If, perchance, there are any Australian teachers/students reading my blog, they will understand when I say that the year is getting to its very pointy end and it's not surprising that updating the blog is slipping further and further down my priority list. School holidays begin in 68 hours (who's counting?) although I will also be involved in work things during our break, since my seniors will be finishing up their scheduled classes shortly thereafter. Apart from those small obligations, I will be resting free and easy for the break, with a trip to the farm, lots of cultural activities (such as finally going to the Titanic Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum, woohoo!), and hopefully some gorgeous spring weather to lap up. With some more playtime available, I hope to also have some fun in the kitchen, getting some fresh and zingy spring recipes ready for party season!
In the meantime, here's a quick run-down of my latest shenanigans:
I'm currently trying to crack down on my weight issues by sticking to a meat-based diet once more, adding some veggies with dinner if I want them. Today I had beef sausages for breakfast and lunch, some salmon sashimi when I arrived home from work, and then a BAS of silverbeet, onion, garlic and mushrooms, sautéed in butter. Since a more relaxed approach to carb intake and calorie consumption is clearly not working out for me, despite going dairy- and nut-free on top of everything else, I'm getting stricter. No fruit, carbs under 50g (including fibre), and calories under 2000kcal except on more active days. I'm trying to keep my fat intake around 150g per day, which translates to me trying to keep my protein intake at a reasonable level. Time to defrost some lamb chops...
On Mondays, I have my belly dancing class. I'm still really loving it, and am transitioning into learning extended choreography with the girls who have been training for 6+ years! It's a little full-on since they don't teach me the dances step by step; I'm expected to just follow along and do as much as I can. It'll be different when they're not preparing to perform in a festival, and are learning a new dance from scratch. I've bought a few DVDs so that I can learn choreographed sequences from those, for my own enjoyment. IF only I had a more dance-friendly space in my house - the TV is in a room with a low-hanging lampshade - not terribly conducive to arm flourishes!
I'll be skipping meals when I'm not hungry, and I plan to occasionally fat fast through a meal (i.e. take a hit of coconut oil instead of cooking up a full meal). Hopefully these revised efforts, on top of what I hope to be a healed and balanced metabolic/hormonal system, will help kick-start my fat loss once again. I'm sick of being so fat! I want to be able to wear a sexy belly dancing costume, for one thing! A sparkly, embellished bra, with a low-slung hip scarf to match... Yum! At least now I have a bit more of a goal than just to look good naked - if I want to perform on stage, I want to wear the real gear and look hot! I want my shimmies to look controlled and sexy, not like jiggly fat wobbles! I want my 'fish'/'camel' stomach/spine waves to look smooth and gorgeous, not like I'm sticking my gut and my butt out in counterpoint!
I've been running (but not leading) a yoga session each week at my school, and this being the last week of term means this Wednesday is also our last yoga session. I don't think we'll be continuing next term, since attendance has been varied thanks to it being the pointy end of the year, so I'll be going back to my yoga vodcasts and leading myself through sessions at home. If I join the gym where my belly dancing sessions are held (the classes are past of their group fitness offerings despite the teacher being a proper belly dance teacher - I don't feel like I'm paying enough for her expertise! - and cost about the same amount per session as I would pay for a weekly membership there), then I could go to their evening yoga sessions, and maybe even some Pilates, which I used to love. They have a pool, too...
Simon Says...
Stephan Guyenet says... Dogen Zenji says... The world is complex, as our are bodies and our environments, so keep your nutritionism and reductionism in context.
Pål Jåbekk & Matt Stone say... Think positive! It's good for you!
Ned Kock from Health Correlator says... When we consider the China Study data, we see wheat is associated with some pretty evil stuff, and rice isn't great either, but it's hard to define why...
Mark Sisson says... You don't have to live with joint pain!
JP from Primal Journal says... Carbohydrates in large quantities and from bad sources are to be avoided.
& Girl Gone Primal says... Ciao!
Showing posts with label Alternate Day Fasting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alternate Day Fasting. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
One For The Road
In fewer than seven hours, the beau & I will be hopping on board the first of a series of planes that will eventually deposit the two of us in sunny (it better be...) Canada! So I am bidding you adieu for two weeks, but before I rush off to pack my suitcase full of distressingly light-weight garments that haven't yet experienced my current figure, here's a quick breakdown of my situation at present and in future:
* I'm really enjoying yoga. It's really hard work, especially since I'm also using a non-beginner podcast to give me ideas for workouts between sessions at Balwyn Yoga, but I'm really loving it. This week, I went along at the tail end of a punchy series of fasting: 16hrs of nothing but water and tea, and then over 24hrs of fat fast food and portioning, although I hadn't yet had my fourth & fifth meals of the day (and decided to skip them thanks to the immense endorphin high that greeted me mid-way through my yoga class)! I floated home...
* For those of you who haven't heard of the Fat Fast per se - though you probably have heard of something similar - here's a quick summary:
- I am striving to garner 90% of my calories from fat, whilst limiting my caloric intake to create a decent deficit. Atkins recommended 1000kcal, spread out over four or five meals in the day. I'm more flexible - I just listen to what my body wants.
- My meals of choice (since I'm paleo, I don't do the cream cheese and whipped cream + sweetener concoctions Atkins recommended) have been 1) 30g macadamia nuts, 2) 1T nut butter with 1T coconut oil, and 3) a hard-boiled egg with 15g butter. I've been hitting a minimum of 80% calories from fat, and I could go higher if I liked the taste of my current coconut oil...
- The idea is to fast for 3 to 5 days (any longer and you're putting your body at risk of protein deficiency), and if fat loss is happening (which is pretty likely given the cal restrictions - if not, there's a major hormonal issue at play) then you can scale up the calories and add in foods such as fatty ground beef. Then you can return to Atkins Induction etc, to see if your body's newly revved-up metabolism will happily continue to burn stored fat.
For me, I'm playing with more of an Alternate Day Fasting situation. I'm not setting a rigid schedule, since going overseas would make that awfully difficult, but I'm planning to eat 'normally' for one day, and then fast for one or two days, then another normal day, etc. We'll see if this is necessary. I won't necessarily be doing a fat fast as such on my fasting days - just keeping my calories at or below the 1000kcal mark, if my body likes it.
Progress thus far: the morning after my yoga class, I weighed in at 2.6kg less than I had pre-fast! I know that I was holding onto some water thanks to sodium and such, but it was still wonderful to see! My body demanded a refeed after that though, so I used my sore muscles as an excuse to finish off what remained in my jars of almond butter and macadamia spread. The overall calorie count (albeit estimated in terms of servings) was pretty monstrous, and yet the today the scales only showed an increase of 0.5kg, which I would have expected merely considering the weight of normal food amounts. I'll be scale-free in Canada, so I'll be monitoring my gut jiggliness... Traveling is always rough on the cortisol levels though, so I'm not too bothered, so long as I don't GAIN weight!
To the future:
I've bagged up two hard boiled eggs and a pat of butter to take to the airport and eat before we get on the plane at 7am, if I'm hungry. I know eggs don't keep too long out of refrigeration, but I'll try not to eat for the sake of eating... I've also bagged up three servings (200kcal each) of macadamia nuts that should get me through the looooong flight! Dang, I should have bought some bagged white tea - all I have is the loose stuff and that won't work on a flight... Boo.
The beau's mother, with the assistance of the lovely Kat Garson, has found two very exciting farms in/near Ottawa to supply me with my meaty goodness for the trip, as well as hopefully becoming my MIL's continuing provider of good meat - you know, meat that's actually suitable for human consumption. Now, the original plan was to go out to the farms, take a butcher's (haha, a pun AND cutesy rhyming slang!), and do a write-up. However, time constraints mean I will not get to check out the wonderful Dobson's Farm this time, although we have placed an order for a variety of beef, particularly ground beef, that we will be picking up upon my arrival via the central city market in Ottawa. It's not all bad news though - we WILL squeeze in a visit to the terribly exciting Bearbrook Game Meats farm since it's snuggled up close to where I'll be staying! I'll finally be able to try the North American 'delicacies' my Tweeps often tweet about - buffalo, bison, & boar! I'll also be sure to stock up on smoked salmon, my favourite, and maybe I'll even try foods that are available in Australia but not easily, such as emu, duck, kangaroo (if they have unadulterated steaks, etc), and some sausages that are made of a mix of meats, provided they don't include flour.
I might get some cooking in during my trip, if there's demand at all, but otherwise I'll be sitting back and lapping up some much-needed sun!
The suitcases are calling - au revoir!
* I'm really enjoying yoga. It's really hard work, especially since I'm also using a non-beginner podcast to give me ideas for workouts between sessions at Balwyn Yoga, but I'm really loving it. This week, I went along at the tail end of a punchy series of fasting: 16hrs of nothing but water and tea, and then over 24hrs of fat fast food and portioning, although I hadn't yet had my fourth & fifth meals of the day (and decided to skip them thanks to the immense endorphin high that greeted me mid-way through my yoga class)! I floated home...
* For those of you who haven't heard of the Fat Fast per se - though you probably have heard of something similar - here's a quick summary:
- I am striving to garner 90% of my calories from fat, whilst limiting my caloric intake to create a decent deficit. Atkins recommended 1000kcal, spread out over four or five meals in the day. I'm more flexible - I just listen to what my body wants.
- My meals of choice (since I'm paleo, I don't do the cream cheese and whipped cream + sweetener concoctions Atkins recommended) have been 1) 30g macadamia nuts, 2) 1T nut butter with 1T coconut oil, and 3) a hard-boiled egg with 15g butter. I've been hitting a minimum of 80% calories from fat, and I could go higher if I liked the taste of my current coconut oil...
- The idea is to fast for 3 to 5 days (any longer and you're putting your body at risk of protein deficiency), and if fat loss is happening (which is pretty likely given the cal restrictions - if not, there's a major hormonal issue at play) then you can scale up the calories and add in foods such as fatty ground beef. Then you can return to Atkins Induction etc, to see if your body's newly revved-up metabolism will happily continue to burn stored fat.
For me, I'm playing with more of an Alternate Day Fasting situation. I'm not setting a rigid schedule, since going overseas would make that awfully difficult, but I'm planning to eat 'normally' for one day, and then fast for one or two days, then another normal day, etc. We'll see if this is necessary. I won't necessarily be doing a fat fast as such on my fasting days - just keeping my calories at or below the 1000kcal mark, if my body likes it.
Progress thus far: the morning after my yoga class, I weighed in at 2.6kg less than I had pre-fast! I know that I was holding onto some water thanks to sodium and such, but it was still wonderful to see! My body demanded a refeed after that though, so I used my sore muscles as an excuse to finish off what remained in my jars of almond butter and macadamia spread. The overall calorie count (albeit estimated in terms of servings) was pretty monstrous, and yet the today the scales only showed an increase of 0.5kg, which I would have expected merely considering the weight of normal food amounts. I'll be scale-free in Canada, so I'll be monitoring my gut jiggliness... Traveling is always rough on the cortisol levels though, so I'm not too bothered, so long as I don't GAIN weight!
To the future:
I've bagged up two hard boiled eggs and a pat of butter to take to the airport and eat before we get on the plane at 7am, if I'm hungry. I know eggs don't keep too long out of refrigeration, but I'll try not to eat for the sake of eating... I've also bagged up three servings (200kcal each) of macadamia nuts that should get me through the looooong flight! Dang, I should have bought some bagged white tea - all I have is the loose stuff and that won't work on a flight... Boo.
The beau's mother, with the assistance of the lovely Kat Garson, has found two very exciting farms in/near Ottawa to supply me with my meaty goodness for the trip, as well as hopefully becoming my MIL's continuing provider of good meat - you know, meat that's actually suitable for human consumption. Now, the original plan was to go out to the farms, take a butcher's (haha, a pun AND cutesy rhyming slang!), and do a write-up. However, time constraints mean I will not get to check out the wonderful Dobson's Farm this time, although we have placed an order for a variety of beef, particularly ground beef, that we will be picking up upon my arrival via the central city market in Ottawa. It's not all bad news though - we WILL squeeze in a visit to the terribly exciting Bearbrook Game Meats farm since it's snuggled up close to where I'll be staying! I'll finally be able to try the North American 'delicacies' my Tweeps often tweet about - buffalo, bison, & boar! I'll also be sure to stock up on smoked salmon, my favourite, and maybe I'll even try foods that are available in Australia but not easily, such as emu, duck, kangaroo (if they have unadulterated steaks, etc), and some sausages that are made of a mix of meats, provided they don't include flour.
I might get some cooking in during my trip, if there's demand at all, but otherwise I'll be sitting back and lapping up some much-needed sun!
The suitcases are calling - au revoir!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Gizmos & Gadgets & Recipe: Baked Almond Snapper
I bought myself a new toy!
It's a GoWear Fit, a gadget attached to an armband that you wear constantly, so that it can use its fancy computer to approximate your caloric output for the day. I'm using it mainly for fun, to find out how many calories (excluding waste and futile cycles and the metabolic advantage of glucogenesis, etc) I'm using per day. I was hoping for an explanation of how I could have lost fat consistently when I first tried the all-meat diet despite consuming an average of 2400kcal per day! Well, it's still a bit of a mystery, since my average result via the GoWear Fit is that I use up around 2100-2200kcal per day. Dr. Michael R. Eades does suggest that the metabolic advantage achieved through high-protein/low-carb diets is only in the vicinity of 100-300kcal per day... So unless my body has to work extra hard to convert protein into glucose when I starve my body of dietary glucose, I'm amazed I was breaking even, let alone causing a deficit. The GWF is correct to about 10% either way, so it's possible the average is still currently skewed, since I've only been wearing it for a week, so I'll keep tracking while my free month of online access lasts, and see how my average turns out...
Meanwhile, I've been trying to hide the gadget under my clothes, so I've been going for longer sleeved-shirts, rather than my usual cap sleeves, but the weather has turned back to hot and humid! Plus, the gizmo beeps when it loses contact with the skin, and somehow it manages to do this on occasion whilst I'm wearing it. Having your arm beep in the middle of teaching is just a leeeetle awkward... The painful part of the process is that the gadget is practically useless without buying a subscription to use the software/website - you can gather the data, but not view it! If it were free, I'd only wear the gadget occasionally, but to get the most out of the trial, I'm compelled to wear the band every day, working my wardrobe around it. Bring on cooler weather!
As much as I don't like thinking about calories whilst I'm eating (checking at the end of the day when I check my macro-nutrient breakdown), since it can interfere with my connection to satiety, knowing approximately how many calories one is burning per day makes it hard not to want to know exactly how many calories is in each meal, to make sure to manage a deficit... And this is even though I know that it's not as simple as calories in = calories out (burned/stored).
At least I won't have to worry about calories tomorrow - I'm going for my first complete day fast! I've eaten a big dinner this evening, and now I won't eat anything tomorrow (a decision primarily driven by my hectic schedule tomorrow - there's no time to eat!), until breakfast the following day! The fast will be just over 34 hours... I'm excited, though I may carry a bit of coconut oil just in case my energy flags to levels that mean I can't get through my responsibilities tomorrow...
Here's most of the food that has been keeping me going for the past few days (I keep forgetting to take photos!):
Saturday
I skipped breakfast as the beau & I headed off to the Queen Victoria Market for fresh fish. Salmon, oysters, rockling, and tropical snapper - yum! After running a few other errands, we returned home and I put together a little plate of raw salmon and oysters in lemon juice.
Then I got cracking on dinner - two Toulouse sausages from Jonathan's, plus a small serve of the beef curry I made for the beau, plus a taste of sauerkraut - my first taste! Wow, so sour/sweet! Perfect with the beef curry - even better than cauliflower rice!
Sunday
After a big sleep-in, I whipped up a generous fry-up for the beau & my breakfast: bacon, Jonathan's Bespoke Breakfast Sausages, and an egg/lox scramble
Later, it was time to get fancy with a massive piece of tropical snapper we picked up at the market:
Recipe: Baked Almond Snapper
Ingredients:
Huge slab o' tropical snapper (or any kind of snapper, or white fish)
1/4 cup almond flour
A bevy of dried herbs and spices (mine: cumin, parsley, basil, paprika, and sage)
1 egg
1/4 cup coconut oil
Method:
1. Place fish fillet, skin side down, in a greased baking dish.
2. Whip egg in a small bowl, and brush/drizzle egg over the top of the fillet.
3. Mix almond meal/flour and herbs & spices in a small bowl, and sprinkle over fillet until completely covered.
4. Drizzle oil carefully over the coated fillet, taking care not to wash away the almond flour.
5. Bake in a moderate oven (160degC) for 30 minutes, until coating is golden and fish flakes apart when cut.
Serve immediately, to rave review!
Monday
Decided to skip breakfast and lunch, so this rack of lamb, with its generous layers of fat, certainly hit the spot!
Tuesday
Started my day with Toulouse sausages and fried eggs, cooking extra snags to take to work for lunch. However, I ended up eating them at recess, resulting in a 8 hour fast between brunch and dinner - very nice!
Then for dinner, I had a few bitsy pre-fast meals, starting with an organic beef steakette (tastier than the photo would suggest), plus some scrambled eggs with Camembert for a luxe treat! I also had smoked salmon, as well as a few macadamia nuts to get my fat intake up. Hope that fibre won't cause any issues!
Wish me luck for my big fast - here's hoping the 'worst' that I experience is keto-breath!
It's a GoWear Fit, a gadget attached to an armband that you wear constantly, so that it can use its fancy computer to approximate your caloric output for the day. I'm using it mainly for fun, to find out how many calories (excluding waste and futile cycles and the metabolic advantage of glucogenesis, etc) I'm using per day. I was hoping for an explanation of how I could have lost fat consistently when I first tried the all-meat diet despite consuming an average of 2400kcal per day! Well, it's still a bit of a mystery, since my average result via the GoWear Fit is that I use up around 2100-2200kcal per day. Dr. Michael R. Eades does suggest that the metabolic advantage achieved through high-protein/low-carb diets is only in the vicinity of 100-300kcal per day... So unless my body has to work extra hard to convert protein into glucose when I starve my body of dietary glucose, I'm amazed I was breaking even, let alone causing a deficit. The GWF is correct to about 10% either way, so it's possible the average is still currently skewed, since I've only been wearing it for a week, so I'll keep tracking while my free month of online access lasts, and see how my average turns out...
Meanwhile, I've been trying to hide the gadget under my clothes, so I've been going for longer sleeved-shirts, rather than my usual cap sleeves, but the weather has turned back to hot and humid! Plus, the gizmo beeps when it loses contact with the skin, and somehow it manages to do this on occasion whilst I'm wearing it. Having your arm beep in the middle of teaching is just a leeeetle awkward... The painful part of the process is that the gadget is practically useless without buying a subscription to use the software/website - you can gather the data, but not view it! If it were free, I'd only wear the gadget occasionally, but to get the most out of the trial, I'm compelled to wear the band every day, working my wardrobe around it. Bring on cooler weather!
As much as I don't like thinking about calories whilst I'm eating (checking at the end of the day when I check my macro-nutrient breakdown), since it can interfere with my connection to satiety, knowing approximately how many calories one is burning per day makes it hard not to want to know exactly how many calories is in each meal, to make sure to manage a deficit... And this is even though I know that it's not as simple as calories in = calories out (burned/stored).
At least I won't have to worry about calories tomorrow - I'm going for my first complete day fast! I've eaten a big dinner this evening, and now I won't eat anything tomorrow (a decision primarily driven by my hectic schedule tomorrow - there's no time to eat!), until breakfast the following day! The fast will be just over 34 hours... I'm excited, though I may carry a bit of coconut oil just in case my energy flags to levels that mean I can't get through my responsibilities tomorrow...
Here's most of the food that has been keeping me going for the past few days (I keep forgetting to take photos!):
Saturday
I skipped breakfast as the beau & I headed off to the Queen Victoria Market for fresh fish. Salmon, oysters, rockling, and tropical snapper - yum! After running a few other errands, we returned home and I put together a little plate of raw salmon and oysters in lemon juice.
Then I got cracking on dinner - two Toulouse sausages from Jonathan's, plus a small serve of the beef curry I made for the beau, plus a taste of sauerkraut - my first taste! Wow, so sour/sweet! Perfect with the beef curry - even better than cauliflower rice!
Sunday
After a big sleep-in, I whipped up a generous fry-up for the beau & my breakfast: bacon, Jonathan's Bespoke Breakfast Sausages, and an egg/lox scramble
Later, it was time to get fancy with a massive piece of tropical snapper we picked up at the market:
Recipe: Baked Almond Snapper
Ingredients:
Huge slab o' tropical snapper (or any kind of snapper, or white fish)
1/4 cup almond flour
A bevy of dried herbs and spices (mine: cumin, parsley, basil, paprika, and sage)
1 egg
1/4 cup coconut oil
Method:
1. Place fish fillet, skin side down, in a greased baking dish.
2. Whip egg in a small bowl, and brush/drizzle egg over the top of the fillet.
3. Mix almond meal/flour and herbs & spices in a small bowl, and sprinkle over fillet until completely covered.
4. Drizzle oil carefully over the coated fillet, taking care not to wash away the almond flour.
5. Bake in a moderate oven (160degC) for 30 minutes, until coating is golden and fish flakes apart when cut.
Serve immediately, to rave review!
Monday
Decided to skip breakfast and lunch, so this rack of lamb, with its generous layers of fat, certainly hit the spot!
Tuesday
Started my day with Toulouse sausages and fried eggs, cooking extra snags to take to work for lunch. However, I ended up eating them at recess, resulting in a 8 hour fast between brunch and dinner - very nice!
Then for dinner, I had a few bitsy pre-fast meals, starting with an organic beef steakette (tastier than the photo would suggest), plus some scrambled eggs with Camembert for a luxe treat! I also had smoked salmon, as well as a few macadamia nuts to get my fat intake up. Hope that fibre won't cause any issues!
Wish me luck for my big fast - here's hoping the 'worst' that I experience is keto-breath!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Birds flyin' high, you know how I feel...
First of all, I want to send heatrfelt thanks to all those commenters who weighed in with their support an perspective and empathy in response to my last post. Your messages were truly touching, and a very welcome reminder that 1) my efforts are appreciated and 2) that I'm not the first to have a hyperphagic reaction, whatever the cause.
I'm feeling a lot better today, given that I've been on this dose of my drug for almost a week, but that also means it's time to step it up another notch... I have a busy weekend ahead of me, so I'll be upping the ante on Sunday night, taking Monday off to cushion the potential crash-landing.
Blocking my access to food has worked very well - a little too well; yesterday I at e a small breakfast and packed a small lunch, about 600kcal combined with a decent amount of animal fat. At the end of my long day of classes and rehearsals, I wasn't ravenous but I was ready for dinner. However, it took me so long to find a way home on that miserable, rainy evening, I missed my chance to eat dinner and still have a sufficient amount of digestion time before wanting to go to sleep. So, after all my plans to put a hold on the ADF protocol, I ended up fasting. Today was a normal eating day - a generous breakfast, no lunch (too busy, and not hungry), and a large dinner of protein and fat. I know that the hyperphagia is still present since I was compelled to keep eating dinner tonight even though my logic was telling me that I should be feeling sated... I had served myself a little too much food, but after yesterday's accidental fast, I wanted to be sure to get enough protein to balance things out.
Breakfast: fried eggs, bacon, and some ham (some shaved, some sliced off a 'log' of free-range ham from the local butcher)
Dinner: Corned silverside leftovers, chicken drumsticks wrapped in bacon, and extra coconut oil.
I'm full, but I catch myself gritting my teeth - a sign of a desire to eat, for me. I'm drinking tea so hopefully I can keep my stomach and mouth occupied until bedtime.
So, while not much has changed, I am pleased that I can wield self-control now that I've identified the problem (it's amazing how long I ignored my extra snacking, even though I was logging everything, and feeling bad about the calorie totals), and the fact that the scales reported a 0.7kg drop overnight is comforting. I am still currently up by 5kg on my post-Christmas weight, and 7kg on my pre-Christmas weight. It's devastating that half of my fat loss success has been so quickly reversed. What's helpful to my sanity though is that I haven't gained any weight on my face, just gut and maybe thighs/hips, so it's not an all-over bloat issue and maybe other people won't notice... Here's hoping that I can get rid of the extra weight promptly! At least we're in for some cooler weather, so I can hide a bit more. I need to go and buy warmer clothes, but I don't want to go shopping now and spend money on clothes that will hopefully be too loose in a month or so!
In the wider blogosphere, Charles Washington posted a timely retort to the recent claims that long-term carb restriction may pose metabolic problems, as asserted recently by Matt Stone. Whilst there's not much to Charles' post itself, he does note a study that he believes supports the theory that Dr. Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet, and therefore other low- to very-low-carb, and maybe even zero-carb diets do not cause 'deleterious metabolic effects'. I've seen others critiquing Matt's viewpoints (and no one supporting them, actually), but Charles is the first to try to justify the lack of metabolic issues in the ZC way of life. Although he doesn't do a great job, it's helpful to me to be reminded that many others function as well as I do on ZC and have been doing it for longer, so perhaps I can stop worrying about my metabolic health and just eat the way that (usually) provides me with the most comfort and satiety - meat & fat! I will stay watchful for signs of a lagging metabolism though.
And on a completely different note, Don Matesz posted a detailed discussion on the theory that humans are designed through evolution to live in coastal regions, with ample access to sea animals and plants. My love of seafood is certainly keen to believe this theory! A mix of sea and land animals certainly seems to cover all our nutritional bases, from what I have read. More surf 'n' turf, please!
I'm feeling a lot better today, given that I've been on this dose of my drug for almost a week, but that also means it's time to step it up another notch... I have a busy weekend ahead of me, so I'll be upping the ante on Sunday night, taking Monday off to cushion the potential crash-landing.
Blocking my access to food has worked very well - a little too well; yesterday I at e a small breakfast and packed a small lunch, about 600kcal combined with a decent amount of animal fat. At the end of my long day of classes and rehearsals, I wasn't ravenous but I was ready for dinner. However, it took me so long to find a way home on that miserable, rainy evening, I missed my chance to eat dinner and still have a sufficient amount of digestion time before wanting to go to sleep. So, after all my plans to put a hold on the ADF protocol, I ended up fasting. Today was a normal eating day - a generous breakfast, no lunch (too busy, and not hungry), and a large dinner of protein and fat. I know that the hyperphagia is still present since I was compelled to keep eating dinner tonight even though my logic was telling me that I should be feeling sated... I had served myself a little too much food, but after yesterday's accidental fast, I wanted to be sure to get enough protein to balance things out.
Breakfast: fried eggs, bacon, and some ham (some shaved, some sliced off a 'log' of free-range ham from the local butcher)
Dinner: Corned silverside leftovers, chicken drumsticks wrapped in bacon, and extra coconut oil.
I'm full, but I catch myself gritting my teeth - a sign of a desire to eat, for me. I'm drinking tea so hopefully I can keep my stomach and mouth occupied until bedtime.
So, while not much has changed, I am pleased that I can wield self-control now that I've identified the problem (it's amazing how long I ignored my extra snacking, even though I was logging everything, and feeling bad about the calorie totals), and the fact that the scales reported a 0.7kg drop overnight is comforting. I am still currently up by 5kg on my post-Christmas weight, and 7kg on my pre-Christmas weight. It's devastating that half of my fat loss success has been so quickly reversed. What's helpful to my sanity though is that I haven't gained any weight on my face, just gut and maybe thighs/hips, so it's not an all-over bloat issue and maybe other people won't notice... Here's hoping that I can get rid of the extra weight promptly! At least we're in for some cooler weather, so I can hide a bit more. I need to go and buy warmer clothes, but I don't want to go shopping now and spend money on clothes that will hopefully be too loose in a month or so!
In the wider blogosphere, Charles Washington posted a timely retort to the recent claims that long-term carb restriction may pose metabolic problems, as asserted recently by Matt Stone. Whilst there's not much to Charles' post itself, he does note a study that he believes supports the theory that Dr. Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet, and therefore other low- to very-low-carb, and maybe even zero-carb diets do not cause 'deleterious metabolic effects'. I've seen others critiquing Matt's viewpoints (and no one supporting them, actually), but Charles is the first to try to justify the lack of metabolic issues in the ZC way of life. Although he doesn't do a great job, it's helpful to me to be reminded that many others function as well as I do on ZC and have been doing it for longer, so perhaps I can stop worrying about my metabolic health and just eat the way that (usually) provides me with the most comfort and satiety - meat & fat! I will stay watchful for signs of a lagging metabolism though.
And on a completely different note, Don Matesz posted a detailed discussion on the theory that humans are designed through evolution to live in coastal regions, with ample access to sea animals and plants. My love of seafood is certainly keen to believe this theory! A mix of sea and land animals certainly seems to cover all our nutritional bases, from what I have read. More surf 'n' turf, please!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Lament, plus Recipe: Oopsie Pizza!
I've received a couple of quite horrible comments recently, criticising my recent 'obsessiveness' towards food. Overlooking the fact that this is primarily a primal eating blog and being 'obsessive' is part of the territory (if I took a disinterested approach, this would be a pretty dull blog!), this got to me since it rang in such opposition to my recent real-life sensations. Of late, thanks mostly to Alternate Day Fasting, I haven't been worrying about counting calories or watching serving sizes as carefully, in order to test whether the average person could benefit from the ADF concept. The average person would not weight their food, nor know much about nutrition, let alone ban neolithic agents from their food supply. I wanted to make this experiment as realistic as possible for the average dieter.
However, the average person does not also have to necessarily deal with transitioning to a new nerve-desensitising drug - a cluster of my nerves suffered an infection a few years ago, leaving the cluster highly sensitive to contact. The slightest touch on this area feels akin to a rough blade plunging through the skin. Not nice. So my GP & I have been trying drug after drug, looking for one that will improve, and eventually cure, the situation. A couple of options have helped a bit, but the situation remains. Two weeks ago I started on the latest and scariest of the family of drugs, gradually stepping up the dose every week. This also happened to be the time I started experimenting with formal ADF.
Long story short, I don't know whether the drug or the program - or maybe even just life stress - is to blame, but I have been steadily gaining weight over the past fortnight, and finding myself in the death-grip of what I can only assume is the hyperphagia I've read about from researchers and individual sufferers. I would find myself constantly in the kitchen in the evening, no matter whether I was fasting or not, and unable to stop reaching for nuts or cheese or other foods that didn't require cooking. Even if I was in tears, hating myself for feeling such a powerful need to keep eating, I couldn't stop it. I felt powerful stomach pains but even they wouldn't stop this urgent desire.
My guts are swollen and sore, my legs have swollen a bit (not comfortable in this hot weather, I can tell you), I'm constantly tired for a couple of days after stepping up the drug dosage, and am lacking in motivation to do anything except eat! I haven't been taking photos of my food - that's how much I've been turned off by eating. I did manage to snap a couple of very attractive, balanced meals though:
(Just don't think about what may have compulsively followed those tasty treats into my over-worked and swollen guts...)
I've been at a loss as to how to tackle this situation. I can't stop the drug since it's bloody expensive and, even if it's a painful process, if it's the one that will finally cure this sensitivity then I want to let it do its thing. I don't totally blame ADF for my response, but I will be stopping that method until I can give it a proper trial. I was going to go back to the Six-Week Cure shakes since they were satisfying and made it easy to control portions and get enough fluids in this foul heatwave, but I was out of protein powder. (There's some currently in the mail, and I'll be re-starting the 6WC when they arrive, to help shift my metabolism into dealing with few carbs, high fat, and fat-burning. I'm in need of a quick-fix, sure, but I also know how kick-starting those processes helps me in the long run.)
So, in the meantime, I'm going on lock-down. I never ventured away from primal foods, but I'm going to restrict the 'sensible vice' options, as well as counting carbs and calories, and going for three small-but-satisfying meals per day. I'll be planning my meals ahead so I don't discover when logging my food after eating that I've accidentally gone overboard on calories. Absolutely no snacking will be allowed. I want to try and work out how much of this excess weight is mere water retention thanks to the drug, and how much is due to fat accumulation from consuming excess calories. Now that the weather is at the tail of the heatwave, I want to walk to and/or from work every day, as well as start to integrate more activity back into my life. We're going horse riding on Saturday, for instance, though having to tell the manager my weight over the phone had me nauseated and almost in tears. To see such a change in my physicality in just two short weeks is more affecting than seeing myself finally become slender enough to nearly carry off a bikini. I really hope that the drug's weight-gain effects are just temporary, if the drug is to blame at all. I haven't lost the love of cooking, but I've certainly lost the love of eating, so I hope (after this post) you'll see a turnaround in tone here when describing my eating activities.
In fact, why wait until the next post? I just had a great time in the kitchen, and although it's not a new recipe, I want to share it with you all!
Diana Renata, the Wilderness Childe, posted this recipe on her blog two days ago, and I was instantly reminded of the original Oopsie inventor, Jamie Von Eaton, crafter of other such wonders as Cauliflower Pizza, and how much I always wanted to try making Oopsies, but didn't really need to. I didn't want to have to pack a lunch in the morning that looked like a wrap or roll just so I would "fit in" in the lunchroom. Instead, I would take leftover curries or chicken drumsticks, or nothing at all! So I missed out on the Oopsie experience. However, when presented with Diana's brilliant pizza-base interpretation, I had to have a go! Whilst I'm not sure I agree with her "best pizza base ever" sentiment (I like being able to pick up crisp slices of cauliflower pizza), I really liked the holdable & foldable effect, and the fact that the base is nothing but animal products (albeit processed ones) is a very sweet discovery for someone who dabbles in carnivorism.
My recipe is a pared-down version of Diana's, since I don't really like to use processed agents such as cream of tartar (you don't need it to to make your egg whites stiff), nor garlic or onion powders.I've also incorporated my tried-and-true pizza-making tips for an evenly cooked crust that never sticks to the slide.
Oopsie Pizza
Ingredients:
4 pastured eggs
3 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
Herbs & spices to taste
Your favourite pizza toppings (I used mozzarella, capsicum, tomatoes, ham, and mild salami)
Method:
Heat oven to moderately high, and place a clean pizza tray inside.
Grab two medium bowls, and separate the eggs so that the whites are in one bowl, and the yolks in another.
Using an electric whisk, whip the egg whites until stiff, glossy peaks form.
By hand or using a stick blender, beat yolks, adding in cream cheese, Parmesan, and herbs & spices as desired, until thoroughly combined.
Fold this yolk mixture into the whipped whites, trying not to crush the foamy bubbles too much.
Remove pizza tray from the oven carefully, and grease thoroughly. Pour the pizza dough mixture onto the tray, spreading the mix evenly.
Return to oven, and bake until golden brown - around 20 minutes.
In the meantime, prepare topping items.
When the crust is done, remove from oven and apply toppings (I recommend using a layer of cheese first to hold your toppings in place).
Return to the hot oven and bake for another 10 minutes, or until toppings have toasted/melted as desired. Turn the oven off when toppings are cooked, and allow the pizza to rest for 5 minutes.
Serve and enjoy!
However, the average person does not also have to necessarily deal with transitioning to a new nerve-desensitising drug - a cluster of my nerves suffered an infection a few years ago, leaving the cluster highly sensitive to contact. The slightest touch on this area feels akin to a rough blade plunging through the skin. Not nice. So my GP & I have been trying drug after drug, looking for one that will improve, and eventually cure, the situation. A couple of options have helped a bit, but the situation remains. Two weeks ago I started on the latest and scariest of the family of drugs, gradually stepping up the dose every week. This also happened to be the time I started experimenting with formal ADF.
Long story short, I don't know whether the drug or the program - or maybe even just life stress - is to blame, but I have been steadily gaining weight over the past fortnight, and finding myself in the death-grip of what I can only assume is the hyperphagia I've read about from researchers and individual sufferers. I would find myself constantly in the kitchen in the evening, no matter whether I was fasting or not, and unable to stop reaching for nuts or cheese or other foods that didn't require cooking. Even if I was in tears, hating myself for feeling such a powerful need to keep eating, I couldn't stop it. I felt powerful stomach pains but even they wouldn't stop this urgent desire.
My guts are swollen and sore, my legs have swollen a bit (not comfortable in this hot weather, I can tell you), I'm constantly tired for a couple of days after stepping up the drug dosage, and am lacking in motivation to do anything except eat! I haven't been taking photos of my food - that's how much I've been turned off by eating. I did manage to snap a couple of very attractive, balanced meals though:
(Just don't think about what may have compulsively followed those tasty treats into my over-worked and swollen guts...)
I've been at a loss as to how to tackle this situation. I can't stop the drug since it's bloody expensive and, even if it's a painful process, if it's the one that will finally cure this sensitivity then I want to let it do its thing. I don't totally blame ADF for my response, but I will be stopping that method until I can give it a proper trial. I was going to go back to the Six-Week Cure shakes since they were satisfying and made it easy to control portions and get enough fluids in this foul heatwave, but I was out of protein powder. (There's some currently in the mail, and I'll be re-starting the 6WC when they arrive, to help shift my metabolism into dealing with few carbs, high fat, and fat-burning. I'm in need of a quick-fix, sure, but I also know how kick-starting those processes helps me in the long run.)
So, in the meantime, I'm going on lock-down. I never ventured away from primal foods, but I'm going to restrict the 'sensible vice' options, as well as counting carbs and calories, and going for three small-but-satisfying meals per day. I'll be planning my meals ahead so I don't discover when logging my food after eating that I've accidentally gone overboard on calories. Absolutely no snacking will be allowed. I want to try and work out how much of this excess weight is mere water retention thanks to the drug, and how much is due to fat accumulation from consuming excess calories. Now that the weather is at the tail of the heatwave, I want to walk to and/or from work every day, as well as start to integrate more activity back into my life. We're going horse riding on Saturday, for instance, though having to tell the manager my weight over the phone had me nauseated and almost in tears. To see such a change in my physicality in just two short weeks is more affecting than seeing myself finally become slender enough to nearly carry off a bikini. I really hope that the drug's weight-gain effects are just temporary, if the drug is to blame at all. I haven't lost the love of cooking, but I've certainly lost the love of eating, so I hope (after this post) you'll see a turnaround in tone here when describing my eating activities.
In fact, why wait until the next post? I just had a great time in the kitchen, and although it's not a new recipe, I want to share it with you all!
Diana Renata, the Wilderness Childe, posted this recipe on her blog two days ago, and I was instantly reminded of the original Oopsie inventor, Jamie Von Eaton, crafter of other such wonders as Cauliflower Pizza, and how much I always wanted to try making Oopsies, but didn't really need to. I didn't want to have to pack a lunch in the morning that looked like a wrap or roll just so I would "fit in" in the lunchroom. Instead, I would take leftover curries or chicken drumsticks, or nothing at all! So I missed out on the Oopsie experience. However, when presented with Diana's brilliant pizza-base interpretation, I had to have a go! Whilst I'm not sure I agree with her "best pizza base ever" sentiment (I like being able to pick up crisp slices of cauliflower pizza), I really liked the holdable & foldable effect, and the fact that the base is nothing but animal products (albeit processed ones) is a very sweet discovery for someone who dabbles in carnivorism.
My recipe is a pared-down version of Diana's, since I don't really like to use processed agents such as cream of tartar (you don't need it to to make your egg whites stiff), nor garlic or onion powders.I've also incorporated my tried-and-true pizza-making tips for an evenly cooked crust that never sticks to the slide.
Oopsie Pizza
Ingredients:
4 pastured eggs
3 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
Herbs & spices to taste
Your favourite pizza toppings (I used mozzarella, capsicum, tomatoes, ham, and mild salami)
Method:
Heat oven to moderately high, and place a clean pizza tray inside.
Grab two medium bowls, and separate the eggs so that the whites are in one bowl, and the yolks in another.
Using an electric whisk, whip the egg whites until stiff, glossy peaks form.
By hand or using a stick blender, beat yolks, adding in cream cheese, Parmesan, and herbs & spices as desired, until thoroughly combined.
Fold this yolk mixture into the whipped whites, trying not to crush the foamy bubbles too much.
Remove pizza tray from the oven carefully, and grease thoroughly. Pour the pizza dough mixture onto the tray, spreading the mix evenly.
Return to oven, and bake until golden brown - around 20 minutes.
In the meantime, prepare topping items.
When the crust is done, remove from oven and apply toppings (I recommend using a layer of cheese first to hold your toppings in place).
Return to the hot oven and bake for another 10 minutes, or until toppings have toasted/melted as desired. Turn the oven off when toppings are cooked, and allow the pizza to rest for 5 minutes.
Serve and enjoy!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Swotting Up On The Endocrine System & Stuffing My Face
As well as re-reading a lot of posts on blogs I already following, with this new lens aimed at metabolic function and how it is affected by nutrition, I'm also blogroll-hopping to find new lands of endocrine-exploration. Some follow paleo principles, avoiding neolithic foods, and some don't. I'm accumulating knowledge in a sprawling and all-encompassing manner, and I do not plan to regurgitate it all back out in posts here, since the metabolism is yet another area of health where scientists have not found all the answers. But as I go, I'll be sure to add notes in my posts where particular choices have been made with metabolic process in mind.
Here are just some of the web pages I wandered through today that I found thought-provoking and informative (some stuff I already knew, some stuff I didn't, not that I agreed with everything, necessarily - read critically, says GGP the English teacher...):
Ways To Boost Metabolism - A basic starting point, good for its notes about coconut oil. I took some CCO today, and I've been drinking white tea all day. My hands are like radiators right now...
A 7-step Plan to Boost Your Low Thyroid and Metabolism - points out the link between environmental toxins and hypothyroidism, as well as looking at the causes of chronic inflammation. His 7-step programme also looks good, especially the nutrition notes and heat therapy idea...
And here's an example of what NOT to do - Twelve Ways To Revive & Boost Your Metabolism. Yikes. Utter bollocks until she starts talking about muscles.
I'm reading through the info on the Schwarzbien Principle again. Highly thought-provoking, but not something to take as gospel.
The colourfully named 'The Diet-F*cked Blog' is written by two 18 year old kids who suffer from burned-out adrenal glands and compromised thyroid function. Whilst the blog seems to be stagnant (although there's an odd post asking for your email if you want to subscribe since the blog needs to go 'on the down-low'), there's some really interesting information that is essentially a translation of Ray Peat's ideas placed alongside anecdotal experiences.
To read more about Ray Peat's ideas, check out his articles on thyroid function.
Dr. Kharrazian is an expert in the field of thyroid functionality, but very little of his work is available online (that I can find). I have found reference to his ideas paraphrased in forum comments, but for more details I'd have to buy his book (and I'm not about to do that). The take-home idea of his, at this stage, is that it may well be possible that all of the potential causes of hypothyroidism can be eliminated without the need for medical/drug interference.
From a comment by Erin on a post on The Fabulous Foragers Forum:
From all the reading I've been doing (based upon the experience of people practicing functional endocrinology like Dr. Kharrazian and Nora), the consensus seems to be in favor of lower (not super-low/no) carb, moderate protein, higher fat for healing the endocrine system. Even Dr. Schwartzbein echos this, too. A low(er)-carb, higher fat diet (without all the excess protein!) resets leptin functioning, which then helps insulin, which then helps adrenal function and so on down the hormone ladder.
This comment, based on access to texts that are not available to read online as far as I can tell, tends to support the idea that KKwasniewski's The Optimal Diet is a good way to go. Although I've always felt fine, I've often wondered whether the amount of protein I consume when on a carnivorous WOE is unnecessarily high, and potentially dangerous. I watch my caloric breakdown carefully (i.e. keeping my percentage of calories from fat up to at least 65%) but this doesn't take into account total caloric intake. So if I futz around with Kwasniewski's ideas, here's what I come up with:
If I take 1g of protein for every 1kg of my ideal bodyweight (for which I'm using 65kg, which may be a little lower than my ideal - I don't know since I've never been there in my adult life!), that says I should consume 65g protein, providing me with 260kcal.
My optimal fat consumption range is therefore between 162g and 227g, providing 1458kcal to 2043kcal.
I should then, so Kwasniewski states, consume at least 35g carb but no more than 50g carb, giving me between 140kcal and 200kcal from carbohydrates.
Overall, my minimum caloric intake should be 1858kcal and my maximum 2503kcal.
This is supposedly a healthy eating plan for my goal weight, so eating at this level should encourage my excess weight to leave. But since I'm insulin resistant, it might help for me to consume a lower level of carbs... So theoretically, if I then cut back on my carb allowance (but maybe not to zero if I am to preserve metabolic function), then I should aim for 65g protein, 162g to 227g fat, and around 5g carb, resulting in a caloric intake of 1738 to 2323kcal. Looking at caloric restriction alone, I know that I don't lose fat at this level whilst consuming 20g carb, but perhaps I could on a ketogenic diet... And I've shown before that I can lose fat on a carnivorous diet consuming up to 2400kcal per day, so that may prove the Kwasniewski ranges are quite optimal... Maybe I'll play with this idea more post-ADF experiment.
From what I can tell, my iodine levels are fine, and my hormone test pre-PCO diagnosis suggested that my thyroid was functioning well. However, it cannot be denied that iodine deficiency is becoming a significant problem within at least the Westernised world, and especially those of us who shun fast-food, which is loaded with iodised salt. As Sue pointed out in a comment, Richard Nikoley's own experiences with hypothyroidism and iodine, and the comments which follow, are worth a read for anyone interested in metabolism.
In 2008, Matt Stone completed a 30 day trial of an all-meat diet, noting the therapeutic effects it had on digestion, skin & dental health, IBS, obesity (noting that "an all-meat diet is pretty much a sure thing for weight loss"), acne, blood pressure, and sugar/flour addictions. He touches upon the question I'm currently interested in - whether the carnivorous lifestyle can 'heal' the damage done to the digestive and endocrine systems by previous ways of eating (the usual SAD: high PUFA, high refined carb diet). Whilst this post didn't really answer that question, the comments took the discussion into interesting territory, and are certainly worth a read (until it turns into a weird argument about Charles Washington...)
It seems like everyone is interested in discussing iodine and thyroid function at the moment, including Diana Hseih, who has personal thyroid issues and is blogging about her experience, Hunt.Gather.Love, Dr. James Carlson, and we're promised that Dr. Michael R. Eades will soon be tackling the topic in depth.
In between the reading, I - of course - managed to find time for some really good eatin', especially since Organic Direct just delivered a new month's supply of delicious pastured meat!
Friday - Fasting
Adding to the scrambled eggs noted last post, here's a shot of the HUGE blade steak I easily put away before we headed out to the theatre.
Saturday - Feasting
Started the day with a sleep-in, then satisfied my hunger with lamb chops and fried egg, aw yeah...
A light lunch of smoked salmon followed...
And topped off the day with gorgeous salmon sashimi, followed later by a spoonful of metabolism-boosting coconut oil and a few pots of organic white tea.
Sunday - Feasting
Today is my first shot at keeping my protein intake around the 65g mark, and boosting my fat intake to at least 160g. Carbs will only be coming from animal products for now, so the number will fall as it wishes...
So I started off with a crab meat pancake - 140g crab meat, 3 eggs, and 50g coconut oil, mixed up and poured into a heated frying pan greased with butter. This made two large pancakes (next time I'd use a smaller pan to make smaller cakes - easier to flip) and I topped them off with more butter. I only got through one and a third pancakes though... Spark tells me it's around the 83% fat mark! Phwoar, talk about satisfying!
Then, for a late lunch, we picked up a rotisserie chicken and I ate the drumsticks plus some extra skin, mmmmmm!
Finally, I'd fulfilled my protein need for the day, but not my calories, so I turned to the most palatable fat in my kitchen - double cream! Yum!!
But the highlight of my day was not something I ate, but was still one of my culinary creations - today's article on Mark's Daily Apple is a post revealing my Sunflower Sesame Crackers, plus one of my dips, Prawn Paté!
Worker Bee's effort looks good, though not as golden as my batches of crackers, one of which will be my demo for my own recipe post later today. So now you know why I made all those dips, and the secret snack I alluded to throughout that recipe post... :) I hope you give them a go, and let me know what you think!
Here are just some of the web pages I wandered through today that I found thought-provoking and informative (some stuff I already knew, some stuff I didn't, not that I agreed with everything, necessarily - read critically, says GGP the English teacher...):
Ways To Boost Metabolism - A basic starting point, good for its notes about coconut oil. I took some CCO today, and I've been drinking white tea all day. My hands are like radiators right now...
A 7-step Plan to Boost Your Low Thyroid and Metabolism - points out the link between environmental toxins and hypothyroidism, as well as looking at the causes of chronic inflammation. His 7-step programme also looks good, especially the nutrition notes and heat therapy idea...
And here's an example of what NOT to do - Twelve Ways To Revive & Boost Your Metabolism. Yikes. Utter bollocks until she starts talking about muscles.
I'm reading through the info on the Schwarzbien Principle again. Highly thought-provoking, but not something to take as gospel.
The colourfully named 'The Diet-F*cked Blog' is written by two 18 year old kids who suffer from burned-out adrenal glands and compromised thyroid function. Whilst the blog seems to be stagnant (although there's an odd post asking for your email if you want to subscribe since the blog needs to go 'on the down-low'), there's some really interesting information that is essentially a translation of Ray Peat's ideas placed alongside anecdotal experiences.
To read more about Ray Peat's ideas, check out his articles on thyroid function.
Dr. Kharrazian is an expert in the field of thyroid functionality, but very little of his work is available online (that I can find). I have found reference to his ideas paraphrased in forum comments, but for more details I'd have to buy his book (and I'm not about to do that). The take-home idea of his, at this stage, is that it may well be possible that all of the potential causes of hypothyroidism can be eliminated without the need for medical/drug interference.
From a comment by Erin on a post on The Fabulous Foragers Forum:
From all the reading I've been doing (based upon the experience of people practicing functional endocrinology like Dr. Kharrazian and Nora), the consensus seems to be in favor of lower (not super-low/no) carb, moderate protein, higher fat for healing the endocrine system. Even Dr. Schwartzbein echos this, too. A low(er)-carb, higher fat diet (without all the excess protein!) resets leptin functioning, which then helps insulin, which then helps adrenal function and so on down the hormone ladder.
This comment, based on access to texts that are not available to read online as far as I can tell, tends to support the idea that KKwasniewski's The Optimal Diet is a good way to go. Although I've always felt fine, I've often wondered whether the amount of protein I consume when on a carnivorous WOE is unnecessarily high, and potentially dangerous. I watch my caloric breakdown carefully (i.e. keeping my percentage of calories from fat up to at least 65%) but this doesn't take into account total caloric intake. So if I futz around with Kwasniewski's ideas, here's what I come up with:
If I take 1g of protein for every 1kg of my ideal bodyweight (for which I'm using 65kg, which may be a little lower than my ideal - I don't know since I've never been there in my adult life!), that says I should consume 65g protein, providing me with 260kcal.
My optimal fat consumption range is therefore between 162g and 227g, providing 1458kcal to 2043kcal.
I should then, so Kwasniewski states, consume at least 35g carb but no more than 50g carb, giving me between 140kcal and 200kcal from carbohydrates.
Overall, my minimum caloric intake should be 1858kcal and my maximum 2503kcal.
This is supposedly a healthy eating plan for my goal weight, so eating at this level should encourage my excess weight to leave. But since I'm insulin resistant, it might help for me to consume a lower level of carbs... So theoretically, if I then cut back on my carb allowance (but maybe not to zero if I am to preserve metabolic function), then I should aim for 65g protein, 162g to 227g fat, and around 5g carb, resulting in a caloric intake of 1738 to 2323kcal. Looking at caloric restriction alone, I know that I don't lose fat at this level whilst consuming 20g carb, but perhaps I could on a ketogenic diet... And I've shown before that I can lose fat on a carnivorous diet consuming up to 2400kcal per day, so that may prove the Kwasniewski ranges are quite optimal... Maybe I'll play with this idea more post-ADF experiment.
From what I can tell, my iodine levels are fine, and my hormone test pre-PCO diagnosis suggested that my thyroid was functioning well. However, it cannot be denied that iodine deficiency is becoming a significant problem within at least the Westernised world, and especially those of us who shun fast-food, which is loaded with iodised salt. As Sue pointed out in a comment, Richard Nikoley's own experiences with hypothyroidism and iodine, and the comments which follow, are worth a read for anyone interested in metabolism.
In 2008, Matt Stone completed a 30 day trial of an all-meat diet, noting the therapeutic effects it had on digestion, skin & dental health, IBS, obesity (noting that "an all-meat diet is pretty much a sure thing for weight loss"), acne, blood pressure, and sugar/flour addictions. He touches upon the question I'm currently interested in - whether the carnivorous lifestyle can 'heal' the damage done to the digestive and endocrine systems by previous ways of eating (the usual SAD: high PUFA, high refined carb diet). Whilst this post didn't really answer that question, the comments took the discussion into interesting territory, and are certainly worth a read (until it turns into a weird argument about Charles Washington...)
It seems like everyone is interested in discussing iodine and thyroid function at the moment, including Diana Hseih, who has personal thyroid issues and is blogging about her experience, Hunt.Gather.Love, Dr. James Carlson, and we're promised that Dr. Michael R. Eades will soon be tackling the topic in depth.
In between the reading, I - of course - managed to find time for some really good eatin', especially since Organic Direct just delivered a new month's supply of delicious pastured meat!
Friday - Fasting
Adding to the scrambled eggs noted last post, here's a shot of the HUGE blade steak I easily put away before we headed out to the theatre.
Saturday - Feasting
Started the day with a sleep-in, then satisfied my hunger with lamb chops and fried egg, aw yeah...
A light lunch of smoked salmon followed...
And topped off the day with gorgeous salmon sashimi, followed later by a spoonful of metabolism-boosting coconut oil and a few pots of organic white tea.
Sunday - Feasting
Today is my first shot at keeping my protein intake around the 65g mark, and boosting my fat intake to at least 160g. Carbs will only be coming from animal products for now, so the number will fall as it wishes...
So I started off with a crab meat pancake - 140g crab meat, 3 eggs, and 50g coconut oil, mixed up and poured into a heated frying pan greased with butter. This made two large pancakes (next time I'd use a smaller pan to make smaller cakes - easier to flip) and I topped them off with more butter. I only got through one and a third pancakes though... Spark tells me it's around the 83% fat mark! Phwoar, talk about satisfying!
Then, for a late lunch, we picked up a rotisserie chicken and I ate the drumsticks plus some extra skin, mmmmmm!
Finally, I'd fulfilled my protein need for the day, but not my calories, so I turned to the most palatable fat in my kitchen - double cream! Yum!!
But the highlight of my day was not something I ate, but was still one of my culinary creations - today's article on Mark's Daily Apple is a post revealing my Sunflower Sesame Crackers, plus one of my dips, Prawn Paté!
Worker Bee's effort looks good, though not as golden as my batches of crackers, one of which will be my demo for my own recipe post later today. So now you know why I made all those dips, and the secret snack I alluded to throughout that recipe post... :) I hope you give them a go, and let me know what you think!
Friday, February 5, 2010
Listening To The Experts & Listening To My Body
One of the areas of health that has long been my interest is the concept of metabolism. I can recall a GP telling my Mum, when I was first getting a bit solid around my waist, that I might have a sluggish metabolism, but a thyroid issue was ruled out. So it has always been part of my understanding that my metabolism was the reason behind my weight, and never really blamed over-eating (which I didn't do - I ate the same amount as everyone else) or the foods I ate (which, thanks to Mum, were usually whole foods and sugary treats were very rare). I always understood that it was something else - like a 'fat gene' that I would often hear about.
Throughout my pursuit of information over the last 12+ months, I recognised that I was most probably insulin resistant, caused by my eating. I thought that maybe this was due to my Uni years where I lived on pasta and bread and not much else. But lately a lot of my findings have lead me to wonder whether my high-fruit diet as a child could have played a role in this. I do mean high in fruit - I would eat at least two apples per day, often the gigantic Granny Smith apples, and when in season I would consume nectarines, peaches, and mandarin oranges back-to-back. I adored grapes and would eat them by the bunch (and I loved them, despite the gut pain they ALWAYS triggered!), and we'd always have dried apricots and sultanas on hand to snack on. Fruit juice was part of almost every meal, as soft drink was banned. Not all of these items are comparably high in fructose, but the amount consumed would have potentially nullified the relevance of fructose/glucose ratios. It doesn't really matter where the fructose comes from (except potentially the use of considering fibre in the equation) - once it's in the system, it adds up. Considering that my weight issues have been consistent throughout most of my life, it made sense that, if externally triggered, they must be due to something that had been a normal part of my routine for many more years than my stint at Uni.
There is, of course, a growing understanding of the dangers of fructose, but until recently I did not understand that the problem with fructose might extend beyond the liver damage issue and blood sugar issues, etc. Richard J. Johnson, author of The Sugar Fix, explains it best:
“…we have powerful direct evidence to show that consuming too much fructose-rich sugar and HFCS causes the toxic brew of conditions known as metabolic syndrome. Moreover, this same body of research suggests that starchy foods do not induce metabolic syndrome.”
“It’s worth noting here that the glucose in starchy foods may cause blood glucose levels to rise, which stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin. But this is normal and healthy. Dietary glucose does not cause insulin resistance; fructose does.”
“And so begins a vicious cycle caused by eating high-GI foods, which overstimulate the pancreas. It’s an interesting theory, but it is not well supported by the metabolic facts. Stimulating the pancreas to produce insulin is not the problem. Your body is supposed to produce insulin when blood glucose levels rise, so that’s normal and healthy. It is insulin resistance that is closely linked to metabolic syndrome and weight gain. Glucose does not cause insulin resistance. Fructose does. Glucose does not trick your body into persistent hunger. Fructose does.”
I have also been wondering whether I may be fructose intolerant: yesterday I topped my coconut pancake with a small amount of thawed raspberries, and shortly there after my stomach swelled painfully. Today, I've noticed some intestinal issues as well. These are the same issues I used to find with excessive consumption of grapes, but perhaps I used to bloat a bit after eating all fruit high in fructose but just wasn't paying attention to it. The symptoms and details explained on the What About Fructose? of the Triglycerides-Lowering Diet ring more than a few bells.
One point that has popped up numerous times of late (not necessarily new news, just newly relevant to me) has been that starches are consumed by many peoples who do not seem to have the health issues the Western World experiences. The paradox of Asia's rice-based diet (on average) always seemed unsatisfactorily answered. But lately a variety of voices have explained this in a meaningful way, the thrust of which is that:
Glucose does not cause metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance. If you are not insulin resistant and have a high-functioning metabolism, then consumption of potatoes, corn, and rice should not be harmful as blood glucose levels are unlikely to rise as high as those levels experienced by the insulin resistant.
So, arguably, if you can get your metabolism in excellent working order and reverse the damage done by following ways of eating that combine significant amounts of fructose with other damaging behaviours, then eventually starches should not be the enemy (so long as they are not neolithic foods involving damaging factors such as phytic acid). I know that potatoes are out of bounds for me at the moment, since I have no reason to believe that my metabolism is all that great and all evidence points to continued insulin resistance, but it's interesting to think that I may not need to follow a low-carb diet forever. I already know tat the majority of paleo bloggers out there are not even slightly low-carb, and even Richard Nikoley's blog, Free The Animal, details his transition from low-carb to something more moderate, and he has not seemed to experience unpleasant results.
The main reason that I find this interesting (since I am currently happiest when on an all-meat diet) is that a number of nutrition experts have scientific reason to believe that low-carb diets - ketogenic diets in particular - are damaging in the long run. Matt Stone states effusively, in a guest post on The Fat Head Blog, that the ketogenic diet, if followed long-term is 'metabolic suicide'. His own personal experience was that low-carbing worked wonders for him for 3 years, but then his health started to reverse back to his initial state without any real change in his routine. However, the majority of experts attribute this to the process of losing weight itself - that being in caloric deficit for a significant period of time is necessarily going to encourage the body to conserve energy. This aligns with my own understanding, and I haven't seen reason to believe that the metabolism reacts any differently to a lack of dietary sugars vs. a lack of dietary fats/protein other than the insulin response itself in the short-term.
I am understanding more and more that it's not enough to simply trust that what makes you feel best in the short-term is going to work long-term. The obvious points here would be to look at consumption of alcohol, excessive sun-baking (inc. burning), using drugs recreationally, going to loud music gigs, etc etc. The less obvious practices which may well be damaging include my possibly-ruinous consumption of large amounts of fruit throughout most of my young life, and possibly my potential choice of living on an all-meat diet for longer than is my current practice. Perhaps Dr. Atkins had it right when he encouraged his patients to achieve a ketogenic state to accelerate fat-burning, but then to gradually increase the amount of carbs (in the form of vegetables, primarily) in such a way that fat loss didn't stop, but ketosis was no longer the present metabolic state. However, Dr. Kurt Harris suggests:
So, I am currently trying to work with both my body's response to food and the information available to me by the scientific community, and will not be consuming carbs for carbs' sake, but will be aiming to achieve ketosis in order to kick-start fat burning, and then finagle my food consumption to continue fat-burning but perhaps not be in ketosis. Alternate Day Fasting will still be part of the plan, as I want to continue this experiment, but on my feasting days I will be sticking to animal products until I achieve ketosis. Then I may add vegetables back in or take other action to keep clear of ketosis but not block fat burning... I'm not sure if this will actually be possible though, since in the past, whenever I have reincorporated carbs, I have experienced inflammation of various kinds. And as Dr. Harris puts it: Enough nonstarchy greens to choke a gorilla with an otherwise all animal diet will not keep you totally out of ketosis, I guarantee. If it did, I wouldn't want to share your bathroom. In the meantime I will be spending more time swotting up on metabolic functioning so that I can work towards overcoming insulin resistance once and for all!
Let's see how I go!
First, to catch up on the last three days:
Wednesday - Fasting
A fine day for fasting! I have really been enjoying my fasts, even though I miss out on a bit of cooking. I have been a little worried about fasting's effect on my leptin sensitivity though, since on feasting days I seem to be hungrier after eating than before... Re-restricting carbs should help that, I hope. Nuts & cheese tend to pose the most binge danger, so I'll be keeping them out of the house once more.
Dinner: It was a shockingly hot day, so we picked up a roast chicken after running off to the movies after work to hide in air-conditioned comfort. I served the chicken with a dollop of beetroot dip and a serving of anchovy paste (see my Dips post for recipes) - both were perfect with the juicy chicken!
Thursday - Feasting
I started my day with salmon sashimi (but forgot to photograph it as I was eating it whilst preparing the rest of breakfast) and a couple of coconut pancakes with some cream cheese in lieu of actual cream.
I packed up some leftover chicken for lunch, to help get me through a long night of rehearsals.
I was hungry when I finally made it home, so I whipped up some cheesy sautéed cabbage as an entree to enjoy whilst the lamb chops cooked:
Despite reaching a sufficient amount of consumed calories for the day, I was still hungry, so I made a dessert of coconut pancakes and raspberries. And even after that, with resultant stomach pain from the fruit, I still had the munchies! So I ended up snacking on nuts and a carrot, until finally locking myself away in my bedroom and tried to ignore my hunger pangs. I'm not sure if this reaction was a result of the food I had eaten or the fasting regimen... The crazy weather and extremely busy schedule at work probably didn't help!
Friday - Fasting
Another blissful fast to help alleviate the shame of over-indulgence the previous night! Despite a mad day of full-on classes and uncomfortable weather (kinda humid but cold with misty rain, but still hot inside of buildings thanks to the previous heatwave... Ick!), I didn't find myself heading toward hunger-territory until after lunch, which I washed away with some white tea.
Once home, I whipped up three eggs and a sprinkling of pizza cheese to tide me over until dinner.
And as I type, I'm grilling a couple of blade steaks for the beau & I before we head out to the theatre for the evening. I'd really just like to go to bed, but I'm an MTC subscriber and my dates are secured well ahead of time. Here's hoping it's a good show, else I may finally experience the embarrassment of falling asleep in public!
Throughout my pursuit of information over the last 12+ months, I recognised that I was most probably insulin resistant, caused by my eating. I thought that maybe this was due to my Uni years where I lived on pasta and bread and not much else. But lately a lot of my findings have lead me to wonder whether my high-fruit diet as a child could have played a role in this. I do mean high in fruit - I would eat at least two apples per day, often the gigantic Granny Smith apples, and when in season I would consume nectarines, peaches, and mandarin oranges back-to-back. I adored grapes and would eat them by the bunch (and I loved them, despite the gut pain they ALWAYS triggered!), and we'd always have dried apricots and sultanas on hand to snack on. Fruit juice was part of almost every meal, as soft drink was banned. Not all of these items are comparably high in fructose, but the amount consumed would have potentially nullified the relevance of fructose/glucose ratios. It doesn't really matter where the fructose comes from (except potentially the use of considering fibre in the equation) - once it's in the system, it adds up. Considering that my weight issues have been consistent throughout most of my life, it made sense that, if externally triggered, they must be due to something that had been a normal part of my routine for many more years than my stint at Uni.
There is, of course, a growing understanding of the dangers of fructose, but until recently I did not understand that the problem with fructose might extend beyond the liver damage issue and blood sugar issues, etc. Richard J. Johnson, author of The Sugar Fix, explains it best:
“…we have powerful direct evidence to show that consuming too much fructose-rich sugar and HFCS causes the toxic brew of conditions known as metabolic syndrome. Moreover, this same body of research suggests that starchy foods do not induce metabolic syndrome.”
“It’s worth noting here that the glucose in starchy foods may cause blood glucose levels to rise, which stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin. But this is normal and healthy. Dietary glucose does not cause insulin resistance; fructose does.”
“And so begins a vicious cycle caused by eating high-GI foods, which overstimulate the pancreas. It’s an interesting theory, but it is not well supported by the metabolic facts. Stimulating the pancreas to produce insulin is not the problem. Your body is supposed to produce insulin when blood glucose levels rise, so that’s normal and healthy. It is insulin resistance that is closely linked to metabolic syndrome and weight gain. Glucose does not cause insulin resistance. Fructose does. Glucose does not trick your body into persistent hunger. Fructose does.”
I have also been wondering whether I may be fructose intolerant: yesterday I topped my coconut pancake with a small amount of thawed raspberries, and shortly there after my stomach swelled painfully. Today, I've noticed some intestinal issues as well. These are the same issues I used to find with excessive consumption of grapes, but perhaps I used to bloat a bit after eating all fruit high in fructose but just wasn't paying attention to it. The symptoms and details explained on the What About Fructose? of the Triglycerides-Lowering Diet ring more than a few bells.
One point that has popped up numerous times of late (not necessarily new news, just newly relevant to me) has been that starches are consumed by many peoples who do not seem to have the health issues the Western World experiences. The paradox of Asia's rice-based diet (on average) always seemed unsatisfactorily answered. But lately a variety of voices have explained this in a meaningful way, the thrust of which is that:
Glucose does not cause metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance. If you are not insulin resistant and have a high-functioning metabolism, then consumption of potatoes, corn, and rice should not be harmful as blood glucose levels are unlikely to rise as high as those levels experienced by the insulin resistant.
So, arguably, if you can get your metabolism in excellent working order and reverse the damage done by following ways of eating that combine significant amounts of fructose with other damaging behaviours, then eventually starches should not be the enemy (so long as they are not neolithic foods involving damaging factors such as phytic acid). I know that potatoes are out of bounds for me at the moment, since I have no reason to believe that my metabolism is all that great and all evidence points to continued insulin resistance, but it's interesting to think that I may not need to follow a low-carb diet forever. I already know tat the majority of paleo bloggers out there are not even slightly low-carb, and even Richard Nikoley's blog, Free The Animal, details his transition from low-carb to something more moderate, and he has not seemed to experience unpleasant results.
The main reason that I find this interesting (since I am currently happiest when on an all-meat diet) is that a number of nutrition experts have scientific reason to believe that low-carb diets - ketogenic diets in particular - are damaging in the long run. Matt Stone states effusively, in a guest post on The Fat Head Blog, that the ketogenic diet, if followed long-term is 'metabolic suicide'. His own personal experience was that low-carbing worked wonders for him for 3 years, but then his health started to reverse back to his initial state without any real change in his routine. However, the majority of experts attribute this to the process of losing weight itself - that being in caloric deficit for a significant period of time is necessarily going to encourage the body to conserve energy. This aligns with my own understanding, and I haven't seen reason to believe that the metabolism reacts any differently to a lack of dietary sugars vs. a lack of dietary fats/protein other than the insulin response itself in the short-term.
I am understanding more and more that it's not enough to simply trust that what makes you feel best in the short-term is going to work long-term. The obvious points here would be to look at consumption of alcohol, excessive sun-baking (inc. burning), using drugs recreationally, going to loud music gigs, etc etc. The less obvious practices which may well be damaging include my possibly-ruinous consumption of large amounts of fruit throughout most of my young life, and possibly my potential choice of living on an all-meat diet for longer than is my current practice. Perhaps Dr. Atkins had it right when he encouraged his patients to achieve a ketogenic state to accelerate fat-burning, but then to gradually increase the amount of carbs (in the form of vegetables, primarily) in such a way that fat loss didn't stop, but ketosis was no longer the present metabolic state. However, Dr. Kurt Harris suggests:
The paleolithic principle itself argues against LC and VLC being damaging the same way it argues against plants and all carbs as being poison. It just makes no sense, as it implies that humans in any given econiche, even one rich in a huge variety of animal foods, would have been at risk of metabolic damage from being in long term mild ketosis if they were not able to find enough starchy tubers and fruit in season. (We've agreed that grains like white rice are a recent food, I hope).
So, I am currently trying to work with both my body's response to food and the information available to me by the scientific community, and will not be consuming carbs for carbs' sake, but will be aiming to achieve ketosis in order to kick-start fat burning, and then finagle my food consumption to continue fat-burning but perhaps not be in ketosis. Alternate Day Fasting will still be part of the plan, as I want to continue this experiment, but on my feasting days I will be sticking to animal products until I achieve ketosis. Then I may add vegetables back in or take other action to keep clear of ketosis but not block fat burning... I'm not sure if this will actually be possible though, since in the past, whenever I have reincorporated carbs, I have experienced inflammation of various kinds. And as Dr. Harris puts it: Enough nonstarchy greens to choke a gorilla with an otherwise all animal diet will not keep you totally out of ketosis, I guarantee. If it did, I wouldn't want to share your bathroom. In the meantime I will be spending more time swotting up on metabolic functioning so that I can work towards overcoming insulin resistance once and for all!
Let's see how I go!
First, to catch up on the last three days:
Wednesday - Fasting
A fine day for fasting! I have really been enjoying my fasts, even though I miss out on a bit of cooking. I have been a little worried about fasting's effect on my leptin sensitivity though, since on feasting days I seem to be hungrier after eating than before... Re-restricting carbs should help that, I hope. Nuts & cheese tend to pose the most binge danger, so I'll be keeping them out of the house once more.
Dinner: It was a shockingly hot day, so we picked up a roast chicken after running off to the movies after work to hide in air-conditioned comfort. I served the chicken with a dollop of beetroot dip and a serving of anchovy paste (see my Dips post for recipes) - both were perfect with the juicy chicken!
Thursday - Feasting
I started my day with salmon sashimi (but forgot to photograph it as I was eating it whilst preparing the rest of breakfast) and a couple of coconut pancakes with some cream cheese in lieu of actual cream.
I packed up some leftover chicken for lunch, to help get me through a long night of rehearsals.
I was hungry when I finally made it home, so I whipped up some cheesy sautéed cabbage as an entree to enjoy whilst the lamb chops cooked:
Despite reaching a sufficient amount of consumed calories for the day, I was still hungry, so I made a dessert of coconut pancakes and raspberries. And even after that, with resultant stomach pain from the fruit, I still had the munchies! So I ended up snacking on nuts and a carrot, until finally locking myself away in my bedroom and tried to ignore my hunger pangs. I'm not sure if this reaction was a result of the food I had eaten or the fasting regimen... The crazy weather and extremely busy schedule at work probably didn't help!
Friday - Fasting
Another blissful fast to help alleviate the shame of over-indulgence the previous night! Despite a mad day of full-on classes and uncomfortable weather (kinda humid but cold with misty rain, but still hot inside of buildings thanks to the previous heatwave... Ick!), I didn't find myself heading toward hunger-territory until after lunch, which I washed away with some white tea.
Once home, I whipped up three eggs and a sprinkling of pizza cheese to tide me over until dinner.
And as I type, I'm grilling a couple of blade steaks for the beau & I before we head out to the theatre for the evening. I'd really just like to go to bed, but I'm an MTC subscriber and my dates are secured well ahead of time. Here's hoping it's a good show, else I may finally experience the embarrassment of falling asleep in public!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
ADF - Week One
(Apologies for the delay - Blogger has obviously been suffering a chronic bout of cranky-pants lately, since it has steadfastly refused to upload any of my images for the last two days... I'll post this once it gets over its little temper tantrum...)
Although my first week was interrupted by being away from home for a family wedding where nothing was served but finger food, I've finessed the ADF plan to best fit my life. I've enjoyed the energy boost and litheness gifted by fasting, although I am still struggling with adequately digesting reincorporated carbs, despite upping pro-biotic supplementation. I won't be weighing in until I can tell that I'm not bloated or retaining water.
So, the schedule that I'm current experimenting with is designed to fit the stressful, longer days I work (Tuesdays & Thursdays), leaving the fasting days at Monday, Wednesday & Friday. I thought about fasting during one day of the weekend, but that would result in two fasted days in a row, and that isn't encouraged in the literature. Therefore, weekends will be normal eating days.
Although I will carry emergency supplies with me to work on fasting days, I plan to only eat a small dinner on those days, after fasting through breakfast and lunch. Ultimately, I will be incorporating three 24hr fasts into my week, consuming around 2500kcal in between, since that seems to match what my body requires, as suggested by hunger.
Thursday - Feasting
Breakfast - Salmon sashimi, sans lemon juice
Lunch - Smoked salmon, brought from home, mixed with a sad pile of garden salad: the only edible item served at a work conference...
Dinner - More salmon sashimi, with sautéed cabbage and bacon
Friday - Fasting
Fast until dinner - Pork roast (mainly crackling) with sautéed cabbage & fennel, plus some steamed zucchini.
Saturday - Feasting
On Friday night, the beau & I travelled back to my childhood home as we were to attend a cousin's wedding the next day. After a sleep-in, we lunched pre-wedding on lamb chops, smoked salmon, tomatoes and double brie.
The wedding ceremony was at 5pm, and afterwards we headed back to the local Surf Club for the reception. Platters of junky finger-food circulated, and I managed to score a couple of unadulterated prawns that were served amongst bowls of fried substances, pita bread, and questionable dips.
After watching everyone feast on garbage, I asked our hosts what the main meal would be.
"It's just finger food tonight, it's easier."
Oh, great.
We then contacted the kitchen staff to enquire whether actual food was likely to be prepared in there...
Thankfully, the chef said that there was some squid salad that I could have (from where it appeared, I did not ask), and she gave me the tiniest bowl of sad-looking salad, with a couple of measly strips of squid plopped on top. A satisfying meal, it was not.
So the beau and I had to LEAVE the wedding, to go back to our rented unit, so that I could cook up some dinner! I fried up some eggs and bacon, and grabbed out a bit of herbed cream cheese and some organic tomato pesto I brought from home.
We returned to the party and had a great time - I even had some celebratory bubbly.
The day of eats did go a little awry when we finally plodded home to our unit for the night, and a member of our party was keen to stay up and vent and snack on nuts, cheese and apples. Depressing revelations and bottomless walnuts do not mix well...
Sunday - Feasting
The hosts threw a post-wedding BBQ at their place on the Sunday, and I scored a delicious serving of barbecued lamb and beef, with fresh green salad and cheddar as a side.
Then it was time to get back in the car and return to Melbourne. Unfortunately, the late-night snacking threw my leptin levels out of whack (or something) and I found myself gagging for food all evening. No meat was defrosted, so I reached for nuts, nuts, nuts, cheese, nuts, and even some fruit leftover from the beau's family visit. Stomach = not happy.
Monday - Fasting
It was a joy to fast! I wasn't hungry in the slightest for the whole day, and only ate a little in the evening as I tested my Dip recipes for flavour levels. My digestive system certainly needed the break! I made the most of the fast by being active in the afternoon: walking up to the local shopping strip to pick up the veggie box and other dip ingredients, and boy were my feet, legs and biceps tired afterward!
Tuesday - Feasting
A normal, albeit somewhat light, day of eats:
Breakfast - The Usual (cheddar omelette), and salmon sashimi
Lunch - forgot to pack anything, so I dipped into my emergency stash of tuna. Yuck, so drying...
Dinner - Pork chops served with a spoonful of each of my veggie dips. Turns out that pork is absolutely brilliant served with a side of my Chunky Beetroot & Herb Chutney!
Finally, some inspired info by that champion of the health blogosphere, Stephan - Changing Your Body Fat Set-Point. That's my goal with ADF, since counting calories does allow me to lose weight, but doesn't teach my body to reset my fat balances. As Stephan points out, IF has been anecdotally reported to achieve this, and I hope I can add a successful anecdote to the growing body of evidence.
Although my first week was interrupted by being away from home for a family wedding where nothing was served but finger food, I've finessed the ADF plan to best fit my life. I've enjoyed the energy boost and litheness gifted by fasting, although I am still struggling with adequately digesting reincorporated carbs, despite upping pro-biotic supplementation. I won't be weighing in until I can tell that I'm not bloated or retaining water.
So, the schedule that I'm current experimenting with is designed to fit the stressful, longer days I work (Tuesdays & Thursdays), leaving the fasting days at Monday, Wednesday & Friday. I thought about fasting during one day of the weekend, but that would result in two fasted days in a row, and that isn't encouraged in the literature. Therefore, weekends will be normal eating days.
Although I will carry emergency supplies with me to work on fasting days, I plan to only eat a small dinner on those days, after fasting through breakfast and lunch. Ultimately, I will be incorporating three 24hr fasts into my week, consuming around 2500kcal in between, since that seems to match what my body requires, as suggested by hunger.
Thursday - Feasting
Breakfast - Salmon sashimi, sans lemon juice
Lunch - Smoked salmon, brought from home, mixed with a sad pile of garden salad: the only edible item served at a work conference...
Dinner - More salmon sashimi, with sautéed cabbage and bacon
Friday - Fasting
Fast until dinner - Pork roast (mainly crackling) with sautéed cabbage & fennel, plus some steamed zucchini.
Saturday - Feasting
On Friday night, the beau & I travelled back to my childhood home as we were to attend a cousin's wedding the next day. After a sleep-in, we lunched pre-wedding on lamb chops, smoked salmon, tomatoes and double brie.
The wedding ceremony was at 5pm, and afterwards we headed back to the local Surf Club for the reception. Platters of junky finger-food circulated, and I managed to score a couple of unadulterated prawns that were served amongst bowls of fried substances, pita bread, and questionable dips.
After watching everyone feast on garbage, I asked our hosts what the main meal would be.
"It's just finger food tonight, it's easier."
Oh, great.
We then contacted the kitchen staff to enquire whether actual food was likely to be prepared in there...
Thankfully, the chef said that there was some squid salad that I could have (from where it appeared, I did not ask), and she gave me the tiniest bowl of sad-looking salad, with a couple of measly strips of squid plopped on top. A satisfying meal, it was not.
So the beau and I had to LEAVE the wedding, to go back to our rented unit, so that I could cook up some dinner! I fried up some eggs and bacon, and grabbed out a bit of herbed cream cheese and some organic tomato pesto I brought from home.
We returned to the party and had a great time - I even had some celebratory bubbly.
The day of eats did go a little awry when we finally plodded home to our unit for the night, and a member of our party was keen to stay up and vent and snack on nuts, cheese and apples. Depressing revelations and bottomless walnuts do not mix well...
Sunday - Feasting
The hosts threw a post-wedding BBQ at their place on the Sunday, and I scored a delicious serving of barbecued lamb and beef, with fresh green salad and cheddar as a side.
Then it was time to get back in the car and return to Melbourne. Unfortunately, the late-night snacking threw my leptin levels out of whack (or something) and I found myself gagging for food all evening. No meat was defrosted, so I reached for nuts, nuts, nuts, cheese, nuts, and even some fruit leftover from the beau's family visit. Stomach = not happy.
Monday - Fasting
It was a joy to fast! I wasn't hungry in the slightest for the whole day, and only ate a little in the evening as I tested my Dip recipes for flavour levels. My digestive system certainly needed the break! I made the most of the fast by being active in the afternoon: walking up to the local shopping strip to pick up the veggie box and other dip ingredients, and boy were my feet, legs and biceps tired afterward!
Tuesday - Feasting
A normal, albeit somewhat light, day of eats:
Breakfast - The Usual (cheddar omelette), and salmon sashimi
Lunch - forgot to pack anything, so I dipped into my emergency stash of tuna. Yuck, so drying...
Dinner - Pork chops served with a spoonful of each of my veggie dips. Turns out that pork is absolutely brilliant served with a side of my Chunky Beetroot & Herb Chutney!
Finally, some inspired info by that champion of the health blogosphere, Stephan - Changing Your Body Fat Set-Point. That's my goal with ADF, since counting calories does allow me to lose weight, but doesn't teach my body to reset my fat balances. As Stephan points out, IF has been anecdotally reported to achieve this, and I hope I can add a successful anecdote to the growing body of evidence.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
A New Academic Year, A New Academic Experiment
Today marked my return to the educational institution I call my second home. My holidays are officially over, and once again I'm faced with the reality of what most people consider 'normal eating habits'. Case in point - morning tea & lunch were provided to the staff today. I didn't even bother going to the social staffroom to see what 'food' was served for morning tea, but I did cross the hall at lunchtime with an ultimately misplaced glimmer of hope. I was greeted with platters of party pies and sausage rolls, deep-fried spring rolls, tiny club sandwiches with minimal filling, and nori (sushi) rolls with sugary mayo coating the fillings.
I am seriously considering making a formal request for the food provided at such events to be whole, nourishing, and at least avoiding the most common allergens in at least ONE food option!
This experience further consolidated my idea regarding a new way of eating I wanted to try. I love sticking to a carnivorous diet - I feel energetic and lithe - but I am repeatedly reminded that for many people merely adhering to a low-carb plan is difficult enough, let alone a 'hardcore' regime such as Zero Carb. One of my passions is education, and whilst I know that self-experimentation can only ever be an n=1 study and that my results only prove what may work for me, not what definitely works for the general populace, one of the primary motivations for maintaining this blog is to use myself as a demonstration of feasibility. Since ZC seems out of reach of most people, who may do just as well on a more varied diet anyway, I have decided to option my options back up to include all Primal fare, whilst experimenting with a way of eating that has been making waves through recent scientific reports, and has a rich history of anecdotal success across a longer period of history. It has links to evolutionary eating patterns, breaks away from the socially conditioned patterns of eating, and helps to maintain a caloric deficit without hunger and without long-term harm of metabolic capacity.
I speak, of course, of Alternate-Day Fasting.
The general premise comes in many guises - Up Day Down Day Diet, Feast or Famine Diet, etc. A popular term for a more flexible approach is the Eat Stop Eat protocol, although this is not intermittent calorie restriction if the post-fast meal makes up for the calories missed by the fast. Long-time readers of this blog and other blogs in the primal community will be no stranger to the concepts of intermittent fasting, which I practice sporadically, particularly during the working week where finding time for a primal lunch is a pain in the loincloth.
However, this experiment is going to take a stricter approach than my usual 'meh, I'm going to fast until dinner today' spontaneity. This is in order to hopefully create stronger causal links between my programme and my results, and also to make my trial easier to replicate, should readers wish to do so. The goal here is not just intermittent fasting, but intermittent caloric restriction.
The basics:
On my 'normal' day, I will eat my usual primal diet, with a focus on meat & eggs, eating fat to satiety, and including a range of vegetables. On occasion, I will also include fruit & nuts. My usual carb range, even when eating what feels like a lot of vegetation, is 20g per day or less, but I will not worry if this number increases on normal days, so long as I stick to low glycaemic load foods. Given my history, when eating to satiety I tend to consume around 1800-2200kcal per day. I will not be watching this figure too closely for the first weeks.
On my 'alternate' day, i.e. every second day, I will consuming around one quarter of the amount of calories consumed the previous day. This may be achieved through only consuming one meal per day, eating a number of small meals, or perhaps a complete fasting excepting a few doses of coconut oil. I am very comfortable fasting until dinner time, so I suspect this will be my preferred method.
Numerous studies and anecdotes have demonstrated the relative ease with which individuals can adhere to this way of eating, even when the food consumed is not low-carb. For those people, the opportunity to induce lipolysis by having low insulin levels during fasting periods is a novel way to lose weight. For us, the benefit of fasting is more closely tied to the idea of triggering the release of 'survival' hormones through fasting and caloric restriction, enhancing our fat-burning that way, whilst keeping our metabolism intact. Fasting in general is also an accessible way to achieve caloric restriction without having to always count calories. So no matter where you sit on the 'relevance of calorie counting' discussion, alternate day fasting (ADF) has visible potential.
Many, many people have discussed regimes similar to ADF, and for those of you who want hard data and expert opinion, here are just some of the people on my blogroll and their articles exploring the concept:
Mark Sisson - Feast or Famine Diet
Matt Metzgar - The Alternate Day Diet & Intermittent Calorie Restriction.
Chris @ Conditioning Research - Intermittent Fasting: more research
JP @ Healthy Fellow - Alternate Day Fasting
&
Richard Nikoley - Alternate Day Fasting, Weight Loss & Food
Unlike ZC/carnivorism, where my goal is as much about maintaining a positive sense of well-being as it is a potential fat-loss method, ADF has the singular aim of fat loss. I don't expect to feel better or more energetic on this plan than I do whilst on normal primal eating patterns, and certainly not better than when eating only animal products since I have repeatedly demonstrated to myself that there's just no substitute if I want to feel great AND have a smooth belly AND have an excellent sense of balance in all my physiological systems. ADF is all about the bottom line. And my hope is that I'll end up with results that inspire others to give it a shot and lend weight (no pun intended) to ADF as a potential fat-buster for those who lack the will-power to give up unhealthy food choices, or cannot break psychological ties to food, whether they are truly emotion-based or due to insulin imbalances. If we can get obesity under control, that's a step in the right direction.
It begins:
As a control measure, I took a few days to reintroduce fibre into my system, eating to satiety and then some in order to boost my metabolic rate. I was picking up on some flu symptoms, possibly caused by excessive air-conditioning whilst up north, so I wanted to re-feed my body to give it a good chance of fighting off whatever was ailing me.
Sunday
After a much-needed sleep-in, I served up a large, fresh salad with an array of seafood topping options: salmon sashimi, grilled salmon, and fried seafood marinara.
For dinner, I whipped up my favourite, Caveman Chicken, served with aspects of Veggie Cornucopia, plus wilted beet leaves.
Monday
Started the day with The Usual - ham & cheddar omelette.
We were off to the Australian Open, so I packed up some leftover Caveman Chicken & veggies for a decadent lunch whilst watching Davydenko slowly pulverise Verdasco. My meal was more interesting than the match - thankfully, the rest of the day was riveting watching, even though it was not a good day for the last two remaining Aussie challengers.
I had assumed that there would be nothing but rubbish served at the Open and that I would be sure to miss out on dinner. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a 'sizzling salads' stand, serving nothing but fresh salads (Greek, Mediterranean, or Green) topped with grilled meat (beef or chicken, or crumbed calamari). Delight and rapture! And a bonus - we were late getting dinner, and the stall was packing up for the day, so they stuffed my bowl as full of meat & veg as it could contain!
Tuesday - The First 'Normal' Day
The debut of the suddenly-infamous Coconut Pancakes... Sooo gooooood....
Inspired by the Mediterranean salad on offer at the tennis, I roasted up some pumpkin, capsicum, zucchini and carrot, and served it with another range of seafood options - smoked salmon, fried calamari and baby octopi!
After two big meals, we were happy with leftover salad and some barbecued lamb chops and snags for dinner. I went for some chipollatas from Jonathan's.
Wednesday - The First 'Alternate' Day
I effortlessly fasted through breakfast and lunch, distracted by the business of getting ready for the return of the students on Monday. Of course, fasting is pretty much a breeze when you know you're going out for dinner at Rockpool Bar & Grill! My usual order is the $50 Cape Grim Dry Aged 36 month old Grass Fed Fillet (250g), but tonight I felt like something a bit more special. So I upped the ante and went for the David Blackmore Mishima Grass Fed (From A Marble Score 9+ Animal) Rump (240g). Wow! The exquisiteness of this amazing beef was solidified when I was offered a piece of my usual order, as purchased by the beau's Mom... The comparison between that 'really good' steak and the utter amazingness of the tender, buttery-textured Mishima is indescribable. Go get it! We accompanied our hunks of gorgeous animal with sautéed zucchini and wilted greens (broccolini, leek, and cabbage). Culinary perfection.
My first round of ADF is in the bag! I barely consumed 600kcal today, yet five hours after dinner I'm still feeling fine. Bring on Round #2...
I am seriously considering making a formal request for the food provided at such events to be whole, nourishing, and at least avoiding the most common allergens in at least ONE food option!
This experience further consolidated my idea regarding a new way of eating I wanted to try. I love sticking to a carnivorous diet - I feel energetic and lithe - but I am repeatedly reminded that for many people merely adhering to a low-carb plan is difficult enough, let alone a 'hardcore' regime such as Zero Carb. One of my passions is education, and whilst I know that self-experimentation can only ever be an n=1 study and that my results only prove what may work for me, not what definitely works for the general populace, one of the primary motivations for maintaining this blog is to use myself as a demonstration of feasibility. Since ZC seems out of reach of most people, who may do just as well on a more varied diet anyway, I have decided to option my options back up to include all Primal fare, whilst experimenting with a way of eating that has been making waves through recent scientific reports, and has a rich history of anecdotal success across a longer period of history. It has links to evolutionary eating patterns, breaks away from the socially conditioned patterns of eating, and helps to maintain a caloric deficit without hunger and without long-term harm of metabolic capacity.
I speak, of course, of Alternate-Day Fasting.
The general premise comes in many guises - Up Day Down Day Diet, Feast or Famine Diet, etc. A popular term for a more flexible approach is the Eat Stop Eat protocol, although this is not intermittent calorie restriction if the post-fast meal makes up for the calories missed by the fast. Long-time readers of this blog and other blogs in the primal community will be no stranger to the concepts of intermittent fasting, which I practice sporadically, particularly during the working week where finding time for a primal lunch is a pain in the loincloth.
However, this experiment is going to take a stricter approach than my usual 'meh, I'm going to fast until dinner today' spontaneity. This is in order to hopefully create stronger causal links between my programme and my results, and also to make my trial easier to replicate, should readers wish to do so. The goal here is not just intermittent fasting, but intermittent caloric restriction.
The basics:
On my 'normal' day, I will eat my usual primal diet, with a focus on meat & eggs, eating fat to satiety, and including a range of vegetables. On occasion, I will also include fruit & nuts. My usual carb range, even when eating what feels like a lot of vegetation, is 20g per day or less, but I will not worry if this number increases on normal days, so long as I stick to low glycaemic load foods. Given my history, when eating to satiety I tend to consume around 1800-2200kcal per day. I will not be watching this figure too closely for the first weeks.
On my 'alternate' day, i.e. every second day, I will consuming around one quarter of the amount of calories consumed the previous day. This may be achieved through only consuming one meal per day, eating a number of small meals, or perhaps a complete fasting excepting a few doses of coconut oil. I am very comfortable fasting until dinner time, so I suspect this will be my preferred method.
Numerous studies and anecdotes have demonstrated the relative ease with which individuals can adhere to this way of eating, even when the food consumed is not low-carb. For those people, the opportunity to induce lipolysis by having low insulin levels during fasting periods is a novel way to lose weight. For us, the benefit of fasting is more closely tied to the idea of triggering the release of 'survival' hormones through fasting and caloric restriction, enhancing our fat-burning that way, whilst keeping our metabolism intact. Fasting in general is also an accessible way to achieve caloric restriction without having to always count calories. So no matter where you sit on the 'relevance of calorie counting' discussion, alternate day fasting (ADF) has visible potential.
Many, many people have discussed regimes similar to ADF, and for those of you who want hard data and expert opinion, here are just some of the people on my blogroll and their articles exploring the concept:
Mark Sisson - Feast or Famine Diet
Matt Metzgar - The Alternate Day Diet & Intermittent Calorie Restriction.
Chris @ Conditioning Research - Intermittent Fasting: more research
JP @ Healthy Fellow - Alternate Day Fasting
&
Richard Nikoley - Alternate Day Fasting, Weight Loss & Food
Unlike ZC/carnivorism, where my goal is as much about maintaining a positive sense of well-being as it is a potential fat-loss method, ADF has the singular aim of fat loss. I don't expect to feel better or more energetic on this plan than I do whilst on normal primal eating patterns, and certainly not better than when eating only animal products since I have repeatedly demonstrated to myself that there's just no substitute if I want to feel great AND have a smooth belly AND have an excellent sense of balance in all my physiological systems. ADF is all about the bottom line. And my hope is that I'll end up with results that inspire others to give it a shot and lend weight (no pun intended) to ADF as a potential fat-buster for those who lack the will-power to give up unhealthy food choices, or cannot break psychological ties to food, whether they are truly emotion-based or due to insulin imbalances. If we can get obesity under control, that's a step in the right direction.
It begins:
As a control measure, I took a few days to reintroduce fibre into my system, eating to satiety and then some in order to boost my metabolic rate. I was picking up on some flu symptoms, possibly caused by excessive air-conditioning whilst up north, so I wanted to re-feed my body to give it a good chance of fighting off whatever was ailing me.
Sunday
After a much-needed sleep-in, I served up a large, fresh salad with an array of seafood topping options: salmon sashimi, grilled salmon, and fried seafood marinara.
For dinner, I whipped up my favourite, Caveman Chicken, served with aspects of Veggie Cornucopia, plus wilted beet leaves.
Monday
Started the day with The Usual - ham & cheddar omelette.
We were off to the Australian Open, so I packed up some leftover Caveman Chicken & veggies for a decadent lunch whilst watching Davydenko slowly pulverise Verdasco. My meal was more interesting than the match - thankfully, the rest of the day was riveting watching, even though it was not a good day for the last two remaining Aussie challengers.
I had assumed that there would be nothing but rubbish served at the Open and that I would be sure to miss out on dinner. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a 'sizzling salads' stand, serving nothing but fresh salads (Greek, Mediterranean, or Green) topped with grilled meat (beef or chicken, or crumbed calamari). Delight and rapture! And a bonus - we were late getting dinner, and the stall was packing up for the day, so they stuffed my bowl as full of meat & veg as it could contain!
Tuesday - The First 'Normal' Day
The debut of the suddenly-infamous Coconut Pancakes... Sooo gooooood....
Inspired by the Mediterranean salad on offer at the tennis, I roasted up some pumpkin, capsicum, zucchini and carrot, and served it with another range of seafood options - smoked salmon, fried calamari and baby octopi!
After two big meals, we were happy with leftover salad and some barbecued lamb chops and snags for dinner. I went for some chipollatas from Jonathan's.
Wednesday - The First 'Alternate' Day
I effortlessly fasted through breakfast and lunch, distracted by the business of getting ready for the return of the students on Monday. Of course, fasting is pretty much a breeze when you know you're going out for dinner at Rockpool Bar & Grill! My usual order is the $50 Cape Grim Dry Aged 36 month old Grass Fed Fillet (250g), but tonight I felt like something a bit more special. So I upped the ante and went for the David Blackmore Mishima Grass Fed (From A Marble Score 9+ Animal) Rump (240g). Wow! The exquisiteness of this amazing beef was solidified when I was offered a piece of my usual order, as purchased by the beau's Mom... The comparison between that 'really good' steak and the utter amazingness of the tender, buttery-textured Mishima is indescribable. Go get it! We accompanied our hunks of gorgeous animal with sautéed zucchini and wilted greens (broccolini, leek, and cabbage). Culinary perfection.
My first round of ADF is in the bag! I barely consumed 600kcal today, yet five hours after dinner I'm still feeling fine. Bring on Round #2...
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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.