Archive for April 2009
A Fast, a Workout, and a Braised Pot Roast
Yesterday I tweeted that I was 24 hours into a fast and had yet to experience any hunger. How did that happen? Well, I can't be sure, due too many variables, but what's interesting is that I began the fast about 11 AM day before yesterday, and with only one meal instead of a breakfast & lunch. Eggs & bacon it was. Then I decided to do something I've not done before. I did this high-volume workout at 4 PM, 5 hours into the fast. Then I did 6-7 minutes in the cold cold water. I had no problem with hunger before bed, slept for a good 6-7 hours, woke up refreshed and waited to get hungry. It just didn't happen. The plan was to head over to the gym when the hunger came, and do a cold-water plunge again, as I've used that before to rid myself of hunger. But, I was fixing a big braised pot roast for family guests and I needed to get that started 4 hours ahead of time. So, I never did the second dip and broke the fast without really being hungry at about the 27 hour mark, munching on some nuts as...
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“I LOVE TOFU!”
Enough said. Added Later...after receiving abouty 1/2 dozen emails: Listen, folks, if you can't take the time to click on the link and watch the video to find out what the title to the post means, then PLEASE do not waste my time with emails with links to articles on the dangers of soy poison. I have posted on poison soy before, just use the search to the right to see.
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Paleo Diet in US News & World Report
Well, I could poke it all full of holes, but Keith already did that. In the meantime, here's the comment I posted to the article, which at this time is awaiting moderation approval. ~~~ Paleo Doesn't Mean Just One Thing I think Dr. Cordain is a real hero for being instrumental in helping to light the way to a more sane lifestyle. That said, there are many variations, some going by small-p 'paleo,' LC paleo, high fat paleo, primal, ancestral, evolutionary fitness, and so on. Why? Well, because our ancestors emerged out of Africa 50,000ish years ago and spread across the globe, and they adapted to different things, a prime example being the ability in some to digest lactose beyond weaning, which is actually a genetic mutation some 7,000ish years ago that turned off the gene that halts lactase production. So, it's reasonable to assume there are other adaptations and mutations, some subtile and some profound. In the end, studies of primitive peoples not in contact with industrial civilization demonstrate one thing very clearly: people can live healthfully on natural diets from equator to arctic circle, and those diets can include vast differences in macronutrient content. Protein can't be more...
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Swine Flu Sanity
Don't we just eat up hysteria? I'll bet Google is just raking in the hits, worldwide, as people watch in near real time as the swine flu virus spreads its lethal tentacles across the entire globe. Or not. This sort of hysteria is fueled by one simple thing, and it's something we deal with here all the time: mass ignorance of evolutionary biology and its logic. Human evolution is pretty slow (though getting faster), but bacteria and viruses evolve rapidly. Why? Simple: generational length and population size. The larger the population equals higher chances for "favorable" mutations (mutations that help survival and/or reproduction) and the shorter the generation equals more rapid dissemination of the modified genes throughout the population. Well, kinda, in this case. Our reason for concern, of course, is infection in humans and the ill effects, to include possible death. So, applying the logic above, we need a large population of infectious people in close proximity, and we need just exactly the right generational length. We have neither, in this case. The critical aspect is generational length. The only deaths have been in Mexico near the epicenter of the outbreak. The virus that killed those people is different...
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Workout Today
I don't post a lot about the specifics of my workouts. Why? Well, whereas all the diet & fasting stuff was very accessible and could be put into practice quickly -- with quick results to verify, repeat, verify, and so on -- workouts never struck me like that. I'm a neophyte (still) but that's changing. Also, I have a trainer and he's proven himself to be unconventional and actually willing to listen to me. Right off the bat, he said all I need is two 30-minute session per week of high intensity. That told me he had a lot right. Now, he often sports my Free the Animal T-shirt. That's pretty cool. There's a new book out there I may have mentioned. It's by reader and sometimes commenter Dr. Doug McGuff, Body by Science, which is soon coming up in my reading stack. In the meantime, workout guru extraordinaire, Keith Norris, has reviewed it in multiple parts here, here, and here. [Added later: Chris Highcock interviewed Dr. McGuff here, and here's another interview on video.] There's a bit of a coincidence. When I first began this journey two years ago, I went to the bookstore to pick up a book...
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Steak Tips Stew
Question from a comment: What did your first meal off your fast consist of? Glad you asked. How about this? As per usual, this is something I tortured myself with thinking about during the fast (not really). Equally as per usual, something I've never made exactly this way and probably never will again. Ingredients: steak tips, lard, 2 cups of home made bone broth, cranberries, pine nuts, chopped Brazil nuts, yellow onions, carrots, and Thai masamun curry. Brown the meat in lard, add the broth and cranberries ('bout a handful), cover and place in the oven at 200 for about 2 hours. The meat was already fall apart tender when I took it out. Add all the rest of the stuff in quantities that seem about right. One exception is the curry. This substitutes for all spices and you just want enough to make people say "wow, what's that?" I.e., you want the taste, but not so much it's obviously identifiable as even curry. In this case, it came out to about a rounded teaspoon for four large servings. Bring to a light boil long enough to get the carrots soft, about 20 minutes or so.
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HED: High Everything Diet (If eating garbage is your problem, just eat more of it)
Coming to one or more of your favorite blogs' comments section soon, if the messianic crusade on Peter's Hyperlipid blog is any indication. The comment thread in question begins here. He has also hit Dr. Eades on this post (there's no comment links, but the comments in question begin at 25 April 2009, 23:24). Now, Stephan's blog. In a nutshell, from one of his comments: HED = high-carbs + high-fat + high-calories HED = SAD - sugar - HFCS - PUFAs - TFAs I'm not going to recount all the specifics, as those are contained in the comments -- over and over -- if you're interested. I've said before that I don't think carbohydrate is the primary problem (for those without type 2 or borderline, or obsese), and the Kitavans and other H-G groups seem to prove that. In that regard, this HED does seem to eliminate at least some of what migh destroy a high-carb munching Kitavan's health, i.e., refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, processed vegetable oils (HEDers seem also not too fond of omega-3 PUFA -- the Ray Peat influence) and trans fatty-acids. He has also posted that lots of the low-carbers ignore the Kitavans, which is...
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Birthday Shoes Interview
Some may recall my post from the past, Learning to Walk, where I recounted my significant experience in daily walking, developing chronic foot pain, and retraining myself to walk in the process. Pretty much all shoes are awful for feet. Now I have an interview with photos up on the website Birthday Shoes - for the love of feet and vibram fivefingers.
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Losing 5 Pounds in a Day
I actually gave you a hint in the title of my previous post, Cold, Wet, Hungry, and Running For Your Life. Also, this is not the first time, and since I wrote fairly extensively on it before, I'm going to cover what I did differently and what I did on ocassions when this didn't work. In a nutshell, it's the cold water, again. However, the gym has in the last few months managed to keep the water at a steady 40 degrees rather than the 50 it used to be. Let me tell you: huge difference and it took quite a while to adapt to spending minutes at that temperature. So, the fast began around 1:30 PM, after a pretty big breakfast and lunch. To the left is self explanatory. To the right is leftover sauerkraut, which was Alexander Valley fresh sauerkraut (not caned), which is simply awesome, even uncooked. I had made this in the crock pot a couple of days earlier, with about 3 pounds of pork sparerib, an onion, and lots of caraway seeds. All the pork was gone, but not all the kraut and broth, so I used it with some uncured, gluten free polish sausage....
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“The Original Low-Carb Diet”
Just a quick hit, as I said earlier that I'd review Jimmy Moore's interview with Dr. Loren Cordain once I'd listened to it. First off, I highly recommend it. The best parts concern anti-nutrients and toxins in foods that a low-carber might eat, because the focus is on low carb and not on foods we evolved to eat (and the "foods" we should avoid like the plague). In other words, low-carbers often don't experience the sorts of health benefits paleos do, because many eat stuff like this and other modern concoctions. In essence, many are stuck in the same place as the low-fatters. You can only eat so much protein, the upper limit being around 1/3 of total energy. So, the remainder is going to be some combination of fat and carbohydrate. Consequently, the low-fatters are necessarily high-carbers, and industry has seen to it that they have plenty of low-fat processed products loaded with sugar and other crap. Conversely, industry is seeing to the low-carbers as well, giving them all sorts of processed "food" with cheap ingredients nobody ate for the 2.5 million years preceding the last 10,000 years. That would be all fine and good, but we're talking about...
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Not All Sugars are Equal
A quick hit on an interesting bit of new research, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks. Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose. Fasting plasma triglyceride concentrations increased by approximately 10% during 10 weeks of glucose consumption but not after fructose consumption. In contrast, hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) [RN: liver making fat] and the 23-hour postprandial triglyceride AUC were increased specifically during fructose consumption. Similarly, markers of altered lipid metabolism and lipoprotein remodeling, including fasting apoB, LDL, small dense LDL, oxidized LDL, and postprandial concentrations of remnant-like particle–triglyceride and –cholesterol significantly increased during fructose but not glucose consumption. In addition, fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels increased and insulin sensitivity decreased in subjects consuming fructose but not in those consuming...
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Cold, Wet, Hungry, and Running For Your Life
So, did any of you come up with some tweaks after yesterday's read? I've receive one email with some good ideas. That was really a good refresher for me, but I'm not going to tell you what I did yet. The reason is that I still have 9 hours to go on my 30-hr fast, a workout early this afternoon, followed by a "secret" technique, and I'm already down 5 full pounds from where I was when I began the fast. I want to see where I end up. Then I'll post.
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Feasting, Fasting, Insulin, HGH, Fat and Livers: A Roundup
I read two marvelously detailed, researched, informative and interesting blog post today that I had somehow missed. They are both by the same reader and commenter here, Robert McLeod, who as a physicist is pretty damn good at math and plain old logic. As an example, here's a kinda fun, tongue-in-cheek look at saturated fat epidemiology. I must warn you that these are pretty advanced. However, if you truly want to understand what's going on with fat accumulation and fat loss, I can think of no better way to spend a bit of time. The comments on both posts are good, too. The first of these is: Feast and Fast: the dichotomy of insulin and growth hormone. In a nutshell, he explains in brief, but in excellent detail just how insulin keeps your fat locked in and accumulates more, and just how growth hormone preserves your organs and muscles and releases your fat for use by the body. Here's what most of you already know: it's the high carbohydrate that keeps insulin elevated and makes you fatter and fatter with each passing year (you know, the diet recommended by the "experts"). But, did you also know the rest? So, to...
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Losing Weight is Pretty Much Like Eating Lard
I'm going to revisit a post from a few months ago; but first, I'm going to highlight a post by Tom Naughton, creator of the documentary film Fat Head, which I mini-reviewed here. Let me just mention that this is probably the best tool available for introducing friends and family to the notion of an evolutionary basis for diet. I have screened it with a number of both and the enthusiasm has been uniformly resounding. It's a Big Fat Deal. Alright, so here's Tom's clever post on his blog (notice that this blog is featured on his short blogroll amongst very good company; thanks, Tom). Can Your Own Bologna Kill You? See, Tom figured something out, and I'll give you a clue: It’s easy to find the breakdown of lard on the internet. It’s mostly oleic acid, palmitic acid and stearic acid, with several others making up the balance. Add them up, and it turns out that lard is about 38 percent saturated, 11 percent polyunsaturated, and 45 percent monosaturated. (The numbers don’t add up to 100 because some of the trace fats were unclassified.) [...] ...I finally found a paper in which the researchers stated that they extracted human...
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New Research Shows Vitamin D Reduces Risk of Cancer
I've been blogging about vitamin D for quite some time and it's always good to see the evidence piling up that it's a real health issue for many, if not most people. According to the D-Action project at Grassrootshealth, about 51% of people they've tested are below normal, which they consider to be above 40 ng/ml (I think you should be above 60, and I try to keep mine above 80). But, consider, these are the results of people who are concerned about their levels. I shudder to think what it must be for those unaware, using sunscreen and clothing to avoid sun exposure, and relying on fortified milk. Another piece of the puzzle hit the newsstands, today. A new study on nutrition and health shows vitamin D can significantly reduce the risk of several types of cancer. William B. Grant, director of the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center in San Francisco, reviewed and summarized the ecological studies of solar ultraviolet B (UVB), vitamin D and cancer since 2000. The strongest associations between vitamin D from the sun and cancer were found with colon and breast cancers, but links have also been found with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, ovarian cancer and...
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Cordain, again…
In anticipation of this Thursday's release of Jimmy Moore's interview of Loren Cordain, which I'll blog about after I listen to it, I had a tidbit to report from Cordain's free newsletter, which I subscribe to. The latest issue (v5, #16) is The Impact of Saturated Fat on Health. For those new to all this, Loren Cordain wrote The Paleo Diet, a book that when I last wrote about it, I lamented not being able to toss my ebook reader across the room. I have a love/hate thing going with Cordain. I love the principles, i.e., the fact of our evolution, how long agriculture has been a part of that, and how such facts inform our logic as to what things we ought to eat and not eat for optimal health, lean bodies, and taking years off your look. I hate his ideas regarding saturated fat, and unfortunately suspect that he takes this position out of convenience and then uses silly science to justify it. Here, from the latest newsletter: The estimation of saturated fats from animal sources is more complex because hunter-gatherers typically ate the entire edible carcass,10-11 necessitating the calculation of the total edible carcass saturated fatty acid...
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Mastery and Control of Your Life
Reader and commenter Tin Tin sent me the following and it's really special. It aired on Australia's 60-Minutes program. Backyard Revolution. Of course, as with virtually everything you see, there's the continual emphasis on eating plants and demonization of fat. But look beyond that. This is more about real food, and even more -- if you pay close attention -- this is about taking responsibility for your food and ultimately, mastery and control of your own life. The video is about 12 minutes long, the first half of which is about backyard gardening, primarily. The second half is better, featuring Link Walker -- who lives off the land along with his family -- and professor Kerin O'Dea. It's slightly funny that so much of the piece is about fruits and vegetables ("Low in Fat!!! Yea"), yet watch what Link and his family are up to: getting meat, and lots of it. Here's a notable quote from O'Dea, who took Australian Aborigines suffering from the typical laundry list of modern diseases into the bush to live off the land for seven weeks: We lived off the land for seven weeks and in that time, all of the metabolic abnormalities of diabetes...
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Big Chunk of Grilled Meat
Here was dinner the first night, at Little Rhein Steakhouse. Established in 1967, I highly recommend it. Here's the lineup. Beefsteak tomato salad, which Bea & I split. I had the ribeye, and it was among the best ever. And we split a baked potato, improving it with lots of butter, sour cream, and bacon.
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Random Me
Taken by Bea, earlier today on San Antonio's River Walk.
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A Good Doc
First: Kudos out to frequent commenter "Paleo Newbe" MD, who continues to brave the [some] abuse, here. He has the difficult balancing act of being a rational doc, but also keeping his license. To my mind, this sort of thing needs to be encouraged. I salute him. The reason for that, above, is to highlight the good work of my mom's doc, as differentiated from the advice nurse. The doctor is very pleased with my progress. He believes the problem is the Metformin. He kind of got after me for not contacting him sooner, when I started vomiting every day. Anyway, I was taking 1,000 MG of Metforin in the morning and another 1,000 at night. He wants me to cut that in half and he wants me off it as soon as possible, but wants me to lose another 15 to 20 pounds. So that's my current goal. I am going to try fasting, now. He thinks it's very good that I'm off the heart-burn meds, and the cholesterol meds. He cut my blood pressure med in half. He believes that my blood pressure is weight related, so when I lose some more weight, we will try taking that...
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