Sunday, October 18, 2009

Today's Eat (singular) & A New Experiment

As planned, I decided to fast all day (except for copious amounts of highly diluted organic white tea, as always). rounding off the late afternoon with an organic scotch fillet steak, supported by some of last night's leftovers (giving the veg-heavy parts to the beau and keeping most of the sausage and chicken for myself):


Just look at that delicious vein of fat! Can you believe the boy won't eat his?? And he doesn't even offer it to me while it's still warm (hint hint!!)...


My mother is fairly lean, and always has been. When she was young she was essentially a beanpole, and during her twenties and pregnancies she developed a normal hip-and-thigh roundedness. However, these days she is far more worried about her middle, so when the Drs. Eades came out with their new book, a crash diet no less, entitled The Six-Week Cure For The Middle-Aged Middle (although it looks like it's coming out again in December retitled Lose Your Middle-Aged Middle...), I immediately thought of her. I have already encouraged her to go low-carb, and as primal as possible: she currently eats almond pancakes for breakfast practically every morning, she cooks with coconut oil or butter, she eats meat and veg for her dinners (although Dad persists with cooking potatoes and buying processed foods), and she only eats chocolate occasionally (or so she says - she's a bigger choc addict than I ever was). She has probably dropped a bit of fat, but her belly bulges (a tiny little roll of fat, really) continues to bother her. I'm more bothered by the idea of her suffering from osteoarthritis, etc, since the big six-oh is just around the corner...

The Eades' plan sounded suitable for both our agendas - upping the protein intake and focussing on saturated fat, while tapping into and applying science supposedly specific to weight loss during middle age. I bought the book today (after a tedious and tiresome battle to find a retailer of the ebook that catered to non-US customers), and have already read half of it in detail after originally skimming the lot to see whether Mum could fit the programme into her schedule. Well, the 3 shakes + 1 meal fortnight is a big ask of her, although once she hits the meat-only weeks I'm sure she'll cope easily (although she might miss her pancakes), and the final fortnight matches up with how she already eats, really. How to encourage her that following a somewhat extreme diet for the first two weeks might be worth it...

Give her proof. Well, hopefully. Yep, I'm going to have a crack at losing my middle-aged paunch... Except that I'm 24 and probably don't have much in the way of visceral fat given that my waist-to-hip ratio is already 0.7, with my remaining fat sitting as a muffin-top/love handles, which the Eades' say is very much a marker of teen/youthful subcutaneous fat. So hopefully any fat loss will be enough to demonstrate the usefulness of this plan, even if it's not technically around my waist but perhaps below my belly-button instead. This does mean I have to add dairy back into the mix (I could not find any egg protein powder, so it had to be whey, and while I might give coconut cream another shot as the 'cream' in the shake, dairy cream is a safer bet), but I guess we can't claim protein powder to be 'not primal' if we accept vitamin and mineral supplementation to be perfectly reasonable. It's just two weeks. My one meal will be meat meat meat, referring to the plan's recipe section for guidance on portions (although they do say that they essentially leave it to the individual to eat as much protein and fat as they need, especially during the second fortnight, but the first fortnight is supposed to be calorie-restricted...) And then I get to go back to being a proper carnivore for another two weeks (and beyond - the Eades' are bright enough to know never to claim that we need to eat any form of carb, so huzzah!).

I have my protein powder and my cream, but my ordered leucine powder will take a couple of days to get here from Sydney, and the DAG oil is a no-go in Australia, it would seem. I might have a look in the body-building health food store in the local shopping centre the next time I'm in there (rarely these days), but otherwise I'm not worried about it. I haven't worked out when I'm going to have my meal - I'm thinking that dinner makes the most sense so I can cook for the beau at the same time, but since Mondays are super-long I might have a meaty brekkie tomorrow... And then there's the entire lack of time or resources at work with which to make the shakes, so at best I'd have to bottle some and take it with me...

Wish me luck! I'll be sure to make fully fleshed-out primal meals for the beau so you still have something pretty to look at beyond one pic of meat & eggs per day!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jez, I look forward to seeing your results from the Eades plan. I'm 40 and searching for a solution to the last stubborn inch of fat over my belly button, which is sticking around after four months of zero carb. I'm still tweaking some things like cutting back or out on cheese, exercising less often and more intensely for less time, etc.

I am constantly jealous of your menus and the luscious snapshots. I love my beef, but that kangaroo had me ready to fire up the barbie!

Oh, and Jay Robb makes an egg (white) protein powder, though I haven't tried it myself.

Jezwyn said...

Thanks for the comment, frogfarm - it's easier to stick with deprivation knowing that someone is watching... :)

I was told that Jay Robb is the absolute king of protein powders, but I can't find it for sale anywhere in Australia, and to ship one small pack from the US was going to cost US$60+! So I went with a less elite but equally beloved and recommended brand through iherb, and have followed it up (since I will need more, plus some for Mum) with a huge 5kg pack of whey (still couldn't find egg) protein from an Aussie supplier. Ah well, it's not forever...

Sarah said...

Out of curiosity, which website did you use to get your copy of the ebook? I wanted a copy after Dr. Eades said there was plenty of new info on sat and visceral fat, even though I'm nowhere near middle aged, but wasn't sure about the reliability of the websites and ended up ordering a hardcopy from bookdepository instead.

Best of luck on your diet! Its great hearing about results, but also interesting to hear about what it was like following the plan :)

Jezwyn said...

I sourced my copy from Diesel eBooks, since it proved to be the only site I could find that wasn't locked to US/Canadian customers. It wasn't the cheapest price though, not by a long shot... Hopefully it's worth it!

I'm not sure if there's any extra information in my copy - if anything, I'd assume it was an old copy since I've found quite a few typos, although a couple have been technical (i.e. a "1/2" being replaced with its generation code, etc...) so maybe it's to do with the file itself, rather than the edition... Do you have your copy so we could compare?

Thanks for the luck - your wish to know my experience is duly noted; I wasn't going to make a big deal about it, but maybe I will now since there's an interested audience!

Sarah said...

Ohh, my bad! I thought you meant you'd actually bought an ebook version of the book, didn't realised you also ended up buying a hard copy.

Even with the best of diet plans not everything works for everyone, so I've always found it really interesting to hear about the way people tweak the lc/vlc plan to make it work for them. I'll be eagerly skimming your blog for ideas ;)

Jezwyn said...

I only have an eBook... ? I'm talking about my digital copy of the book.

I look forward to hearing how you go, and about what inspires you! :)

Steve said...

Jezwyn

I do not know how to phase this except to say when I eliminate all fiber from my diet I have problems in the bathroom. Because of this problem I find I need to eat vegs and fruits, what say you on this problem of the all meat diet?

Jezwyn said...

I have known some individuals who have required an adjustment period when cutting fibre from their diet, but it's usually a matter of days. Upping dietary fat intake helps that area as well as helping every other part of your body's function! It's actually more likely that the adjustment that needs to take place is psychological, not physiological - you need to realise that it's not actually normal or necessary to have bowel movements once or more per day, unless you are stuffing yourself full of non-nutritious roughage (i.e. fibre!). If you are eating food that it completely bioavailable, that our bodies can use up to 100% of, you obviously don't have so much waste left over. I tend to go every three or so days, but I don't even think about it - I go when I need to. I'm not constipated (which means you are in pain, not just that you haven't gone in a day or so - another psychological adjustment for some to make!), so unless you are in real pain and you bloat massively when you eliminate fruit & veg, then you don't have an issue either.

Here's a great post from Dr. Eades on the perceived necessity of regular bowel movements - http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/a-cautionary-tale-of-mucus-fore-and-aft/

Let me know how you go if you try breaking your psychological and physiological reliance on having fibrous materials scraping and irritating their way through your intestines! :)

Steve said...

Jezwyn

I don't need to eat a lot fruit and vegs to have an movement, but without any I feel bloated more than not. I am surprised how little fiber I need, but I do need some.

Thanks

Steve

Jezwyn said...

How long have you gone without fibre in the past?

Steve said...

Never and I use to take high doses of a fiber supplement. Since I changed to a Paleo diet I have stopped the fiber supplement. Also, I spend less time in the bathroom and that is a good thing. But I find I need to eat minimal amount of Vegs and Fruits to keep from being bloat and constipated. I am OK with that because I enjoy the small amounts of fruits and vegs I choose to eat.

Maybe because I used to have so much fiber in my diet, my body has become some what dependent on having at least a small amount of fiber to help with elimination?

Matthew said...

Like Jezwyn stated before, I really believe that it is a matter of increasing fat intake.

My philosophy is that natural foods that don't contain fiber (i.e meat) don't need fiber to be digested. Natural foods (like fruit) that have fructose in them however come with the fiber they need.

That being said, I guess its just a matter of perpetually undertaking mini-experiments with your diet and seeing how it effects you personally.

Jezwyn said...

You can become dependent on fibre, but it doesn't take long to retrain. As Matt said, it would take a bit of experimentation to see how you go without fibre - you'd need to try it for a week to see if your intestines adapted to processing waste without the 'help' of the mucous generated by the fibre rasping along the walls of your intestines. I love fruit & veg as well, and if I eat some I don't find it affects my bathroom habits at all, since my intestines have healed adequately, so now I can enjoy my infrequent produce when I feel like it. Plus, the fibre in fruit and veg is pretty minimal compared to grains, so its unlikely that my intestines will ever be as damaged as they were, even if I eat loads of fruit & veg every day.

Matt - where has your theory about us needing fibre to digest fructose come from? As far as I am aware (and I've only just started looking at fructose, so I'd love to know more), they are processed separately in the body...

Steve, if you do have a crack at rebooting your system by cutting out fibre for a week, make sure you let us know how you go! And make sure you take a tablespoon of coconut oil or similar with each meal to help your body heal.

Matthew said...

My apologies I guess my comments are a bit misleading.

I don't think you need fiber to digest fructose, but what I really meant was that it may offset the harmful effects fructose could have on your liver by slowing its absorption into the bloodstream.

Fructose is something I have only recently started looking into also after watching the Robert Lustig presentation on it. Complicated stuff though! Maybe I should have done organic chemistry instead of engineering at uni :)

It is interesting in his article "Food Processing and Obesity" that he says adding extra fiber to fiberless processed food may not actually be that helpful.

Steve said...

About half of my meals are all meat and half include produce. As long as I eat some produce I am fine but as soon as I go all meat I have problems. But since I enjoy this way of eating I guess I am fine with it for now.

I haven't eaten a grain for about eight weeks now and I have no plans to do so any time soon. Also, I do not take fiber suppplement any more. So maybe after a little more time I will adapt to an all meat diet.

Jezwyn said...

Thanks for that, Matthew - sounds like you've been following the same path of fructose education as me. :) And like you note at the end, it's my understanding as well that fibre doesn't really slow down absorption of anything, it's just bulk that sits in your stomach for a while as everything else goes through its usual process.

I wonder if the intestines can heal even if there's still a bit of fibre in your diet... I bet they can, since it's not like you can really give your intestines a real break unless you go liquids-only! :)