another check-in

lol -- Y'all are going to get tired of hearing from me, today.

I've been catching up on miscellaneous posts as well as checking places where i've left comments and not been back, during this my day of recovery before i allow an airplane to stress me (i hate flying these days)....

One thing i've noticed the last few days is how dopey my thinking has felt.  Unless i'm much mistaken, i've been speaking more disjointedly and have been more easily distracted, too.  Having had nothing but coffee with cream and stevia (and supplements) for the last 18 or 19 hours, i feel as though my brain is coming back.  For me, this is the sine qua non of existence.

The "ghrelin effect" has kicked in, too:  that keen and alert feeling which encourages me to go out to hunt-and-gather....  ;-)

Ok, i'll shut up.

quick update

Four hours later, and i feel better already.

I can't help but think that the hypothesis is true, that the secret to coexistence with carbohydrates is all about calorie restriction -- either through modern IF'ing, or old-fashioned starvation.  Not that i'm in the least interested in embracing a higher-carb diet!  It makes me feel bloody awful.  On my beloved low-carb, the palpitations and tremors that more carbs cause are completely absent.  No muscle aches, fewer joint problems, happy intestines -- why on earth would i go back to carb-scarfing???

Nope.  ...I think i'll go pour myself another cup of coffee, WITH cream!

when will i ever learn?

This week of indulgent vacationing is almost over -- thank heavens!  ;-)  It's been something of an inversion -- a PERversion of what food-elimination diets are all about.  I've eaten things over the last week that i KNOW i should not eat, and am observing the consequences -- and don't try to tell me it's a reverse-placebo effect!

I have body-aches that i haven't felt since last year.  Anyone who has read some of my oldest postings might remember my awe when, after three weeks of the Personal Paleo Code program, i took a roadtrip and found that i was able to get out of the car (after driving for 6 hours straight) and experience no stiffness upon moving around.  At the time, i was SO impressed with the effects of the frequently-problematic-food avoidance, i couldn't see ever eating them again.

I ate them this past few days.  OUCH.  Wheat.  Corn.  Sauces containing mystery ingredients.  Industrial seed oils.  Sugar.

I HAVE had individual-meal "excursions" before, from my ideal diet, with limited repercussions.  One day of being "bad" can affect my knees, my water-balance, my allergies, and/or my digestion.  It takes several days to give me this gawd-do-i-feel-old sensation.  I'm sitting here right now with my feet up, leaning back comfortably against cushions; my lower-back hurts, my upper-neck hurts and my temples ache -- inflammation causes my glasses to fit poorly, and i get a pain behind my ears, as well.  I woke this morning with my hands and feet aching from the water retention.  Climbing out of bed was more trouble than it has been for seven months; i limped to the next room.

Today i'm fasting until dinnertime, and i anticipate feeling MUCH better.  I'm also going to do a little upper-body bodyweight exercise right before dinner -- some planks, maybe some pushups.  (Weightbearing exercise, especially in the upper body, is reputed to burn a LOT of glucose/glycogen.)  I'll be drinking as much coffee as is comfortable, with cream if i start feeling hungry.  I CAN LICK THIS!  ;-)

When i fly home tomorrow, i trust i'll be feeling at least a little better than i do right now.  When i get there i'll start being "perfect" again.  Perfection is MUCH easier than moderation.

this one's for you, kids!

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Son, you're on your own!"

Fred at Philosophy of Weight Management has a column that's very much to the point, today.  Everybody and his dog has something to say about obesity -- where it comes from, what to do about it, and who's at fault.  Few, however, are actually helpful.  Further, there are a great many entities which have a great deal to lose if a "cure" is widely available -- and these entities are frequently the most vociferous about what we should be doing.  (It's obvious how effective their advice is, too....)

How can anyone trust the advice of those who are making a lot of money out of the overweight???  But people do.  [eyes rolling]

We have to make ourselves responsible for our own health, because nobody else really has a stake in it.  If you must have a doctor to help you with some aspect, you should do your homework and see if his/her philosophy jibes with yours.  There ARE low-carb-sympathetic doctors out there, just as there are those who have had weight problems of their own.  Some of them have licked their weight challenges; i can only imagine that they have a little more insight and empathy than the always-lean ones -- but if they succeeded through starving and running marathons at the age of thirty, and you're 55 and female ... who knows?  ;-)

I'm sure i'm preaching to the choir when it comes to those who read here often.  I just hope that any newcomers will be inspired to think about it on my suggestion....

horrible American food and dietary habits!!!

I'm in San Francisco for another visit this week.  It ain't N'Orleans, but we haven't had a bad meal yet. This is part of why i get a little annoyed with sweeping statements about how bad "American" food is, and how it's no wonder so many people are fat, seeing as how we eat fastfood all the time.

HUH?  News to me....

The Americas, in fact, have an awe-inspiring culinary heritage as a result of being the "melting pot of the world."  That statement may sound like a piece of self-important fatuousness, but like most banal truisms it has a basis in fact.  When people came here from all over the globe, they brought their food traditions -- and recipes -- with them.  The magic happened when old-world dishes couldn't be made exactly as they were before, and new-world ingredients were added in an attempt to replace the unobtainable.

Can ANYONE deplore the addition of pumpkins ... tomatoes ... CHOCOLATE to the world's collective cuisine?  I even stand staunchly behind potatoes and maize (if it's properly nixtamalized...).  Stevia.  Turkeys.  Why fixate on Dr. Pemberton's contribution to international culture and forget the rest?  And why conflate greedy businessmen trying to make a fortune off a cheap product, with creative purveyors of outstanding cuisine?

Jokes (and prejudices) aside, there's a wealth of great food here.  If you can't find it, you don't know how to look.  In some of the most out-of-the-way, unlikely places one may find a jewel, and some of the shabbiest dives serve the best food -- i could tell you stories....  Customers flock to our farmers' markets, which are packed with beautiful locally-produced foods of every variety.  Grass-fed beef, pastured pork, poultry and eggs, raw milk (where legal) are eagerly sought by people in-the-know, who impatiently sit on waiting-lists for an opportunity to buy.

Yes, a LOT of people eat McDonald's "food."  Most people don't eat it often, though.  They grab a burger or some doughnuts when they're on the highway or vacationing in a strange place, because they know what they'll be getting, and these places are EVERYWHERE.  Pizza becomes a "treat," when you don't allow yourself to eat it but once a year.  Ditto for Kentucky Fried Chicken.  These are things we picnicked on when we skipped classes and went to the park instead; we sat on the grass and listened to Chicago or Crosby, Stills & Nash on transistor radios, and "made out" in public to the shocked disbelief of our elders....

The only "people" i know who really seem to LIKE fastfoods are children of a certain stage of development, and i suspect it has a lot to do with the rarity of their visits, the fact that they don't get to drink soda with meals at home, the especially-enticing playground equipment, and the collectible toys that come with the "meals."  My grandchildren have the same enthusiasm for McD's that my own kids did; none of them has ever eaten like this regularly, because responsible parents (and there ARE a lot of them here, despite the poor advice they get about childrearing) don't allow it as a generality.  This stuff is designed to entice kids, and SOME kids (far from all) bullyrag their parents into going there SOMETIMES.  Especially when vacationing.

But "bad American food"?  It's out there, but it's pretty easy to avoid, too.  Next time you're in St. Louis, go to Billie's Fine Foods -- it's an old-school diner, and it has one of the best omelettes i've ever tasted, the Supreme.  Highly reminiscent of a supreme pizza, as a matter of fact.  At the Deja Vu in New Orleans, get the Deja Vu omelette (not available during Mardi Gras week, though).  These are not places you'll find in touristy areas -- you actually have to look for them, google-search good restaurants in strange towns and read the reviews.  Of course, if your bus is leaving in 20 minutes and you're ravenous, McDonald's and Cici's Pizza IS right there, and you know what you're getting....

eat low-carb, or punish yourself

That title was meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek.  I have to announce this up front, or some doctorate-types would insist that i'm 1) lying; 2) ignorant; 3) unqualified to open my mouth in public; or 4) all the above.

Reading all the commentary (in TPJ-approved sites) on why the Kitavan diet isn't a high-carb diet in the "modern world's" sense, something occurred to me:  a truly high-carbohydrate diet is all about Biblical-style asceticism!  YES!  If you eat a high PERCENTAGE of your diet as carbs you have a few choices to make, to keep yourself from embodying the Deadly Sins of Gluttony and Sloth.

You can eat your huge percentage of carbohydrates in comparatively meagre quantity.  A very low CALORIE diet can afford to be high-carb!  And what do we call a very low calorie diet, kids?  STARVATION.  Saints used to be very fond of that; it shows that you value spirituality more than worldly hedonism -- and you get really kewl visions and stuff -- sometimes you get to hear God talk to you!

Instead of eating very little every day, you can also choose to eat as much as you want today, and nothing at all tomorrow -- it balances out the same way.  If you prefer to eat every day, you can also decide to eat for a very short time.  Fasting is a multi-disciplinary-approved means of self-denial.

OR ... you can eat enough to saturate your bodies with all those strengthening "energy foods" and work extra hard to make them go into the SPECIFIC tissues you want them in.  Punishing the body to chasten it was also very popular in the height of the monastic era (AKA the Dark Ages).  If you worked hard enough you could make your body forget it has all sorts of horrible urges like ... a LIBIDO!  Ewwwww....  Where's that Ben-Gay -- i mean HAIR SHIRT?

;-)  Thanks but no thanks.  Their self-righteousness is not for me!  The believers in Gluttony and Sloth (reincarnated as food reward) may think i'm damned because of my faith in the Golden Calf (BEEF, yes!), but i'm not afraid.  Even if they're right about my destination, their idea of hell has no terrors for me -- and the music there is said to be much better.