Archives for January 2011

When Time Runs Out

Yea, 30 is the new 20. 40 is the new 30. …And 50?

See, that’s a harder pill to swallow, at least to my mind. While there are innumerable rites associated with aging…and this has to go back eons, there’s a point where in your own mind if nowhere else, you have to concede that the gig is up, and now you’re an “elder” member of society.

And while there’s a certain discontent, going from “the new 30s” to elder status in a day, there’s also a certain embrace of the thing for me that I’m finding comfortable. Perhaps it’s time. Can family and society be comprised only of “young people?” Can one still be young at heart while at very least, show some elder maturity; some wisdom; some sense that one has had some experiences, learned a lesson or two and that just perhaps, it’s worth listening to?

This goes even to listening to one’s self. I wish I’d an inkling 5-10 years ago of what I now understand as the constant cycling of global markets, rises and falls (randomness, in a word). I’d easily be 1/2 million richer. Instead, I find myself scrambling to recapture what I already had in my grasp (and bank account). Then again, the lesson I now take home seems not that far off from what I observed in terms of the behavior of my four grandparents who had survived a massive World War (that renders us all pussies in comparison, by mere circumstance), along with a global depression of huge proportion as icing. Most oft, I saw their behavior as outdated, fear motivated, or even quaint and cutely endearing. Not profoundly wise as I do now. My bust.

I’d have always loved to have been willing and of sufficient gut to be the big risk taker…so long as I came out on top; or alternatively, been quickly devastated so as to recognize clear failure quickly and reverse course. But how often does that former instance work out and, perhaps I watch too many movies. In reality, I did take risks, lots of ’em, and for the most part, managed. But I feel as though I played too much of a middle road, never making it HUGE, never putting so much on the line as to potentially knock the fuckin’ shit out of myself, so that I could try something else entirely. But in many ways, it feels beyond that, now. I have responsibilities.

I suppose I still could. That’s an ongoing internal debate. But it’s not for now, at least in this post. Right now is the time I reflect on what is, how it came to be like this, and what I can do now. And that has a lot to do with taking serious account of experience and paying the fuck attention to it.

Now, “50-years-old” is as arbitrary as anything else. For instance, you’re not incompetent to drive a car one day and fully vested in trust the next, when you turn 16. And it’s not like you can’t handle a few serious beverages at 20 years and 364 days but magically, get a super-liver, metabolic godhood and some fine sense in a day.

We have many arbitrary rites of passage in our world. How was it way back when? Well, I suppose they could have and did count the passing of seasons. Puberty would have been a biggie, for obvious reasons (more hunters, more gatherers…musta been cool for the guys back then). But how about the more nebulous reasons after that? I dunno, but I would surely like to imagine that age was knowledge. That would be a perfectly meritorious means of counting for age. You could easily imagine there being a 10 years or more range in terms of physical age, plus or minus, counting on just knowledge, experience, effectiveness, success and results.

But now we’re a collectivized equivalent of an ant hill or bee hive, and you have your place. And some bees & ants are created more “equal” than others, and they have parents, relatives and friends of influence in the hill & hive. And your place changes with age and decrepitude. We have arbitrary ages for everything and they count for nothing real except the arbitrary turning of the Earth around the Sun (at least we finally got that right). It goes hand-in-hand with the neolithic notion that we’re subjects who require masters; and far from being able to manage individual prowess, they arbitrarily assign age. It’s the given, now.

And so that’s of course why I fought it for so long and in fact, did a good job I think in making the last 3-4 years of my 40s pretty remarkable, counting my own progress, the growth of this blog resource, and the many hundreds who have reported their own results — even for many long ago “Old Fuckers.”

So in the end, this post is somewhat of a thinking out loud. In all my reflections over the past weeks the issue of this blog has never been in doubt — only how to continue to grow it and build influence while keeping the fuck-you spirit alive. I have no idea how to do it other than to simply do what I do. Passing this threshold only makes me more serious about my reality of life (fuck that “gift” shit). In turn, that makes me more serious about those things I pay a lot of attention to and spend a lot of time on.

To sum it all up into something very simple: I’m somewhat in awe that I’ve reached this age at the physical and mental state I am. I am as lean as I was in college, far stronger than any time in my life, feel great all the time (excepting the current neck & shoulder issue that will pass), and yet have some uncertainties about what I really want to do.

Even simpler: Make the 2nd 50 even better than the first.

Good luck, 20-fucking-sumthings. If you’re smart, realize the questions never end: they just become different. And if you’re smarter, you know that already. And if you’re the rare smartest, you’re trying to anticipate and resolve them even now. And good for you if you are.

~~~

I want to take a moment to thank all the commenters in my recents post for one, wishing me a happy birthday…and it was, in spite of pain (but I self medicated). For second, I got all sorts of advice and insight on my shoulder injury and so much of it was useful. As it stands now, I likely have no shoulder injury, but rather something causing a sort of nerve impingement/inflammation around c4-5 in my neck. It was the guys at Janzen & Janzen who figured that out, without imaging. But in poking, prodding and putting pressure on those areas of my neck, they can send me into writhing pain the likes of which is precisely what I have been feeling combined with an excruciating intensity I have never felt. Most likely a herniated disc in the region, since x-ray revealed no bone abnormality.

Next up: an MRI (and a prescription of Vicodin)

Oh, an if there’s anything here worth sharing, please do so with the Facebook and Twitter buttons up top.

Oh Noes!

Don Matesz has a different take on an aspect of Paleo-ish than I? Well, this means war! First it was the Johnsonian "War on Poverty;" then, the Nixonian "War on Drugs;" and then, we got used to always being at war with someone over something. We’re America, goddammit! We’d better be at War! Indeed, love is War. Peace is War. Life…is War.

Suppose I’ll have to head out to Phoenix, sos we can have it out — Don & I —  mano-a-mano, as I think they say it out in those backwards places. I mean…his post…on the heals of mine…

I’ve been dissed! Don dissed me!

Now, if what I was representing was mainstream media something, and Don, something else, equally mainstream…y’know, something like an abducted, likely raped and dead pretty young bond white  girl — and certainly not a black one (especially not black black – we prefer our mulattos), hispanic, asian — or my God forbid, a male….then even this little disagreement could take on national, yea, International proportions (so long as ad bucks flowed, news whore suckers).

Or maybe not. Will human nutrition ever take on a prominent stage, or is food-in-boxes the last real word and it’s really, going forward, only about treadmills? …The jury will now retire to deliberate.

Ok, so after a long prelude to a short post, I think Don wanted to use good science to defend a sweeping dismissal of vegetables, which I would support. I, on the other hand, simply used the article like a cheap whore to bolster my nagging impatience with those who can’t seem to say, "yea, my diet? Well, when I’m not consuming animal flesh and devouring livers, hearts, other internal organs and the cornucopia of varietals of animal fat, I’m doing my best to choke down a bit of spinach."

Now assuming that’s not hyperbole, which it certainly is, which is better?

And that’s my point.

To belabor it, I am not dissing vegetables per se. Rather, I really want to see them on just about every plate, in their place. Here’s a fact: the variety of flavor and texture in fruits and vegetables (and herbs & spices as subs) is unmatched by animal products. Conversely, the quantity and quality of essential nutrition in animal products is unmatched by fruits and vegetables.

And so, marriage seems appropriate and that’s why we’re always setting them up on our plates. And it’s a good marriage.

It’s just that sometimes, the guy like to be alone.

Rib Tips

And sometimes, he likes to stray altogether, but in a light, tasty sort of way.

Adultery

Inspiration for that later was provided by my main local bud, Robert Chon, with whom I, Bea and his wife Julie just spent the weekend in San Francisco. Robert will walk barefoot for miles on bare glass for just a lick of cucumber.

Just ask him. 🙂

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Back when I was just transitioning into Paleoish eating, one goal was to get off my prescription medications I’d been on for a long time. One of those was for seasonal allergies that I had come to have to take year round for the previous decade. The other was various Proton Pump Inhibitors prescribed for what I called "nuclear heartburn," officially knows as Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD).

What I found in the end is that I just began forgetting to take both, eventually realizing I didn’t need them.

That was a few years ago, and after some experience with family members and anecdotes I’d heard over the years, I had a pretty good idea how one might successfully go cold turkey when I got an email from a reader a couple of weeks ago.

I have a question or 2 for you. I remember reading that you used to take anti-gerd medicine (prilosec?). My question is, do you wean yourself off it (going from every other day to every 3 days, to once/week) or did you quit cold turkey? …

For what it’s worth, the Paleo-ish is going well. I’ve lost a couple of inches around the waist and feel great. I say paleo-ish, because I’m doing the 80-20 thing. I allow myself one pasta meal/week, although I make sure to do it the Italian way and not have pasta be the dominant item on the plate. And as a nod to my Bavarian heritage (born and raised), I drink one wheat beer a day with dinner. I can claim that the beer is medicinal, when I was in the hospital in Munich recovering from kidney stones, my doctor told me that if I drank a wheat beer a day that I’d never get another one. 23 years of following his advice and I haven’t had one since.

Basically, I just asked myself what I’d do if I were back at the start to go cold turkey, knowing what I know now. My 1-2-3 reply.

Best to go cold turkey on the GERD meds in my view. Here’s a couple of tips to help you if you have problems:

1. Go pure paleo for a few days to a week, no added fat, i.e., lean meats & veggies with at most a drizzle of olive oil.
2. No alcohol, coffee, tea, or tobacco during that pure paleo week. Water only.
3. Supplement with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), about a level tsp mixed in water after each meal if you get heartburn.

Most people seem to get back to normal within about a week. But you’ll definitely want to forego the pasta and the beer for that week.

Congrats on the success.

How could it be any simpler? And for this reader, apparently it was pretty simple, for I received this email just a few days ago.

Worked like a charm. Now working on getting rid of the lipitor. And after I’ve lost 20 lbs, I’ll be able to convince my doctor to drop the blood pressure meds. (as I did doing Ornish/Pritikin).

Glad he could follow the simple advice, advice he’d likely never get from a drug pusher in a white coat.

Any other tips from self-experimentation experience? I know some recommend betaine HCL, probiotics, digestive enzymes and such, but personally I have never noticed any benefit with any of those for myself.

In terms of learning everything you always wanted to know about GERD, what it really is (too little, not too much stomach acid), how devastating PPI GERD meds can be long term and why you want to get off them, Chis Kresser is the go-to guy on this. See his multi-part series at The Healthy Skeptic.

For the newbies just leaning about how to go Paleoish, here’s a primer with links to follow.

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Just a quick note before heading out for the weekend.

I was contacted by Julie Deardorff of the Chicago Tribune for some supplemental info for an article she was doing. And here it is: How to give up soap. I was particularly gratified that she got in a few bits about paleo, particularly that it’s not reenactment.

Proponents of a paleo-type diet generally avoid dairy and grains and try to eat as our ancestors once did. Nikoley said he isn’t trying to emulate a caveman, but he lost 60 pounds and his health improved after he eliminated grains, sugar, modern processed cooking oils, and most dairy.

"My high blood pressure normalized, I got off allergy meds I’d been on since college, and GERD meds I’d been on for a decade," he wrote in an email. "In other words I do it because I get excellent results, feel better, have stable energy, and so on."

Giving up soap, he reasoned, was primarily a matter of convenience as long as the results were acceptable. But then he found that washing only with water was actually better than using soap.

Still in a bit too much shoulder pain to blog much, but we’ll give ‘er a try as soon as possible.

Talk about piling on. I’ve been having long bouts of aching, stabbing pain in my right shoulder — since mid December, about a month now — and the intensity is not really getting any better. The pain shifts, from the trapezius to the rear of the deltoid, suggesting to me, at least, that I might be dealing with nerve issues as much as actual torn ligament or muscle. But well see. Thanks to a couple of commenters, I now have a self-directed course to pursue. Eric Lapine, and then Michael in a couple of comments really gave me some stuff to check out. Here, and here.

Last Thursday I went to the gym and did some light pulls in various ways and that seemed to help. Even if I do air rows and really get into collapsing the scapula, I get relief (I’ve learned to do this in bed, even).

Ibuprofen reminds me that I actually should love the drug companies. Had I not taken 800mg a bit ago, I would not even be writing this post. But I still hurt and I have to say that I’m just hating all of this.

Anyway, in that second link above, Michael makes reference to Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. Well, I once shared lunch with Tim & Dr. Mike Eades in San Francisco and while Tim is impressive as hell, I don’t know about the super-human stuff. On the other hand, I got where I am with 60 pounds of fat loss largely by self experimentation, so who am I to question? To each his own experiments. And I do like how Tim is promoting very decent dietary guidelines…

…Now this is about 24 hours later. I just couldn’t finish the post. Yesterday was one of the worst days in a month. But I did make an appointment with Janzen & Janzen, mentioned by Tim in his book, and was present & accounted for by 8:40 am at their offices, only 10 minutes away. Mike Janzen and one of his physical therapists spent a good 2 hours with me: to both get the medical history, trying diagnose exactly what was going on (which involved quite a bit of manipulation in itself), and then an excruciating ART treatment, first by the assistant and then by Mike. …A hundred & sixty bucks. I was surprised at how modest the charge was, considering the time spent by two professionals. And since we won’t have the workup for subsequent treatments, it’ll be a lot less.

The result is that now I have more of a dull, constant pain, and not the sharp, agonizing pain that had me fantasizing about either cutting off my own arm, or having a .40 caliber for dinner. I go in again on Friday. In addition, he gave me a lot of ergonomic tips for such things as typing, mousing, and so on, that were really causing a lot of pain.

~~~

Now here’s something I’ve been waiting two years to blog about because I finally found out what the problem was. Ever heard of "Pine Mouth?"

This began in the spring, almost two years ago. We were attending a wedding. There was lots of food. But, I was also drinking and didn’t notice anything immediately. The next morning I went out to a local cafe and ordered a nice ribeye steak & eggs. And then I sent it back because it tasted awful; bitter, metallic. It made me lose my appetite for steak so I asked them to bring bacon instead. Still, I had the awful flavor, but just chalked it up to the "bad meat."

And then I had dinner later that day, and everything tasted the same: awful, bitter, metallic. And so it went; for days and days, perhaps a week or so. It finally cleared, and then happened again some weeks later. I did plenty of Googling but could never zero in because there were no clear set of symptoms matched with any possible cause I could find.

…Until two nights ago, when it happened again; and I immediately guessed the cause: pine nuts. I understand why this never occurred to me as a cause before, because I cooked with Trader Joe’s pine nuts quite a bit at the time. Along my paleo path I have almost completely stopped eating nuts, just naturally. Every now and then, maybe every couple of months. But no pine nuts in a long time. But the other day I was shopping and I grabbed a bag (toasted pine nuts). Then I thought they might go well in a loin of lamb I braised the other night. Wham! Immediately. First bite. And it still persists. Now that I had a likely cause it was simple to immediately find out what was going on: ‘Pine Mouth’: How Pine Nuts Can Ruin Tastebuds for Weeks. I find this of particular interest:

Another hypothesis — one that is becoming increasingly accepted — is that certain non-edible varieties of pine nuts are being passed off in the marketplace as the edible variety, Munk says. Some researchers have implicated China in exporting these non-edible pine nuts.

It’s interesting because I grew up eating pine nuts a lot. My grandparents would pick them, and I went along a time or two, on the road between Reno and Virginia City. They would lightly roast them, just enough so the thin shells world become brittle, and they were easy to crack, but the flesh inside was still soft, though firm. I used to like to just break that soft meat and then pull, and see if I could get the inner stem to remain intact.

So, I’m interested in a couple of things. first and foremost is if any of the brainiacs out there have any speculations about all of this. Second, if anyone has a good source for pine nuts, preferably in the shell. I have to delve into this.

[/file/ too weird]

Go ahead and alert your Facebook Friends and Twitter followers to my misery, if you like.

Alright, I just couldn’t resist. While I no longer catch a lot of heat for my potato eating ways, there are still a few of the low carb Paleo zealots around. I have in the past reported on my lipid panels, back in 2008 and then again in early 2009, almost two years ago.

Despite the fact that I don’t really see cholesterol as any sort of problem to be managed (manage your diet, i.e., eat Real Food, and let the numbers take care of themselves) it is, at least, some measure of confidence that something’s amiss in conventional “wisdom,” since I ought to have “awful numbers,” given the high amount of fat and saturated fat I ingest, albeit mostly all from Real Food sources.

So here’s the latest results:

Lipid Panel 1-11-2011

Of course, calculated LDL is bullshit, and especially so when you have low triglycerides. But, the Iranians of all people came up with a better formula for calculating LDL when trigs are low. And so:

Friedewald (1972) Formula: LDL = TC – HDL – TG/5.0 (mg/dL)

Iranian (2008) Formula: LDL = TC/1.19 + TG/1.9 – HDL/1.1 – 38 (mg/dL)

Plugging the numbers into the Iranian formula calculator yields a calculated LDL of 57 mg/dL vs. 91 mg/dL for the Friedewald equation. Well, let’s see how it stacks up, because I requested an LDL Direct, where they actually measure LDL instead of calculate it.

LDL Direct 1-11-2011

So actually, in my case, the Friedewald was actually off by only 9 units, so far closer than the one rendered by the alternative. However, what’s important to note is that in my experience for those with low trigs, the Friedewald equation almost always overstates LDL, a very convenient situation for the statin pushers.

Let’s take a look at the various ratios. Here they were from March, 2009 (percentages are improvements from the July, 2008 tests).

• Total/HDL = 1.68 (19% improvement; I’m now off the scale)
• HDL/LDL = 2.02 (98% improvement; again off the scale)
• TG/HDL = 0.35 (20% improvement; off the scale)

And now:

• Total/HDL = 1.96 (average is 4-6 and ideal is 2-3; still off the scale)
• HDL/LDL = 1.24 (average is .3-.4 and ideal is above .4; off the scale)
• TG/HDL = 0.36 (optimal is <2; off the scale)

And so, I guess those higher carb days, mostly from potatoes are not actually dumping fat into my bloodstream as high triglycerides. 37 mg/dL is pretty dam low. If that’s not evidence of an overall low carb diet, I don’t know what is.

I have one other issue to discuss and that’s alcohol consumption. I’m sure most everyone knows I’m a bit of a boozer. I love my scotch and I tolerate it pretty well. And while I’ll go a day or so without, it’s pretty much a daily deal for me to ingest a few. And so, I was curious to see what my alanine aminotransferase (ALT) would be.

The alanine aminotransferase (ALT) blood test is typically used to detect liver injury. It is often ordered in conjunction with aspartate aminotransferase (AST) or as part of a liver panel to screen for and/or help diagnose liver disease. AST and ALT are considered to be two of the most important tests to detect liver injury, although ALT is more specific than AST. Sometimes AST is compared directly to ALT and an AST/ALT ratio is calculated. This ratio may be used to distinguish between different causes of liver damage.

The last one I had was in July of 2008, roughly 9 months into pretty clean eating, a year into my working out at the gym, and 6 months into my fasting. I believe my weight was around 210 at the time, down from 235 (I’m now 175ish).

ALT 1 11 2011

You can click to enlarge, but what you want is 36 U/L or less. Less is better. My test from 2008 was 28, pretty close to the top of the range. I’m now at 16. Here’s the graph.

ALT Comparison

Pretty much cut that enzyme in half. But how can that be? I could see it staying the same, given my boozing ways, but to cut in half?

Here’s my speculation: the crap that the “experts” and “authorities” tell you to eat, such as grain products, cereals, much with sugar and in particular, high levels of fructose is, in the final analysis, far worse for you than even heavy alcohol consumption, especially if you drink spirits like I do and not beer and sweet drinks.

Pretty counter intuitive, but I guess I expect nothing less from our Puritanical culture that just has to glorify the stuff really making you fat and damaging your liver while demonizing the stuff that’s probably a wash in the context of an otherwise good, Real Food diet that eschews the garbage “foods.” Perhaps Dr. Robert Lustig ought to rethink his quote that “fructose is alcohol without the buzz,” to something along the lines of fructose and other sugary crap is far worse than alcohol (and still without the buzz).

Still on the subject of alcohol, Martin Berkhan has up a very informative post about alcohol in the context of fat loss and muscle growth.

I do find it interesting that over these two and a half years since first tested, that both my LDL and ALT liver enzymes have dropped. It made me think about Chris Masterjohn’s recent post about how elevated LDL on a LC paleo or low-carb diet in general is possibly being caused by your liver clearing out its fat deposits over time.

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I hadn’t intended to post anything until I get up Part I of my series on the Paleo life way for beginners, likely Sunday night or Monday morning. But this fits right in, given that I’m doing this for whomever are interested of the 80,000 Boing Boing and GIZMODO readers who visited this blog last week.

So let me get right into Marc’s story, a reader who came over from the FARK link on New Year’s Day, 2010 to have a laugh at a guy who’d given up soap and shampoo for water only.

~~~

This is a little late, I promised you in comments that I would send you my story by the end of the year but life got busy. Maybe it could still be inspirational to some in sticking to their new years resolutions. I know you recently had a post that New Years resolutions are bullshit, and I too made and broke the "lose weight" resolution many times before. I think it is relevant though that my success began with a new years resolution. It often amazes me how life can present you with the exact information you need at the moment you are ready to receive it.

Last January 1st I was pretty hung over and just lounging around and surfing the internet. I made the usual resolution to "lose weight" but this time, I actually quantified it. I resolved to lose 40lbs. I had no particular strategy to do this other than eat better/less and move more. Since my birthday is the 3rd I usually try to never start a resolution until the 4th so it really wasn’t on my mind. I was just mindlessly surfing Fark.com reading funny stories when I saw a link about a guy who quit using soap. The fark tag was funny so I followed the link to have a laugh at your expense. The thing is, when I got here and read what you had to say I found rather than laughing at your ideas I found them intriguing. I moved from your soap article to your dietary articles and was immediately struck by how these ideas passed my logical mind’s bullshit detector, i.e. common sense when looked at from this new perspective. I spent from about 8:00pm to 4:00am reading your site, and the sites you linked to. I knew right then that this was something I was going to do.

As I said in the comment you blogged about, you changed my life. Let me tell you how. When I found your site I was about to turn 34 and weighed about 270 pounds. I had been probably 40 pounds over weight for many years but had rapidly put on another 40 pounds in the last few years due to a perfect storm of quitting smoking, having a son, and many long hours of sedentary work and then studying for professional certifications in the evenings. I could no longer look in the mirror and pretend like maybe I at least carried it well.

I also had many health issues, not all of which I attributed to diet but now so obviously are. I had acid reflux so bad I would wake up in the night vomiting acid. I tried both over the counter and prescription prilosec/zegerid. These were somewhat effective but woe was me if I missed a pill or two. I live in a high allergy area and suffered accordingly. I daily took Allegra D or Claratin D twice daily. I was having some sort of arthritis/carpal tunnel symptoms in my hands that gave me poor grip strength and pain. For years I had these occasional spells which now I can only presume was some sort of pre-diabetes. They started out rare but had become more frequent. If I skipped a meal and exerted myself I would sometimes have what I would describe as some sort of hypoglycemic episode. I would get tunnel vision and become very lethargic as well as feeling like I was about to faint. Usually I would rapidly sit down and then try to find some type of bread or juice to drink. When I brought this up to my doctor his advice was "try not to let yourself get hungry". This guy had pushed the conventional low-fat chicken breast and salad routine to me for years and was threatening to put me on statin drugs. I no longer see him.

After discovering your site I have rapidly been healing my body and all of these conditions. You can see from the attached before and progress pictures that I have lost about 65 pounds. Going from ~270 to ~205. I am no longer on any medications and I am free of symptoms of all the above conditions. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to breathe clear when all my co-workers are calling in sick due to allergies.

I attribute all of this healing to intermittent fasting and my diet. I would describe my diet as lacto-paleo. Probably closest to Dr. Harris’s Panu of the "paleo" sub cultures. I also practice Mark Sisson’s 80/20 rule and don’t penalize myself for imperfection. I try to eat grass-fed but probably only succeed about half the time or less. My big cheats are likely to be tacos or chips and salsa rather than cake or candy. This still amazes my wife since I had a huge sweet tooth. I also switched from beer to wine.The weight loss didn’t come all at once. When I first started I rapidly lost 8 or 10 pounds. Then I lost 3-4 pounds a week for several weeks, then 1-2lb/week, etc. I had a few stalls, A couple went on for weeks and then, just about the time I was questioning everything I rapidly lost several pounds.

During all of this weight loss I never once set foot in a gym. I never jogged, biked, or any other kind of cardio. My job is sedentary, but I do get some activity through yard work, light construction projects around the house, and chasing my two year old around. I have definitely gotten more active, even unintentionally. I think Gary Taubes is right, we confuse correlation with causation. I believe I got sedentary because I got fat, rather than the conventional notion that I got fat because I was sedentary/lazy.

Last but definitely not least, and hopefully this doesn’t embarrass my wife too bad, but the diet is way better than viagra. That’s probably enough said about that.

So this is my story. It doesn’t seem like enough to just say thank you to the guy that saved your life, but a heart felt thanks to you Richard. Your influence spirals outward as people see my progress and I point them here and to paleonu (so glad he is posting again). As for me? In the new year I am headed into the gym for the first time in a long time. I am determined to get serious about weight training to further my progress. I am keenly following your Lean Gains articles.

Marc Before After

~~~

A hearty congratulations to Marc. His reward for listening to what is essentially some common sense is to regain a life he can be most proud of an enjoy. It’s the ultimate reward.

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This is a preface to a multi-part series that I am excited beyond terrestrial measure to deliver. I’ll make it a very short preliminary story.

Just over a year ago I reluctantly posted about having gone six months using no soap or shampoo in the shower. Water only. I was reluctant because I thought I might get hammered even though I’m pretty in-your-face as a general rule, as those regular readers well know. But this was personal. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, did it anyway and to my welcome surprise, it was picked up by Boing Boing, then Fark, and within days, my blog went from getting 1-2,000 visits per day to more than double that, on average.

But OK, that was a random gift out of nowhere, right? That’s how I saw it, initially, and I didn’t do much about it. But my average traffic doubled to 3-4,000 visits per day and I’ve held onto that and have grown it over the last year. This end-of-year, I did an update and Boing Boing published it, and it got picked up by GIZMODO today. Traffic is astounding. Tens of thousand of visitors per day.

So now I’ll get into the meat of this. This focusses on the principals that guide the 3-4 posts to follow. …But I must deliver some bad news at the same time. The no soap or shampoo deal is at best 5% of the total equation and probably much less than that. I won’t be addressing it until the final post, as merely one of many self-experiments undertaken. just the way it goes and I’m sorry, but if that’s a disapointment, that’s what it is.

~~~

What do you think you really know?

I know you know a lot. So much so, you can take a lot for granted…not thinking about it in the least: you don’t guard your step out of your abode in the morning for fear of gravity having been repealed by the gods. You recognize water, instinctively — in the finest sense of a wild animal going back eons — and you drink without thought to consequence. You move about as you do on foot with natural confidence, and now, in machines…regularly in machines of potential lethal mass destruction; you do it every day, and that’s a big deal that you are left alone to contemplate…that important responsibility. Think seriously about that, the potential destruction you could wreak. …Yet you go about it in a relative quotidian trance.

It could challenge the mind, but it doesn’t, and it’s but one example; why it doesn’t is a simple thought experiment I shall leave totally unanswered because, by the end of this series, the answer ought to be obvious to all.

The very coolest thing about the “paleo” movement is that it is totally and completely awash in every sort of ideological persuasion you can imagine. Just spend a week reading comments on my blog. How in the fuck an atheist and anarchist such as I can have fundamentalist Christians, lefty commies, conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats, hippies, spiritualists, scientists, MDs, PhDs, evolutionists, anthropologists, creationists, and whatever and whoever else you can think of…reading, commenting, and largely being civil to one-another on some sense of common ground is to me, less of a step forward than it its a solemn responsibility to recognize, nurture, and keep alive. I’m impressed. I’m appreciative.

This tells me the same thing many have gotten and are coming to realize. We are onto something. It may be big. There is a natural allure. I think it’s complex, and the no soap or shampoo thing I think substantiates the idea that there’s some part of paleo that attracts everyone.

But why listen to me? Well, if you don’t know me you might ought have no reason in the world. You can read my About page. I’ve been around, lived around, done a few things. And I got fat. I fixed that to the tune of 60 pounds, got stronger, got off meds, and lots of other things including recently, a 325 pound deadlift at 50 years old. I went through a bunch of self-experiments to lose that weight, documented here.

I blogged about it. Gotta be more than 1,000 posts by now, since 2007. And eventually, it got some notice, with some help from my friends. I was interviewed in Der Spiegel. Shortly later, Macleans of Canada. A paid article for DRW Magazine. Then a radio interview in Canada. Jimmy Moore interviewed me on his podcast. And more recently, an interview with Healthy Mind; Fit Body.

Doesn’t mean shit if I’m wrong, and that’s all that counts. What it means is that a of of people are listening, and if I may suggest, these are not the people watching Entertainment Tonight. Nope. They’re people like you: on the Internet; slowly, but very  surely getting comfortable with the radical notion that…you’re on your own, but also that you have more knowledge at your disposal — at the tips of your fingers — than did kings and queens of old. But more than that: that you are competent to get it.

But how do you know? I mean: how do you really know? I’m going to submit to you a radical proposition:

• You can’t know unless you’ve tried it on yourself with success or failure.

It could be inconclusive, in which case you still don’t know…with the saving virtue of knowing that you don’t know. There’s a corollary:

• All Medical studies are meaningless until you confirm their results personally.

And so here’s my scientific method throughout.

From the starting point of some guy; I read about, think about, study about, research about evolutionary biology in the widest sense. From that, I come up with ideas. I test them on myself. I see how it goes. I blog about it. Readers experiment. They report results in comments. Repeat.

There you have it. We’re all still waiting for the food and drug manufacturers to come give us big paychecks.

The theme will be my own self experimentation bolstered — and in a big way — by my thousands of daily readers who have likewise undergone the same self-experiemnts and have reported their results in thousands of comments.

And I am happy to report that the results have been fantastic, but that’s only because we gained the confidence to think for ourselves, experiment on ourselves, and tell our stories. But above all, readers here are generally in agreement that there’s something about the Animal, that we are him, and that when we respect our nature as such, good and interesting things result.

I will conclude with a stark example of self experimentation. If you don’t know where the tiny South Pacific island Nauru lies, don’t sweat it, because it seems to me that these dear folks have no clue where they’ve even been themselves. So here, let me show you where they’ve been.

I Love My Pizza

And another.

Just back from McDonalds

I just wonder: is this not one of the greatest controlled & randomized experiments ever? Consider that this is the smallest island nation in the world at 8 sq. miles. You can drive its perimeter in about 20 minutes, in traffic. Population is around 14,000, and it’s about 400 miles from the nearest commercial port from whence products may come.

In the 1980s they got a bit rich, owing to their phosphorous deposits going back to when birds first began to shit (a long time). So it goes full circle. The phosphorous is sold for fertilizer (“Fortified?”) that grows crops that are used in packaged & canned products that, now that the Nauruans have the income, can buy buy back, but for a mere portion of their original profit, including shipping two ways, processing, and packaging. As a consequence, relatively cheap canned and processed foods have entirely pushed out anything fresh. There are zero fresh vegetables, fruits, meats sold in the markets. You want it? Gotta grow it yourself.

That is an economic win-win, if I’ve ever seen one. In pure terms of econimic efficiencly, how can you not possibly marvel?

But there was a huge external cost that they could not have foreseen. So, this is never about rolling back the technological progress we’ve seen or the resultant economic efficiencies we enjoy as a result (more for less; basically), but about simply understanding our natures as biologically Wild Animals in all of this, in a zoo that for some reason finds it a mystery…how to properly feed us, (while all the while, regular zoos have not a problem in the same regard). Take what’s good and works. Leave the rest. And educate.

And with that, let’s get to the short video, about 8 minutes. Check those pictures above, again, and see what a 100% diet of canned, packaged, processded food can do to grandmothers, mothers, fathers, children. You see, the island is now known as “The Fattest Place on Earth.” 95% obesity. 50% Type II diabetes. Watch now.

And so this will be the touchstone and fiber that runs through the rest of my posts.

Update: Just one more reason to pay attention. Here’s the story of a man who linked over here from FARK on New Year’s Day, 2010, hungover, and to have a laugh. Then he proceeded to lose 65 ugly pounds.

Update 3/19/2011: This intended series has now been superseded by a “Hacker’s Quick-Start Guide” that will be published as a free eBook download by the end of March, 2011.

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Time for a little food porn as I put finishing touches on the Preface post for a series on paleo for beginners that will be the mainstay of next week.

Last night I took one grassfed New York and one ribeye out of the freezer from my Marin Sun Farms CSA. Submerge them in tepid water and they thaw within about 30 minutes.

Since I intended to sear and cook them in cast iron with enough leaf lard that they don’t stick, then deglaze with red wine (a pinot noir), reduce, then reduce beef stock and thicken, no seasonings or spices. Do it after. As always, click on the images for hi-res.

New York and Ribeye

You really want to swish them around so there’s no stickage. Then, cover for 4-5 minutes. These are at medium high. Then flip ’em and go 3-4 minutes. For medium rare, I want to see some of the internal fat beginning to emerge from the sear. Done.

BS Before Sauce

Then I set to work on the sauce as this rests in a warm oven. I described the process here. In this case, I added about a half cup red wine to the pan (without draining), deglazed, reduced to a syrup, added about 2/3 cup or so of beef stock, reduced, and finished it with about 1/4 tsp of potato starch in a cold beef stock slurry to thicken.

AS After Sauce

In the end, zero spices or seasonings were required. Not even salt or pepper.

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FAT: delicious fat; light, but subtly peppery. From olives; not animals. But in spite of bacon’s stature in taste, this one hasn’t a thing to be ashamed of. Quite to the contrary.

…It was December, 1991 when, as a US Navy exchange officer and navigator of the French missile destroyer DUQUESNE (pronounced kinda like: Duquain), we pulled into port at Patras, Greece on the peninsula of Peloponnese.

And after a few days of doing the standard Greek thing of going to eat dinner at 10-11pm (restaurants are empty until then, even on weekdays) and being shit tired the next day and absolutely needing the 12-4pm siesta break that describes the Greek way of life which is essentially, in my estimation, two days in every one, three other officers from the ship and I decided to rent a car and trek.

Olympia is on that peninsula, so that’s where we headed. As I recall, it’s quite mountainous and along the way near the top of one summit or the other, we came across the typical Greek rural restaurant…some family’s home, with a dining hall attached.

…I must first spend a moment telling you how much I love this. My first experience had been another trip, to Athens. You don’t get the same sense of rural Greece, there. But again, a different ship (Le COLBERT — pronounced like the comedian), a different set of officers and we set out in a rental to the outcropping of Corinth. Having attended divinity school I’d have expected something quite more substantial (actually visiting Biblical places will make you an atheist more than anything). We got there about 1pm to a literally deserted town in any important way. It was so empty and quiet that I had to wonder if Jesus might not actually have come again whilst we were on the road en route and typical, I’d just fucked myself in the last year, ’cause I was assured I’d be along for the ride before I became such a blasphemer. But what the hell, at least I was in good company…sure glad the driver musta been my kinda heathen. And after all, the city’s Biblical, so how could I hold any grudge that they all got raptured out?

Long story only a little longer: we found this family home / restaurant at the southern end of the Corinth canal and they served us a Greek salad, the equal of which I have yet to taste. Not even close. Not anywhere. Price, location, ratings irrelevant. This was the best ever.

Now back to the original story, we stopped at this rural home / restaurant at the top of this mountain with a wondrous view, and it was dead. No customers. Long story short this time, the family roused and prepared us a meal I still remember. Very simple — minimalist, actually — grilled thin lamb chops with essence of garlic & rosemary, drizzled in luscious olive oil. There were other things, but I still seem to recall only the lamb and the way it was prepared and so modestly presented.

…Uh don’t tell the FDA or local food service police, y’know, in this place that lazy, fat, complacent, slumbering "Americans" still ignorantly refer to as "The Land of the Free." It’s complete BULLSHIT! for anyone who has bothered to actually travel or live outside its borders.

LOL.

We made our way from there to Olympia, getting there after noon and as typical, the town was desolate. But being a bit more touristy, there was a shop or two open — even a museum — as I recall. And of course, the original stadium…which is only really impressive if you consider the timeframe, and not the hype surrounding the Olympic Games. But al least we got to see the vestal virgins (I’ll bet) in white silk robes rehearse the lighting of the torch for the 1992 winter Games in Albertville, France.

…OK, Richard, is there, after all, any point to this post?

I’m glad you asked because we did have to get back to Patras, back to out staterooms on the ship. But not before a coupla more memorable encounters. The first was some ancient amphitheater high in elevation which I know only because I recall the snow on the ground. Anyway, it was parabolic, very well preserved, and there was a disc in the very bottom center to stand upon. We found that you could talk at normal volume and be heard in the cheap seats. Fun.

And then it turned dark and we were still on the road, now low on gas. And so it was that we came upon a rural station and filled up. This would have never occurred to me, a crude American lacking in culture, refinements and essential tastes. But the subject turned to olive oil, of all things. You see, while Italians may likely have turned up their noses in stubborn pride, the French are kinda like the Swiss in terms of olive oil neutrality. Or perhaps not, as I recall a few mon dieus expressed in describing the wondrous fruit of the region.

So we asked. It was mom & pop and present was the obligatory, pretty fat, nice old lady sitting inside. You could tell she finally understood by the ear-to-ear smile and before we knew it, we had in our possession two, 2-liter bottles of the most lime green olive oil you have ever seen in your life. And it was unfiltered: teentsy, tiny bits of olive colloidally suspended throughout. I described it at the time as "olive juice."

I don’t know how long we spent heading down the road whilst dipping our pinky fingers into those bottles, tasting.

I never, ever forgot it and to this day have always tried to source Greek olive oil. But kalamata olive oil is about all you can get, easily, and even that’s difficult though very worth it in my estimation. The Italians have really fucked us. Or, it’s those excessively late dinners and 4-hour naps on the part of the Greeks…

Whatever the case, I will go to my grave flatly asserting that Italian olive oil is rat piss in comparison to koroneiki olive oil and can barely, but not quite, hold its own against kalamata, my everyday oil.

And so it was on on a day last week while at the mountains when someone, somewhere on Twitter, linked to the wares of the The Konstantopoulos Family Grove in Messinia, Greece, that I immediately linked over, quickly ascertained what could be in store, and having a good idea of what I would rediscover, ordered six bottles without wasting any time.

…The box from Euphoria was sitting on my desk at the office when I returned today.

When I got home I was like a kid at Christmas, but this time, waiting on a rediscovery. I opened a bottle, poured a bit into a dipping cup, and tasted. And there it was: that, at once, sweet of fruit and hot of pepper — all at the same time. Now I’m energized for dinner. It will be no bone-stock based sauce tonight.

I peeled one clove of garlic, crushed it, and put it in the dipping cup along with about 1/4 tsp of dried thyme, filled it with Euphoric nectar and placed it in the oven at 150 to warm & infuse while I got busy. Then I made a standard dijon vinaigrette and pan fried a grassfed flap steak (bavette) in cast iron with just enough leaf lard to avoid sticking. When done, I drained it because I had other plans.

After resting, I sliced it, plated it, and drizzled it with my infusion, which I had strained after suitable time in the oven to pick up some of the garlic & thyme flavors.

Well, my wife Bea, not a huge meat eater, fought me for the last slice. And she won.

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Circa 2004. How many resolutions do you imagine I’d made before, including and after reaching this state of body composition? I don’t know, but I’m sure it had something to do with the typical: eat less, move more.

Rich and Rotor

…And how many more?

Rich and Rotor: double plus more

By this time, I was already a good 2-3 years and another 20-30 pounds gain into my brilliant plan to walk off the weight. I’m serious and lying not: it was about 3.5 miles every single morning, day in, day out. Perhaps I gained weight less rapidly. It was probably good for a coupla pounds less gain per year. So, not worthless. But that depends on what you think of yourself.

I find it astonishingly surreal to look at these photos I’m posting. Back story is that a time or two ago when we were up at the cabin, Bea found them in a stash and presented them to me. I stuck ’em in a drawer. They are at once hilarious and mysterious to me. The hilarious is easy to get, hindsight & all. But what interests me in the very particular is how, looking back, I do not ever recall being horrified at my own appearenace, in spite of the clear fact that I should have been.

I guess I had to save it for later — because I surely am now.

I see a lot posted here and there about "evolutionary psychology." The first time I ever heard about it way back when was with an "is bullshit" appended. Perhaps that prejudiced me and frankly, I’m still not convinced, having looked into it a bit, that there’s any there, there.

…If there was no free will, which is to say that if I didn’t eventually come to appreciate my own values and act for them, then it all would seem pointless to me. …Perhaps I’m not sufficiently informed of the tenants of EvPsych. I dunno. When did plain old epistemology go out of fashion? 🙂

And so anyway, there’s lots of progress photos going back to the very beginning. But here’s the one I like the best, primarily because of the look on my face, which is wholly natural, real, and quintessential me:

Fuck You!

…Happy New Year, and please do make it your best yet. Don’t fuck around with resolutions, such as rules of "don’t do x," or "do x," but rather, resolve to look, feel, and be better! by 12/31/2011…no matter what it takes…and all it really takes is a simple recognition of what’s most important to you (looking HOT!) and taking the really simple steps to get you there.

For the real dumbasses: when you feel like a pizza, see if you can down a whole 4 pound tri-tip roast…and if you can’t, you’re a pussy, so try harder next time.

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