Archives for February 2016

Why Does Karl Denninger Lie Like That?

February 29, 2016 32 Comments

The only real value of this post is to point out that the actions of the subject thingy motivated Tim Steele to put together some excellent information on sodium, potassium, and the balance thereof, vis-a-vis The Potato Diet. Otherwise, it’s just a damn chore that I ought just ignore.

Here’s Tim’s post: Mr. Potatohacker: Thank You! Feel completely free to read it and never mind about the rest of this (though I have included some interesting stuff on how potatoes spurred massive population growth toward the end, including a cool, free 57-page paper). I wasn’t about to cast pearls before swine in any meaningful way and was ready just to let this drop, but Tim had the grace to lemonade the thing, and now we have yet another reference in answer to another irrational, baseless fear. So, this post became important to do on that basis alone.

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The Potato Diet Practicalities: Dropping Big Weight Fast With High Energy and Without Hunger

February 27, 2016 244 Comments

First things first. Here’s a search link to find all the potato diet posts and thousands of comments from a few years back. That’s for ‘potato hack,’ what we were usually calling it. Here’s one for ‘potato diet‘ too. Lottsa stuff. This post is the 3rd in the series that began with Can Eating Mashed Potatoes With Your Meals Cause You To Eat 30-40% Fewer Calories? And my big tease of a couple of days ago: I’ve Dropped 13 Pounds In Four Days With No Hunger Or Cravings, And I’m Going To Tell You Precisely How.

And I am. Right here.

The first post covers the science of why potatoes work…from big and rapid weight loss to steady but sustained loss by eating less overall, to plain old maintenance: from doing a potato only diet periodically, to just upping your overall potato consumption in your diet and eating less overall as a consequence. I encourage you to read that post, but here’s 1,000 words worth.

Notice potato chips way down there on the bottom, both predicted and experimentally. “You can’t eat just one” was indeed a prophetic marketing slogan. But then, to see how experimentally, boiled potatoes blow everything else out of the water—including the prediction—is truly a remarkable finding that’s largely ignored in general, and derided and scoffed at by the low-carbohydrate community.

So, the takeaway is that boiled potatoes as a single food source are the most satiating food ever tested. That means that when eaten by themselves—compared with equivalent calories of anything else—test subjects waited longer to eat again and consumed less when they did eat, compared to any other single food. But that’s not all. When boiled potatoes are included as part of a meal (even mashed with sane amounts of butter & milk), test subjects consume far fewer calories overall in the meal, compared with any other starch…and I’d bet that would hold for any side dish. Your plate full of “leafy greens” that’s always all the rage in LC, where LCers eat more “leafy greens” than literally anyone else on the planet, including raw vegans? It’s a badge of honor; and plus, it allows them to up that steak from 6-8 oz. to 16 oz., thereby tripling the calories over a meal of mashed potatoes and a 4-6 oz. steak.

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I’ve Dropped 13 Pounds In Four Days With No Hunger Or Cravings And I’m Going To Tell You Precisely How

February 25, 2016 86 Comments

I was in such disbelief when I weighed in on the same Balance Beam Scale I weighed in on Sunday at the gym that I stepped on and off it, checking everything three times, and made sure it balanced at 0.

Yep, indeed. Thirteen pounds since this time Sunday, four days ago. Never have I dropped that much so rapidly—not even LCHF with topped off glycogen…not even close—and not even with the rather uncomfortable 30-hr fasts twice per week I used to do, which usually netted 1-2 pounds weekly in my 2008-2009 endeavor from 245 to 175.

It was so much work and often, brutally painful. …Which is at least part of why I’ve bounced around about 195 +/- on average for a good while, now. But anyway, on Sunday I was a solid 203, probably 203.x. Today, I’m 190, four days later. And it was so damn easy. Not uncomfortable in the slightest, absolutely zero gnawing hunger, no untoward cravings, and often feeling pretty stuffed.

For sure way most of it is water weight, but it had zero whatsoever to do with low carb, ketogenic, high fat, or calorie counting. It was completely ad libitum eating like LCHF is touted, but this is actually more effective, far easier, less craving and no hunger if you don’t want it.

The complete unabridged story and how-to in the next post, coming up later today, more likely in the morning hours of tomorrow.

Until then, then.

Update: The Potato Diet Day 10 Update: Weigh-In, Meals, Workouts, and Blood Glucose Measures

The Yuge Explanation of the Uniquely American Trump Phenomenon

February 24, 2016 35 Comments

I’ve been burnt out lately on the current events stuff I was to be posting about, and so have re-focussed more on food stuff lately, which I’m enjoying far more, truth be told. Perhaps I’ll do some sort of current bullshit roundup post every Sunday or something, just to keep some ideas and analysis flowing both ways. Plus, I’m just numb with leftist no-sense, and the social-justice stuff is enough to make me want to vomit my guts. I digress.

Here’s a very solid piece of writing and because it’s on Facebook (go give it a Like or Share), I’ll quote it entirely here, for the benefit of those who, unlike me, are smart enough to stay away from Facebook. It’s by Robert Bidinotto, author of the Hunter series of vigilante novels. I haven’t read them yet, but they’re highly regarded and I’m confident I’ll love them once I do. Bidinotto is a very smart man. I remember him from USENET back in the day, in philosophy newsgroups.

I’ve previously written that what I have liked about Trump being in this presidential race is his general iconoclasm…not in a nihilistic sense, but rather directed towards the entrenched elites who deliver failure upon failure, on both sides. I think Bidinotto is spot on here and delves a lot deeper than I have. I particularly like how he analyzes this as more about individual pride, self-esteem and worth than collective nationalism (we’ve seen that before).

Perhaps the bright spot is that If America’s cultural roots in revolution on behalf of individuals rather than collectives is strong enough to inoculate it from taking this to extreme nationalism, then perhaps it’s also strong enough to overcome a failed Trump presidency.

AN EPIPHANY ABOUT THE APPEAL OF MR. TRUMP.

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Why Am I “Attacking” The Low-Carb and Paleo Diets?

February 22, 2016 56 Comments

I’ve most recently put up yet another couple of posts that many perceive as me attacking the Low-Carbohydrate Diet, The Ketogenic Diet, and The Paleo Diet.

I suppose you could say that, but those saying it ought at least juxtapose my approach now, with my approach back when I was all the rage over my brutal attacks of low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-saturated fat, white meat & fish only, grain-based diets, vegetarian diets, vegan diets…grant whores…etc.

For those who don’t see that, allow me to explain. Here’s some reading material.

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Can Eating Mashed Potatoes With Your Meals Cause You To Eat 30-40% Fewer Calories?

February 20, 2016 54 Comments

I’ve had renewed interest in “The Potato Hack“ lately, emerging here just over three years ago, producing a bunch of posts and comments once Tim “Tatertot” Steele brought it to my attention. He’ll soon have a book out, specifically on The Potato Diet, or “Hack,” as we like to call it. I’ve skimmed through his draft and offered a few suggestions. You’re going to love it. There’s actually nothing particularly new about it, as you’ll see.

Lots of folks gave the intervention a shot to various degrees way back then, and so far as I recollect, lots of people dropped a lot of pounds and those who’d been having blood-sugar issues from chronic, low-carbohydrate induced insulin resistance saw improvement there as well. Some ketogenic dieters even remained in a ketogenic state, owing to the chronic caloric deficit (what ketones are really for, physiologically…starvation). For myself, I had become pretty disillusioned with seeing fasting BG at 115-130 day after day for a long time, kinda just becoming an LC eater by default, I suppose. A few days of mostly potatoes and no more problems. But I really hate going more than a couple days eating bland potatoes only. Is there a better way?

Maybe. I recall very well one commenter, Marie, who had excellent results even including a little protein and fat. See this post (meal pic included). She wrote:

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Apple Invented a New Kind of Shovel Where You Can Carry Around Your Buried Treasure

February 18, 2016 15 Comments

I’ve been thoroughly disappointed with all I’ve seen about Tim Cook, Apple CEO, defying a court order to code a workaround for the iPhone 5c left by our bro & sis native-immigant hybrid bombers in San Bernardino. Both ways.

It frustrates me when people do not extract, identify, understand, and then argue from essentials. Like, people will not pay for various levels of security, for whatever their reasons?

Shovels used to be a great device for ensuring your security. Dig a hole somewhere, drop stuff in it, and cover it up. Back then, various governments and lords were well aware that it would be pointless to hit up shovel manufacturers for the location of all buried treasure and incriminating evidence.

Torture notwithstanding, the only real issue on the table is whether you can buy a truly secure product…reminiscent of shovels, or not. There’s no middle ground. It’s secure, or it’s not secure. Do you understand simple logic, by which I mean, are you smarter than the 99%?

Here’s a tech piece that gets into all details you may want. Bottom line, and interesting, is that while Apple could comply with this order and maybe successfully get at the data, later iterations of the hardware render Apple a shovel manufacturer:

Apple can comply with the FBI court order.

The Elixa Probiotics Manufacturer Explains How You the Customer Created Version 2

February 17, 2016 25 Comments

It was about a year ago that Karl, through some miracle from heaven, chose me to help promote his burgeoning probiotics manufacturing business. It’s been a cool success, with well over 1,000 orders so far. The very, very important thing is that Karl Seddon is himself the manufacturer. The importance of this critical distinction cannot be overstated.

You see, when you purchase most probiotics at Whole Foods or online, you are purchasing from a marketer who orders off-shelf stuff in big bags, then has a facility package and label it for marketing. It’s why it generally gives you only expensive poop. That attention to your gut is important is pretty clear, so I’ll turn it over to the manufacturer, Karl, who listens to every one of you, and seeks to change his manufacturing parameters hands-on, to your increasingly greater satisfaction in this cutting-edge experiment.

Since being introduced to the FreeTheAnimal community by Richard, not only has Elixa Probiotic received a staggering (and much appreciated) level of interest from my North American fellows, but the product itself has also evolved by a remarkable degree in the time that has passed. I was confident from the outset that Elixa was going to gain traction because I’d already received positive responses from many of the early adopters and many people were recommending it to a friend or family. However, I knew it would take time for people to slowly and organically learn about it.

Thanks to Richard though, the big ole’ USA (and plenty of other places in the world) learned of Elixa – and things have been hard to keep up with ever since! Leading to many interesting email conversations with Elixa users throughout 2015.

We are all here to experiment as scientists. No foregone conclusions, like: ‘this XYZ diet / supplement / routine works and any results to the contrary are wrong!’ The theories here are fluid and debated—and results beat all. This matches my approach to Elixa perfectly—always open to constant upgrades as and when new feedback, results, and theories emerge.

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A Mild Critique of the Low-Carb-Diet Encouragement to Add Fat

February 15, 2016 30 Comments

Please understand right off the bat that I am not an enemy of low-carbohydrate dieting as a lifestyle. And even for myself, on average, I’d put it in the moderate carbohydrate category. Even Atkins, the modern pioneer, allowed up to 120 grams of carbohydrate—if I recall my 1991 reading of The Revolution correctly. That’s right. If it works for you, up to 120 grams of carbohydrate would have been considered “low carb” by Atkins’ stated standard.

These days, however, I see stuff around and about that very nearly amounts to any gram is too much; and a carb is a carb (sound familiar?). I’ve been doing guerrilla here and there to kinda figure out what’s up and why it’s gone that way. To really know and understand—because everybody lies automatically—one must push all boundaries, to see what everything is really made of.

For a few years, I thought it might be Jimmy Moore’s unbelievably embarrassing speech Down Under where, turns out, carbohydrate restriction to bare nothing isn’t enough. Steak is now chocolate cake. Because human metabolism has a nasty tendency to make sugar from meat when your body absolutely requires sugar to survive, but you aren’t eating sugar, then this means that you must take much of that away too, because sugar is just sinful and our body’s absolute glucose requirement of 60-120 grams daily is tantamount to Original Sin, but there is redemption available via both carbohydrate and protein restriction.

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Michael Mann’s Man-Made Global Warming Hockey Stick Just Became More Important Than Ever

February 13, 2016 1 Comment

My best friend ever used that Hockey Stick in his second book, even featured the graph. This was in 2005.

On the other hand, Michael Mann, inventor of the hockey stick, has very serious problems. Him, I don’t know. He’s easy to hate and loath. Wikipedia:

Michael E. Mann (born 1965) is an American climatologist and geophysicist,^[1] currently director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, who has contributed to the scientific understanding of historic climate change based on the temperature record of the past thousand years. He has pioneered techniques to find patterns in past climate change, and to isolate climate signals from “noisy data”.^[3]

As lead author of a paper produced in 1998 with co-authors Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes, Mann introduced innovative statistical techniques to find regional variations in a hemispherical climate reconstruction covering the past 600 years. In 1999 the same team used these techniques to produce a reconstruction over the past 1,000 years (MBH99) which was dubbed the “hockey stick graph” because of its shape. He was one of 8 lead authors of the “Observed Climate Variability and Change” chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report published in 2001. A graph based on the MBH99 paper was highlighted in several parts of the report, and was given wide publicity. The IPCC acknowledged that his work, along with that of the many other lead authors and review editors, contributed to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was won jointly by the IPCC and Al Gore.

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