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June 19, 2005
You Shouldn't Eat A Live Tarantula
Brewers yeast has tons of excellent nutrients, including many B vitamins and copper, so that's why I eat it. It's DEAD yeast. While I can see some argument for not eating LIVE yeast, extrapolating that therefore you should not eat dead yeast is like saying that you shouldn't eat a live tarantula, therefore killing one and eating one would be equally bad. If a tarantula had tons of B vitamins, that is. The point is, eating a dead, B vitamin-rich tarantula that has been cooked and delicately seasoned would be a much different experience than having a live one crawl around your digestive tract.
Ya still with me, bloggiefriends?
MR will soon update his flax oil rant to answer all those questions, but here's a preview: ground flax seeds are an excellent source of cyanide.
Dairy doesn't make me stuffy or seem to cause me any other ill effects. I have a great control for that because I was a hard core vegan for five years, so I know what I felt like without dairy and I know what I feel like with. I know several people who seem to be negatively effected by dairy, but I don't appear to be one of them. You're right to be skeptical about the requirements for high calcium, but the most conservative approach at this point is to take the RDAs (recognized to be the human requirement for health) and at least meet them. Since we CR people have to be careful about our bones, it makes sense for me to get the RDA of calcium, which my dairy intake (and I supplement) allows me to do. I also do weight bearing exercise, cause I kept having nightmares about my bones collapsing. I actually like doing push-ups now... there's a whole lot less to push-up now that I weigh 104 as opposed to 137! I also speed-walk at 4 mph to 4.5 mph at an elevation of 4 on a treadmill for thirty minutes at least four days a week, usually more. I used to lift weights a lot, and am looking forward to joining a gym that has better weight training equipment than my apartment gym. And Liz is going to fly out to be my personal trainer, right Liz?
Re: The China Study. If you're talking about the Cornell China health study, this is about the worst example of science out there. It's not even proper [prospective] epidemiology: they took population data from different counties in China, and compared their diet and their health outcomes for the entire county, not for the individuals in it (as opposed to specifically asking people what they eat and to share their personal medical history, as in the Nurses Health Study) and then drew conclusions. It's like saying that they smoke more in Japan, but they die less of lung cancer (which is true!), therefore smoking causes a decrease in cancer (which it obviously does not!)
Tall MR and Little MR both wish I would Zone more. My breakfast is very low carb because I find that eating a very low carb breakfast prevents a morning anxiety spike. Because my mental state seems to be very closely tied to what I eat at various times of day, I sometimes make food choices that involve that calculation as well. In the absence of that issue, I would Zone my breakfast more. But Mary, aren't you excited that I'm now eating hazelnuts with my afternoon yogurt? And lunch is quite nicely Zoned. Dinner is higher carb because after the giant shot of protein early in the day, I usually can't afford to cram in more protein into dinner than the brewers yeast provides (16 g) unless I am willing to go to what even I think may be excessive protein.
I really appreciate all the time and energy all have put into thinking about my diet and commenting. It's such fun to have a conversation! For so long I wondered if anyone was reading the blog at all... and many thank you's to those of you who have been with me from the beginning. Keep up the chatting!
Nutrition is a subject that you could spend your entire life studying, and for the lay person, it can be tricky to navigate the evidence without giving up your day job to read medical studies. I spent TONS of time searching the CR Society archives and many other sources while I was in the process of creating my current dietary habits. Now I benefit from the advice of someone who actually spends tons of time reading medical studies and has for many years. The fact that he happens to cook really well helps too! It sure does make it easier now that I can just turn around and ask him a question instead of always having to hunt for it myself, though I'd have to say that process of figuring out my diet myself was a very empowering experience. Even now, MR marvels that I get so much into so few calories.
I think what Emma is saying makes a lot of sense. People are different. My needs and Mary's needs are similar in some ways but different in many others. She has allergies, I don't. I feel anxiety spikes when I eat too many carbs early in the day... most people don't. I have to eat things that are stored on low shelves because I am short and can not reach things on high shelves. The point is: one-size fits all is pretty darned difficult. That being said, there are some things that pretty much everyone needs to do, and I think I have those covered.
Because I have lived the lowfat vegetarian (Ornish style) and no-fat vegan (McDougall style) lifestyle for years each, I know how those effect me, and I don't like it. Yes, I was thin, but I was also hungry and eating all the time, anxious, and carrying giant tupperwares of rice and beans around all the time. I feel a whole lot better now that I get much more protein, and I get it with very little saturated fat.
Another interesting data point. MR has one of those Tanita type scales, and it says I have 18.1% body fat. Now these things tend to be terribly inaccurate for the extremely skinny of the very atheletic but I am neither, so chances are it's not far off. When I started CR just over a year ago, I was 33% body fat. Wow. CR is not about body fat percentage or weight or anything like that, but it's still kinda cool to watch where that number has gone. I was shocked... I still look so normal, like a slim but not "skinny" girl, that I expected it to be at least 20%.
Thanks again to all for your wonderful comments!
[No tarantulas were harmed or even mildly inconvenienced in the production of this blog entry.]
Posted by april at June 19, 2005 5:24 AM
Comments
Hi April
Reading your blog with interest. I do hope you aren't go to say anything about taking ground flax? It's working wonders for me.
I've just spent all week-end reading 'Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill' and analysing my last few days fats. I know I was very deficient in LNA previously, and I suspect in LN as well so I'm changing my habits.
Still learning though.
Posted by: Gay at June 19, 2005 10:50 AM
Hi, April--
Sure, I'll be your personal trainer. I even have respectable qualifications: a current certification in the Biomechanics of Resistance Training from the prestigious Cooper Institute in Dallas! (though so far my only client has been me) We'll have you buff & tuff in no time. You may have to up your protein a little though, and that might mean eating 600 tatrantula legs every day. Just make sure they're good and dead.
Keep up the good work.
-Liz
Posted by: Elizabeth at June 19, 2005 11:44 AM
Lots of foods have "poisonous" compounds. They are living things with defense systems. We have evolved to deal with many chemicals produced by plants. Here is information I found on ground flax in regards to cyanide, www.flaxcouncil.ca/FlaxPrimer_Chptr11.pdf
I think you are very well informed about what you are doing and I enjoy reading your blog.
Posted by: Stacey at June 19, 2005 1:09 PM
The real test of your diet is how it makes you feel over a number of months. If it's working really well for you - and it really seems to be - then you've got it tuned right. Tarantulas are supposed to be delicious, BTW. People in Mexico eat them roasted and they taste like crab (they are related, you know - 8 legged things). I had a house in Austin on a tarantula migration path. For a month each year, tarantulas walked across my grass - which was dormant and brown at that time of the year. Miss the silly things. I liked them a lot more than the scorpions.
Posted by: Mary at June 19, 2005 3:20 PM
Ha! Here's the cookbook you need, April:
The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook: 33 ways to cook grasshoppers, ants, water bugs, spiders, centipedes, and their kin.
by David George Gordon
"David George Gordon, author of The Compleat Cockroach, says eating protein-rich bugs is good for you ("Crickets are loaded with calcium, and termites are rich in iron"), and good for the earth ("Raising cows, pigs, and sheep is a tremendous waste of the planet's resources, but bug ranching is pretty benign"). After all, what's inherently more disgusting about eating a grasshopper than, say, an oyster? Gordon enthusiastically provides recipes for terrestrial arthropods gleaned from the entomophagic appetites of people around the world, telling you which insects are most delicious and which to avoid, how to cook them, and which wine to drink with your many-legged meal. The recipes themselves are clear, easy to follow, and quite educational, with sidebar tidbits about the bugs you're about to eat. Gordon divides the recipes into sections by type of insect, be it grasshoppers, social insects, or "pantry pests." And, of course, he provides a list of places where you can order your edible insects and tips for catching your own. The Eat a Bug Cookbook is a sure kitchen conversation piece--even if you never try Three Bee Salad or Chocolate Cricket Torte, you'll laugh out loud, squirm uncomfortably, and lick your chops while taking this deliciously creepy culinary tour."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0898159776/ref=ase_hopspressbooksto/102-6598683-7083341?v=glance&s=books
-Liz
Posted by: Elizabeth at June 19, 2005 4:12 PM
hi april,
how do you deal with setbacks? i have a pretty blk and white personality...but i get so very discouraged when i have a setback....
i do want to con't CR- for so many reasons...you are so dead on re: family and friend pressure. how do you deal with it?
im so sick of acquiesing (sp) to their eating habits and their eating schedule.
why do people- almost frown, deem you snobish if you refuse their food when you are not hungry! i dont get it??
any suggestion will help dearly
sorry to rant thanks again
az
Posted by: az at June 20, 2005 8:49 AM
Are you worried at all about the effects of artificial sweeteners? Dannon Light N’ Fit is sweetened with Splenda I believe, which I had a very bad reaction to, as have several other people I’ve known. Also, as someone whose interest in CR is relatively new, where does the CR community stand on processed foods and sodium? Sorry is any of these questions are dumb "newbie" questions! Thanks!
Posted by: Amy at June 20, 2005 12:25 PM
april, i wanted to add something to what you said about serving as your own control. when i first started trying to cron (motivated almost entirely by vanity), you said it's ok to start by being strict mon-fri and not so strict on the weekends. so, i did that - keeping the calories low and putting everything into the computer and trying to reach all the rdas during the week and then just being lazy and eating whatever on the weekend. this made me notice how dramatically different i felt on the cron, zonish, april-imitating diet as opposed to the usual low-fat, high-cal vegetarian diet. so, eventually on the weekends i was automatically eating cron, to avoid the icky side effects of eating high calories and high carb. i would really recommend this approach to anyone who's trying to get started! i didn't feel deprived by giving up certain foods once i realized they were making me feel awful. i don't know if it would work if you were just doing the cr- without the -on, i sort of doubt it.
Posted by: emma at June 20, 2005 12:26 PM
BTW, Amy, I forgot to address your comment about the "China Study." You're obviously biased against it and therefore you'll never learn from its well-documented research, which is indeed extensive, and led to a great deal of important follow-up research by the author of that book (research, for example, showing that dairy is a significant factor in the development of cancers, and should never be consumed).
In any case, it's interesting that while you have turned a blind eye to this research, many others have learned a great deal from it, including Dr. Roy Walford, the father of CRON. Heard of him? Of course you have. Read any of his books (I have)? If so, you'd see where he has pointed to this research as very beneficial to his own viewpoints on CRON and a whole foods diet approach.
Then again, maybe *you* know better, and it really is a case of the "worst example of science out there". Poor Dr. Walford just didn't have you at his side to tell him how bogus it was.
Posted by: Scott Miller at June 21, 2005 12:00 PM