April's CR Diary

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January 27, 2010

Another Hazard of CR -- Stuffed Eggplant -- N&M Society Meeting

My right wrist is starting to hurt when I chop vegetables. Does anyone else have this problem? I chop so many veggies making food for MR and myself that I think I am getting a repetitive stress injury. I will ask Sage Jonathan, my yoga teacher, what to do about it, but other suggestions are welcome from excessive vegetable choppers.

Tonight's MR dinner: surprise! Another stuffed eggplant! Am I getting boring? He says he never tires of the old favorites, and I've rarely made the exact same dish twice, but will there come a point where he just doesn't want another stuffed eggplant? I doubt it. He's not a huge fan of variety. But still... I should learn some new tricks.

Here's a healthy way for us all to entertain our brains: I propose a stuffed eggplant recipe contest. You've seen the kinds of things I do with stuffed eggplant: mushrooms, asparagus, zucchini, Walden Farms Marinara, nonfat ricotta, nonfat mozzarella, etc. Always topped with olive oil, after cooking. Send me new and creative stuffed eggplant recipes.

Obviously, MR is not yet convinced of the okayness of sat fat, so keep the eggplant recipes low carb and low sat fat, k? If he has some sort of revelation, you'll be the first to know.

Meanwhile, here is something I should have told you about long ago: the Feb 27 meeting of the Nutrition and Metabolism Society. As of yesterday there were only about 17 spots left, and I'm sure they're going fast, so especially if you're in the NYC area, you should think about going. The cost is outrageously low, which I think is wonderful since this sort of thing shouldn't be reserved for only people who have a lot of money. Here's the description:

Reminder:

Saturday, February 27th, 2010. Join Dr.'s RD Feinman, RK Bernstein, Eugene Fine and many other Society members at our 2010 NMS planning meeting.

We will hear from Dr.'s Bernstein and Feinman, review science in the news from 2009, discuss our plans to make headlines in 2010, Adele Hite will share plans to strengthen our global presence and we want to hear from you, our valued members!

The meeting will be in Manhattan from 10:00am to 3:30pm
Location: Partnership with Children
299 Broadway, Suite 1300
New York, NY 10007
There will be lunch, raffles and lots of great prizes for participants! There will be a $10 fee for Society members and $15 for non members to participate in the meeting.

Space is limited and there are just 18 seats left. You may reserve your seat today by clicking here and then clicking on the "JOIN" button. This will take you to paypal. Type the word 'meeting' in the blank box and enter the appropriate fee to reserve your seat today.

Please note: We prefer you use Paypal by clicking on the link above, however, if you do not have a paypal account you may use this link and enter the reservation fee under 'general donation'.
All reservations are non-refundable.

And, not to compare this to the opportunity to meet the rock stars listed above, but I'll be there too!

Posted by april at 5:55 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

January 26, 2010

What Works, What Doesn't

I can't sleep.

It's 3 am. I've been waking up at 3 most nights for the last while, but most nights I don't mind... I stay awake for a little while, lying in bed writing in my head or whatever, and then I go back to sleep till 4 or 5 or (gasp!) 6 on some really good days. I don't really mind waking up at 3 am if I wake up with particularly good thoughts, such as an entire chapter of the novel writing itself. But this morning I woke up feeling stressed out.

I was thinking about why I didn't sleep well tonight, and I thought of a few behaviors that help me sleep, and a few that don't. Now why you would take sleeping advice from an insomniac I don't know, but here are some observations that you can take or leave.

-- I sleep better when I don't eat past about 6:30 pm.
-- I sleep better when I do yoga every day.
-- I sleep better when I do cardio every day.
-- I sleep better when I'm on serious CR, but there is a limit to that because if I go too low I am almost high and can't sleep much at all, as during my ketogenic diet experiment. On the flip side, I need less sleep when my calories are lower.

Yesterday was a super busy day. Membership meetings at Temple at 7:30 am, 12 noon, 1 pm, 3:30 pm, 5 pm, 7:45 pm. Susie and I did a leaflet at 6:30, and I had a meeting with my organizing staff at 10:15. During Temple membership meetings, we see 700 - 1000 people, and they don't all come at once at the meeting times: they tend to roll in as they get breaks or can drop by, so it's a continuous stream of people. I was on my feet almost the entire day, and when I got home I was dead exhausted and really thought I'd sleep through the night. Tomorrow morning (well, this morning) is Jonathan's class, so that means 6:05 am train. Then I'm giving a pick up class to a co-worker whose blood pressure is up a lot from the stress of the Temple campaign. Yoga for relaxation: I don't think it's going to be what he thinks it's going to be, but the fact is, once you're on number 5 of the 12 sun salutations we do every morning, you've forgotten about whatever was bothering you. Then a full day of work, though luckily not all that long a day.

As I thought about my sleeping problems, my mind drifted into making a list of things that work and don't work for CR, or even for just eating well. While I am not very credible as an authority on how to sleep (beside the basic mechanics: lie down, close eyes, etc.) I do know a lot about what works and what doesn't for CR.

A few highlights. YMMV.

What doesn't work:

-- The punishment mentality: overeating and then trying to eat really low to make up for it. A lot of now-gone CR bloggers tried that. It both doesn't work and reinforces the mentality that this is something you're doing because you feel bad about yourself, not good. If you overeat, just go back to normal the next day, unless you're genuinely not hungry.

-- Replacing fat with carb. This is the single worst thing that I can do in my CR. I mean, other than replacing turkey and mashed cauliflower with 98% fat free canned ravioli, which I haven't done in a long long time.

-- Starting the day without a clear plan and clear goals. I find that I am much more susceptible to the "just one bite" trap if I don't have a very clear plan of what I'm going to eat going into the day. Even if it's just, "I will not eat anything with carbs in it other than low calorie vegetables," that's enough to avoid the biggest monster of all:

-- "Just one bite." The one bites I've had off friends' plates, of appetizers people wanted to share, of meeting food at nurse meetings, etc. have added up. And what's worse about just one bite is that it often turns into more than just one bite. For instance, I can not eat just one bite of a bagel with cream cheese. I've done it once or twice, in 35 years, but for the most part, if I eat one bite of bagel, I'm in it for the whole thing. Same with pizza.

-- "Last Night On Earth," a phenomenon I've named after a U2 song about heroin addiction (I think.) The idea that "Tomorrow I will start being really strict and will continue to be so for the rest of my life so tonight I will eat whatever I want and it will be okay." This may be the second biggest monster, or it may even win out as the biggest monster. Have you met it? I'd rather meet a plush minotaur in my bed in the middle of the night than this one.

-- The "I've already screwed up, so I'll start again tomorrow" monster. A close relative of the above. Often the direct descendant of "Just one bite."

-- The "I feel awful so I'm going to do something that makes me feel even more awful," monster. This is why it's so important to surround yourself with positive people who make you feel good about yourself. When I feel young and beautiful and healthy, my behavior reflects that. There's a fairly good test, for me, of whether or not I'm in a good head space re: body image. It has nothing to do with the mirror or the scale. It is as follows:

One of the workers at the meeting comes onto my twenty-something co-worker (who looks like a super model) and ignores me. I either:

a) feel depressed because I'm not 27 anymore and what if I'm past the point where anyone is going to look at me ever again except for MR who is wonderful and the love of my life but obviously hopelessly deluded by being in love with me all these years and also likes his food with very little salt and his vegetables undercooked which just goes to show that he has weird taste

or

b) I am simultaneously planning the biggest health care strike in Philadelphia in 20 years and plotting how to raise a few hundred thousand dollars to do a revolutionary study on low carb diets for diabetes patients (not my idea, RDF's, but my love/hate relationship with fundraising always leaves me thinking that given a few minutes I could come up with a hundred thousand dollars, and it's happened before so it's not that off the wall.) and I don't even notice that the worker is hitting on my staff member until I recognize that she really needs to be rescued so I create a distraction.

Obviously, choice B signifies a good space.

A CR friend and loyal reader, Agnes, was asking me about motivation. For me, I am much more motivated when I am intellectually engaged with the subject. That first year of CR is so exciting because you're learning everything for the first time. I have another CR girlfriend who is in first year euphoria, and it's a ton of fun for me to watch her obsess over macronutrient ratios. It's all so fascinating the first year you turn yourself into an experiment, with results both instant and long term. I've felt quite a bit of renewed euphoria starting to study this low carb stuff... it's almost like a chemical high, like you could shred up the papers and put them in some water and then inject them directly into my veins and zing! Better than all the drugs I've never tired, and only positive side effects... unless you are thinking about the fact that my car is now covered in them and my union president is riding with me to Scranton in two days so I'd better clean out the car. I remember how my mother used to say, back before she was as happy as she is now, "I may be depressed, but I can be a depressed person with a clean car."
There is really never a downside to cleaning out the car.

So on to what does work:

-- Have a plan, both for what you're not going to do but more importantly for what you're going to eat. For me, it's something like: pack protein and fat, eat them before eating any carbs, make sure enough veggies are on hand or accessible, have a back up plan if the gang goes out for lunch or dinner.

-- Hang out with people who are positive influences, both re: food and in general. Avoid people who aren't.

-- Recognize the danger of the food environment and plan for it.

-- If you screw up, don't freak out about it, but also don't let yourself off the hook too much.

-- Don't do CR media. Putting myself in a position where I got attacked for my diet, my lifestyle, anything I said about libido either pro or against (you should have seen the attacks I got on the CR Society list for my statements re: that most common myth about CR -- are these people from Victorian England??? I thought we had decided that sex was good???) started such a negative feedback loop in my head re: diet and everything. Maybe you could handle it. I can't. Not now anyhow.

When I look back, I can see the series of events that led me from being very happy in my CR and in general to some sort of existential despair. Most of the events had nothing to do with CR, but were things that happen to many of us at one point in our lives or another. 35 is a funny age. 33 and 34 were kinda awful but so far 35 is my favorite year ever. I strongly recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it yet. I'd never trade the 25 year old version of me for what I have now. It just occurred to me that the 25 year old version of me who used to sit in her little single girl apartment reading nutrition books would jump up and down with delight if she could see the 35 year old version of me. "We did it!" she'd say scream, alarming the then two year old cat who would take her activity as an invitation to play and start to chase her feet. We're finally starting to *do* something re: diet and public health. Not sure quite what yet or quite how, but no question that the revolution is just around the corner, and I'm not the distant spectator I was for so long. Sure, the macronutrients are turned upside down in a way that would really alarm the 25 year old version of self, but like Madonna (thanks Agnes!) I am constantly re-inventing. And besides, "Don't Tell Me" is a much better song than "Borderline.:

Posted by april at 1:18 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 23, 2010

MR on Saturated Fat

I mentioned a few weeks ago that MR responded to RDF's inquiry re: sat fat. I'm finally getting around to posting it... read and draw your own conclusions!

Keep in mind... MR is far from a lipophobe. He advocates a high fat diet, but coming mostly from MUFAs and PUFAs.

Please do be sure to follow the embedded links!

Hi Dr. Feinman,

As relayed by the fair hand of April:

> What does MR say about saturated fat? ... what is the
> evidence. Not a challenge, because I present to medical students my
> side of the picture, the failure of Framingham, Malmo and WHI and,
> most of all, Jakobsen's article showing that replacing saturated fat
> with PUFA, or MUFA or carbs is pretty much of a flip of the coin in
> terms of outcome.... The only answer I
> got was reference to all the health agencies opinions and the fact
> that the Jakobsen paper that I quoted showed PUFA was better than
> SFA.

By "the Jakobsen paper," you mean the AJCN meta-analysis, right? (Let me come back to WHI in a moment). Actually, I too would start there, as even on an abstract-surfer's casual analysis it's sufficient grounds to draw the *broad strokes* of the core conclusion: it shows fairly clearly, from a large number of mostly very high-quality prospective epidemiological studies in Western countries with a range of different dietary patterns, that typical North American and European intakes of *both* saturated fat and carb, on an isocaloric basis, are significant contributors to coronary events and mortality -- even now, when we have statins, metformin, thiazides, et al to control some of the adverse metabolic sequelae of such lifestyles.

> And, for sure, replacing SFA with carbs is, at best, a wash.

Yes -- which constitutes an indictment of both :) . Ie, a pox on both Atkins' and Ornish's houses! This argues for a lower-carb, lower-SFA, higher-PUFA diet -- something like "South Beach" or the Zone.

But let me drill down into those results a bit, as I think there's more to be mined therein:

> I presented that at the CR meeting and my interpretation was
> that there was so much individual variation that the mean didn't > really mean anything.

I agree, and think that we can say a bit more about this. As you know (you alluded to it at the Conference and have said so in more detail elsewhere), we actually know a fair amount about the BASIS for such variation in the population, due to the differential metabolic responses observed in response to a low-carb diet, with leaner, more insulin-sensitive subjects (and, though you didn't say it, younger ones) responding less favorably to a low-carb diet and more favorably to an old-style AHA low-fat (and, specifically, low-SFA, low-cholesterol) pattern. In the "Discussion" in the Jakobsen meta-analysis, they note that "It has been suggested that the association between major types of fat and risk of CHD is modified by sex and age. This study suggests that to prevent CHD, SFAs should be reduced and replaced with PUFAs among all middle-aged and older women and men. However, it cannot be excluded that associations may be stronger in subgroups, but our study only provides a suggestion for these possibilities."

A somewhat stronger case than the study they cite on this point, although indirect to the specific issue of SFA vs carb, comes from a comparison of studies on the outcomes for prospective studies in Europe vs America for mortality outcomes for a low-carb diet score based on intakes of *protein* vs carb:

http://ki.se/content/1/c6/04/99/84/WLH_22_Lagiou%202007.pdf
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v61/n5/full/1602557a.html
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/19/1991

In the Nurses Health Study, eating a lower-carb, higher-protein diet was associated with a reduced risk of cardiac and total mortality in women, whereas in the 2 European studies, such diets were associated with *higher* risk. Willet's editorial:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117966552/abstract

... notes the dietary differences amongst populations:

**************
We can set aside immediately that the difference in findings were due to fundamental differences in study quality. All three studies were prospective, meaning that the potentially serious biases in case–control studies were avoided; all used dietary assessment methods with documented validity; and all had quite complete ascertainment of outcomes. …

Thus, the apparently contrasting findings are likely to be due to real differences in the study populations, their diets or the methods of analysis. … Women in the Swedish study were substantially younger ... than in the US study ... and leaner ..., and for both of these reasons, the degree of insulin resistance would have been much lower in the Swedish study. One of the most important findings during the last decade has been that the adverse metabolic effects of high-carbohydrate intake are greatly magnified in the presence of underlying insulin resistance. Consistent with this evidence, we have seen that high dietary glycaemic load... has little effect on the risk of coronary heart disease in lean women, but nearly doubles the risk in overweight and obese women. Similarly, high glycaemic load was not associated with the risk of stroke in leaner women, but was significantly associated with risk in overweight and obese women. The types of diets consumed by the Swedish and US women may have contributed to the differences in findings. From many dozens of controlled feeding studies, we know that different types of fat have opposite effects on blood lipids [blah blah ;) ] ...

Similarly, the type of carbohydrate rather than the total amount of carbohydrate is key in relation to the risk of cardiovascular disease. As noted above, high amounts of refined starch and sugar have adverse metabolic effects and increase risk; in contrast, whole grain/high-fibre forms of carbohydrate have beneficial metabolic effects and are related to reduced risks of cardiovascular disease. ... [F]rom other reports we know that the cereal fibre content (the form of fibre most strongly related to lower risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes) is approximately three times higher in Swedish compared to US women [9]. Whilst there is little reason to believe that the type of protein influences the risk of cardiovascular disease [I'd actually disagree on this -- there is substantial evidence of a more protective effect of *vegetable* protein; references available on request ;) -MR], the protein package can include large amounts of cholesterol and saturated fat (in the case of animal proteins) or fibre and beneficial micronutrients (with plant proteins). The available data do not allow a comparison of the sources of proteins in the Swedish and US studies. ***********

Jakobsen et al also note, re: the surprising neutral-to-unfavorable results for MUFA, that "the main source of MUFAs was animal fat, whereby confounding from other dietary components in meat and dairy products cannot be excluded. " Other studies point pretty clearly to a protective effect of olive oil and other less-confounded MUFA sources with a protective effect against mortality and other outcomes.

While it's getting a bit off-topic, and while I imagine you're initially going to think that I am attempting to rouse a long-dead myth, a substantial amount of evidence has emerged just in the last few years for a divergent effect of dietary *cholesterol* (a fellow-traveller with SFA when it comes from animal sources) depending on leanness and insulin sensitivity:

http://www.crsociety.org/archive/read.php?2,189896,189896#msg-189896

(Do follow the embedded links).

What I think we're seeing is exactly the divergence within these populations that you know: that carb is really rather bad for overweight, insulin-sensitive people, such that replacing it even with SFA is relatively harmless -- whereas for lean, insulin-sensitive people, SFA (and dietary cholesterol, its fellow-traveller in omnivorous diets) is likely more *relatively* harmful, because carb is less able to derange the metabolism. We have to remember that any time we look at these studies and see only modest or borderline-significant effects: 66% of the US population is overweight, and half of that majority is obeese; Europe is somewhat better-off, at 49.8% and 13.3% in men and 36.0 & 13.5% in women per MONICA. So the deleterious effects of any nutrient with a differential effect on low-BMI, insulin-sensitive people will tend to be blunted by the much larger number of people for whom such effects are blunted by their "larger" problem.

It also means that the deleterious effects of a rise in SFA intake are at least temporarily outweighed if it is is part of a dietary shift into a lower-carb diet when it is successfully used for weight loss (as opposed to just being a person's self-selected default diet, which of course is what's going on in teh studies in Jakobsen and in the Swedish, Greek, and US Nurses low-carb/high-protein studies). But it's reasonably clear that if you're insulin-sensitive -- which, interestingly, is what one is likely to become after losing weight on a successful low-carb weight-loss diet! -- the effects of SFA become more *relatively* harmful as teh deleterious effects of carb recede.

Moreover, I think we have a fair amount of evidence for a specific (albeit widely exaggerated) benefit of omega-3 fatty acid intake, which unfortunately the Jakobsen meta-analysis couldn't evaluate. I think it's reasonable to expect that a discrimination here would have further emphasized the benefits of these fats.

Overall, I think the epidemiology is consistent with your view that the effects of carb are differential, and that we need to pay attention to that. They're also consistent in particular with the widely-accepted view that there is 'good carb/bad carb' as well as 'good fat/bad fat'. Again, this argues to me that that the thing to do is to lose weight, by whatever means, is a Good Thing, but that the best way to do this -- and, more importantly, the *maintenance* diet for people who are of normal weight and below and who are insulin-sensitive -- is a *relatively* (vs population average) low-carb, low-saturated-fat, high-PUFA (and probably plant-derived MUFA), high-(vegetable)-protein diet, with the carb coming from vegetables and whole grains rather than starchy crap.

Ie, a pretty boringly mainstream viewpoint :) with a bias toward the Zone (or South Beach, if Agatson's recipes and detailed dietary guidance actually lived up to his high-level advice and the diet's reputation).

Now, that's the epidemiology. Interventionally, you mention the lack of reported benefit from a low-fat diet in WHI. I would first note, of course, that I don't advocate for a low-fat diet, but for a low-SFA, moderate- to high-fat diet. But also, I must draw your attention to the fact that the trumpeted "No benefit of a low-fat diet!" headline is based on (wait for it!) an intention-to-treat analysis ;). The intervention group self-reported a 29% fat diet, vs the 20% study goal, and as multiple studies have clearly shown, people systematically underreport almost everything they're eating, but especially fat (because it's easier to see that you've eaten a whole vs a half an apple than that you've added a whole vs a half tablespoon of lard to your frying pan); meanwhile, the controls reduced their fat intake almost as much, and both groups modestly (almost indistinguishably) increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, and neither group significantly changed intake of grains. In biomarkers, despite the fact that lower SFA intake will, pretty unambigiously, lower LDL levels (whatever else it does -- and more on THAT below), LDL decreased only 2.6% more in the low-fat group than in the controls.

And, we don't know *which* fats these people were eating. We not only don't really know if they lowered SFA relative to other fats: we don't know if, as part of following widely-publicized "low fat" advice, they replaced SFA with margarine, which was still trendy through most of the intervention period, going from bad to what I'm sure you already agree was worse; we also don't know if they rendered themselves n3 deficient. I'll say it again: I wouldn't say that there is an evidence base for supporting a merely low-fat diet!

And was there even a REAL (even if tiny!) reduction in even fat intake?? If they fell prey to the "Snackwell effect," not actually LOWERING their total fat or SFA intake, but increasing their intake of simple carb (as we know from CDC and others that the US population as a whole did following the propagation of the low-fat oversimplification by the public health authorities in teh late 70s thru' the early 2000s) the result would be reported as a percentage reduction of SFA when they've actually just added high-GI carb Calories onto already-toxic Standard American Diets ("WHI! The New and Improved SAD -- with Added Metabolic Syndrome!").

So what is GOOD evidence? I'd say the clearest intervention data we have is also the most robust: the Lyon Diet Heart Study:

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/158/11/1181
http://www.circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/6/779

... which as I'm sure you know reported that a dietary intervention with multiple components to the *guidance* , but which in the end based on actual shifts in dietary intake (by self-report and by biomarkers) largely amounted to a modest reduction of SFA in vavor of a higher intake of ALA (and, modestly, MUFA) led to quite astonishing reductions in cardiovascular and total mortality (as well as cancer, although the n was so small as to not make this a strong specific outcome, esp as it was a post-hoc outcome analysis). I know that there were initially methodological criticisms of the study, but in my view the biomarker data rebut a lot of that, and certainly it's the best overall evidence we have for a dietary intervention trial. Similar results, with more rigor, were reported by Singh et al:

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673602114723

... despite using mustard oil, which is problematic (inferior n6:n3, may contain inflammatory constituents, erucic acid content seems to have been absolved of previous suspicion still somewhat controversial); unfortunately Dr. Singh's research is now under a substantial cloud of suspicion: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67005-5

I'm sure you can come up with a lot of criticisms on methods or analysis of these studies, but it looks to me to be the best evidence that's available on the subject, and what I give above appears to be the best analysis, based on the results, of its implications in terms of how one should eat for one's health. That is: this is the balance of evidence from prospective epidemiology and clinical trials, and there doesn't to my knowledge seem to be evidence of similar quality (large-scale, well-characterized populations, followed up for sufficient time to expect to see a difference in outcomes) that is equally suggestive of a contrary conclusion.

Notably, the critiques of these broad conclusioins that seem most widely cited by low-carb laypeople in reply (Ravnskov, Taubes, etc) clearly don't meet this standard: they spend most of their efforts bitching about the limitations of what IS available, beating dead horses, and emphasizing *lower* -quality studies while breezing over even better data. They spend, eg, an absurd amount of time criticizing Keys, who of course got the whole Diet-Heart Hypothesis going on EXTREMELY shaky grounds in the first place -- but pointing out the multiple flaws in Seven Countries doesn't take a whit away from the quality of SUBSEQUENT studies of much greater rigor, like the Nurses' Health Study, Health Professionals Follow-up Study, Physicians' Health Study, etc, which they instead ignore entirely or breeze over.

At the same time, these critics spend a lot of time emphasizing studies of much lower quality -- including, ironically, spinning the low-quality Keys data in a different direction (as if that could lead to a more reliable conclusion), and simiilarly making much of other purely cross-sectional, population-level ecological data. Ravnskov, eg, is quite enamored of what he claims is observed in the Masai; it's bad enough that this is rebutting a low-quality ecological study with an even lower-quality, even smaller ecological study (as if such studies were worthy of consideration to begin with!), but to make things worse, he misrepresents the data itself, and ignores available and more plausible explanations even for what he DOES accurately review! Taubes makes many of the same mistakes, and then does things like blame the rise in obesity in the late 20th century on the "fact" that "the percentage of fat in the American diet has been decreasing for two decades", when as noted above their actual intakes of total fat remained static and carb intake progressively increased (which (surprise!) leads to overweight and metabolic syndrome), and then asserts that over the same period, "Our cholesterol levels have been declining [true! -- due to an actual reduction in SFA -- MR], and we have been smoking less [also true -MR], and yet the incidence of heart disease has not declined as would be expected." In fact, as you may know, coronary disease and mortality declined quite remarkably in the late 20th century, DESPITE the rise in obesity, metabolic syndrome, and junk carb intake:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/343/8/530
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15308430

And all of them engage in much hypothesis-spinning from the biochemistry, which is a fine basis for generating new hypotheses but not for rebutting actual, prospective study outcomes.

At the end of the day, we have to go with what we've got. Until we get a couple of thousand healthy twenty-year-olds locked up in metabolic wards for sixty years or so for a really vigorous diet trial, I think saturated fat AND carbs (especially starchy carbs) stand out as things to reduce in the diet, in exchange for vegetables, fruit, lean protein, and PUFA (and probably MUFA) as things to maintain or increase. And most people should lose weight!

Again, boring ol' me ;) .

(A postscript, with relevance to the wider subject: at the Press Conference, I'd mentioned a meta-analysis finding that the epidemiology couldn't actually support the differential effect of small, dense LDL on cardiovascular risk, as giving additive information to the basic risk profile. It's available here:

http://www.annals.org/content/150/7/474.full

Live long -- live young!

-Michael

Posted by april at 9:23 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 19, 2010

Faith

I was just whining to CR-girlfriend Paige that I am feeling a little unmotivated. I'd been doing so well, seeing weight loss on the scale, major improvement in my Pilates practice, feeling more energetic and better over all. But in the last couple of days I'm feeling a little less enthusiastic. Last night I went out with a friend who knows nothing of CR and ended up splitting a cheeseburger and fries. Hadn't done that in ages. It tasted pretty good, especially the dead cow, but of course I felt awful afterward, not guilty just icky. And then I didn't sleep well, and had to get up and run to get my stuff together to go to Scranton, then go to the office for a rather intense two hour meeting, then hit the road for a three hour foggy drive. I was tired, a little stressed, and not feeling like hanging out all day in the cold.

I'm back to not eating breakfast again, so I didn't eat until close to noon when I was driving. I reached into my food bag, packed with bok choi and romaine salad, nonfat organic yogurt, turkey cooked in red wine vinegar with capers, flax oil, and so I thought, two pre-measured bags of almonds and pumpkin seeds. I was going to have my strength-providing bag of nuts and seeds on the journey, but I couldn't find them. They were nowhere in the bag and I thought, how stupid, I made such an effort to carefully pack every morsel of my food and now I forgot something!

So I bought a stick of string cheese, 80 cals of part skim mozzarella, at the Allentown rest stop. Fought an epic battle with the wrapper to open it, ate it, felt okay. Got to my meeting at a Perkins. The sweet nurses I met with insisted on buying lunch, and we all got breakfast. I had an eggwhite omelet with mushrooms, tomatoes, mushrooms, green peppers and onions. Decaf coffee and diet Coke. Tomato slices on the side, obviously no pancakes or toast or potatoes. One of the nurses had wheat toast and a fruit cup. The other had one egg sunny side up and blueberry pancakes.

Meeting was great... a reminder of why I do the work I do.

Then I drove back to the hotel and realized I was starving. And feeling very, very low energy. Had meant to work out but realized it wasn't going to happen. Got out my turkey and salad and ate some of it. Eventually MR wrote and remembered that he'd put my nuts and seeds bags in the bag with my supplements in my suitcase, so I did in fact have them, but by this time I was already full. I did some work, caught up on some emails, wrote a silly blog about lip gloss.

I was just feeling exhausted and unmotivated. The scale was up this morning, of course, and on Monday I had the worst Pilates class ever. My teacher was out of town and we had a sub, whose entire workout seemed to revolve around exercises that I can't do with my tailbone injury, even though it's so much better since Iyengar. I somehow managed to re-injure the tailbone, so sitting hurt for the rest of the day. I sat there thinking I'd have been better off staring into space for an hour, attempting to modify the exercises. Not an inspiring experience.

I was feeling extremely inspired about the projects I'm working on with RDF and Laurie, the director of the Nutrition and Metabolism Society. But a little bit questioning if I could keep up this long term low carb CR thing, plus Pilates and yoga and cardio (been hitting at least half hour on the treadmill per day, and when I do treadmill I go up to 8 or more incline.) I had felt so good when I started CRCR, almost high... okay, definitely high. But now I was lacking focus. That slip with the cheeseburger... the general knawing hunger without a clear object. The lack of energy. General listlessness. Where had my magic CRCR gone?

Then it occurred to me. I hadn't had my fat. The missing nuts and seeds, though located, had not been consumed. No flax or olive oil today. No wonder I was feeling off! Fat is not only the great stabilizer of blood sugar, it is the great stabilizer of mood. And energy levels. Without the once-forbidden macronutrient, I am now a listless little pile of non-energy. There is no stick of part skim mozzarella, no matter how cleverly hidden within overly secure packaging, that can take the place of my little pre-measured bag of nuts and seeds. Even protein and very healthy veggies can not make up for the fat. I need it now: I am not so much addicted as awake. I didn't realize, for all those years, what I was missing. It fixes everything: it conquers sugar cravings, clears the mind of highs and lows, and re-focuses the tastes so that what is good tastes good and what is bad is unattractive.

I get overconfident and think I can live without it, but the results of even a few hours of deprivation are obvious. MR was always right about this. Without adequate fat, it's not just carbs that creep. It's hunger and cravings and a general lack of stability. Fat, albeit in the forms of MUFA and PUFA (the names of my non-existent rats!) is the drug that makes me function at a level that I'd never imagined possible. But it's not a drug: it's a real part of so many foods I'd loved but repressed my taste for because I was taught that they were bad.

I take a leap of faith every time I eat my nuts and seeds. The programming is so deep that I feel like I should skip the fat so that I have more room for carb later. But I should know by now where that road leads. To cravings and temptations to throw it all out the window and eat whatever. To the "I'll start tomorrow" mentality. My beloved, almost magical equilibrium that allows me to be so creative and productive seems to be directly connected to my fat consumption.

Of course, there are limits. Ketogenic got too extreme very quickly. I can't handle the cold, though it would be fun to try in summer! I miss my healthy veggies too much, and I started to feel that if I took another bite of turkey I'd be ill! But the insight that fat consumption comes first, and all follows from that: it defies every rule I've ever learned, but still I've never been half so... on... as when I am on a higher fat diet. (there's a very obscure Carly Simon lyric reference in there that probably none of you will get.)

So, as George Michael says in what is one of his best songs ever: I've gotta have faith. I know from experience that this works, but the sinister voices in my head that say, "You can save calories by skipping your fat," have to be treated as the liars they are. There is so much more at stake than weight: my long term health and longevity depends on me being able to get my calorie levels lower, and I knew from the moment I met RDF that carb restriction was going to be the key. And the secret key to carb restriction is loading up with fat, early in the day, and without skipping doses. I should just think of it as my medication and take it with the fervor with which I used to take anti-anxiety pills, back before I realized that I don't have an anxiety disorder, I just have a bad reaction to sugar and caffeine.

I need it, it's not bad, it's not fattening, it's not fat that makes you fat. Even the links between saturated fat and heart disease are starting to unravel, and there is hope that someday I will eat hard boiled eggs with reckless abandon.

But for the moment, I know that my nuts and seeds and oils are enough. Early in the day, before I eat anything else. Nearly pure fat. The thing I used to think was the enemy.

It's a funny upside down moment when the eggs are sunny side up and the world is upside down. The bad guys are good and the good guys are bad. The bagel is the enemy, the cream cheese could be your friend.

Ummmmmm... cream cheese.

Posted by april at 4:50 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

In Case You're Having A Sugar Craving

I am a huge fan of lip gloss. Though I used to wear lip stick when I was younger, I find it looks a little "too much" these days. I wear very little make up at all, as MR strongly prefers me without it and not wearing it gives me an excuse to be a little lazier. So most days I just use a dab of eyeliner and some lip gloss, but I am quite the lip gloss freak.

Recently I was in the grocery store (surprise!) and decided it was time for a shiny new gloss. I especially like the kinds with little sparklies in them, so they shine almost excessively. I picked up Mabelline's Shiny-licious SPF 15 crushed candy flavor. It really tastes like crushed candy! And it's nicely shiny without being too sticky or gooey, which if you're a user of lip gloss, you know is a tough balance to strike.

I was thinking that it would be the perfect sugar free fix for those late afternoon sugar cravings. I don't get them much anymore now that I eat more fat early in the day, but the urge to eat a handfull of candy used to be very strong some days in the afternoon. Now I can just put on some lip gloss!

Posted by april at 3:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 18, 2010

Other Things Your Mother Should Have Told You

I have often thought of writing a book entitled, "Things My Mother Taught Me That You Sure Wish Yours Had Taught You." Or some more clever variation of that.

One piece of advice that I don't think she ever gave me, but that I wish she had, goes as follows.

Hang out with people who make you feel good about yourself.

and, equally important:

Don't spend time with people who don't.

This seems so obvious, doesn't it, yet think back to times in your life when you were blissfully happy, and note who was around you. Then think back to times in your life when you were less than content, and look around you. Clearly, if we all had this figured out, we'd all have been much more cheerful during those down times.

I discovered this by accident, almost the exact same way I discovered that full-caff coffee gives me anxiety attacks. With the coffee, I started drinking decaf when we ran out of regular and I didn't have time to go by Starbucks for a few days. Then I noticed that my traditional 9 am anxiety wasn't there anymore. After testing a few times, I realized that the anxiety was a direct result of caffeine. I don't have anxiety, or at least I don't anymore: I have a very bad reaction to large doses of caffeine, and the same to sugar.

I think this concept is extremely important when it comes to any attempt to change your diet or improve your health, because in order to succeed, you have to believe that you can succeed. If the voices in your head (I mean that metaphorically, I assure you) are telling you you're fat and ugly, you're much less likely to make the right decision when it comes to what to put in your mouth. You know the drill: the scale is up a quarter of a pound in the morning and you think, "Damn it, I'll never lose weight, I'm going to eat a bagel." Or, my personal favorite, when I eat something I didn't plan to that's less than healthy I'm tempted to say, "Forget it, I'll start tomorrow." I'll-start-tomorrow is the arch-nemesis of positive change.

That's why it's extremely important to surround yourself with people who are a positive influence. This is so mind-numbingly obvious that you may not need to read this entry at all, but like many things that are best hidden when in plain view, I think it deserves to be picked up and and given the credit it deserves.

Once I stopped giving so much time to negative self-talk, I noticed that extremely positive people started appearing, as though by magic. Or, rather, I was more open to positive influences, and also more confident and therefore more likely to reach out to potential new friends.

When I look back at the toxic people I've had in my life, some of them downright radioactive (I'm thinking of someone from long ago, who anyone who knows me now except my mother and Emma would not remember, so don't start trying to guess) I notice that in many subtle ways, they sent me the message that I should give up on my dreams. There's something secure and comforting about those messages, at times, because if you give up on your dreams, then there's a lot less to work for. The bizarre flip side of having had a lot of career success very young was, for me, that it would be very easy to rest on what I've already accomplished and not explore other things in life that make me happy and that I find exciting, like yoga, nutrition and public health stuff, writing, etc. I am not just a happier person when I'm exploring other interests in addition to my job, I'm actually a better organizer. And I'm a better influence on everyone around me. I can be a toxic friend when I'm feeling less than healthy and happy myself -- we all can -- and when we pursue whatever it is that makes us light up like a Christmas tree, then we're more likely to encourage others to do the same.

If you're starting out on a new plan re: diet, exercise, or whatever, try this: list everyone who is an influence in your daily life. Then put a little line through the name of every person on that list whom you think expects you to fail. If even looking at the name fills you with a sense of negativity, put one tiny line through it. Don't worry, you won't kill the person or remove him or her from your life -- this isn't voodoo! But you will send a subtle message to your subconscious that this person's influence or perceived influence is weakened.

Even if you can't weed all the naysayers out of your life, you can minimize their psychic toxicity. Here's the trick: don't think about them. Most of the time, the people who we turn into critics in our heads aren't even thinking about us. Even if they are, we are under no obligation to think about them. Replace the negative voices with positive ones, even if you have to find them outside of your immediate circle.

I did this incredibly well during early CR. I was surrounded by people who had no interest in healthy eating (except for my mom and VLC, which back then stood for Very Little Co-Worker, though now of course it means something else) but I immersed myself in the CR Society list and its archives to the extent that it became almost an imaginary friend. Sure enough, several list friends became real friends: Kenton, Lin, Dean. And of course, the alpha male of the CR Society in its glory days, the one I dragged home to my country, even though it was at the time the land of George Bush and no national health care. His work was the single most powerful factor in my initial conversion to CR and 40 pound weight loss, and led to the development of a host of healthier habits. I had no work/life balance at all before I met MR... now I have something I can quite credibly call a "life" outside of work, and that has even improved my work.

Of course it's not all sunshine and bunnies. Over the winter of my CR discontent... a rather long winter indeed... even the positive voice of MR couldn't seem to break through the haze. The stranglehold of negative voices seemed unbreakable: the horrible harping from the media that seemed to go on for two years straight -- during which I don't know how I would have survived were it not for the positive voices of my CR girlfriends, most notably the ever-supportive Robin and the avenging angel journalist goddess writer, Allswellinhell, and the long term sister from the UK who has been there through good times and bad for both of us.

"You can't talk to the press if you care what they write," says RDF. I wish somebody had told me that *before* I agreed to do the first article! Could have saved me a lot of time and agony!

It probably didn't help that I read and re-read all the negative articles over and over again. Sending myself bad messages instead of picking myself up and doing something useful, like scrubbing the kitchen floor. It's ever so tempting to wallow in the negativity, isn't it?

I don't think people usually mean to be toxic. They just don't realize the consequences their words and actions have, and then we allow our own minds to magnify the toxicity, creating an icky stew of bad feelings that tastes even worse than hemp oil. For instance, Rebecca Traister didn't *mean* to ruin my Thanksgiving in 2006 and set off a string of nasty attacks on my blog that included the random death threat. Eventually we met, and we really quite like each other. (She also had a huge string of bad luck following that article, which I'm sure had nothing whatsoever to do with me but which might give columnists pause next time they decide to write something nasty about us...) But the fact is, if I hadn't thought about it so much, the whole thing probably would have been a lot less hellish.

These days, I feel incredibly good. I was thinking the other day that I feel as happy and optimistic and excited about life as I did at 22, but without all the craziness that comes with being 22. (If any of you out there are 22 year old women, let me assure you, it gets better.)

So far, 35 is my favorite year ever. Iyengar yoga with the most amazing yoga teacher on earth (Jonathan doesn't know about the blog so I can say nice things about him that he would really find irritating if he heard), unprecedented happiness on the home front, and the improbable appearance of the Low Carb Rockstar (not the diet version of the energy drink! That stuff if gross.) and subsequent introduction to all sorts of people who are actually *doing something* about the public health crisis directly caused by diet.

I find that on a daily basis, I am encouraged to dream big. And to act big. In a skinny sort of way. Delusions of grandeur, perhaps, but a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.

Posted by april at 4:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 17, 2010

Lap Rats

While I'm writing entries that contribute nothing whatsoever to the scientific dialogue, using the blog merely as a vehicle to play out my bizarre fantasies, I thought I'd let you in on a discussion MR and I were having re: our next pets.

Well, that's not precisely true, because MR will not let us have next pets. He says he doesn't want to be responsible for any animal other than me, and I'm pretty self-supporting. He was never a pet person, and has suffered the cats quite patiently, all things considered. So after Kieffer dies (which I hope is a long, long way off) he says: no more cats. He says I can have a snake if I want, and I may well get a snake as I adore snakes, but it's not like you can sleep with a snake in the bed or pet its soft fuzzy fur.

I have an idea for the perfect pet. Somewhere out there, someone has genetically engineered rats to be both intelligent and affectionate. Lap rats, if you will.

Graduate students have raised generations of rats who expect to be petted for several hours a day, and who will sit quietly in your lap while you type on the computer. They map the cuddliness of the rats on a Cuddle Matrix, a complicated reporting tool perfectly designed to capture the snuggle factor of the rat. Rats are bred for maximum cuddliness, and also for empathy with humans. For instance, like most cats, these rats can detect when you are sick or sad or for whatever reason need a cuddle, and will initiate cuddles at the appropriate time.

And surprisingly enough, while they love cuddling, they can also sit quietly in their little beds under your desk if you don't feel like paying attention to them. They're so well-behaved that they don't have to be kept in cages. They're liter trained too.

I'm going to find these rats, and purchase two, a boy and a girl, so they can keep each other company. I'm going to brush them and put a bow in the little girl's hair (go ahead and accuse me of raising my rats according to gender stereotypes, see if I care.) They'll love each other and play together.

I even told MR that the boy rat can be his pet and the girl rat can be mine, since the problem with pets is that he's obviously worried that the pets all love me more than they love him. He assures me that this is not the problem, and that he does not want pet rats. But I know that once we have them, he'll love them just as much as I do.

I'm going to name them Mufa and Pufa.

Alas, something tells me that my next pet will probably be a chia-pet. Kieffer had better live a long time.

I promise my next entry will be a serious one. But if you want another really silly entry about rodents, there's this one from 2005 about Chloe, the world's oldest mouse. It has a lot of 2005 in-jokes, but it does contain an insight about high carb diets that I had forgotten, but that really seems to be true. That reminds me that, as MR has pointed out, when I was most successful at CR in the early years I was eating a lower carb diet, about the same as I am now, and that the slinking off of hardcore CR occurred largely when I started replacing fat with carbs. The insight is just as true today as it was in 2005: replacing fat with carbs is bad, but the magic of trading carbs for fat may be just what you were looking for!

And I stand by the thing about the pink bow.

Posted by april at 5:40 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 15, 2010

My Nutrition Superstition

I wrote about nutrition superstition the other day, and just to prove that I am not picking on anyone in particular and that I am just as irrational as everyone else, I will tell you my own superstition.

I can't eat anything cute.

Not rabbit. Not duck. Not lamb. Obviously not veal. Not baby spinach. Not baby arugula. Nothing with the word "baby" in it, except for baby carrots which are somehow immune from this rule (I said it wasn't rational, it's not consistent either.)

And here is the craziest part: I can't eat chia seeds. First, I find them gross. But on top of that, I can't stand the thought that a cute little chia-pet will not be born because I ate the seeds. (Did you know that you can buy a Barack Obama chia pet? What a country!)

Even though they would have been a good source of omega 6's.

Now I can eat pumpkin seeds because pumpkins aren't all that cute. But I prefer to eat canned pumpkin than fresh because a) fresh is hard to deal with b) the kind of little sweet pumpkins out of which you get pumpkin pie (sweetened with Splenda of course) pumpkin are cute.

I really like unattractive vegetables like cauliflower. I prefer dino kale to curly kale, not just because I think it's texture is more fun but because it is ugly. I really like the truly bizarre varieties of cauliflower that are totally unappetizing colors like purple and turn eggwhites blue if you make a stir fry out of the two. I love pickled eggs, which are bright pink and absurd looking.

There is nothing cute about Nancy's organic cottage cheese. Shrimp are really ugly unless you have the head, and I don't like the head... in part because the little eyes are too cute. I find it hard to eat eyes, which makes it just as well that I don't eat potatoes anymore.

Even the forbidden hard boiled egg that I think about a ridiculous number of times a day (I know what you're all thinking: "For the love of cruciferous vegetables, woman, just do it!!! Go to Wawa and buy yourself a hard boiled egg! He'll never have to know!") is a rather silly-looking food. Efficient, delicious, easy to travel with, great with just a dash of salt and pepper or with nothing at all, perfect in every way except for the cholesterol and the small amount of saturated fat (paper cited in previous entry has not yet saved me from the anti-sat fat lobbying group that lives in my house.) but still, kinda funny looking if you think about it.

The funny thing is that when I cook for others, I'm all into presentation. I like to serve pretty foods. Stuffed veggies, portabella pizzas, beautiful colorful pumpkin dishes in fall, lovely pastaless lasagna, all manner of attractively presented foods. Even cute little touches like sprigs of rosemary standing up like small trees. But for my own food: a bowl of mashed cauliflower with a Laughing Cow Light cheese stirred in and a teaspoon of flax oil is my current favorite dinner, and my idea of heaven. It's all white and really boring looking. Like a bowl of low carb high nutrient porriage. Like the kind of thing that could be used as a prop in the orphanage scene in Oliver Twist. Reminds me of how my step-brother went through a phase where he would only eat white foods. Kinda the opposite of the no-white-food fad diet.

Perhaps it's because my favorite fashion era was the time of Calvin Klein minimalism. Black suits, which blouses, harsh angular cuts, the kind of thing that looks best on Kate Moss, whom I don't look like no matter how skinny I get. I like to eat very boring looking foods. There's something understated, even classy about food that is just there, no bells and whistles necessary. It's like the put on all your jewelery and then take off one piece rule.

And when foods are pretty, I like to change them into a format such that they're not pretty. Like my broccoli and cheese soup: broccoli is cute little trees, the soup is a big green mush. It's delicious and nutritious but it's a giant green mush.

(The founding president of my union refused to eat anything green and creamy. She also refused to tell us why, but when anyone who has been a nurse for 25+ years tells you something is too gross for her, you don't want to know about it.)

Or my almond or hazelnut pesto. You take nuts, which are not exactly cute but are not unattractive, and food processor them up with lemon, olive oil, a dash of salt and tons of fresh basil (which is also cute until you puree it.) Amazing pesto but not cute.

I once made a beef stroganoff (correct my spelling) with fresh tomatoes that looked I kid you not like dog barf. It was delicious though. My college boyfriend is probably still laughing about it.

My favorite salad topping is nonfat plain yogurt mixed with Trader Joe's salsa verde. It looks so gross.

Microwaved eggwhites are so unappetizing to the uninitiated that Edward couldn't watch me eat them.

Quorn tenders, which I don't eat anymore because I'm focusing on lower carb sources of protein, are just stupid looking.

My favorite low carb source of protein, turkey, is by far the most ridiculous looking of the edible birds.

The list could go on and on but I have to go to Pilates class.

I would like to point out, in my defense, that I have much better taste in men.

Posted by april at 5:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Breaking News!!!

This just in!

You have to have a full subscription to the AJCN to read the whole thing, but you can read the abstract here.

And just in case any of you skip the comments, this from RDF:

The abstract pretty much tells the story. The paper itself is somewhat tedious. The bottom line is that the recommendation of American Heart and other agencies to reduce saturated fat to 7 % is without scientific basis. But the details are important. The paper does not say that nobody benefits from reducing saturated fat. It says that you are as likely to INCREASE risk by reducing saturated fat as you are to decrease risk. Also, the previous idea that replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat may still be true. (If true, it means that replacing SF with carbohydrate is definitely deleterious). I think it is not that AHA and others did not know that the SF data was bad but rather they thought, as in the punch-line to numerous jokes "maybe it wouldn't help, but it wouldn't hurt" to reduce saturated fat. The current paper shows that this is wrong. It can hurt. And it is as likely to hurt as it is to help. You are at the craps table: if you bet on low saturated fat and you lose, you don't get your chips back things have gotten worse.

I modified figure 2 from the paper to show that in the studies considered (a meta-analysis is an analysis of many already published papers) the outcomes are pretty much unpredictable. I will post someplace and post a comment as to where the figure is.

Posted by april at 4:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 13, 2010

Can We Pick Up Something Healthy?

We had the big all-Parsnip (that's the blog code name for my union, for any who may wonder if I went to work for the National Parsnip Council) executive board meeting today, and whereas in our old building we used to have continental breakfast catered in (bagels, cream cheese, danishes and muffins) in our new building we have no cafeteria so tasks were assigned to pick up food. I got the coffee: three boxes of Starbucks, two regular and one decaf. I think I had the decaf box all to myself. Then one of my co-workers, Luke, volunteered to pick up breakfast food. "I'll pick up something healthy," he said.

Here is how deeply the lowfat ideology has penetrated the idea of what is healthy. When I walked in, the breakfast spread consisted of:

whole grain bread
jelly
little cut up pieces of French bread
fat free, full sugar organic fruit yogurt (Stoneyfield Farms, which I do love, and as we all know I am a huge fan of fat free plain yogurt)
apples
bananas
non-fat milk
butter

That's a lot better, to be sure, than bagels, muffins and danishes, but it cracked me up how much fat free carb there was in the spread. Sure enough, everyone was starving again in less than three hours for lunch.

I had already eaten: the usual high protein breakfast of eggwhites with flax oil. I love cottage cheese but even that amount of carb in breakfast seems to set me up for hunger later in the morning. I've started eating my 30 grams of almonds just a bit before lunch... and putting my pumpkin seeds in the same little baggie. A lot easier to transport than oil or an avocado.

I was remembering the other day how when I was first out of college and on a very, very low fat diet, I used to eat bagels with tomato, onion, and fat free sour cream and salsa. It was actually quite yummy. All fat free, you know. No wonder I was hungry all the time. Eating bread for breakfast seems to me to be the surest way to make sure you're ravenous and will eat anything at lunch.

Posted by april at 12:59 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

No Comments?

That post got 19 comments last time I posted it! How can there be none, none whatsoever??? Are all of you readers *actually doing your day jobs*???

I have been doing my "real" job too... day long executive board meeting for my union. And wearing the lovely suit that my mother-in-grace, step-father-in-grace and aunt and uncle-in-grace got me for Christmas!

Posted by april at 12:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Against Weight Bias

[This is a re-post of an old entry. It seems that there are so many new readers that it makes sense to re-post some of the older entries that you might not get a chance to scroll back to.
This is from back in the days when I read the Rudd Center blog every day, back before they started publishing articles claiming that I was anorexic. Sigh.

I haven't re-edited this one since I wrote it three years ago, so I may have revised my views on some things. I just thought it would be a nice read for those of you who have joined us in the last three years.

And I have an all day executive board meeting, so I won't be able to create any exciting content for you until later. And I feel guilty about that. You might have to actually do some work, and it will be my fault. Unless you really don't feel like it, in which case I suggest you take the opportunity to watch Big Cat Rescue videos.]

I've been thinking a lot lately about the issue of weight bias. One of the main inspirations for this line of thinking is the fine work of Dr. Rebecca Puhl at the Rudd Center. Her blog entry here on bullying, among many other fine pieces, casts a very careful eye on the issues surrounding weight bias as it affects overweight and obese people. I highly recommend that all of you take some time to read through Dr. Puhl's entries in the Rudd Sound Bites Blog.

Weight bias occurs when one person makes assumptions about another person's character, lifestyle, habits, moral status, or worth as a person based on his or her weight. There are many obvious examples of weight bias against overweight or obese people. Thin people aren't exempt, though. For instance, I notice that a lot of people assume that thin people are:

rich
snotty
holier-than-thou
self-righteous
health nuts
lucky
hate fat people

and that very thin people are:

anorexic
obsessive compulsive
neurotic
very rich
really hate fat people

All of this is quite silly. You can't draw accurate conclusions about a person's character, background, or motivations based on his or her BMI, dress size, or weight.

Let me state my position clearly: I believe it is wrong, MORALLY WRONG, to make judgements about a person's character based on his or her weight.

I have written at length about how hard it is for people to eat healthy and maintain a slim weight in our obesogenic environment. I have dedicated myself to citizen action to improve the food environment, so that everyone has the information, options and support to make healthy choices and live just as long and healthy as he or she would like to. I don't blame people for doing exactly what our biology dictates we will do in an environment where we're bombarded with high calorie, high sugar, high saturated fat, possibly addictive foods. I want to work to improve the environment because I think that the pre-mature death and suffering caused by this food environment is inexcusable. People deserve better choices.

In Food Fight, Brownell and Horgen go into detail about how efforts to improve the food environment often meet with resistance from people (Food industry lobbyists, even public officials) who insist that obesity is a personal problem, and can only be solved with personal responsibility. The implication is that those who are suffering lack personal responsibility. Our culture demonizes overweight people, painting them as lazy, stupid, and morally deficient. This totally absolves food merchants of any responsibility for providing healthy choices. It also ignores the role of education in teaching people how to understand and interpret nutritional information and plan a healthier diet for themselves and their families.

Weight bias is ineffective as a strategy for combating the obesity epidemic. It just hasn't worked. If people lost weight and got healthy because weight bias motivated them, everyone would be slim and trim! There's plenty of pressure to be thin: what is lacking is nutrition information, reasonable healthy affordable tasty food choices, and time + resources to make exercise a part of daily life. I believe that it is counterproductive to debate whether or not obesity is a "choice." (You can quite a few of these debates on the Rudd Center blog comments.) No one wants to be unhealthy. Everyone wants to have a range of choices, and accurate information with which to make those choices. 65% of Americans are overweight or obese, and the top New Year's Resolution, every year, is to lose weight. Blaming people for being overweight is not helping anyone. In fact, it hurts.

But for the sake of argument, I decided to do a quick thought experiment to determine whether or not, in my own experience, fat people are lazy and stupid. I'm going to mentally go through every lazy or stupid person I've ever known.

Hold on, this may take awhile.

Please stay with us... I'm still thinking.

Wow, I've known a lot of lazy stupid people. But guess what?

As a percentage, the majority of lazy, stupid people I've known in my 32 years were not overweight! Some were normal weight, some were overweight, one particularly lazy former staff member (years ago, back in Vermont) was thin as a rail. She was evil too, but that's beside the point. Point being: in my experience, the overweight are actually *underrepresented* in the ranks of lazy, stupid people! To judge from my anecdotal experience, one is more likely to be lazy and stupid if one is of normal weight or thin!

It just goes to show that you can't judge a human being by his or her body fat percentage.

Now that doesn't mean that I believe we should minimize the health consequences of being overweight or obese. I think it's important to be honest with people about the dangers of obesity, and to work towards improving the food (and activity) environment so that people have better, healthier choices. Pretending that it's normal, natural or healthy to be overweight or obese isn't going to change the cold hard facts of health risk. Sure, some people are just naturally heavier, and some people are naturally skinnier. I, for instance, am naturally a bit heavier. Even on moderate CR, I'm not skinny-looking. Eating ad lib, I look like a fertility goddess from an ancient Celtic religion. My partner is naturally skinny, and was even eating ad lib. People come in different shapes and sizes, to be sure, and people have different tastes in what they find beautiful. It's possible to affirm the value of every human being (of whatever weight) while recognizing the health risks of obesity and pursuing strategies to end the epidemic.

I've had some ideas about combatting weight bias in popular culture. Here's my idea for a television spot:

One at a time, about six different people of different races, in clothing that indicates different class status, both male and female, but all slim, smile into the camera and say, "I've lost x number of pounds." The pounds should range from 10 to 150, with most somewhere in between.

The viewer will think it's an ad for a diet plan, so he or she will pay attention.

Then in the next series of shots, each of the original people will say some version of:

"And I'm not a better person -- I'm just lighter."

"I feel healthier now, but I'm the same person I used to be."

"I was a good person when I was overweight, and I'm still a good person now."

"I wasn't lazy or stupid when I was obese... I just didn't have the choices and information that I have now."

As shots of the six characters going through their lives -- at work, at school, at home -- flash onto the screen, a voice over says, "It's wrong to judge someone by his or her weight. These folks lost weight... but they're here to tell you that they're the same person they were when they were overweight. Overweight people aren't stupid, lazy, or bad. Think before you judge."

Last shot: the six slim characters hanging out with, hugging, shaking hands with, exchanging high fives with, a cast of six overweight or obese characters.

I believe we should all make an effort to combat weight bias. I confess that I have not always been as proactive as I should be. When thin folk make negative comments about an overweight person based on his or her weight I will, in future, hold myself more accountable. I'm going to come up with some things to say when I feel like someone is unjustly judged due to his or her weight:

"Hey, it's not fair to judge that person based on his or her weight. We don't know what circumstances may contribute. Let's focus on things that are more relevant."

"You know, I don't like her either, but it's not because she's overweight. It's because she (insert valid reason for not liking her.)"

"I used to be overweight myself, and I can assure you, I was no more lazy or stupid then than I am now. Let's not make assumptions about people's character based on his or her weight, okay?"

And while we're on the subject of weight bias, I'd like to challenge a few assumptions that many people, including some of my readers, seem to have about folks who are thin:

1. That we hate fat people. We don't. Some thin people have an irrational hatred of fat people... no doubt some thin people have an irrational hatred of spiders too. But most thin people I know don't feel that way at all. Don't assume that we put overweight people down because we happen to be thin.

2. That we don't enjoy life. As Paul McGlothin so wisely said, we need to get past the idea that the amount of pleasure we receive is equal to the number of calories we consume.

3. That we're all anorexic. We're not. It is quite possible to cultivate a healthy relationship with food that involves getting great nutrition while maintaining a low, or even very low weight. I frequently hear from other healthy thin women that they are tired of being asked if they're anorexic. People who work at maintaining a healthy weight are no more obsessive, compulsive, or otherwise disordered than the rest of the population... we're just taking advantage of the tools and information we've been lucky enough to come across to make choices that we feel are best for our own health. Either pass the kale, or leave us alone!

Weight bias hurts, no matter which direction the bias goes. Let's all join cyber hands and commit to fighting for healthier attitudes towards food and our fellow humans.

Then we can go back to judging people by things that really matter, like the quality of comments they write on the blog.

Posted by april at 4:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 11, 2010

Vaguely Southwestern Radish Salad

EFRDF turned me on to radishes. They're a spicy, feisty low carb vegetable that I hadn't thought of much in the preceeding years... too bad, since I rather like them. I enjoy them just plain or on a salad, but I discovered this new way to prepare them that both MR and I really love.

About 200 g radishes, chopped, but not too finely
about 1 tbsp lime juice
about five hard shakes cumin
about three hard shakes garlic powder
about ten sprigs of fresh cilantro
the hot sauce of your choice: Goya green salsalita for me, Chipoltle Tabasco for MR

Marinate indefinitely. This is great by itself, or on top of a salad, but gets even better when you add avocado. And then you get that good-girl-gone-bad, which you now realize is bad-girl-gone-good, thrill of eating FAT! Take that, McDougall! And my cat loved your book... to eat.

Posted by april at 5:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Nutrition Superstition

This is a re-post of one of my favorite old entries. I post it in response to a question regarding diet soda in the comments section of a recent post.

[WARNING: I am not picking on anyone in particular, though chances are most everyone will be offended by *something* in this post.]

There are a lot of little sayings about how to eat that circulate in the popular culture. "Eat around the outside of the grocery store." "Eat only whole foods." "Don't eat anything processed." "Don't eat anything white."

Those sayings often have some wisdom, and for normal people who are just seeking to avoid the horror of the Standard American Diet, they're probably pretty good advice.

But I strongly believe that people pursuing CR owe it to ourselves to take a more nuanced view of nutrition. CR is hard enough in itself: lowering your calories below what your body *thinks* it needs is a process that takes focus, concentration, and information. We minimize foods that are high in calories and low in nutrition, though many of us eat them from time to time and balance them with our other meals. But when you start to rule out entire categories of foods, not based on solid evidence-based scientific information but based on nutrition superstition, you may be putting unnecessary obstacles in your already difficult course.

That is not to say that there are not other valid considerations when making our decisions about food. People who are ethically committed to vegetarianism or veganism may put those concerns ahead of nutritional issues or convenience. It's possible to do CRON as a vegan, but I think it's a lot harder, and means sacrificing the convenience of getting a low-calorie, high protein meal of grilled chicken on a salad at a restaurant out with co-workers.

Other folks value supporting local farmers, or organic farmers, or fairly traded products, so they might factor these issues into their food choices. I have complete respect for all of these choices.

My concern is when people are making choices based on either misinformation or just plain superstition. Classic example: this whole diet soda kerfuffle.

[Yes, Cat and Allswellinhell, it's coming.]

Objections that are, in my mind, valid, to diet soda:

-- If you don't like the taste, don't drink it.
-- It's expensive (as opposed to water)
-- It takes packaging (environmental concern)
-- There are some sodas that mix benzoic acid (or sodium benzoate) with vitamin C. When you mix those folks, you end up with benzene, which is carcinogenic. So to avoid this problem, don't drink sodas that list benzoic acid and ascorbic acid at the same time.
-- Some people who have serious sugar addictions find that anything with artificial sweeteners triggers their sugar cravings (but lots don't.)
-- I'm sure I could think of more and people will add them in the comments.

Here are some objections to diet sodas that I do not consider valid:

-- EEEEEK! It's not *natural*!
-- EEEEEK! It has artificial sweetener!
-- It's processed.
-- It's not found in nature (though I am still looking for the Diet Dr. Pepper tree, and will let you know when I locate it and plant our backyard full of them.)
-- Our ancestors didn't drink it.
-- It's not virtuous.
-- It keeps alive the idea of soda, which is a "junk" food, therefore we should not drink it, even if it can be proven that it does not harm our actual health. (The "it's the thought that counts" school of nutritional counseling.)
-- It's going to rot my bones (this one is not irrational, it's just most likely incorrect for CR'd folks, which I will explain in a moment.)
-- Some people have bad reactions to them.

'Let's take these one by one.

-- It's got artificial sweetener.

First: just because something is artificial does not make it unhealthy. Lots of things that are artificial are good for you. Lots of things that grow in the ground are not. Ask anyone who has swallowed a poisonous mushroom if you doubt this. Opposing foods on the grounds that they are artificial is an ideology, not to be confused with sound scientific information based on evidence.

That being said, it certainly does not follow that all things artificial are safe. We must take them one by one and evaluate the evidence. For instance, aspartame was introduced in the early eighties with what probably was too little testing. At the time, it was reasonable to avoid drinking it for a while, while we waited for more evidence to come in. Since then, however, it has been tested A LOT. Have a look at the survival curve of rats fed aspartame, in that study which was recently hyped as supposedly showing that long term aspartame exposure really does cause cancer, which as you can see from the survival curves, showed no such thing. [editor's note, Jan. 11, 2010: some of the embedded links seem to not be working, but try them and see if they do. If not I'll dig up fresh links and re-post, but I have to leave shortly to do my actual job. Like you, I do have a more than full time job, in addition to the responsibility of entertaining you. But I find entertaining you so much more fun...] The curves are about the same, and in females, there seems to be a tiny bit of lifespan lengthening in rats fed aspartame! Drink up, little rodents!) We also have over twenty years of actual people using the stuff, with very few documented problems (never mind that sugar, which is "natural," is ruining the teeth and health of Americans, especially children, in a very well-documented fashion. Call it "pure milled cane juice" on the label and sell it at Whole Foods, whatever!) Yes, some people have bad reactions to aspartame. Those people should not consume it. Most people do not have bad reactions to it, and even those who claim to, in double-blind studies, often have no worse reaction to it than to a placebo.

If you, personally, have a bad reaction to any substance, man-made or out of the ground, vegetable, fish or fowl, stop consuming it! I stopped watching sports on television when I realized that I have a bad reaction to it. A die hard Red Sox fan should not follow suit.

Sucralose is also quite safe... and certainly safer than sugar. Mary had a great treatment of this issue in a recent entry.

Okay, having dispensed with the artificial sweetener issue, on to the "processed" issue.

There are processed foods that are very good for you. Nonfat organic yogurt (unless you are allergic to it) is a good example. It doesn't come straight out of the ground or out of the cow, but it's one of the lowest calorie, healthiest sources of calcium you can find. There are other processed foods that may not be ideal sources of this or that, but are perfectly fine, and can help you keep your calories low and nutrition high while maintaining your job, housecleaning, and life. For instance, once a week or so I eat a Lean Cuisine frozen dinner, usually under 200 calories. I add my own unsaturated fat, usually flax oil and/or almonds, sometimes I put brewers yeast on the veggies. That's perfectly fine! It's low cal, doesn't have anything toxic in it, high protein, fills me up, and is a fine thing to grab when I'm running in the door two minutes before dinner. Most days I eat a combination of veggies, brewers yeast, sometimes more nonfat organic dairy. But a frozen dinner, as part of a calorie-controlled, nutrient balanced diet, is just fine! Just because something is processed doesn't mean it's bad for you, especially in the context of an overall extremely nutritious, low calorie diet. That's what I mean about we CR people being able to exercise a little more judgement than the average Joe who thinks that eating healthy is just avoiding processed foods. I am capable of reading the ingredients on a package, deciding if it's something I want to eat, and evaluating it in the context of my overall nutrition for the meal, day, week, etc.

Now there are some things that are processed that I'd drop like a hot potato. Anything with transfats, for instance. Gotta go. But not because they're processed. I'd drop a poisonous mushroom too, right back onto the ground where it came from.

On to the old "Our ancestors didn't..."

This argument is so absurd that I find it difficult to engage it. Our ancestors didn't live very long, had very different priorities in life (avoiding starvation, running from hungry wild animals, starting fires to prevent a freezing death) and didn't benefit from the tremendous wealth of information and technology that our more recent ancestors have provided us with. Things that we eat should be evaluated on the basis of what they actually do to us, not theories about what ancient people ate.

This is fun, let's do another.

"It's not virtuous." Or some variation thereof.

I've written extensively about how I find it most counterproductive to think of food in moral terms. Foods either make us healthier or they don't. They either fit into our lifestyle or they don't. They either taste good to us or they don't. There's only one way to find out: do the research and/or give it a try. I am not doing CR to prove that I am a good or moral person, and if I were, I think that would be downright silly because my ability to eat this or that proves nothing about my character. I wish that all this talk of food as morality would just go away. It sets people up for ridiculous guilt, which in turn sets them up for more binging, followed by more fasting or purging, followed by my eventual entry on that topic.

Ditto on the "idea of junk food." CR is not about how we feel about food. Most of us find that we feel better about food post-CR than pre, but whether we like "junk" or not, we can still do CR and improve our health, hopefully even lengthen our lives. Lower calories, more nutrition, that's all.

"It's going to rot my bones."

This one is not irrational. This one is just a misunderstanding, but not too far off. It's also a good example of how mechanistic thinking, when contradicted by evidence, can lead you in the wrong direction.

It goes like this: consuming phosphorus, and also "acid ash" foods, increases calcium excretion. So you'd think that consuming something with phosphorus -- especially as "phosphoric acid" (like diet soda), which is also an "acid ash" metabolizer -- might make your bones weaker. You wouldn't be unreasonable to make that assumption. But if you're Cat, and Cat is really who she says she is (as opposed to an elderly woman getting less than the RDA of calcium), then you'd be wrong.

The bottom line is that the increase in calcium excretion from these kinds of effects is very small -- so small that it's negligible, if you're getting enough calcium in your diet to compensate for it. In large studies where the diets of people are tracked long-term and compared to their health risks, it's been found that there is an increased risk of bone problems in cola drinkers -- but only in the ones who don't get enough calcium in their diets! (The same is true for people who eat a lot of protein, which is also "acid ash"). So Cat, who is getting sufficient calcium in her diet, and is even tracking it to make sure, can drink diet soda without weakening her bones. Cat is also doing tons of bone building exercise, setting a fine example for the rest of us. So Cat is doing a lot to protect her bones, and should drink diet soda if she feels like it.

The thing that gets me so worked up about people cutting out diet soda based on either myths or logical misunderstandings is that when you're in the midst of such radical change as going on CR, drinking that diet soda might be just what you need to make it to your next meal without snacking on something that has calories you don't need. Sure, if you want to get extra health benefits while you drink something calorie free, you can pull a Robin and drink a gallon of green tea. But if that little pop of Diet Coke just satisfies you on an existential level, for heaven's sake, drink it! Keep your calcium high, do your bone building exercise, and squeeze a bit of lemon or lime into that Diet Coke. Buy me one while you're at it. [editor's note, Jan. 11, 2010: And thank you if you already did.]

We who practice CR have the overriding aim of eating as few calories as possible while maintaining nutrition. When a food ideology that is not based on evidence causes us to eat more calories, then I'd say, throw the food ideology out. That's not to be confused with genuine concerns that are other than nutritional, like the ones I mentioned early in the post: vegetarianism, environmental concerns, etc. What I'm talking about is an unsupported belief that food that is "whole" is better for you than food that is "processed." Eating sugar instead of artificial sweeteners because you're convinced that something is bad just because it's artificial (not because there's actual evidence to support your conviction about the particular artificial substance) is counterproductive for the person whose aims for CRON. If you want to play everything super safe and give up everything that might possibly be harmful, you can try to do that. But most people find it doesn't work. In the quest to give up the artificial, they all too frequently consume more calories, and usually of substances that we know are bad for you, like sugar and saturated fat.

Are you still with me? Can we still be friends? I know that a lot of people will find my position on this downright offensive. I hate to be the cause of controversy (not that you can tell!) but I've spent so much time angsting about Cat and Emily trying to give up diet soda that I just felt like it had to be said. If you find that green tea really does please you more than diet Coke, then go for it. I tend to have one diet soda a day, a ton of green, black and herbal tea, two cups of coffee [editor's note, Jan. 11, 2010: make that decaf -- I don't drink regular coffee anymore, and make that about three diet sodas a day] and a bunch of water including seltzer water. That works for me. You've got to decide what works for you.

That brings me to another point I've been meaning to underline. To do CR means to take on responsibility for your own health. I spent seven months in intense research (it helped that I was single at the time!) to design my own diet and decide what I wanted to eat and what I wanted to minimize. I did the work myself, searching the CR Society archives, reading cited papers, checking books out of the library, ordering books online, reading more articles, and experimenting on myself. My old blog over at blogspot chronicles the long tale of how I evolved my current practices. I made a lot of mistakes that you may find entertaining. My practice continues to evolve over time, and will probably never stop growing and changing. But I got to my own beliefs by doing my own research. You need to do the same.

As much as I believe in argument from authority when it comes to how to wash the kitchen floor, I don't believe in the kind of guru-ism that says that just because someone you like and respect does something, you should do it too. [editor's note, Jan. 11, 2010: For example, I'm in the running for president of the RDF fan club, but that doesn't mean I do everything he says. My personal jury is still out on saturated fat, so I'm still keeping to minimal levels of it while I consider the evidence. I will soon post MR's epic response to RDF's questions regarding SF.] [Further editor's note, Jan. 11, 2010: If it seems that I am more likely to do what MR says regarding nutrition even when I'm not 100% sure for myself, let me point out that that is not guru-ism: that is Sad Face Avoidance. If you had to experience the face of your life partner as he imagines, in great detail, your agonizing slow death as a result of eating eggs, then you would probably eat them infrequently too. Or at least when you're not home.]

There are things I can warn you about, issues I can suggest you look into, ways of thinking that I can challenge, and mistakes I've made that you can learn from/laugh at. But in the end, it's up to you to make your own decisions. Your priorities can and will be different from mine -- we're different people!

Here are two great sources of information for you as you do your research.

CR Society Archives.

Pub Med -- that's where you can find the referenced articles, or just fall asleep trying.

Now here's something that you may be confused about: I've been ranting against the whole "natural" thing, yet I consistently tell you to get your nutrition from food, not from supplements. What's up with that? Why can't you just take a pill, or eat a fortified cereal? I wrote about that in depth here, but I'll paste it in for those of you who don't want to click:

Just what is the right amount of each nutrient for us, how do we best supplement, and what nutritients do we really need to get from food, vs. what nutrients can we supplement adequately?

Dr. Walford has an excellent treatment of this topic in Beyond 120, so I suggest y'all read it if you haven't yet. But a few quick points:

-- In lab animals, the ones fed their nutrients from real food live longer than the ones fed rat junk food plus supplements.

-- We don't know, for sure, what exactly it is in each food that is good for us, so by getting our RDAs from food we maximize our chances that we're getting whatever we need that might not be specifically isolated in a vitamin. There is no perfect vitamin pill.

-- Most multis have toxic levels of this or that, and varieties of the nutrients that are actually different from what's found in food. Synthetic beta-carotene, for example. Even if you have a great multi, it will still only fill in the holes in your particular diet by chance. You really must analyze your diet before you choose your supplements. MR doesn't take a multi cause his diet is too good. He'd be overdoing it on some nutrients if he took a multi. He supplements with specific nutrients, but doesn't take one single multi.

-- There are some nutrients that have to be kept in balance with each other, else neither will be properly absorbed or utilized. Zinc and copper are an example. If you have too much copper (which is found in fruits and vegetables) relative to your zinc, your zinc won't be properly absorbed and utilized, even if you're getting more than the RDA of both nutrients from your food and/or your supplements. And vice versa. So taking a random pill without analyzing your diet is likely to throw off the balance of your nutrients, or at the very least leave an imbalance uncorrected. You might think you're getting the RDA (the pill says so!) but you're not absorbing and utilizing it. The more you rely on pills without knowing what's in your food, the more likely you are to fail to correct imbalances, or make them worse. You're reasonably safe if you have the RDAs, or even proportional multiples of all the RDAs at once, since good balance is shown in the RDAs. But if you start taking a bunch of pills on top of your food, without knowing exactly what's in them and understanding how they interact with the nutrients in your diet, you're likely to perpetuate any imbalances.

There are still plenty of reasons why you might want to supplement. Insurance against occasional or chronic deficiencies if you eat a mostly vegetarian diet,) [editor's note: Jan. 11, 2010: Veggie Booster is unfortunately no longer available, but it was great when it was.) specific medical conditions for which certain supplements might be indicated (like my I-3-C for cervical dysplasia, which, btw, is GONE as of my last check up!!!) and more experimental supplements that may have a beneficial effect but definitely aren't necessary for a healthy diet. I've written a lot about what supplements I take, and I need to update some of the info because we've recently revamped my supplement program. Informed supplementation can improve your CR program, and uninformed supplementation can cause problems, so analyze your diet before you start taking pills.

Here is an article on responsible supplementation for vegetarians.

There. Thus concludes old entry, now we're back to today's extremely long entry. But I know you're all sitting at your desks on Monday morning looking for ways to avoid work just a minute longer, so this entry may serve you in more ways than one.

Which brings me to another point (many a household chore has been sacrificed in the production of this entry): long ago, so long ago that the commenter probably thinks I've forgotten her, a reader asked why I'm opposed to oatmeal. That's a good way to illustrate another nuance in how we think about nutrition.

I do not oppose oatmeal. Some of my best friends eat oatmeal. In fact, one of my friends eats oatmeal almost every morning for breakfast. He is not on CR. He also looks like Richard Gere. That doesn't mean that eating oatmeal will make you look like Richard Gere... another classic error in thinking that people apply to nutrition (ie. Elephants are long lived... elephants are vegetarians... therefore, we should be vegetarians!)

I find, however, that oatmeal isn't a good deal in terms of the nutrition you get for your calories. Therefore, I choose not to eat it. You may find it worth it. I'd rather have a glass of wine with those calories (though not for breakfast) and get my fiber from 1 tablespoon of wheat bran. I don't think that oatmeal is toxic, I just don't think it's a good buy. You might like it so much and find it satisfying and therefore decide to include it in your diet. I've also found that I need a high protein, low carb breakfast to stay satisfied till lunch. Ergo, eating eggwhites for breakfast works for me. That's the result of vast and entertaining self-experimentation, and you may find you're the same. But you may not. That's okay. That's what I mean by make your own decisions.

Either way, I hope we can still be friends.

Posted by april at 7:58 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

CR and Low Carb Bloggers Out There?

Happy Monday to all!

I follow as many CR blogs as I can remember, but some of them come and go and others are new. If you are a CR or Low Carb blogger out there, can you post a comment with your website to remind me where you are so I can follow you?

Thank you!

Posted by april at 5:21 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 9, 2010

Slow and Steady Rush

I mentioned in my last post that the negative side effect of the ketogenic diet appeared to be that I was very, very cold at night. Very, very cold.

On my Facebook page, I said that I was so cold I was sitting on the heater in my hotel room in Scranton reading "Here Comes Everybody," a book that RDF recommended I read. He gives me a lot of reading assignments... I wonder if he's ever considered becoming a professor? I think he'd be good at it.

I had the heat up all the way on the trip to Scranton, and never took off my coat, scarf, and sweatshirt over my sweater and two layers of camisoles. Then I got to my hotel, went downstairs to the restaurant to order a no-carb dinner (just shrimp and grilled chicken with nothing whatsoever on them) and was so cold that I had to order a decaf hot tea to keep me warm, while I toasted my hands over the candle and burned them a few times.

Then I went back up to my room and soaked my feet in a hot bubble bath, while turning the heat in the room up to 80 degrees. Ah, the joys of having someone else pay the electric bill. All the while I was wearing yoga pants, two layers of camis, a lambswool sweater, and a sweatshirt.

Went to bed and for the fourth night in a row couldn't sleep because I was too cold. Insanely cold. I have lived in Northern Michigan for four winters and not been this cold. I have been on strike in the Poconos in February and not been this cold. I have leafleted a hospital in Bayonne, NJ in a blizzard and not been this cold. I was seriously, bone-chillingly cold, in a way that nothing could seem to warm. MR would snuggle me in the night, marveling at the fact that *he* was the warmer of the two mice. I'd take hot showers and be fine for a few minutes, but then go back to freezing.

The first three days it was just at night, but on Thursday it transitioned into being an all day cold. I stayed bundled up during my meetings, and held a cup of decaf coffee or tea all day for warmth. In my hotel room between meetings, I had the heat at 80 and was still cold.

Extremely low insulin levels, says RK. It's really, really cold out, says RDF. I don't know, baby, but you're really cold, says MR. The triumvirate of authorities obviously had no clue what was going on with me.

Then I tried to work out. Between meetings, I thought I'd do the namascar series, which is a series of twelve sun salutations, done Iyengar style.

I was practically passing out after two, and decided to give up. This is not like me. I've banged out the namascar series every day, no matter what, for months now, with few exceptions.

I was so exhausted, but I chalk that up to not sleeping for four nights in a row. The initial high of the ketogenic diet (wow, that buzz is amazing!) had masked the exhaustion, but my glycogen levels were probably way down having burnt off anything I had from last weekend, and the lack of sleep was starting to over-ride the ketogenic high.

Meanwhile, I went to lunch at the lunch buffet at the Radisson, which is unbelievably inexpensive for what you get. Looking for things with no carbs, I ate meat. I had the first prime rib I've ever had, and it was really quite good. "May I have some of the dead thing?" I asked the waiter who was carving. He was confused, but I pointed and he figured it out. I had a second piece, and also some chicken, and a bit of tilapia off of which I scraped all the sauce of dubious origin.

Still, I found that I was staring at the giant salad bar, long for tomatoes and artichoke hearts and olives. I had some romaine lettuce... very low carb... but even worried about that kicking me over 20 g, even though all I'd had all day was an eggwhite scramble with flax oil and my inositol.

Staring at the salad bar. Dreaming of cucumber, green pepper, tomato, lettuce... onions! Red onions! Artichoke hearts packed in water! All these no fat veggies, very low calorie...

but they have carbs, so I lusted after them with silent resignation, putting them in the category of happily married men and dead historical figures like Robert F. Kennedy... I would if I could but I can't so I may as well eat some more meat.

I definitely ate more calories at that meal than I would have if I had just eaten the big salad with a little protein that I wanted to eat. And I ate my fat... 30 g almonds... like a good girl.

I froze through the afternoon, mainlining decaf tea and literally shaking half the time from cold. I drove home with the heat all the way up, the radio up even higher, and my coat and scarf glued to me, wearing my business skirt and sweater with a giant sweatshirt on top and socks over my black stockings in my boots... we are talking serious winter gear here.

By the time I got home, I was resolved. I was not going to freeze like this anymore. I do not need to lose weight fast, I do not need to break a sugar addiction, both MR and RDF advocate a more moderate carb load, and the negative of freezing to death was beating out the high of ketogenic brain waves. I was starting to get downright mean, I was so cold. I feel so sorry for the rats in the cold feet experiments.

So I added some carbs. For dinner, I had a lovely salad of bok choi with a cup of nonfat plain yogurt, 15 g almonds, and 2 tbsps Trader Joe's salsa verde.

I felt better. A lot better. Slept medium-okay.

The next day, I wasn't nearly as cold... in fact, I was almost normal. Quite a few confounding factors, but I did a great deal of walking in the cold and didn't mind it at all, in fact enjoyed it. Ate a very low carb lunch of Cobb salad with grilled chicken and a real vinegarette (though of course I got it on the side and only used part) and ate the whole boiled egg in the salad... oh sinful eggful transgression! So yummy....

Then I got home and had just stewed tomatoes for dinner, followed by a double dose of melatonin and a glass of wine. Oh happy sleepiness. Slept from 8:30 pm to 6 am.

I very much enjoyed my foray into the world of ketogenic diets, but I can not imagine doing that for even four weeks, much less eight. I was too cold!!! I might try it again in the dead of summer... it's like natural air conditioner! And it totally cleared my head and re-set my tastes. I have no craving for or interest in bread, pasta, or any such thing at all... all I want is veggies. Tomatoes: the forbidden fruit. Green peppers. Onions. Just a bit more bok choi... more please, sir?

I'm so glad I tried it because I do feel like it jump started my diet. I'm gradually adding carbs back, first with just yogurt and tomatoes. I'm aiming to end up at 100 g carbs a day and 1400 calories. That will be either a little too low or the perfect level for long term CRCR for me and my activity level.

Oh, and I've lost 3 pounds. In 6 days.

So now I'm going back on low-ish carb, just like I did so successfully shortly after the CR Conference. I can see how for people who had a weight problem or a sugar addiction, a good two weeks of Atkins induction would be just the thing, but I'm not that person. I eat less total when I'm allowed to just eat my 100 grams of tomato and savor it and call it a day. Being able to eat cucumber and tomato and onion was such a treat after nearly a week without. My appreciation for vegetables has increased exponentially.

As to euphoria... I feel more grounded now. I was definitely high there for awhile, and it was a ton of fun. I know I can get it back at any point, and it was certainly much easier to do the ketogenic low sat fat diet when I was near home with my own safely packed foods. But for the longer term, I want my veggies and yogurt, as well as my protein and pumpkin seeds. I had two vegetarian meals today, and enjoyed them more than I ever thought possible. For the first time in seven days, I ate no turkey!

Tonight I went out with my friend Jim, the lawyer for our union who is a bigtime foodie and likes to take me out. I had suggested we hit the best sushi place in Philly, Kisso (4th and Arch), where I could get no-carb sashimi. I had a delicious dinner of dead fish, no carbs, and he ate regular sushi. I experienced what I've come to call the "Feinman Effect," which is that ever since I met Richard David Feinman, I've (with a few exceptions at the holidays) just stopped eating unnecessary, non-vegetable carbs. The rice in sushi seems so irrelevant... a distraction from the fish. MR points out that this is just doing CR: avoiding all empty calories so that you can pack more nutrients into your low-calorie bin. But pre-Feinman I was so tempted by these little empty white treats, and would think that I could simply make up for the calories by eating less fat... a downward spiral that ends in hunger, cravings, and consumption of more calories.

The ketogenic euphoria was a ton of fun, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking to jump start his or her weight loss or just clear your head. It did both for me. I will likely try it again... in July!

For now, I'll choose the slow and steady rush of low but not extremely low carb, low calorie, long term CRCR. It shouldn't be long now till the real weight loss high kicks in, even at a 100 g/day carb level, and I can ride that for ten pounds till I hit the level that I'm not sure I am willing to go below. Yoga + CRCR should equal a good brain chemical that I would make millions of dollars if I could market in drug form.

I will post some sample days of what I'm eating tomorrow... Monday will be a pack all my own food day, as we are in negotiations from 12 noon on, likely till 8 or 10 pm. I will pack my turkey, almonds, pumpkin seeds, veggies, and computer... anything to keep me from starving or going crazy. Tons of Diet Coke, the blood of the Gods as far as I am concerned.

Tomorrow I am also making a giant chicken vegetable soup out of some chicken I bought and broccoli and cauliflower. After a week at super low carb, broccoli and cauliflower feel like special treats reserved only for Christmas or Easter. This is the beauty of an ultra-restrictive diet: it makes you think that things that are good for you are actually off-limits, so once you can have them again, they have all the thrill of full-blown sin.

MR is making me a big batch of his famous mashed cauliflower. He was a good sport about the ketogenic thing, and is not very happy that I'm packing more and more vitamins and minerals into my little body.

Never before has a tomato tasted so exquisite.

I may have another tomorrow.

Posted by april at 7:10 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

January 7, 2010

Euphoria Is Better Than Any Bagel!

So said one of my readers and fellow CR practitioners, Paige, when I mentioned via blackberry (what did I do before the California organizers forced me to get a Blackberry?) that I was trapped in a room with bagels and cream cheese, waiting for nurses. I did consider eating the cream cheese... Paige graciously looked it up for me, and found that 1 tbsp has only 1 carb, but I decided not to considering the calories. Am getting so much positive re-enforcement from CRCR that I don't want to risk throwing anything off.

Favorite black skirt fits again! Of course it's *mostly* about slowing the aging process and living longer, younger... but come on, how can you not love the favorite skirt fits again moment? Or favorite jeans or whatever... I realize not all of you have a favorite black skirt.

Okay, back to work.

Posted by april at 6:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 5, 2010

No, thank you...

"April, did you bring your lunch? I'm ordering from 'On a Roll,' (local sandwich shop.) Susie yelled into my office.

"Ugh, no," I said, and then realized that I was being rude. Happily bopping along on my very low carb state, just the idea of a giant fluffy piece of bread is a major buzz kill.

"I mean, no thank you," I revised, "I brought lunch."

So far so good... ate the rest of last night's dinner for breakfast (turkey, romaine radish celery salad) and today's dose of pumpkin seeds. Cooked up some more turkey for today but am switching to one of the others on the approved list of meats tomorrow.

CR-induced Zen definitely kicked in, with periods of possibly CR-induced euphoria from time to time but there are too many confounding factors to be sure. Either way, I feel great. The idea of giving this up for a piece of bread strikes me as utterly ridiculous.

Off to a long day... picking up my drycleaning (how mundane but there's a sweater there I want to wear) and treadmill and Pilates and work and driving to Scranton for day long meetings tomorrow... Low Carb in Scranton. Sleepless in Seattle it isn't, but I'm packing my own food so it should go fine.

The only real problem so far is that I seem to be very, very cold at night. We've had a cold snap here so that could be partially to blame, but I mean really, really cold. And I haven't lost enough weight for it to be a reflection of losing my insulation. RK says it is likely due to very low insulin levels. So I'm turning up the heat, electric bill be damned. I'm already wearing all the clothes I own around the house. Tonight in my hotel room in Scranton I am going to turn the heat way up and take a really hot bubble bath. I don't seem to be unusually cold during the day, only at night, but at night I am extremely cold.

So I've packed two little bags of pumpkin seeds (15 g each) and two little bags of almonds (30 g each) and I'm going to pack one of my various choices of dead things, plus bok choi, romaine, celery and radishes and flax oil. I came up with a new radish recipe last night but I don't have time to post it else I won't get in a treadmill workout before Pilates class and work.

I actually love Scranton... my favorite campaign ever, CMC of Scranton, won July 19, 2007, was there, and I've spent so much time there that it feels like home away from home. Unfortunately, being on the road in Scranton was a major factor in my move away from hardcore CR, but those days seem very far away now. It's so incredibly easy now. I am not exaggerating. It's not just that I don't want carbs, it's that I'm not really hungry at all. I eat my little foods and I enjoy them and I'm quite satisfied, and that's that.

If you are looking to jump start your weight loss, improve your self-discipline re: food (it also seems to be helping me sort out my office files, but again, confounding factor of office move) or just clear your head, I recommend spending a little time on the super-low carb diet. Contrary to what all the handwaving naysayers say, a few weeks with less than 20 g carb a day will not kill you, cause you to be malnourished (if you do it with the care and precision that any CR practitioner would, using your nutritional software like a good boy or girl) or get you committed to a mental institution. Whereas even one more year of the kinda half-hearted more-obesity-avoidance-than-CR that I was doing before Atlanta was actually shortening my life and healthspan. And to that I say a very polite, "No, thank you."

Posted by april at 9:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 4, 2010

How Long Are You Planning to Do This?

A valid question was posed by Amy, and earlier by MR.

How long am I planning to do the 20 gram thing?

Robert Krikorian is pulling for eight weeks. That is way, way longer than any of the weight loss with ketogenic diet books suggest. Most of them I think say two weeks. Since Robert is more interested in the cognitive effects, he thinks I should try it for the same amount of time the patients in his study on ketogenic diets and brain function did it, which was eight weeks. (Something I've noticed from hanging out with scientists: they like to experiment on you.) But I'm not sure. I figure I'll try it for a few weeks, see how I like it, then gradually increase carbs to the neighborhood of 100 - 130. MR is rooting for as little time as possible. I'll ask RDF for his opinion as well.

Today has been great: of course there are confounding factors, but I have been both simultaneously calm and extremely cheerful. Had a great Pilates class, the office move was accomplished (great new building, nice new office) and I got everything done I set out to do.

One problem I can already see is that I'm just not hungry enough to eat as much food as I need to. I made it to dinner with less than 700 calories already in me, and couldn't even come close to finishing my dinner. My veggies are so low carb that they're also very high volume, and I ate about half of my salad (romaine, radishes, and celery) before giving up. I did eat quite a bit of turkey... and bought quite a bit of turkey... but I ended the day just over 1000 calories. Wow. And I worked out today.

On the subject of meat: MR is fine with me eating tilapia, steelhead, lots of low fat fishes, bivalve shellfish like clams, mussels, oysters, occasional salmon (but I only like it smoked and that's bad so I do mean occasional) pork loin (no clue how to cook that) and some chicken. I've never liked beef all that much (I'm sure you will say I haven't had it cooked right) so that's not a point of contention.

When I was in the grocery store today I found myself doing a lot of staring at cheese. No wonder those Atkins people who are allowed to eat SF seem so happy. They're not at the mercy of carb-induced hunger and mood swings, and they get to eat cheese! And bacon! And... well, you know what I am thinking. The "e" food.

Conversation in my house tonight:

AS: Brie has 0 grams of carbs per 100 grams.
MR: And how many grams of saturated fat?
AS: (sighs) Don't worry, I'm not really going to eat it.

For the record, cheddar has 1 g carb per 100 grams, according to CRON-O-Meter. Not that I'm thinking of eating it. Purely intellectual curiosity.

Speaking of the "e" food... one of the things I miss most about hard boiled eggs is peeling them. When I used to get them in diners I would always specifically as the waitperson to bring the entire egg, shell on. There's something so engaging about peeling an egg. You can do it really slowly so that you make minimal numbers of eggshell pieces. Or you can just rip the thing off in a giant mess and, if outdoors, drop the shells all over the ground. (That's probably considered litering but I imagine the shells somehow returning to Mother Earth in a very Lion King-esque Circle of Life moment.) I like the tap the side of the egg quickly and firmly with a fork, making a solitary crack in the shell, and then begin to peel starting at that crack, trying to make large, unbroken pieces out of the shells, and then neatly piling them on a plate. This is not obsessive compulsive behavior -- this is enjoying the visceral experience of getting at one of my favorite things.

So much of our food just arrives on a plate as though it has no connection whatsoever with the world it came from. I remember telling my mother when I was a child that food came from the grocery store, prompting her to immediately organize one of those trips to a pick-your-own-food farm. The egg, with its hard shell, reminds us that it had an original purpose. It's the lifeforce in a little capsule.

Of course, that didn't work out so well for the chicken, but what can you do? It's like communion: it's a beautiful ritual, even though the thing it symbolized wasn't that much fun for Jesus.

Okay, by the time I'm comparing the hard boiled egg with the death of one of the most influential religious leaders of all time, it's time to go to bed.

Posted by april at 3:01 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April On Atkins

Look at that.

Just looking at it feels really, really weird.

1. Don't blame RDF.

2. Don't freak out.

3. Don't freak out.

4. Don't freak out.

If you're looking for someone to blame (and who is not?) blame Robert Krikorian.

To clarify: RDF has said that he doesn't think that I need to go as low carb as the induction phase of Atkins because (correct me if I get this wrong, RDF) I don't really need to lose weight, I just want to go harder core on my CR. And I was losing weight on low-ish carb.

So why am I doing this?

a) First and foremost, I want to jump start my progress back down to my CR-fighting weight. I'd rather get there more quickly than slowly, while remaining within the parameters of safe weight loss.

b) Second, it's a New Year and after being a lot less strict with my diet for the last few weeks during the holiday celebrations, and I feel the need to clear my head. I know that the fewer carbs I eat, the more clearly I think. I figured that out in early CR.

c) The kind of calm-yet-high feeling of super-charged CR-induced euphoria that I got in early CR has never entirely come back. Parts of it seem to come back with CRCR, but it's still not as powerful as I like it. In early CR, six years ago, I could generate the sensation by going very, very low, like 800 - 1000. But I can't go that low anymore, not without sacrificing muscle and my yoga practice. The feeling that Robert K describes getting from extremely low carb sounds exactly like the extreme low cal feeling... only on more calories.

Yes, I like to play with my brain chemistry, I just like to do it through legal and safe means.

d) RDF said in a talk he gave in Vienna, "A moderate diet will get you moderate results." As all who have been around for awhile know, saying things like around me is like waving catnip under my cat's nose. I love the idea of extremes almost as much as I hate the idea of moderation. RDF has another really good line about that, but you'll have to wait for the book to find out what it is. Point being, whatever I do, I like to do it all the way.

So you can blame RDF after all. And blame RK for introducing me to him. There, blame is circulating.

So I've decided to give it a try. Under 20 grams a day. If I hate it, I'll stop.

And no: I am still not allowed to eat eggs. : - ( More on that soon...

MR took awhile to convince, but now he's on board with the idea. He was very concerned about me not getting adequate nutrition, so I gave him the task of figuring out what I should eat and promised that I would eat exactly that. My carb count is even more complicated by the fact that I take inositol, which has 8 grams of carb in my dose, so that knocks me down to 12 food carbs per day. Wow. That's not much.

Here's what he came up with:

Seeds, pumpkin and squash seed kernels, dried 15 g 81.2
Celery, raw 100 g 16.0
Cabbage, chinese (pak-choi), raw 150 g 19.5
Radishes, raw 100 g 16.0
Lettuce, cos or romaine, raw 100 g 17.0
Flax oil 2 tsp 80.1
Turkey, fryer-roasters, breast, meat only, cooked, roasted 729.63 g 985.0
Nuts, almonds 30 g 172.5

Nutrition Summary for January 4, 2010
Report generated by CRON-o-Meter v0.9.5
===========================================

General (69%)
===========================================
Energy | 1387.2 kcal 217%
Protein | 234.2 g 488%
Carbs | 22.1 g 7%
Fiber | 11.0 g 37%
Starch | 0.2 g
Sugars | 8.0 g
Fat | 37.0 g 168%
Alcohol | 0.0 g
Caffeine | 0.0 mg
Water | 929.8 g 62%
Ash | 13.0 g

Vitamins (84%)
===========================================
Vitamin A | 15925.3 IU 531%
Retinol | 0.0 µg
Alpha-carotene | 1.5 µg
Beta-carotene | 9556.0 µg
Beta-cryptoxanthin | 0.0 µg
Lycopene | 0.0 µg
Lutein+Zeaxanthin | 2665.3 µg
Folate | 363.5 µg 73%
B1 (Thiamine) | 0.6 mg 48%
B2 (Riboflavin) | 1.6 mg 121%
B3 (Niacin) | 57.6 mg 360%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)| 6.0 mg 121%
B6 (Pyridoxine) | 4.7 mg 275%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) | 2.8 µg 119%
Vitamin C | 109.7 mg 122%
Vitamin D | 0.0 IU 0%
Vitamin E | 10.6 mg 71%
Beta Tocopherol | 0.1 mg
Delta Tocopherol | 0.0 mg
Gamma Tocopherol | 3.4 mg
Vitamin K | 209.1 µg 174%
Biotin | 0.0 µg 0%
Choline | 673.0 mg 122%

Minerals (85%)
===========================================
Calcium | 428.7 mg 43%
Chromium | 0.0 µg 0%
Copper | 1.2 mg 131%
Fluoride | 10.0 µg
Iron | 17.2 mg 215%
Magnesium | 435.7 mg 104%
Manganese | 1.9 mg 82%
Phosphorus | 2085.2 mg 298%
Potassium | 3581.1 mg 76%
Selenium | 238.0 µg 433%
Sodium | 606.9 mg 47%
Zinc | 15.7 mg 142%

Amino Acids (100%)
===========================================
ALA | 14.3 g
ARG | 16.9 g
ASP | 23.0 g
CYS | 2.4 g 166%
GLU | 39.5 g
GLY | 11.7 g
HIS | 7.2 g 668%
HYP | 0.0 g
ILE | 12.0 g 821%
LEU | 18.5 g 572%
LYS | 21.4 g 722%
MET | 6.5 g 446%
PHE | 9.4 g 370%
PRO | 9.7 g
SER | 10.4 g
THR | 10.2 g 664%
TRP | 2.7 g 695%
TYR | 9.0 g 356%
VAL | 12.4 g 4029%

Lipids (100%)
===========================================
Saturated | 5.2 g
Monounsaturated | 14.3 g
Polyunsaturated | 14.6 g
Omega-3 | 5.2 g 131%
Omega-6 | 9.0 g
Trans-Fats | 0.0 g
Cholesterol | 605.6 mg 202%
Phytosterol | 13.0 mg

Judith rightly points out that I probably won't be able to eat that much turkey, though if you look at how little else I'll be eating, I might just make it. MR strongly prefers that I eat turkey instead of other meat because of you guessed it saturated fat. Over time I am hoping to figure out how to convince him that SF isn't the devil, but for now, sad face appears instantly at even the slightest mention of the "e" word. I asked about chicken and beef and he said maybe but not often.

MR says I can have some seafood too. I don't mind the lack of variety though... my diet has never been all that exciting, as I prefer to write and talk about and cook and play with food than to actually eat it much of the time. I will, however, be going out to eat sashimi this weekend with a friend who likes to buy me dinner... and I plan to eat a whole lot of expensive dead fish.

(Please do not get the idea that MR is some sort of controlling ogre. He is not... he's just very, very worried about my long term health. He's completely un-controlling of me in every other aspect of life, to a degree that most people find alarming and enviable, and I asked him to put together some ideas about what I should eat... saves me the trouble.)

To the extent that I can't get enough calories without adding carbs if I can't eat that much meat, I'll just add olive oil. I finally got some that I like, so that won't be bad. I can put it on the greens. Or just shoot it. The oils I like (as opposed to the evil Yuck Oil) I actually like straight.

Nutritionally it's pretty good, though calcium is the big hole and I'm not interested in eating fish bones. When I get off the super-low carb and transition back to more moderate low carb (100 go or so) my yogurt will be the first thing that comes back.

So I'm starting today. I'm very excited about this... I needed something new to shake me up a bit, and the thought of both easier CR + more concentrated CR-induced euphoric Zen is quite irresistible.

Now everyone remember, don't freak out. I've already had to peel one old friend off the floor, which he fell over onto when told that the April he knew as a vegan was doing any sort of Atkins-esque anything. I'm terrified of telling Edward (my co-worker, not the vampire)... he'll probably insist that I see a psychiatrist, at which point I can point out that Robert K is a psychiatrist and thinks I'm quite sane. The bizarre emotional reactions people have to the concept of low carb is only out-weirded by, well CR, and my friends have had years to get used to that.

I'm not crazy, I'm just on a low carb diet.

Maybe we should put that on a bumper sticker.

Posted by april at 8:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack