has been relegated to the basement, but is kept for entertaining crowds and the mothers ... who still believe in wheat.  A toaster-OVEN does live on my countertop -- when Mother moved I leapt to inherit THAT.  It's far more effective for toasting the odd-size breads that are made with nut-flours, flax and the oopsie-rolls we still use.  Melts cheese onto all kinds of things, too.  ;-)

KitchenAid mixer!!!  Making oopsie-rolls without THAT is a time-consuming pain in the backside.  When J was stationed in N'Orleans I got him a tiny KA processor, too, which also lives in a quiet corner of my countertop -- I beat the softened cream-cheese and eggyolks in that while the mixer does the whites all by itself, then I fold the former into the latter, spoon it into the whoopee-pie-pan I bought for this specific application, and in a half-hour I have sandwich rolls -- particularly convenient for picnics and car-trips.  The only need a low-carber has for those is keeping one's hands clean while out of range of washing facilities.

The crockpot also has a secure place in my life -- how else be confident that cookery can go on SAFELY while we're out doing more interesting things?  I have two sizes, because for the two of us huge batches of stew are pointless.  Large beef-round roasts and pork shoulders, though, should never go to waste, and if you roast them dry in the crockpot, the broth that comes off is the perfect base for gravy.

Then there are the things you CAN'T make without dedicated apparati -- espresso for one!  Problem, though, before I learned to like coffee black, I never could make decent steamed milk with the doodad on the side of the machine!  WOULD NOT froth for me, even though my favorite barista at the City Diner gave me tips.  So when I saw how well it did at a kitchen-toy store a few years ago, I indulged myself with a Nespresso milk-frother -- which REALLY came in handy when I switched to coconut milk!  That stuff turns into an oil-spill on your coffee UNLESS you froth it well first....

I LOVE MY COUNTERTOP ICE-CREAM FREEZER!  [sheepish grin]  When I was a kid we did it the hard way, but which was not the HARDEST WAY (hand-crank)....  We had an electric one, but it was a pain in the ass because you had to buy the right kind of salt, a LOT of dairy products, and a shit-TON of ice to do it right ... but it made a couple of gallons of damned good product.  When the kind appeared that was "iceless" it sounded good, but didn't freeze that well.  During a move, the vessel that one puts in the freezer got damaged, and I was searching for a replacement when my husband gave me a whole new machine for my birthday that was self-sufficient -- it was wonderful!  No ice, no tricky vessel, just plug it in and it does all the work.  It's a nuisance to clean, but I've learned a shortcut.  I am in AWE of that machine.  It isn't essential to have special equipment to make ice cream, of course, but it's a wonderful, time-saving thing.... 

For the hard-core paleo who prefers to grind her own hamburger and make her own sausage, an electric grinder is da bomb.  I "learned sausage" with an old-fashioned hand grinder and ...  HOW THE HELL DO YOU STUFF A SAUSAGE CASING WITH ONLY TWO HANDS?  Oh -- you buy the sausage-gun in the 1890s catalogue (though I've yet to find a good clean one in an antique store).  :-)  When I had a chance to inherit an electric grinder, I had no idea how convenient it was going to be, but i'm now SOLD.*

There's long been a special baking pan for everything, but now there are special pans for EVERYTHING, made out of all kinds of surprising materials.  I'm not a huge fan of silicon YET, but I suppose it could happen -- it's a lot less expensive than the cast-iron animal-shaped cookie plaque I bought when the kids were young.  Besides the whoopee-pie pan I mentioned earlier, which is VERY convenient for sandwich buns, I have one for hotdog-rolls which i'm less pleased with -- questionable design!  But at least it offers a low-carb base for chilidogs (which I love);  my daughter uses baked sweet-potato for the base, and it's good, but it's also more grams than i'd allow myself on any but a re-feed day!  J has bought himself three separate braising pans, but I think he finally found one he likes -- I was content with the old footless dutch-oven of iron I inherited....  But that's fine!  My husband likes to cook, and i'm delighted to turn the kitchen over to him occasionally;  he should have tools that he likes to use, too. 

Roasting pans, their lids, and the attendant racks are other things we've collected quite an assortment of (pardon the bad grammar)!  Every size of bird needs its own roaster, it seems.  [sigh]  We have cupboards and drawers full of heat-proof vessels.  We finally found the perfect ceramic dishes for shirred eggs -- mmmm.  Angel-cake pans that are never greased.  Souffle dishes tall enough and with straight sides -- using other kinds of bakers won't do.  Somebody handed down a couple of ceramic apple-bakers to me -- now, what the hell do apple-bakers even exist for?  There's a wide post in the middle of it, so you have to waste a lot of apple-flesh to make it fit;  it also leaves room for NO filling.  If I ever bake apples again, it'll be in a pan which holds several, and they'll be stuffed with spices and cheese!  I should hand these bakers on down to someone else....

Waffle iron that doubles for wafer-baking.  Ebelskiver pan.  Cast-iron gem pan.  Mini-muffin tins I used to make pecan tarts in, which I liked to serve and give away at Christmas....  Having always loved all kinds of food, and doing a goodly amount of creating it since before my teens, I've collected a LOT of tools for doing it, through the decades!  Good thing we have a big house and NO intention of ever moving from it -- it's my kids who will have to deal with the excess someday.  The estate sale will probably be something to remember.
_________
*  tip for economy shoppers:  cheap ground beef sucks -- hell, expensive ground beef can also suck.  cheap cuts of beef can be home-ground, and it's GREAT.  if you grind it more coarsely than at the store, it holds juice MUCH better in the patty.  ;-)

happy RANT DAY

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.