But yes, today was a successful meat-only day despite the 'women's issues' causing mood fluctuations and fatigue. I actually managed to maintain a fast through til 4pm, across a hot day spent at an indoor funpark as an end-of-year excursion. There was a canteen, and the smell of freshly fried chips filled the air at regular intervals. Kids offered me chips at equally regular intervals. I stayed strong, despite their sad looks of rejection. Bloody manipulative bastards. :)
Broke the fast with a generous slice of free-range Christmas ham - cured with a minimal amount of nitrate and real smoke, after being soaked in salt. No sugar, no grains, no chemicals, no awful environmental/health impact. Huzzah!
Then it was time for a long nap before dressing up in my favourite finery (a sweet Alannah Hill frock with a flattering shape, cute love-hearts and sequins, and a devilish low-cut neckline!) and heading off to my work Xmas party.
Entree - some form of tender beef steak on an ignored pile of vegetation.
Dinner - a choice of roast lamb (with mash and heated frozen veg) or chicken wrapped in prosciutto (with risotto, creamy sauce and heated frozen veg). Since I let them know my dietary preferences, I was given the chicken/prosciutto without the sauce and rice, and I ignored the 'what country is this from, or how long has it been in the freezer?' veg options.
Delicious and satisfying. However, the lamb looked damn good, and there just happened to be a plateful of it placed next to me, where there was a spare seat...
Oh yeah! Full and happy, and I even got a bit of a dance on!
I have a week to get rid of the fat-loss jiggles and higher-carb bloat: together = not good! The trip to the organic butcher yesterday means I'm all set too - a giant ham to pick at, beef and lamb roasts, all manner of chops and steaks, chicken drumsticks... And I just heard from my Dad that he successfully acquired another ginormous crayfish ready for us to enjoy at the farm! I'm already drooling...
Girl Gone Readin'
There has been a sudden spate of interest regarding polyunsaturates today, across a variety of outlets. If you're still unsure of what's good, bad and ugly about polyunsaturated fat, or want some resources with which to pummel the minds of friends, check out the following:
Mark's Daily Apple: Canola Oil
The Comfort Eater's Diet: Polyunsaturates & Heart Disease
Dr. John Briffa's Blog: Why Eating A Lot Of Polyunsaturates Is Not Necessarily Healthy
In other news:
Local Nourishment responds to a somewhat closed-minded article about the truth of sustainable farming. While it's great that the wider community is learning not to take things merely at face value, it's disappointing when the 'correcters' still get it wrong.
Tom Naughton has been posting of late on his Fat Head blog about his father's battle with Alzheimer's. A must-read series for anyone currently on statins or needing to break from their sugarholism.
I treasure posts from bright experts that take conventional wisdom and give them such a thorough bashing with scientific research that there's no possible way for the reader to continue to believe the diet/nutrition myth any longer. They don't use fancy anecdotes or discussion necessarily - it's "here are all the studies that clearly refute what's being pushed on us. So duh, clearly the CW is BS". Two such posts: 'This Is Your Brain On Wheat' by Dr. William Davis, and 'The Dirty Little Secret of the Diet-Heart Hypothesis' by Stephan Guyenet. The latter in particular adds much weight to the continuing body of evidence demonstrating that saturated fats and dietary cholesterol are not, by themselves, bad guys. Surely the 'experts' controlling the information disseminated to the general populace will have to face facts soon...
Yet as we can see from the lovely Goofy cartoon below, we've known for 50 years (and more!) that the reason we're fat is due to over-eating (thanks to hormonal imbalances caused by insulin, psychological imbalances and emotional disorders, the food-obsessed culture, etc...), and yet the 'gurus' continue to push quick-fixes and exercise as though we can eat as much as we like of any and every food and somehow be healthy and of a normal weight. Sheesh. Enjyo the cute cartoon - but don't overthink it! Goofy may be deluded and lazy and a greedy pig, and we know not all obese people are that way at all, but the food-as-culprit message is still clear. Just watch out for the emotionally-manipulative bastard in the mirror!
I cut out grains, sugar and starches at the beginning of 2009. I have been keeping a journal as I have progressively shed my bulges and my processed foods. I am aiming to live a clean, primal lifestyle, and I wish to share my eating habits with those who wish to clean up their lifestyle and live happily and healthfully. As the cliche states - if I can do it, so can everybody else.
4 comments:
I'll have to disagree...I don't think th reason we're fat is due to over-eating at all. I think it is linked directly to the quality of the food that we're eating. 4,000 calories of twinkies is a lot different than 4,000 calories of meat.
James,
You should read 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Gary Taubes. Yes, obviously the quality of the food matters, but the vast majority of people in the Western world follow the standard diet passed down by their governments, and even if you follow their 'healthy guidelines' but eat too much of that food, you're going to gain weight. If you don't eat more than your body burns for fuel, you can't gain fat. Can you explain how obesity can develop without an abundance of calories?
Obesity can develop without an abundance of calories because carbohydrates are so easily stored as fat. That is why you can eat more calories on a high fat zero carb diet than on a low fat high carb diet.
There's more to it than that, Katelyn. The simplified version is that when you eat high GI carbs, your insulin is produced and ushers the energy into cells (muscle or fat) as quickly as possible. If the muscles don't need much at that moment in time, the energy is mostly given to the fat cells, and trapped there while insulin remains in large amounts in the bloodstream. That's why after a high-carb meal, you can start feeling hungry a while after - your muscles now want that fuel, but it's stuck in the fat cells. BUT if you don't eat more food to curb that hunger, the insulin in the bloodstream eventually dissipates, and the energy is released from the fat cells and can be used by the muscles as fuel.
The dangerous part of this way of eating is that in between the insulin doing its job and that insulin finally retiring for the day, the body may turn to catabolic processes to fuel itself - i.e. eating its own muscles for energy. Then when the fuel in the fat cells is free to be used, the muscles may not need that fuel any longer, so the fuel goes back into storage. Unless you're over-eating though, your body will eventually use those stores, but you have to time it right (go hungry while your insulin is keeping your energy in the fat cells rather than following your impulse to eat). So you won't accumulate fat unless you don't give your body a chance to use those stores (i.e. you over-eat instead).
The metabolic advantage of ZC is that insulin is rarely at levels high enough to block available energy from cells that need it, so every runs smoothly on available fuel sources - either provided through food intake, or from currently stored energy in the fat cells.
We can eat more calories on ZC because our body can always use them. But eating too many calories will still usually result in energy storage in the fat cells. And fat-loss will only occur if there's a reason for the body to use the energy currently stored in the fat cells.
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