So. The food journal has been going well :) I've managed to finish two days, and I'm working on the next few, they are in process and I will be (occasionally) keeping track of days in the future and number-crunching them. I have not been able to get every day down, as I haven't accurately recorded every day (In fact, I only have about a week total accurately reported...). I've also done a bit of skipping around... I have some food journals done from late August and early September and from the past couple days. I also found that certain home-made things are difficult to figure out the contents of, like home-made chicken broth. For that reason I have decided to skip those days on which I ate home made broth altogether, as I have no way of accurately measuring my intake based on this homemade item. Some time in the future I may try to replicate the homemade broth and get a better estimate of the contents of it, but I'll be honest when I say that I will have no idea how to measure anything in it except for the free-floating fat. Maybe I could assume that all the sugar in all the vegetables used to make the broth were leeched into the liquid, whereas all the fiber and probably the starch has mostly remained in the vegetables, then since I discard the veggies I wouldn't get those. Then I could assume that most of the fat from the chicken used to make the broth was rendered out of the skin (let's say, 80% of it?), then since I generally add the meat back to the broth to make the soup, the contents of that will be easily determined. Vitamin C and some certain b-vitamins will be destroyed by the long cook times, but most vitamins should be unaffected. And maybe I can figure out the minerals that I'd get leeching out of the bones (though I don't really know how).
At any rate, that sounds like a lot of work. Maybe I will just avoid home-made broth in the future for the sake of easier food journaling. I hope to turn the excel file into something easily viewable here so you can see what my eating has been like in general. Before I do that though, I may want to get a few more days done and try to make the spreadsheet look a little nicer. I'll summarize what I have so far though.
It's been an average daily intake of around 3500 calories, 70-80% of them from fat, about 30g of carbohydrates, about 10g of which are fiber, and around 130g of protein. I have been consuming sufficient levels of most vitamins and minerals, save vitamins C and D, and magnesium (though this does vary a bit). A larger portion of my fats are monounsaturated than are saturated - beef and most meats have more monounsaturated fats than they do saturated fats.
I want to talk a little bit about what this proves, and a lot about what it doesn't prove, and to clarify my frustrated statements about what I think you can trust in terms of dietary advice.
First of all, my diet is not a well-controlled experiment. There are a lot of variables that I changed when I switched diets. I started consuming more fats and less carbohydrates, without doubt. I have drastically increased my calorie intake. I probably am consuming more protein, but maybe not. The types of fats I am eating are different. I am consuming different amounts of cholesterol (not that I think that matters). I am consuming dramatically more sodium. I am not consuming vitamin C in large quantities. I am exercising regularly. In addition to these variables, there's the one that I wanted to change in order to test something, and that was the basis of my diet. The basis of my diet switched from omnivorous to what is probably about 90% animal based, and in doing so I disproved the theory that eating animal fats will give you heart disease and kill you (at least, it hasn't been as swift as lots of people would have predicted). I am under the impression that this variable was the important one, because it essentially determines the rest of the variables I listed (except for exercising - but if this diet + exercise is not killing me, it is unlikely that this diet alone would kill me. Nothing we know about exercise shows it to have such a powerful effect that it can reverse the effects of an extremely unhealthy diet to the extent it has in my case).
Nevertheless, my experiment has still been poorly controlled, so that limits what it can prove and disprove (as does the size of my sample... n=1 is never a good thing). Basically all I can disprove is universal statements, such as "all animal product-based diets will rapidly degenerate your cardiovascular system." All I can prove is that this diet has the ability to make a person gain weight in the presence of exercise, much of which appears to not be fat. My experiment of one has disproven (as if it had to be done) claims that a person cannot have a functioning brain or be athletically productive on an extreme low carbohydrate, or even possibly ketogenic diet (but since I have not accurately determined whether or not I am in or have been in dietary ketosis at all, this last part is a bit adventurous). I have disproven the claim that such a diet would lack essential nutrients. I have proven that scurvy cannot be the result of low intake of vitamin C, and there simply must be another variable involved (even with the citrus I have been eating, I haven't been getting nearly enough vitamin C, especially when you consider that I don't always eat lemons and limes). Because of my lack of proper controls, I can't tell you that my diet is superior for muscle and strength increases to any other diet (or for that matter, inferior to any other diet). I haven't proven that this diet is healthier than any other diet, except for those outrightly guaranteed to kill you quickly (or I suppose those known for a fact to be unhealthy, like unsupplemented veganism).
I can also predict that I have disproven the calories in/calories out hypothesis of fattening. Like I said, I dramatically increased my calorie intake, but if anything I have lost fat. Despite the exercising that I do, it is unlikely that I am exercising enough to burn off all those calories that I eat in excess of what I used to - there simply must be another variable at play that is too difficult to detect with casual observation (recall the hypothesis from "Why Are Thin People Not Fat" which suggested that people up there unconscious physical activity, by twitching for instance, in response to excess calories - and if you haven't watched that, GO WATCH IT NOW).
I've also proven that my diet results in low post-meal blood glucose levels (~70). I don't, however, have a standard to which I can compare this value. I have not checked my fasting glucose levels, but they are likely lower if just by a smidge. I cannot, however, describe what this means for a diabetic person. I would like to be able to claim that the effect on a diabetic would be similar, but I didn't experiment on a diabetic.
I want to apologize for the rant I went on in my last post in which I decried any form of dietary advice. I think there is good, solid, scientific dietary advice out there - I just think that without access to the original scientific paper, it is nearly impossible to determine that an experiment is a good one that actually proves things. Conversely, it's really easy to figure out that an experiment (or just an observational study) is a waste of your time. Furthermore, I think that Gary Taubes is a clear thinker and is an honest person, thus I trust his advice - but I do not have access to the original scientific papers he consulted to come to his "guidelines." For this reason, I would still advise you to be skeptical of even his advice. You should even be skeptical of advice concerning not eating sugar (at least in the specifics) - despite this skepticism, you should note that the consumption of sugar has known impacts on liver function and blood sugar and insulin levels. I also think you should take my advice with a grain of salt - I don't have access to these studies and I can't show them to you. Without these, the only reason you have to trust me is if you can cross-reference my information with another valid source.
There are some advantages to Gary Taubes' view of things. You will note that in his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, he calls his way of looking at nutrition the "alternative hypothesis." He doesn't call it the "alternative fact" or even the "alternative theory." This is a sign of someone who is being honest about how much he knows. It's a sign of scientific humility. It's a sign that this is believable stuff, with the caveat that there isn't enough to prove it yet.
Essentially, what I want you to do is be skeptical of the things you hear in the field of nutrition. The reason for it is that there are a lot of dishonest or lazy researchers even with Ph.D's who will try to pull the wool over your eyes. And there are a lot of people who see this as a way to profit from misinformation by spreading even more misinformation. The true solution to the problem, as I see it, is to eliminate any respect that the field of nutrition gets. If we can reboot the system and set new standards of scientific research in the field, then it will be difficult to deny the information they publish (much like we would feel about anything published in, say, a chemistry journal).
This is the subject of my paper, free from frustration (I had to tell my professor of argumentative writing that correlation does not imply causation. Needless to say, my blood was boiling out of my eyeballs). This is the heart of what I would like to convince people of. Unfortunately, I hand-wrote the first "part" of the paper that was due October 2nd. It's a 1000-word prospectus, so at least I can distill it down to a few sentences for you:
I want to argue for why you should disbelieve virtually everything you hear about nutrition. First of all, because so much of what we read is based on observational studies incapable of proving things. And second because those which are based on experiments are often poorly conducted in one way or another. Next I wish to criticize popular print and unpopular, scientific journals for insisting on continuing to print falsehoods or at best misleading things. Beyond that, I want to criticize specific issues within observational studies, to demonstrate that they show even less than an ordinary skeptic might think. Next I want to criticize specific popular diet books and gurus, like the china study; and government guidelines. Last I want to give my own personal experience and discovery of information - and explain that my ideas aren't new and shouldn't seem outlandish. I also want to set a historical context in which all of this began to occur - there actually is a half-decent reason for it all.
I meant to post this a while ago, my bad... The food journal post is going to be the next one. Also, I have an outline for my paper that is basically done, which will be posted.
A blog about eating a (mostly) meatetarian diet - one consisting of meat eggs and dairy (meat meaning any part of an animal or fish, and dairy mostly excluding milk, but including other products). Includes food adventures, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You have been warned...
Monday, October 15, 2012
Friday, September 28, 2012
Update on the Input Idea, and some thoughts
So, keeping a food journal isn't that hard, but actually sitting down and breaking down calories and fat and such is not an easy task. As such, despite relatively good food journaling - for only a week, I'll admit - I have yet to sit down even once and try to figure out my intakes of various nutrients. The good news is that I haven't been eating much in terms of variety, so once i check up on a few things, I should be able to figure out those seven or so days pretty easily. I'll be doing this within the next couple of days. I may, on occasion, food journal again, just to see if anything major has changed, but I doubt that it will, since I tend to eat the same things, and usually in the same amounts.
Also, weighing myself and checking body fat percentage (according to the scale) appears to be a waste of time. I have done so almost daily, and this morning, after many tiny variations, I weighed 170.8 lbs with a 17.4% body fat. I also don't believe the body fat scale anymore... It has told me that I was above 24%, and right at 14%. Now, I may actually be closer to one of those measurements than I am to 17%, but I know that my body fat has not varied by 10% in the past month.
I've been pretty good about going to the gym lately. I've reduced the frequency to about 3 times a week, and upped the intensity, while decreasing the duration. This has actually made it dramatically easier to be consistent. I haven't been running much - usually just a quick warmup. Instead I've been focusing on about 6 major exercises and trying to keep them in the ~5 reps range. So I've been doing bench, overhead press, chin-ups, deadlift, squat, and shrugs (and a few others). And I got a new max on bench, 215 lbs! It's cool to see progress. At the beginning of the year I think I couldn't quite bench 185. I also think I figured out how to deadlift right, since I started lifting a lot more weight than I had been before. I'm interested in trying something unorthodox just to see if there are results and progress - I'd assume there will be, because fitness is about as reliable as popular nutrition in terms of what we know works and what we claim doesn't... then again, maybe I should put a little more faith in the fitness people's ideas.
I began my last quarter as an undergraduate! I am taking an English 102 night class... I expected there to be a lot of freshman who would be writing papers about how we should save the whales. Surprise! There's only one! We get to write our paper about anything. I am going to write my paper about what is wrong with the science of nutrition. I intend to put my ideas and writings up here for critique. I'll start with a bit of a disclaimer:
My ideas will sound hauntingly familiar if you've read anything by Gary Taubes or Peter Attia... they've kinda been my inspiration. But there was a reason why I was so interested in what they had to say. The science of nutrition essentially has within its power the capacity to be a science that is as solid as chemistry - but for whatever reason, the scientists in the field have chosen not to do so. As a math person, my sneaking suspicion is laziness. Observational studies aren't hard - all you have to do is crunch numbers - and then if they show you the wrong things, ignore them! To get a truly good experiment, you need carefully contrived controls - you have to mess your experiment up eleven times until you have finally put a stop to all confounding variables and have the right controls in place; then you have to throw caution to the wind and accept the results you get even if they aren't what you or the people paying you wanted to see. Instead, nutrition has fashioned itself as a sort of "social science" type of science (I really mean no offense to social sciences by this statement - social sciences are incapable of large-scale, well-controlled experiments, and so are confined to best guesses and inferences. There's nothing wrong with this, they just aren't capable of attaining the level of certainty that a hard science is.), confining itself to what seems right, and ignoring the possibility that its own researchers might be biased, and pretending that it can't do anything better. So basically, the crux of my argument is that the field of nutrition is fatally and fundamentally flawed by the ivory tower that it's stuck in - because certainly there is no way to police every researcher in the field to make sure he understands what he can prove and what will prove it; as well as what he can't prove and why certain things can't prove things. As a result, I believe the only logical thing to do is to reject virtually all claims about good health as it results from eating - and look instead to theoretical arguments and ideas from other sciences (for example, the theory that sugar is bad for you because of fructose's known effect on the liver, and because of the many harmful results of high blood sugar and insulin are good enough reasons for me to avoid sugar).
And this is the primary argument in my paper: nutrition is wrong, virtually 100% of the time. Ignore what I tell you to eat, ignore what Gary Taubes tells you to eat, ignore what Dr. Oz tells you to eat, and for the love of God, ignore what Colin T. Campbell tells you to eat. Eat whatever the hell you want to - and if it pleases you, try to create little experiments for yourself (control them as best you can!) to determine the effect - or lack thereof - of particular dietary elements on any number of factors. For example, my experiment has been proof that you can gain weight on an ultra-low carbohydrate diet, and that it won't kill you in a year-and-a-half. There's not much more that I can say about it though, and it's VERY important to realize that!
A more detailed input will follow, probably within the next few days. Until then, prepare for my writing!
Also, weighing myself and checking body fat percentage (according to the scale) appears to be a waste of time. I have done so almost daily, and this morning, after many tiny variations, I weighed 170.8 lbs with a 17.4% body fat. I also don't believe the body fat scale anymore... It has told me that I was above 24%, and right at 14%. Now, I may actually be closer to one of those measurements than I am to 17%, but I know that my body fat has not varied by 10% in the past month.
I've been pretty good about going to the gym lately. I've reduced the frequency to about 3 times a week, and upped the intensity, while decreasing the duration. This has actually made it dramatically easier to be consistent. I haven't been running much - usually just a quick warmup. Instead I've been focusing on about 6 major exercises and trying to keep them in the ~5 reps range. So I've been doing bench, overhead press, chin-ups, deadlift, squat, and shrugs (and a few others). And I got a new max on bench, 215 lbs! It's cool to see progress. At the beginning of the year I think I couldn't quite bench 185. I also think I figured out how to deadlift right, since I started lifting a lot more weight than I had been before. I'm interested in trying something unorthodox just to see if there are results and progress - I'd assume there will be, because fitness is about as reliable as popular nutrition in terms of what we know works and what we claim doesn't... then again, maybe I should put a little more faith in the fitness people's ideas.
I began my last quarter as an undergraduate! I am taking an English 102 night class... I expected there to be a lot of freshman who would be writing papers about how we should save the whales. Surprise! There's only one! We get to write our paper about anything. I am going to write my paper about what is wrong with the science of nutrition. I intend to put my ideas and writings up here for critique. I'll start with a bit of a disclaimer:
My ideas will sound hauntingly familiar if you've read anything by Gary Taubes or Peter Attia... they've kinda been my inspiration. But there was a reason why I was so interested in what they had to say. The science of nutrition essentially has within its power the capacity to be a science that is as solid as chemistry - but for whatever reason, the scientists in the field have chosen not to do so. As a math person, my sneaking suspicion is laziness. Observational studies aren't hard - all you have to do is crunch numbers - and then if they show you the wrong things, ignore them! To get a truly good experiment, you need carefully contrived controls - you have to mess your experiment up eleven times until you have finally put a stop to all confounding variables and have the right controls in place; then you have to throw caution to the wind and accept the results you get even if they aren't what you or the people paying you wanted to see. Instead, nutrition has fashioned itself as a sort of "social science" type of science (I really mean no offense to social sciences by this statement - social sciences are incapable of large-scale, well-controlled experiments, and so are confined to best guesses and inferences. There's nothing wrong with this, they just aren't capable of attaining the level of certainty that a hard science is.), confining itself to what seems right, and ignoring the possibility that its own researchers might be biased, and pretending that it can't do anything better. So basically, the crux of my argument is that the field of nutrition is fatally and fundamentally flawed by the ivory tower that it's stuck in - because certainly there is no way to police every researcher in the field to make sure he understands what he can prove and what will prove it; as well as what he can't prove and why certain things can't prove things. As a result, I believe the only logical thing to do is to reject virtually all claims about good health as it results from eating - and look instead to theoretical arguments and ideas from other sciences (for example, the theory that sugar is bad for you because of fructose's known effect on the liver, and because of the many harmful results of high blood sugar and insulin are good enough reasons for me to avoid sugar).
And this is the primary argument in my paper: nutrition is wrong, virtually 100% of the time. Ignore what I tell you to eat, ignore what Gary Taubes tells you to eat, ignore what Dr. Oz tells you to eat, and for the love of God, ignore what Colin T. Campbell tells you to eat. Eat whatever the hell you want to - and if it pleases you, try to create little experiments for yourself (control them as best you can!) to determine the effect - or lack thereof - of particular dietary elements on any number of factors. For example, my experiment has been proof that you can gain weight on an ultra-low carbohydrate diet, and that it won't kill you in a year-and-a-half. There's not much more that I can say about it though, and it's VERY important to realize that!
A more detailed input will follow, probably within the next few days. Until then, prepare for my writing!
Monday, August 27, 2012
Hey - at least its not September!
So apparently that whole "see you in September" thing was basically serious. Topology was a rough ride - I had to learn LaTeX in order to do my homework assignments. LaTeX really isn't that bad, but I have no coding experience so I had to learn on the fly. It is, according to Wikipedia, a "document markup language." Since I don't really know precisely what that means, I will describe it for you as best I can: It's a coding language for use with maths and sciences that lets you, for example, plug an equation directly into a text document. It's probably the language that was used to code any math test you took in the last... say 10 years (probably more). I did well though, thanks to the professor, which was nice after my experience in analysis... But it was still a lot of work. There's a spot in my bedroom where all my work from all my homework assignments is scattered on the floor. I'll clean it up eventually. I am now going to try to plug as many math puns as possible into the rest of this post, and you will get bonus points for spotting them.
I was talking with an old friend of mine last night about a couple of blogs he reads. Apparently, they at least include mine and those of a vegan work associate of his. This brought to mind something which I think I have stated on my blog before, which is that I think it is entirely possible to be a healthy vegetarian, though I am skeptical of the healthful qualities of a vegan diet (and, of course, I can't understand for the life of me why anyone wouldn't want to eat meat!). Of course, vegans can take supplements and take care of any serious issues that I think they may otherwise potentially face, and as my friend pointed out, otherwise just eat a ton of avocados, so that resolves that problem. If you haven't realized by now, I essentially believe that a diet can only be healthy if it is largely based on fat, protein is mostly unimportant and carbs are mostly harmful. Thinking more on this issue reminded me of something that I really ought to mention before there are any misunderstandings (it's only been a year and a half, but please bear with me).
Much of what I say is a joke. I don't actually hate hipsters, for instance. I do find their culture to be extremely immature, but I derive a great deal of pleasure from people-watching hipsters, and without them I wouldn't have that enjoyment. I don't actually think less of (non-militant) vegetarians and vegans. They aren't the only ones who have been deceived into thinking eating animals is a health hazard. At least they took it to its (not-so) bloody conclusion and cut out meat altogether - or found another reason not to eat anything that comes from an animal. I mean, honestly, if you think something is unhealthy or immoral, then I congratulate your self-control in avoiding eating it altogether - I know that I occasionally indulge in things that I know very well are extremely unhealthy due entirely to a lapse in self-control.
But I am dead serious about what I've been eating: meat, dairy (no milk!), and eggs have indeed made up the bulk of my diet, with a smattering of leaves, non-starchy stems, fatty vegetables (olives and avocados come to mind), and aromatics... and cheat days... I also have been, as of late, actively trying to eat more fat - and I am becoming more and more interested in documenting this as accurately as is feasible. So, here's the plan:
I want to bring back the input part of input/output. But rather than just say "I ate this," I want to say, for example, "For breakfast I had 2 egg whites, 4 egg yolks, a quarter cup each of cream, butter, and cream cheese, totaling X calories, Y grams of fat, Z grams of protein, W grams of carbohydrates; this day I consumed enough of these vitamins, and not enough of these ones..." and so on.
This will be a lot more work than I've been putting into this in quite some time, but I think it will be worth it. One of the theories I'm working with is that the consumption of less carbohydrate/protein will lead to fat loss, and one simple way to achieve that is to eat more fat. I want to find out if this is true. Over the past year and a half, I can't honestly be sure if I've lost much. I didn't accurately state my starting point, or even know where it was, and until recently I haven't been getting detailed information about my weight and body fat, nor have I been keeping track of it. Basically all I know is that from my minimum of 150 pounds last summer, I am up about 20 pounds, and based on appearances I am assuming that it is primarily not fat, which is a good thing lol. So I'm going to try to be better about that by starting with today: This morning I weighed in at 170 pounds on the dot, with a body fat of 17% (pre-breakfast, post output). For those keeping score, this is a vast improvement over my freshman year of high-school, in which I weighed 170 pounds with a 30% body fat! Of course, I would submit that growing up over 10 years had more to do with it than eating meat over 1.5 years, but who knows?
Another note: Even if I do not post daily with updates, I do intend to at least write down things like weight and body fat and input so that there will be a record. Also, that blood test may become a reality... We shall see...
I was talking with an old friend of mine last night about a couple of blogs he reads. Apparently, they at least include mine and those of a vegan work associate of his. This brought to mind something which I think I have stated on my blog before, which is that I think it is entirely possible to be a healthy vegetarian, though I am skeptical of the healthful qualities of a vegan diet (and, of course, I can't understand for the life of me why anyone wouldn't want to eat meat!). Of course, vegans can take supplements and take care of any serious issues that I think they may otherwise potentially face, and as my friend pointed out, otherwise just eat a ton of avocados, so that resolves that problem. If you haven't realized by now, I essentially believe that a diet can only be healthy if it is largely based on fat, protein is mostly unimportant and carbs are mostly harmful. Thinking more on this issue reminded me of something that I really ought to mention before there are any misunderstandings (it's only been a year and a half, but please bear with me).
Much of what I say is a joke. I don't actually hate hipsters, for instance. I do find their culture to be extremely immature, but I derive a great deal of pleasure from people-watching hipsters, and without them I wouldn't have that enjoyment. I don't actually think less of (non-militant) vegetarians and vegans. They aren't the only ones who have been deceived into thinking eating animals is a health hazard. At least they took it to its (not-so) bloody conclusion and cut out meat altogether - or found another reason not to eat anything that comes from an animal. I mean, honestly, if you think something is unhealthy or immoral, then I congratulate your self-control in avoiding eating it altogether - I know that I occasionally indulge in things that I know very well are extremely unhealthy due entirely to a lapse in self-control.
But I am dead serious about what I've been eating: meat, dairy (no milk!), and eggs have indeed made up the bulk of my diet, with a smattering of leaves, non-starchy stems, fatty vegetables (olives and avocados come to mind), and aromatics... and cheat days... I also have been, as of late, actively trying to eat more fat - and I am becoming more and more interested in documenting this as accurately as is feasible. So, here's the plan:
I want to bring back the input part of input/output. But rather than just say "I ate this," I want to say, for example, "For breakfast I had 2 egg whites, 4 egg yolks, a quarter cup each of cream, butter, and cream cheese, totaling X calories, Y grams of fat, Z grams of protein, W grams of carbohydrates; this day I consumed enough of these vitamins, and not enough of these ones..." and so on.
This will be a lot more work than I've been putting into this in quite some time, but I think it will be worth it. One of the theories I'm working with is that the consumption of less carbohydrate/protein will lead to fat loss, and one simple way to achieve that is to eat more fat. I want to find out if this is true. Over the past year and a half, I can't honestly be sure if I've lost much. I didn't accurately state my starting point, or even know where it was, and until recently I haven't been getting detailed information about my weight and body fat, nor have I been keeping track of it. Basically all I know is that from my minimum of 150 pounds last summer, I am up about 20 pounds, and based on appearances I am assuming that it is primarily not fat, which is a good thing lol. So I'm going to try to be better about that by starting with today: This morning I weighed in at 170 pounds on the dot, with a body fat of 17% (pre-breakfast, post output). For those keeping score, this is a vast improvement over my freshman year of high-school, in which I weighed 170 pounds with a 30% body fat! Of course, I would submit that growing up over 10 years had more to do with it than eating meat over 1.5 years, but who knows?
Another note: Even if I do not post daily with updates, I do intend to at least write down things like weight and body fat and input so that there will be a record. Also, that blood test may become a reality... We shall see...
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Oopsie bread, end of the quarter, ketosis, and all-nighters [In no particular order]
So, the quarter has come to an end. And my professors have graciously passed me. I can now explain to you precisely how the Discrete Fourier Transform is (theoretically) used by a computer to do practically anything to an audio signal (and given the appropriate number of years I could also do these things by hand). And I can also tell you about the Lebesgue integral - but I still don't really know how to use it (and the proofs for these things are not pretty - it involves invoking the words "simple" and "function" about a billion times... "simple" function does not even begin to describe it). But most importantly, I do not have to take any more analysis! I have wisely decided instead to take a class called Topology over the summer (Topology sounds innocuous enough, but it isn't - I can assure you). See you in September readers!
Hehehe... Anyway, I had to pull some all-nighters to get my research and writing done for the Discrete Fourier Transform thing. I do not like all-nighters, but caffeine is a hell of a drug. One of my many methods of coping with the burden of the research was playing chess on the internet :) another was checking out this website:
http://eatingacademy.com/
This is a blog of sorts maintained by a guy named Peter Attia, a medical doctor and a fitness nut who decided to go super-low-carb and super-high-fat to the point of ketosis (and in the process actually had to cut back on protein too). I can't do his story justice, so I HIGHLY recommend you visit his site, but I can do my best to summarize (his site has a button at the top that says "START HERE" - and oddly enough, you should start there). Despite being extremely active and eating "right" and being trained as a doctor to know these things, he ended up becoming, as his wife described, "not thin." So, he went low carb and lost a ton of weight, and took it a step further and went for full-on ketosis. He then documented the athletic advantages and disadvantages of such a change, and many of the health implications (mostly good, don't worry, dear readers). He is associated with Gary Taubes in some way, and the two of them believe that there is about to be dramatic shift in the way we think about diet and nutrition and health (and maybe I agree with them...).
The blog is, in a way, what I wish my blog could be. He has access to the actual studies that purport to show certain things, and he can clearly demonstrate what they do and do not show (whereas I must take other people's critiques and distill them for you - hoping there's no wool being pulled over my eyes - in other words I stop when I read the words "population study" and shout BOGUS!!!!). He takes frequent and detailed blood tests, showing spectacular blood chemistry that improved from not-so-good blood chemistry (and he explains, in great but understandable detail, what "good blood chemistry" is and what "bad blood chemistry" is and why). Since he has experience with it, he actually has the capacity to describe a change in his athletic performance - both from a feelings perspective and a quantitative perspective.
His blog has also inspired me to try for this whole ketosis thing, so I have been actively eating more fat and less protein. I have now entirely removed milk from my diet, and I eat a lot more high-fat dairy products. I still eat meat, but it's fairly difficult to find meat that is fatty enough for these purposes, so I am now eating less of it. I discovered this thing that the internet calls "oopsie bread" that is basically bread without any carbs. Here's how you make it:
3 eggs, separated
4oz cream cheese
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/8 tsp baking soda
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Whip egg whites and cream of tartar first with a hand mixer until you can turn the bowl upside down and they don't move (getting any yolk in them will make this step impossible). Then mix the yolks and cream cheese together until the cream cheese is mostly not-chunky (there will still be a few tuny chunks unless you whip them for so long that they start to heat up... you don't want this). Fold them together (for those not in the baking world, "fold" is a cute way of saying mix gently... housewives...). Put appropriately sized discs of the stuff onto a baking sheet smoothed out to about a half inch (for me, its about two tablespoons smoothed out - they only puff up a little, so the size you make them is the size you get, and you can make them as thick or thin as you like, as long as you watch the cooking time). Bake for around 30 minutes, or a few more - but be careful not to overcook or they become crumbly like meringues, which are not bread like - they will be nicely golden and still kind of spongy when done. Let them cool and then let them air dry before you use them (they get kinda damp and stick to plates and fall apart if you don't do this, but in my opinion that's not such a terrible thing). Make epic sandwiches with them.
My epic sandwich for oopsie bread right now is, by layer from top to bottom:
oopsie bread, sour cream, cream cheese, cabbage leaf (for crunch), lots of pepperoni, avocado, provolone cheese, liverwurst, sour cream, oopsie bread. I didn't realize how much I had been missing sandwiches until I made myself one of these - it's awesome (plus no gross mayonnaise!)
Due to the all-nighters, I had to take a break from the gym, but I still went on occasion. I've been doing a bit more running than usual... trying to push my limits on one-mile runs. I managed a 6:18 mile as my best so far - I was absolutely shocked. The first time I went for it I got a 6:21 though. My goal was to get 50-second laps - at 8 laps per mile that would be a 6:40... based on my previous best of around 8 minutes, I knew it was a lofty goal, but I also knew that 8 minutes was not as fast as I could go. So I started out pretty good, getting laps around 49sec or so. Then as I started my 7th lap the music switched and I really started pushing it, and I guess the last two laps must have averaged out to about 40 seconds each. I know that means I need to get better about pacing myself, so that has been the goal since then. A friend of mine said it best, so I'm going to quote (paraphrase) him: I don't think I ever could have run a sub-7 mile. It's fun to try to push myself, and it's cool to actually be inspired by improvements to the point where I want to go run some more, but it still doesn't feel great hahaha. Most of all, that whole runner's high thing is either a lie, or you have to run for more than 6 minutes to get it.
Well, I think it's about time to wrap things up, so maybe it's time to throw in something a little philosophical... Reading Peter Attia's blog has shown me one thing above all else: even someone who has been trained in the field of health didn't know what it meant to eat healthy - what are the odds that you know what that means? Maybe it's best if you avoid the wool being pulled over your eyes and try to see for yourself.
Till next time! (Hopefully before September!)
Hehehe... Anyway, I had to pull some all-nighters to get my research and writing done for the Discrete Fourier Transform thing. I do not like all-nighters, but caffeine is a hell of a drug. One of my many methods of coping with the burden of the research was playing chess on the internet :) another was checking out this website:
http://eatingacademy.com/
This is a blog of sorts maintained by a guy named Peter Attia, a medical doctor and a fitness nut who decided to go super-low-carb and super-high-fat to the point of ketosis (and in the process actually had to cut back on protein too). I can't do his story justice, so I HIGHLY recommend you visit his site, but I can do my best to summarize (his site has a button at the top that says "START HERE" - and oddly enough, you should start there). Despite being extremely active and eating "right" and being trained as a doctor to know these things, he ended up becoming, as his wife described, "not thin." So, he went low carb and lost a ton of weight, and took it a step further and went for full-on ketosis. He then documented the athletic advantages and disadvantages of such a change, and many of the health implications (mostly good, don't worry, dear readers). He is associated with Gary Taubes in some way, and the two of them believe that there is about to be dramatic shift in the way we think about diet and nutrition and health (and maybe I agree with them...).
The blog is, in a way, what I wish my blog could be. He has access to the actual studies that purport to show certain things, and he can clearly demonstrate what they do and do not show (whereas I must take other people's critiques and distill them for you - hoping there's no wool being pulled over my eyes - in other words I stop when I read the words "population study" and shout BOGUS!!!!). He takes frequent and detailed blood tests, showing spectacular blood chemistry that improved from not-so-good blood chemistry (and he explains, in great but understandable detail, what "good blood chemistry" is and what "bad blood chemistry" is and why). Since he has experience with it, he actually has the capacity to describe a change in his athletic performance - both from a feelings perspective and a quantitative perspective.
His blog has also inspired me to try for this whole ketosis thing, so I have been actively eating more fat and less protein. I have now entirely removed milk from my diet, and I eat a lot more high-fat dairy products. I still eat meat, but it's fairly difficult to find meat that is fatty enough for these purposes, so I am now eating less of it. I discovered this thing that the internet calls "oopsie bread" that is basically bread without any carbs. Here's how you make it:
3 eggs, separated
4oz cream cheese
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/8 tsp baking soda
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Whip egg whites and cream of tartar first with a hand mixer until you can turn the bowl upside down and they don't move (getting any yolk in them will make this step impossible). Then mix the yolks and cream cheese together until the cream cheese is mostly not-chunky (there will still be a few tuny chunks unless you whip them for so long that they start to heat up... you don't want this). Fold them together (for those not in the baking world, "fold" is a cute way of saying mix gently... housewives...). Put appropriately sized discs of the stuff onto a baking sheet smoothed out to about a half inch (for me, its about two tablespoons smoothed out - they only puff up a little, so the size you make them is the size you get, and you can make them as thick or thin as you like, as long as you watch the cooking time). Bake for around 30 minutes, or a few more - but be careful not to overcook or they become crumbly like meringues, which are not bread like - they will be nicely golden and still kind of spongy when done. Let them cool and then let them air dry before you use them (they get kinda damp and stick to plates and fall apart if you don't do this, but in my opinion that's not such a terrible thing). Make epic sandwiches with them.
My epic sandwich for oopsie bread right now is, by layer from top to bottom:
oopsie bread, sour cream, cream cheese, cabbage leaf (for crunch), lots of pepperoni, avocado, provolone cheese, liverwurst, sour cream, oopsie bread. I didn't realize how much I had been missing sandwiches until I made myself one of these - it's awesome (plus no gross mayonnaise!)
Due to the all-nighters, I had to take a break from the gym, but I still went on occasion. I've been doing a bit more running than usual... trying to push my limits on one-mile runs. I managed a 6:18 mile as my best so far - I was absolutely shocked. The first time I went for it I got a 6:21 though. My goal was to get 50-second laps - at 8 laps per mile that would be a 6:40... based on my previous best of around 8 minutes, I knew it was a lofty goal, but I also knew that 8 minutes was not as fast as I could go. So I started out pretty good, getting laps around 49sec or so. Then as I started my 7th lap the music switched and I really started pushing it, and I guess the last two laps must have averaged out to about 40 seconds each. I know that means I need to get better about pacing myself, so that has been the goal since then. A friend of mine said it best, so I'm going to quote (paraphrase) him: I don't think I ever could have run a sub-7 mile. It's fun to try to push myself, and it's cool to actually be inspired by improvements to the point where I want to go run some more, but it still doesn't feel great hahaha. Most of all, that whole runner's high thing is either a lie, or you have to run for more than 6 minutes to get it.
Well, I think it's about time to wrap things up, so maybe it's time to throw in something a little philosophical... Reading Peter Attia's blog has shown me one thing above all else: even someone who has been trained in the field of health didn't know what it meant to eat healthy - what are the odds that you know what that means? Maybe it's best if you avoid the wool being pulled over your eyes and try to see for yourself.
Till next time! (Hopefully before September!)
Friday, May 11, 2012
I'm (still) not dead!
So, I decided it was time for an update if for no other reason than to keep from falling of the face of the (blogging) Earth all over again.
There isn't much to say, except that I have been bad about a few things... I ate a lot of MnM's recently, and also a couple of those cheesy drumstick ice cream cones. But other than that I've been pretty good. I have also been mostly good about drinking less milk... It is sad, indeed, but I have been replacing it with cream, which is cool. Whipping cream in a blender with ice is basically like unsweetened ice cream, and it's at least as awesome as it sounds.
Food adventures have been minimized because of busy-ness in school and life, but I did try a cold cut in the deli section of the grocery store called "liver cheese." There is no cheese in liver cheese. It is basically liver sausage with a layer of pork fat around the outside (Yum!).
Also, I have taken to doing wind-sprints at the gym instead of just running around the track for what feels like forever (even if its only 3 or 4 laps). It's way more fun, and you get to feel like you're going fast for a little while, and then not kill yourself for a little while, and then start the process all over again. If they told me to come up with names for particular exercises, I'd be more creative. Instead of "wind-sprints" it would be "winded-sprints" and I could let out a nervous chuckle every time I told someone about it because I enjoyed the pun so much. Maybe even ask someone if they got the joke, and make it especially awkward. Maybe that's a bad idea after all...
I've been seriously considering shaving my head too. I've been buzzing it pretty short since about mid-January, and it might just be me, but it seems like the hair is just thinning more and more. Pretty soon I'm just gonna have a patch at the top of my forehead and a ring of baldness. I'd rather just get rid of it all, especially if my head could be really shiny hahaha.
Well, that's all I can think of for now. Until next time!
There isn't much to say, except that I have been bad about a few things... I ate a lot of MnM's recently, and also a couple of those cheesy drumstick ice cream cones. But other than that I've been pretty good. I have also been mostly good about drinking less milk... It is sad, indeed, but I have been replacing it with cream, which is cool. Whipping cream in a blender with ice is basically like unsweetened ice cream, and it's at least as awesome as it sounds.
Food adventures have been minimized because of busy-ness in school and life, but I did try a cold cut in the deli section of the grocery store called "liver cheese." There is no cheese in liver cheese. It is basically liver sausage with a layer of pork fat around the outside (Yum!).
Also, I have taken to doing wind-sprints at the gym instead of just running around the track for what feels like forever (even if its only 3 or 4 laps). It's way more fun, and you get to feel like you're going fast for a little while, and then not kill yourself for a little while, and then start the process all over again. If they told me to come up with names for particular exercises, I'd be more creative. Instead of "wind-sprints" it would be "winded-sprints" and I could let out a nervous chuckle every time I told someone about it because I enjoyed the pun so much. Maybe even ask someone if they got the joke, and make it especially awkward. Maybe that's a bad idea after all...
I've been seriously considering shaving my head too. I've been buzzing it pretty short since about mid-January, and it might just be me, but it seems like the hair is just thinning more and more. Pretty soon I'm just gonna have a patch at the top of my forehead and a ring of baldness. I'd rather just get rid of it all, especially if my head could be really shiny hahaha.
Well, that's all I can think of for now. Until next time!
Monday, April 23, 2012
Raw food and other hippy crap
Funny story - this Friday was 4/20 - the infamous pot-smoker's holiday. I am not a pot smoker, so I went to the gym and worked my tail off on Friday. Considering this was around 4 o'clock (well, closer to 4:20...), when you generally can't find a parking spot at the local YMCA, I was overjoyed to discover nary a single high-school/college kid at the gym (there was one, actually, who spotted me on the bench whose named turned out to be the same as mine...). Considering it was a Friday at 4:30, the place was a ghost town. Needless to say, I loved seeing yet another stereotype confirmed (males in high school or college are potheads - math majors exempted). I was also pretty happy not to deal with the usual traffic jam that is the weight area at that time.
Anyway, onto the discussion of other hippy crap. Today's discussion is about raw food. I know next to nothing about it. In fact, in most cases I haven't even heard arguments for it. I know that they say cooking vegetables cooks vitamins out of it, and I know that there is some reason to believe that - but there is also reason to believe that without cooking vegetables you won't be getting through much of the cellulose to get many of those vitamins in the first place - not that it matters, I eat meat and eggs so I get enough vitamins. I generally think cooked vegetables taste better, though there are exceptions, like many greens. I like sushi, and I understand why it is mostly safe to eat (If I am not mistaken, with the exception of tuna, sushi sold in the US has to be frozen beneath a certain temperature for a certain period of time - this kills any marine parasites that may be present and many other pathogens). I don't believe any of the arguments that it's healthier for you, unless you burn it - but I'm a good enough cook that I usually don't have an issue with that - and burnt fish tastes bad besides. I know for a fact that cooked eggs, in addition to being safer to eat than raw eggs, are actually more nutritious if cooked (denaturing the proteins in the whites tends to make them easier to absorb - to the point where a raw egg white has what they call poor bioavailability, and a cooked egg white has near perfect bioavailability). Ditto for the burning them issue, but the same rule applies here. Burnt eggs taste like garbage; even scorched eggs are nearly inedible.
So then we come to the real raw food arguments that I neither understand nor know much about. I know that some people like to eat raw, non-fish meats. In the case of an omnivorous or carnivorous animal, I know that this is generally bordering on stupid beyond measure because you risk contracting a parasite that is likely to kill you before you can do anything about it (read about trichinosis - If you get enough trichina worms in your system you can die. That or they just end up in your spinal cord or brain and you die.). But then there are herbivores. I am terrified of parasites, so I wouldn't want to eat them raw, but I also understand that in the US at least you are very unlikely to contract a parasite from raw herbivore meats (or from pork, come to think of it). And I do occasionally have my steaks a little rare. The risk of bacterial infection is also there, but not so much in a rare steak as in completely raw meat. Beside these arguments, I prefer the flavor and texture of meat that is at least cooked somewhat, and so I don't care too much for the arguments for raw non-fish meats.
So then there is raw dairy. I can honestly say that I know very little about this for certain. I believe that the argument for pasteurization is strong - regardless of what you do with the milk, or how the cows are raised, pasteurization reduces the likelihood of a consumer contracting a foodborne illness from the product. This is independent of the cows being grass-fed, or organic, or being happy or what-have-you (if you aren't convinced, imagine that the only difference between one dairy and another is pasteurization. Even if such a situation does not exist, without doubt, the dairy that pasteurizes its milk has fewer pathogens and consumers of its product are less likely to contract a foodborne illness, even if the difference of these chances is insignificant.). Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that one is likely to get sick from drinking raw milk, but if the benefit doesn't outweigh the risk, I can see no reason to increase my chance of an uninvited "cleanse," or potentially something worse.
As you may recall, I like having solid, definitive proof of things before I believe them. This stems in part from the fact that I study mathematics, and as an undergraduate (and actually, before that, as a high school student) I am only allowed to give answers that I know and can show. Because of this, when some asshat with a pH.D "performs" an epidemiological study and concludes that drinking raw milk will make you live forever, I feel cheated AND superior at the same time, because I know he is either wrong or he got extremely lucky, not to mention the fact that he went into a soft-science field and isn't required to actually do any hard work. Now that I'm off my soapbox though, I can actually make a point. Everything you read about raw milk either claims that it will kill you or turn you into the embodiment of perfect health. While I can't definitively say that either of these is untrue, I can conclude that if either is, it is only because the researcher who said so got lucky - the research that could suggest this either way just hasn't been done yet. In addition to this, it probably won't be done in any reasonable amount of time (probably because both the raw milk people and the pasteurization people don't want the real facts to come out).
With these in mind, I can't justify the cost of such a product without a guarantee that its benefits outweigh its risks. It's not that I'm not interested in trying to learn more, but I do face the issue of it just sounding a little too granola for me. Not to mention the fact that if I started drinking raw milk, I'd probably have to cut off my internet or something.
Until next time.
Anyway, onto the discussion of other hippy crap. Today's discussion is about raw food. I know next to nothing about it. In fact, in most cases I haven't even heard arguments for it. I know that they say cooking vegetables cooks vitamins out of it, and I know that there is some reason to believe that - but there is also reason to believe that without cooking vegetables you won't be getting through much of the cellulose to get many of those vitamins in the first place - not that it matters, I eat meat and eggs so I get enough vitamins. I generally think cooked vegetables taste better, though there are exceptions, like many greens. I like sushi, and I understand why it is mostly safe to eat (If I am not mistaken, with the exception of tuna, sushi sold in the US has to be frozen beneath a certain temperature for a certain period of time - this kills any marine parasites that may be present and many other pathogens). I don't believe any of the arguments that it's healthier for you, unless you burn it - but I'm a good enough cook that I usually don't have an issue with that - and burnt fish tastes bad besides. I know for a fact that cooked eggs, in addition to being safer to eat than raw eggs, are actually more nutritious if cooked (denaturing the proteins in the whites tends to make them easier to absorb - to the point where a raw egg white has what they call poor bioavailability, and a cooked egg white has near perfect bioavailability). Ditto for the burning them issue, but the same rule applies here. Burnt eggs taste like garbage; even scorched eggs are nearly inedible.
So then we come to the real raw food arguments that I neither understand nor know much about. I know that some people like to eat raw, non-fish meats. In the case of an omnivorous or carnivorous animal, I know that this is generally bordering on stupid beyond measure because you risk contracting a parasite that is likely to kill you before you can do anything about it (read about trichinosis - If you get enough trichina worms in your system you can die. That or they just end up in your spinal cord or brain and you die.). But then there are herbivores. I am terrified of parasites, so I wouldn't want to eat them raw, but I also understand that in the US at least you are very unlikely to contract a parasite from raw herbivore meats (or from pork, come to think of it). And I do occasionally have my steaks a little rare. The risk of bacterial infection is also there, but not so much in a rare steak as in completely raw meat. Beside these arguments, I prefer the flavor and texture of meat that is at least cooked somewhat, and so I don't care too much for the arguments for raw non-fish meats.
So then there is raw dairy. I can honestly say that I know very little about this for certain. I believe that the argument for pasteurization is strong - regardless of what you do with the milk, or how the cows are raised, pasteurization reduces the likelihood of a consumer contracting a foodborne illness from the product. This is independent of the cows being grass-fed, or organic, or being happy or what-have-you (if you aren't convinced, imagine that the only difference between one dairy and another is pasteurization. Even if such a situation does not exist, without doubt, the dairy that pasteurizes its milk has fewer pathogens and consumers of its product are less likely to contract a foodborne illness, even if the difference of these chances is insignificant.). Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that one is likely to get sick from drinking raw milk, but if the benefit doesn't outweigh the risk, I can see no reason to increase my chance of an uninvited "cleanse," or potentially something worse.
As you may recall, I like having solid, definitive proof of things before I believe them. This stems in part from the fact that I study mathematics, and as an undergraduate (and actually, before that, as a high school student) I am only allowed to give answers that I know and can show. Because of this, when some asshat with a pH.D "performs" an epidemiological study and concludes that drinking raw milk will make you live forever, I feel cheated AND superior at the same time, because I know he is either wrong or he got extremely lucky, not to mention the fact that he went into a soft-science field and isn't required to actually do any hard work. Now that I'm off my soapbox though, I can actually make a point. Everything you read about raw milk either claims that it will kill you or turn you into the embodiment of perfect health. While I can't definitively say that either of these is untrue, I can conclude that if either is, it is only because the researcher who said so got lucky - the research that could suggest this either way just hasn't been done yet. In addition to this, it probably won't be done in any reasonable amount of time (probably because both the raw milk people and the pasteurization people don't want the real facts to come out).
With these in mind, I can't justify the cost of such a product without a guarantee that its benefits outweigh its risks. It's not that I'm not interested in trying to learn more, but I do face the issue of it just sounding a little too granola for me. Not to mention the fact that if I started drinking raw milk, I'd probably have to cut off my internet or something.
Until next time.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
The foray into the worlds of the "Bros"
Now, I know most of you reading this know me fairly well, and for many of you this involves having known me for a long time. For those who either haven't known me for a long time, or simply don't know me well, know this: I am a nerd. I find no shame in this fact - being a nerd is awesome. There are some people who don't quite understand this though, and I'm okay with that, and there are definitely aspects of normal life that I don't understand because I am a nerd. I am unathletic and uncoordinated. I am not good at any sport (video games don't count). I don't enjoy watching sports of any kind (with the exception of world cup soccer, and the super bowl). I don't understand the appeal of dancing. I generally don't understand the appeal of going out at all, come to think of it. I would rather drink for cheap or not at all than go to a bar and get blasted while listening to music that is too loud. I clam up around groups larger than about 6 (even among my own friends sometimes) and delve into the realm of the socially awkward. I am not a conversationalist, unless the topic is something I am passionate about. I am good at listening, and do not like the sound of my own voice. My idea of a good time is hunching around a tiny table with 3 or 4 friends and playing an obscure card game over beer and pizza (though lately, that would have to be converted to the no-homo version of wine and cheese) or watching a movie that we may or may not enjoy, frequently pausing it (or skipping that step) and making critical comments about it - best if it is sci-fi or fantasy related, but it doesn't have to be. One of my hobbies is looking up things I think might be interesting on Wikipedia to see how biased its assessment is - and relishing in every discovered grammar/spelling error. I am a gamer, and I tend to play games until there's nothing left in them - usually playing through long games multiple times just to try something new. I also love to discuss games with people - you see, as a nerd, I view (some) games as a form of art, and not merely entertainment. Some games have themes as much as any good movie does (though often interrupted by long bouts of "kill this monster 100 times until you get what you need") and dissecting the intricacies of these themes is often as rewarding - if not more-so - than the game-play. I don't understand the appeal of going to a concert. I enjoyed math in high school. I love to play chess.
What's the point of all this? Well, it's something that I haven't discussed much (though may have touched on). The gym is a weird place for me. It's crowded, and most of the people there are not nerds. The things you do at the gym are not nerdy things, so they don't feel very natural for me (especially the movements). People try to start conversations with you about things you don't feel comfortable talking about, like football, or your bench-press form (No one has brought up the subject of diet with me yet, but probably because that would be something I would feel comfortable discussing). Some of the people wear douchebag cologne while working out, which I always find really distracting because it seems kind of comical to smell like anything but BO at the gym. Others are simply douchebags in other ways and are literally walking stereotypes (complete with blaring bro-rock from their iPods). Old men walk around naked in the locker rooms. Whenever anyone spots you on bench, they practically shout empty words of encouragement like, "Baby weight, you got this!" when I just died on the last set doing fewer reps than they expect me to get (I find this especially funny because when I spot people I usually say nothing until afterwards, when it feels abnormal to not give them some sort of bro-ish message of encouragement - usually a simple, "that was good.") [I'm not kidding]. Crossfit people go to normal gyms sometimes and do box jumps and funny pullups (that's how you can spot the crossfitters).
I don't mean to bring up any of this to complain, but I think it's important to understand this idea of unfamiliar territory. It feels abnormal, pointless, uncomfortable, and intimidating. It hurts and it makes you smell bad and it sucks up your time. But its not all bad news - it helps me sleep like a rock, and when I do have to run to catch a ferry, I don't collapse on the first available seat and practically black out anymore. Even so, I had a hard time going to the gym for the first few months (this is some time in the past now). In fact, back in January the only reason I really started going regularly again was because my brother promised to work out with me... Then he had to go and get a job - I tried to tell him his kids could fend for themselves, but he just wouldn't listen.
Anywho, it's time to turn down the self-pity. The gym isn't really that bad. Even for the socially awkward, all you have to do is crank up your iPod and start running. And putting all the uncomfortable stuff aside, there is occasionally a conversation to be had that's actually worth having. I've seen lots of friends from high school that I haven't seen in years, and lost track of how many laps I've walked while chatting with them.
Plus, when you actually start noticing results, especially when you can quantify them, it's really cool. This past Thursday (that's the 12th of April for posterity's sake) marks the first time I have ever bench-pressed more than my body weight - 165lbs, 5 times (7 with help from a spotter). The same day I also did 10 pullups in one go. Some time before that, I ran an 8-minute mile (I could have run it faster, quite easily I think. The 8 minute mile hardly even phased me). I've also a gained a little weight... I'm at 162lbs now, which puts me 7 pounds over where I started this diet thing (I think?). Like I've said before, I couldn't actually say for certain whether or not it's fat... but I think it is likely not primarily fat... Let's hope not at least XD
Onto our next subject...
I'm not fantastic at cooking vegetables. I have about one fewer year of veggie-cooking experience among other things... But veggies have always seemed to me to be a bit of an after thought, so cooking with them has never seemed to come naturally. They are a side-dish. You don't make a broccoli dinner, you steam it and serve it with a steak. You rip up some leaves and put them on a plate and call that a "salad." Sometimes there's not even any preparation at all - "eat these carrots kid, they're good for your eyes."
Well anyway, I mentioned last time that I intended to add (some) veggies into my diet, and I have indeed done so. I have eaten some broccoli and some asparagus and some celery since then (and also some peanut butter). Not too much, I'm trying to keep it normal, of course. I also haven't been taking my multi-vitamins (technically, with the veggies, I shouldn't need them - and should barely need them at all anyway). Of course, the broccoli was always drenched heavily in sour cream, the asparagus was almost literally swimming in bacon grease (it sprouted arms and legs, but couldn't figure out the motions) and the celery was really just a vessel for sour cream or peanut butter (and that's all celery is anyway, unless you're using it's juices to get some tasty nitrites into meats and soups). Also, no benefits from fiber have been noticed.
I also may be turning into a hipster... I bought those funny toe shoes, Vibram five-fingers aka Hipster shoes for the hipster who's into barefoot running (I got them on special sale for 50 bucks - there's no way I'd pay full price). I'm not into barefoot running because I'm afraid I will get hepatitis or worms or AIDS, but I decided to try these shoes almost out of desperation. My old walking shoes were falling apart, and my running shoes fit me poorly and make my feet hurt besides. I have wide, flat feet, so my old running shoes were about a half size too large, and my feet just kinda shifted around inside of them when I ran. When I tried on the Vibrams, they fit snugly, without crushing my forefoot every time I took a step. It was sort of a eureka moment - shoes can actually fit one's feet?! Impossible! It's almost enough to make me change my opinion of runners... Wait -who am I kidding? You and I both know that anyone who actually enjoys running around for more than about 10 minutes at a time is literally insane. But at least now I feel like I could do that without having to baby my feet for the next couple of days.
My favorite thing about the shoes though is whenever I catch someone staring at them - it reminds me of the old Norwegian saying: "How do you spot the extroverted Norwegian? He's the one looking at your shoes!" [For those who don't get the joke, the rest of us Norwegians are so introverted that we regularly look at our own shoes, but when we are feeling adventurous, we may glance at another's footwear. The joke will make sense if you are Norwegian.]
Aside from being nice to run in, the Vibrams also suck if it is even remotely damp outside. They may have been a fine investment for exercising, but I may have to find an alternative shoe for rainy weather...
I do have a food adventure to share! Ever had liver sausage? It sounds kinda gross, I know, but it is an animal product with vitamin C, and it's not as nasty as my own attempts at preparing liver. Plus it's loaded with vitamins that aren't exactly easy to get from other (non-animal) sources [admittedly, if you are a meatetarian you probably don't have fat-soluble vitamins worries - or any micronutrient worries, come to think of it]. But it does come in a nasty tube. Kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies to scrape it out with a butter knife and smear it on (lol) salami.
I'm out of ideas and this post is more than long enough. Until next time!
What's the point of all this? Well, it's something that I haven't discussed much (though may have touched on). The gym is a weird place for me. It's crowded, and most of the people there are not nerds. The things you do at the gym are not nerdy things, so they don't feel very natural for me (especially the movements). People try to start conversations with you about things you don't feel comfortable talking about, like football, or your bench-press form (No one has brought up the subject of diet with me yet, but probably because that would be something I would feel comfortable discussing). Some of the people wear douchebag cologne while working out, which I always find really distracting because it seems kind of comical to smell like anything but BO at the gym. Others are simply douchebags in other ways and are literally walking stereotypes (complete with blaring bro-rock from their iPods). Old men walk around naked in the locker rooms. Whenever anyone spots you on bench, they practically shout empty words of encouragement like, "Baby weight, you got this!" when I just died on the last set doing fewer reps than they expect me to get (I find this especially funny because when I spot people I usually say nothing until afterwards, when it feels abnormal to not give them some sort of bro-ish message of encouragement - usually a simple, "that was good.") [I'm not kidding]. Crossfit people go to normal gyms sometimes and do box jumps and funny pullups (that's how you can spot the crossfitters).
I don't mean to bring up any of this to complain, but I think it's important to understand this idea of unfamiliar territory. It feels abnormal, pointless, uncomfortable, and intimidating. It hurts and it makes you smell bad and it sucks up your time. But its not all bad news - it helps me sleep like a rock, and when I do have to run to catch a ferry, I don't collapse on the first available seat and practically black out anymore. Even so, I had a hard time going to the gym for the first few months (this is some time in the past now). In fact, back in January the only reason I really started going regularly again was because my brother promised to work out with me... Then he had to go and get a job - I tried to tell him his kids could fend for themselves, but he just wouldn't listen.
Anywho, it's time to turn down the self-pity. The gym isn't really that bad. Even for the socially awkward, all you have to do is crank up your iPod and start running. And putting all the uncomfortable stuff aside, there is occasionally a conversation to be had that's actually worth having. I've seen lots of friends from high school that I haven't seen in years, and lost track of how many laps I've walked while chatting with them.
Plus, when you actually start noticing results, especially when you can quantify them, it's really cool. This past Thursday (that's the 12th of April for posterity's sake) marks the first time I have ever bench-pressed more than my body weight - 165lbs, 5 times (7 with help from a spotter). The same day I also did 10 pullups in one go. Some time before that, I ran an 8-minute mile (I could have run it faster, quite easily I think. The 8 minute mile hardly even phased me). I've also a gained a little weight... I'm at 162lbs now, which puts me 7 pounds over where I started this diet thing (I think?). Like I've said before, I couldn't actually say for certain whether or not it's fat... but I think it is likely not primarily fat... Let's hope not at least XD
Onto our next subject...
I'm not fantastic at cooking vegetables. I have about one fewer year of veggie-cooking experience among other things... But veggies have always seemed to me to be a bit of an after thought, so cooking with them has never seemed to come naturally. They are a side-dish. You don't make a broccoli dinner, you steam it and serve it with a steak. You rip up some leaves and put them on a plate and call that a "salad." Sometimes there's not even any preparation at all - "eat these carrots kid, they're good for your eyes."
Well anyway, I mentioned last time that I intended to add (some) veggies into my diet, and I have indeed done so. I have eaten some broccoli and some asparagus and some celery since then (and also some peanut butter). Not too much, I'm trying to keep it normal, of course. I also haven't been taking my multi-vitamins (technically, with the veggies, I shouldn't need them - and should barely need them at all anyway). Of course, the broccoli was always drenched heavily in sour cream, the asparagus was almost literally swimming in bacon grease (it sprouted arms and legs, but couldn't figure out the motions) and the celery was really just a vessel for sour cream or peanut butter (and that's all celery is anyway, unless you're using it's juices to get some tasty nitrites into meats and soups). Also, no benefits from fiber have been noticed.
I also may be turning into a hipster... I bought those funny toe shoes, Vibram five-fingers aka Hipster shoes for the hipster who's into barefoot running (I got them on special sale for 50 bucks - there's no way I'd pay full price). I'm not into barefoot running because I'm afraid I will get hepatitis or worms or AIDS, but I decided to try these shoes almost out of desperation. My old walking shoes were falling apart, and my running shoes fit me poorly and make my feet hurt besides. I have wide, flat feet, so my old running shoes were about a half size too large, and my feet just kinda shifted around inside of them when I ran. When I tried on the Vibrams, they fit snugly, without crushing my forefoot every time I took a step. It was sort of a eureka moment - shoes can actually fit one's feet?! Impossible! It's almost enough to make me change my opinion of runners... Wait -who am I kidding? You and I both know that anyone who actually enjoys running around for more than about 10 minutes at a time is literally insane. But at least now I feel like I could do that without having to baby my feet for the next couple of days.
My favorite thing about the shoes though is whenever I catch someone staring at them - it reminds me of the old Norwegian saying: "How do you spot the extroverted Norwegian? He's the one looking at your shoes!" [For those who don't get the joke, the rest of us Norwegians are so introverted that we regularly look at our own shoes, but when we are feeling adventurous, we may glance at another's footwear. The joke will make sense if you are Norwegian.]
Aside from being nice to run in, the Vibrams also suck if it is even remotely damp outside. They may have been a fine investment for exercising, but I may have to find an alternative shoe for rainy weather...
I do have a food adventure to share! Ever had liver sausage? It sounds kinda gross, I know, but it is an animal product with vitamin C, and it's not as nasty as my own attempts at preparing liver. Plus it's loaded with vitamins that aren't exactly easy to get from other (non-animal) sources [admittedly, if you are a meatetarian you probably don't have fat-soluble vitamins worries - or any micronutrient worries, come to think of it]. But it does come in a nasty tube. Kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies to scrape it out with a butter knife and smear it on (lol) salami.
I'm out of ideas and this post is more than long enough. Until next time!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
A full year... A summary of the year, future plans, and pi day!
So, as of about a week ago I have been on the meat diet for an entire year... I guess I never really got around to explaining that point in my blog... lol. I celebrated this pi day as the unofficial anniversary of the self-experiment, with (of course) a meat pie (I had one last year too, but this time there are more pictures, and I intend to post them). I also intend to make some changes to the meat diet and continue it - for at least another year. I have yet to get a blood test done :/ I apologize. I am a little too cheap to spend money on unnecessary medical procedures, however minor.
I want to try to sum up the experience as best I can, and try to be unbiased about it... However possible that is... What has shocked me the most about the experience as a whole is how not abnormal it has been. I haven't really felt any different, with the possible exception of some digestive differences - most of which were not even very unpleasant, or significant. I didn't lose much weight, which didn't surprise me too much (I don't have a great deal of it to lose though, so I'm not exactly complaining) - and though I don't have (or ever intend to take) before and after pictures, you're simply going to have to take my word for it when I say that I am now at least less fat than I was when I started (though this likely has something to do with the fact that I have been working out). It has been very inconvenient to try to eat at restaurants or people's houses though. I usually try to simply be polite and eat what I am offered, or choose restaurants that suit my needs, like sushi bars or steak houses.
I do want to get into the details of the digestive stuff though, so please skip this part if you aren't interested...
And it actually gets a bit gross if you thought you had the stones but want to change your mind...
It's not too late...
I may have mentioned this before, but one of the strangest things I've noticed is that I just don't pass a great deal of poop these days... In fact, it seems like a tiny amount in comparison to what I've been eating. When I first noticed this it got my hypochondria acting up, Which of course led to me being utterly convinced that I had a blockage and was going to die (which... led to a laxative... which of course convinced me that my fears were entirely unfounded). After that, I decided to go with it, and however unusual it seemed to not poop much, the movements were regular - perhaps even more-so than they had been before. In addition to that small issue, I have also dealt with occasional bouts of diarrhea. Considering that this happens to most people on normal diets I wouldn't consider it too abnormal - except that it has a tendency to last a little longer than expected... As I have noted before, there is a reason to believe that this will result from not consuming enough fat, and there is also some evidence to suggest that adding salt to the diet can prevent it (weird...). I have personally noticed that I tend to have this problem when my diet is mostly boiled eggs (or when I am simply stressed out) - boiled eggs are lower in salt and fat than what I generally consume, and when I have free range of things like butter and heavy cream and thoroughly fatty ground beef, this problem entirely vanishes. I haven't really been constipated at all on this diet - pooping is never something difficult, though occasionally I expect to poop, or expect to poop more and there is no more [This goes back to the first digestive change, of course - the belief that I ought to be pooping more than I am has led me to occasionally, at least temporarily, conclude that I am constipated, then I turn out to be wrong] (This has been an improvement for me - I actually dealt with occasional constipation before, and considered it unpleasant, naturally) {TMI?}. Anyway, I have also noticed the occasional acetone-smelling urine that is common among those on high fat, low everything-else diets {I warned you that this part maybe should be skipped!} (Some say this is a sign of dangerous ketoacidosis, but that is simply untrue - dietary ketosis, which is a much safer biological state, can lead to this as well). The smell is unnerving and immediately makes me assume something is wrong, but it's really no big deal.
It's done.
You can start reading the blog again.
It's interesting again without being gross - really.
I didn't know to expect this when I started, but there is some debate about the body's ability to function without glucose. I haven't noticed a significant difference, to be honest, but according to Dr. Peter Attia (I briefly mentioned him before - fitness fanatic and ketogenic diet advocate) it should be expected that high-intensity, short duration exercise (like lifting weights) should be slightly negatively impacted by a ketogenic diet, and aerobic exercises should be positively impacted by such a diet. I can't run to save my life, and the numbers I've been putting up on the weights have gone up... so either the diet hasn't affected me much, or I haven't been truly ketogenic (Either is possible, really. According to him, the impact on high-intensity exercise is quite small - and considering that I couldn't run to save my life before, if you increase that capability by - say - 150%, I still can't run to save my life!).
I've been surprised by my own ability to change my tastes more than anything else. I mentioned long ago that I am practically addicted to milk, I have a serious sweet tooth, and I do not prefer fatty cuts of meat. Well, I've been able to change all of those. I have recently made the decision to wean myself off of milk. I know it sounds sad, as I may never be capable of going back - but really, what am I missing out on? The lactose intolerant can still consume a wide variety of dairy products since only milk and ice cream (and maybe a few others) are actually high in lactose. There's also the fact that the lactose intolerant are supposed to still be able to tolerate some lactose, just not the nearly limitless quantities those of us with working digestive systems can handle. I have replaced most of the milk in my diet with cream (I'll get to why in just a minute), though I still cut it with a little milk because it's too thick otherwise. As for the sweet tooth, I literally don't have cravings anymore. I can smell waffles in the morning and think, "Damn those smell good!" while I dive into a plate of ground beef and scrambled eggs, perfectly content not to eat a half a cup of syrup. Of course, if I do get started on eating something sweet, I usually can't stop myself... Some time ago I decided to have one piece of toast with honey. And a cupcake. And another piece of toast. And another cupcake... I had a good excuse, but it was still inexcusable. As for the fatty cuts of meat - that just took realizing the difference between fats that taste good and those that don't. The fat that is marbled throughout a tri-tip steak as beautifully as if the cow were descended from heaven into the feedlot to be slaughtered especially for me tastes fantastic. Whereas if you try to saute the 3/4 inch of fat from around the corner of a pork shoulder blade steak, it feels like rubber and is virtually inedible. Either kind of fat is desirable when slow cooked until it is like butter stuck to meat. Come to think of it, sticking butter to meat is also a fine way to make it taste butter... better.
I've been delighted by the fact that the diet is a fantastic conversation starter - even if it does make me a hipster to use it in that way. Though I do occasionally run into someone who simply cannot be swayed, most people are open to hearing what I have to say (and most of them still think I'm going to die). I do occasionally struggle to explain why epidemiological studies aren't solid proof of anything, or how hormones work, or what studies actually show about people on high-fat diets (mostly because, except for being able to explain away epidemiological studies, I know very little about the other two areas of scientific research - and the reason I struggle with epidemiological studies is that people tend to believe them anyway...).
That about sums up the experience - it has been not as difficult and far less expensive than I expected it to be. It's been fun, and it seems like it hasn't killed me - so naturally I intend to keep it up. I do want to make some changes though. I want to start including non-starchy vegetables. Why? Variety is definitely a huge issue, but another one (believe it or not) is that I want to try to up my fat intake even more. How to non-starchy vegetables help with that? Simple - how do most people eat non-starchy veggies? If you can't come up with the answer, think of a salad or a raw veggie tray - what is it that sit in the middle of either one? That's right! A giant blob of salad dressing. What are the components of any (good) salad dressing? Right again! Some sort of fat, and some sort of acid, usually with salt and pepper. So that's the idea in a nutshell - I will eat non-starchy veggies like broccoli and celery and asparagus and drench them in homemade dressings or hollandaise sauce or peanut butter and try to incorporate that into the meat diet in an effort to eat more fat. A plus side of this is the purported beneficial effects of fiber ( mentioned before that I haven't had too much trouble with that area of digestion). Since the veggies will have some vitamins in them (not that I haven't been getting most of what I need from meat and eggs) I am going to stop taking my multi-vitamin, but I will continue to take my vitamin D unless there is a miraculous change in the weather and I turn into some douchebag who walks around shirtless in the sun (protip: not gonna happen). I do want to get a blood test done too, but I just think it isn't going to happen :/
The last topic to discuss is pi day (March fourteenth, aka 3/14 for the uninitiated)! Last pi day, my brother and I celebrated the commencement of my meat diet with a glorious meat pie (I had actually been on the diet for a bout a week or so at that point, but whatevs). A meat pie in our case was essentially a meat loaf, with no breadcrums, topped with a bacon weave lattice as a sort of "crust." We basically used a meatloaf recipe by Alton Brown (of Food Network fame) and removed any offending ingredients, and added extra bacon, and baked it in a pie plate. Needless to say it was basically the most fantastic thing I had ever tasted. It also looked beautiful. I took pictures, and a giant slice of it was my facebook profile pic for a while.
Well, this year I had to outdo myself, so I made two pies (and you thought that was for tau day!)! They were, once again, the most fantastic things I had ever tasted. I also took pictures, and if I can figure out how to post them you will get to see them! [Note that the cigarettes in the picture are not mine - I do not smoke cigs]
That about sums it up for now! Until next time!
I want to try to sum up the experience as best I can, and try to be unbiased about it... However possible that is... What has shocked me the most about the experience as a whole is how not abnormal it has been. I haven't really felt any different, with the possible exception of some digestive differences - most of which were not even very unpleasant, or significant. I didn't lose much weight, which didn't surprise me too much (I don't have a great deal of it to lose though, so I'm not exactly complaining) - and though I don't have (or ever intend to take) before and after pictures, you're simply going to have to take my word for it when I say that I am now at least less fat than I was when I started (though this likely has something to do with the fact that I have been working out). It has been very inconvenient to try to eat at restaurants or people's houses though. I usually try to simply be polite and eat what I am offered, or choose restaurants that suit my needs, like sushi bars or steak houses.
I do want to get into the details of the digestive stuff though, so please skip this part if you aren't interested...
And it actually gets a bit gross if you thought you had the stones but want to change your mind...
It's not too late...
I may have mentioned this before, but one of the strangest things I've noticed is that I just don't pass a great deal of poop these days... In fact, it seems like a tiny amount in comparison to what I've been eating. When I first noticed this it got my hypochondria acting up, Which of course led to me being utterly convinced that I had a blockage and was going to die (which... led to a laxative... which of course convinced me that my fears were entirely unfounded). After that, I decided to go with it, and however unusual it seemed to not poop much, the movements were regular - perhaps even more-so than they had been before. In addition to that small issue, I have also dealt with occasional bouts of diarrhea. Considering that this happens to most people on normal diets I wouldn't consider it too abnormal - except that it has a tendency to last a little longer than expected... As I have noted before, there is a reason to believe that this will result from not consuming enough fat, and there is also some evidence to suggest that adding salt to the diet can prevent it (weird...). I have personally noticed that I tend to have this problem when my diet is mostly boiled eggs (or when I am simply stressed out) - boiled eggs are lower in salt and fat than what I generally consume, and when I have free range of things like butter and heavy cream and thoroughly fatty ground beef, this problem entirely vanishes. I haven't really been constipated at all on this diet - pooping is never something difficult, though occasionally I expect to poop, or expect to poop more and there is no more [This goes back to the first digestive change, of course - the belief that I ought to be pooping more than I am has led me to occasionally, at least temporarily, conclude that I am constipated, then I turn out to be wrong] (This has been an improvement for me - I actually dealt with occasional constipation before, and considered it unpleasant, naturally) {TMI?}. Anyway, I have also noticed the occasional acetone-smelling urine that is common among those on high fat, low everything-else diets {I warned you that this part maybe should be skipped!} (Some say this is a sign of dangerous ketoacidosis, but that is simply untrue - dietary ketosis, which is a much safer biological state, can lead to this as well). The smell is unnerving and immediately makes me assume something is wrong, but it's really no big deal.
It's done.
You can start reading the blog again.
It's interesting again without being gross - really.
I didn't know to expect this when I started, but there is some debate about the body's ability to function without glucose. I haven't noticed a significant difference, to be honest, but according to Dr. Peter Attia (I briefly mentioned him before - fitness fanatic and ketogenic diet advocate) it should be expected that high-intensity, short duration exercise (like lifting weights) should be slightly negatively impacted by a ketogenic diet, and aerobic exercises should be positively impacted by such a diet. I can't run to save my life, and the numbers I've been putting up on the weights have gone up... so either the diet hasn't affected me much, or I haven't been truly ketogenic (Either is possible, really. According to him, the impact on high-intensity exercise is quite small - and considering that I couldn't run to save my life before, if you increase that capability by - say - 150%, I still can't run to save my life!).
I've been surprised by my own ability to change my tastes more than anything else. I mentioned long ago that I am practically addicted to milk, I have a serious sweet tooth, and I do not prefer fatty cuts of meat. Well, I've been able to change all of those. I have recently made the decision to wean myself off of milk. I know it sounds sad, as I may never be capable of going back - but really, what am I missing out on? The lactose intolerant can still consume a wide variety of dairy products since only milk and ice cream (and maybe a few others) are actually high in lactose. There's also the fact that the lactose intolerant are supposed to still be able to tolerate some lactose, just not the nearly limitless quantities those of us with working digestive systems can handle. I have replaced most of the milk in my diet with cream (I'll get to why in just a minute), though I still cut it with a little milk because it's too thick otherwise. As for the sweet tooth, I literally don't have cravings anymore. I can smell waffles in the morning and think, "Damn those smell good!" while I dive into a plate of ground beef and scrambled eggs, perfectly content not to eat a half a cup of syrup. Of course, if I do get started on eating something sweet, I usually can't stop myself... Some time ago I decided to have one piece of toast with honey. And a cupcake. And another piece of toast. And another cupcake... I had a good excuse, but it was still inexcusable. As for the fatty cuts of meat - that just took realizing the difference between fats that taste good and those that don't. The fat that is marbled throughout a tri-tip steak as beautifully as if the cow were descended from heaven into the feedlot to be slaughtered especially for me tastes fantastic. Whereas if you try to saute the 3/4 inch of fat from around the corner of a pork shoulder blade steak, it feels like rubber and is virtually inedible. Either kind of fat is desirable when slow cooked until it is like butter stuck to meat. Come to think of it, sticking butter to meat is also a fine way to make it taste butter... better.
I've been delighted by the fact that the diet is a fantastic conversation starter - even if it does make me a hipster to use it in that way. Though I do occasionally run into someone who simply cannot be swayed, most people are open to hearing what I have to say (and most of them still think I'm going to die). I do occasionally struggle to explain why epidemiological studies aren't solid proof of anything, or how hormones work, or what studies actually show about people on high-fat diets (mostly because, except for being able to explain away epidemiological studies, I know very little about the other two areas of scientific research - and the reason I struggle with epidemiological studies is that people tend to believe them anyway...).
That about sums up the experience - it has been not as difficult and far less expensive than I expected it to be. It's been fun, and it seems like it hasn't killed me - so naturally I intend to keep it up. I do want to make some changes though. I want to start including non-starchy vegetables. Why? Variety is definitely a huge issue, but another one (believe it or not) is that I want to try to up my fat intake even more. How to non-starchy vegetables help with that? Simple - how do most people eat non-starchy veggies? If you can't come up with the answer, think of a salad or a raw veggie tray - what is it that sit in the middle of either one? That's right! A giant blob of salad dressing. What are the components of any (good) salad dressing? Right again! Some sort of fat, and some sort of acid, usually with salt and pepper. So that's the idea in a nutshell - I will eat non-starchy veggies like broccoli and celery and asparagus and drench them in homemade dressings or hollandaise sauce or peanut butter and try to incorporate that into the meat diet in an effort to eat more fat. A plus side of this is the purported beneficial effects of fiber ( mentioned before that I haven't had too much trouble with that area of digestion). Since the veggies will have some vitamins in them (not that I haven't been getting most of what I need from meat and eggs) I am going to stop taking my multi-vitamin, but I will continue to take my vitamin D unless there is a miraculous change in the weather and I turn into some douchebag who walks around shirtless in the sun (protip: not gonna happen). I do want to get a blood test done too, but I just think it isn't going to happen :/
The last topic to discuss is pi day (March fourteenth, aka 3/14 for the uninitiated)! Last pi day, my brother and I celebrated the commencement of my meat diet with a glorious meat pie (I had actually been on the diet for a bout a week or so at that point, but whatevs). A meat pie in our case was essentially a meat loaf, with no breadcrums, topped with a bacon weave lattice as a sort of "crust." We basically used a meatloaf recipe by Alton Brown (of Food Network fame) and removed any offending ingredients, and added extra bacon, and baked it in a pie plate. Needless to say it was basically the most fantastic thing I had ever tasted. It also looked beautiful. I took pictures, and a giant slice of it was my facebook profile pic for a while.
 |
| The obligatory bacon |
 |
| The meat pie, sans bacon weave |
That about sums it up for now! Until next time!
 |
| The finished product, artfully displayed |
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
More on Essentail Readings: Update
Some time ago I posted about essential readings. I intend to add to that post by updating from time to time. As you can imagine, I am likely to add Good Calories, Bad Calories to that list, but first I need a more condensed summary. It'll happen. I also want to add another blog to this list - it's by some guy who is a fitness fanatic and also eats a ketogenic diet - he and Taubes are associated in some way. I've read a bit of his blog and he has some useful information there, some of which I would like to try to summarize at some point. One large point he makes is that he was able to lose weight while actively reducing the amount of time he spends exercising, and I think that's interesting (you may recall that I lost weight this summer after ceasing the gym trips... more on that later). No time right now to finish this, I will edit it later, I just wanted to get some thoughts down.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
More things I've been lying about...
I mentioned a long time ago that I wanted to keep a weekly update of my weight - for whatever reason. Anyway, I have not been doing so... partly because for the past 4 months I haven't had a scale (although that's no excuse since I think I only recorded my weight here one time). Anyway, I'm up to about 156 right now. I'm okay with that - it's a pound heavier than where I started, but I'm not as fat as I used to be, which is cool. I should have taken before and after pictures so that I could talk about posting them and then never follow up on it.
I finally got around to taking my blood pressure! And boy was it weird... the first measurement was something like 150/80 which spooked me a bit. So I repeated it: 140/75. Again: 130/70 [these are approximations]. Now, I know that taking your blood pressure repeatedly on the same arm can yield decreasing results like that, so I switched arms. This measurement was about 110/60. This shocked me for a number of reasons. First, why did it start so high? Second, why did it come down so low? And third, why did this all happen in about 5 minutes? Makes me wonder how accurate actual blood pressure readings are, and if we might want to start averaging blood pressure over the course of like an hour to really get a more accurate reading.
I also butchered a pork shoulder recently! Costco had a slab of pork shoulder, bone removed, weighing in at 25 pounds for about $1.70 a pound... I couldn't resist. I did not, however, manage to do a good job of chopping it up. I should have checked a guide online, but instead I just went at it with a carving knife. I got a few good steaks and several chunks of pork roast though. I still think I prefer getting my meat nicely packaged in meal-sized portions (don't reread that...).
I think I'm going to retire input/output. I watched a special about a "condition" called orthorexia, where people become obsessed with keeping track of what they eat for whatever purpose, and I've come to realize that it's not worth the effort. Besides, you know what I eat most of the time: eggs, cheese, meat, a bit of milk, occasional walnuts/pecans. And butter. Lot's of butter. And then I will share with you what is actually interesting. Same with the output - you know the details of what I have told you - it's usually not very interesting, and when it is I will say so.
I wanted to keep this brief, so I'm going to wrap it up now. I did want to mention the hipsters though. I've noticed a trend among the hip that can help to identify them during the winter. You know the skinny jeans? The skinny jeans that are also usually too short? Coupled with the fact that the bottoms are generally rolled up? So you can see their socks below their skinny little ankles? Yeah... that's how you can ID the hip during the winter months. It takes some work though - even some of the most hip won't risk that cold on their ankles.
Anyway, till next time.
I wanted to keep this brief, so I'm going to wrap it up now. I did want to mention the hipsters though. I've noticed a trend among the hip that can help to identify them during the winter. You know the skinny jeans? The skinny jeans that are also usually too short? Coupled with the fact that the bottoms are generally rolled up? So you can see their socks below their skinny little ankles? Yeah... that's how you can ID the hip during the winter months. It takes some work though - even some of the most hip won't risk that cold on their ankles.
Anyway, till next time.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
A (not-so) Brief Update, Focusing on the Gym
Hey, so my last post talked almost exclusively about Gary Taubes' book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. I will repeat my praise of the book here, and I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in diet/health/obesity/diabetes/weight loss/what have you.
But there are other things to talk about. For example, I don't believe I uttered a single word last time about the workout situation! Things are finally (and really this time!) back to normal. Starting in about mid-January, I got a membership at the YMCA, since they waived the joining fee for the new people in January. They also have this financial assistance program for people who are poor, or underemployed, or college students (simply a combination of the previous two) so it actually costs me quite a bit less each month than my old gym membership ever did.
Plus, the facility is really nice - they have an indoor track and everything. My old gym was a snap fitness, and they didn't have a real bench or a rack or anything for weights, so I didn't do bench or squat, or really anything that I couldn't do with dumbbells. Now I'm doing them regularly, and unashamedly begging for spotters whenever I bench (my bench is really pretty pathetic, so it's almost embarrassing asking for a spot - but that's not my style to be embarrassed about anything - except dancing). In fact - and I don't mean to brag - I'm hittin' it pretty hard. The indoor track is a huge part of it... I hate running, and I hate running on a treadmill even more, and I have short, poorly coordinated legs, so the elliptical machine makes me feel like my hip is going to fly out of my pelvis. But the indoor track is cool - you get to run past people who are walking to make yourself feel fast, and with the right music it's actually kinda fun to try to run with the rhythm (if it's too slow or too fast I can't keep it up for too long though).
Speaking of which, I definitely listen to the Black Mages at the gym. In case you are unaware, the Black Mages are a Japanese progressive metal band led by Nobuo Uematsu, of Final Fantasy fame, which does covers of music from the Final Fantasy series. It's fantastic - and for someone like me who is used to getting a lot of work done listening to battle themes there's nothing like it to get my blood pumping for a workout. Apparently they have a relatively new album which I am thinking about investing in... Anyway, it almost makes me wish people could hear what I'm listening to at the gym, as I run around the track in old nerdy t-shirts. Now that I'm actually making some money, I may try to get some new ones :)
As for the details of my routine: I try to go for a nice warm-up with a few laps around the track, usually about a half mile at a decent pace, followed by a walked lap then straight to the weights (if I'm gonna be doing squats I take it easier on the running). After that, I split up my workout into two days, so one day I might do back and chest, and the next shoulders and legs (or some similar combination of those) and I throw in little things here and there, going for about 5 or 6 days a week at the gym, occasionally throwing in a much easier day, or a day of just running (if it sounds like a lot, its not - I'm usually in and out in about an hour). I aim for three sets of about 10 reps each for each exercise, after a warm-up set, and usually dropping the weight down because I can't maintain it yet. I figure I'm not working out hard enough to really worry too much about over-training at this point, so I'm not too worried about that. I also haven't been doing deadlifts - although I want to do them... I admit I've tried to do them before, and they make me sore in a bad way, which means I'm doing something wrong. Don't try to give me advice - I've watched youtube videos all about doing them right and I just can't get it... I'm too awkward. I'm avoiding the risk of injury by doing other things while I wait for an opportunity to have someone show me how to do them and tell me what I'm doing wrong.
Also, if you have read Gary Taubes other book, How We Get Fat you will recall that he details an entire chapter to the "elusive" benefits of exercise. Basically his point is that if we envision exercise as a way of increasing the calories out part of the calories in/calories out dynamic, then we must realize how hopeless things are - the calories in/calories out idea is simply untrue. This is why I don't get to the gym and run for 20 miles or some other such nonsense (and because I'd give up and say eff that by about mile 1.5). However, exercise does have a tendency to reduce insulin resistance, which does help people lose weight. And if you lift weights it has a tendency to make you stronger, so you don't end up fat, old, bald, poor, and short (I remind myself whenever I don't want to go to the gym that I am already short, I am balding, I will one day be old, and I will never be fabulously rich - so if I can't at least avoid being fat I won't have much going for me - except for my charming personality, of course... and shocking good looks... and razor sharp mind and...). Uh, anyway, if the goal is weight loss, then the key to exercising is intensity. Intense workouts cause a shift in hormones that tends to make you lose fat when compared to lower-intensity workouts. All exercise will increase your production of cortisol, which, put simply, makes you fat. But more intense exercise also increases your production of glucagon, testosterone, adrenal hormones, and human growth hormone - which all have a tendency to make you less fat (women, don't worry about testosterone making you bulky - if it were that easy for guys they wouldn't workout) [I also want to do a post about glucagon someday and how it is basically the counter to insulin, but now is not the time]. In other words, the net hormonal effect on weight loss is more positive for intense workouts than for less-intense workouts. The details of it aren't entirely clear to me, but I do know that the calories in/calories out aspect of exercise isn't what makes you lose weight, and the hormonal explanation makes more sense. So it makes sense to go with what makes more sense.
Speaking of all this business, have you ever tried to find accurate information about exercising? I feel like it is exactly like diet/nutrition/health. Everyone is trying to sell something and promising to make you look like Suzanne Somers or Ahnold or make you lose 300 pounds in 6 days or something else that clearly requires too much plastic surgery or at least ought to have required more. I'll admit I've checked a few websites myself and almost been convinced - I have talked about Mark's Daily Apple before... He's the guy who talks about the "primal blueprint." And he was so close to being right about a lot of things - yes intense exercise is good; yes, we ought to eat fewer carbs in general; yes, most fats are not bad for you - that it's almost enough to suck you in, but his reasoning was so flawed. Just because our ancestor's ate it - even if for a long time - does not imply that it is good for us; and just because we did not eat it does not imply that it is bad for us.
Speaking of all this business, have you ever tried to find accurate information about exercising? I feel like it is exactly like diet/nutrition/health. Everyone is trying to sell something and promising to make you look like Suzanne Somers or Ahnold or make you lose 300 pounds in 6 days or something else that clearly requires too much plastic surgery or at least ought to have required more. I'll admit I've checked a few websites myself and almost been convinced - I have talked about Mark's Daily Apple before... He's the guy who talks about the "primal blueprint." And he was so close to being right about a lot of things - yes intense exercise is good; yes, we ought to eat fewer carbs in general; yes, most fats are not bad for you - that it's almost enough to suck you in, but his reasoning was so flawed. Just because our ancestor's ate it - even if for a long time - does not imply that it is good for us; and just because we did not eat it does not imply that it is bad for us.
Taubes showed this repeatedly in his books: The Japanese and many Asian peoples do fine on diets high in carbohydrates when they eat primarily rice, despite the fact that our ancestors likely didn't eat much rice. All people do poorly on diets high in sugar - regardless of the source of that sugar... It rots teeth, it causes heart disease, and liver diseases, and all kinds of horrible things - even though our ancestors likely ate as much sugar as possible (which didn't amount to much). Many mushrooms are poisonous when consumed raw, but are fine sources of trace nutrients when cooked - there's no way our ancestors ate them for too long. The Masai people of Africa live in a state of relative health despite subsisting on a diet of mostly cow's milk. And whey protein and fish oils - two sources of food that our ancestors likely didn't have year-round access to - have a tendency to be exceptionally healthy.
But anyway, then he went on to say that eating primal eliminated his B.O. Put bluntly, he's retarded for saying this. Put less bluntly, it discredits him greatly, and is further evidence that he is simply trying to sell something.
In a frustrated way, what I'm saying is that I'd like a definitive summary of what we know about exercise in a (relatively) concise format similar to Taubes' books so I could more easily sift through all the garbage to know what is true.
What else... I know!
*POOP WARNING*
So, I mentioned in passing in my previous post something about a bit of diarrhea... It was actually quite unpleasant - I believe this may be what was referred to in the "meat for a year" study as the factor that caused the scientists to change their plan to both subjects eating more fat than lean. I won't go into great detail - but it is interesting to note a few things. One is that it didn't seem to be severely dehydrating me - I didn't change my fluid intake much and didn't notice any ill effects. Two is that aside from an often unpleasant frequent urge to use the toilet, I didn't feel bad... there was no pain or cramping or headaches or those sorts of things that you might expect with this sort of issue. Three is that my over-consumption of cayenne pepper did cause a certain amount of unpleasantness... Combined with diarrhea it was actually really unpleasant at times... I'm trying to cut back (but it goes so well with roasts!) Four is that it went on for about a week, probably a couple days more. Since then I have been intentionally trying to eat more salt and more fat, and the problem seems to have cleared up.
I believe it may have been less severe than what the study mentioned because I was still eating mostly fat, rather than mostly lean - just not enough fat. But honestly who knows. I'm gonna try to stick to what I'm doing now though to basically avoid it. I wish I could pin down the cause more accurately, but there's no way of knowing without intentionally trying to force it to happen again - which I don't want to do.
*POOP WARNING OVER*
*POOP WARNING*
So, I mentioned in passing in my previous post something about a bit of diarrhea... It was actually quite unpleasant - I believe this may be what was referred to in the "meat for a year" study as the factor that caused the scientists to change their plan to both subjects eating more fat than lean. I won't go into great detail - but it is interesting to note a few things. One is that it didn't seem to be severely dehydrating me - I didn't change my fluid intake much and didn't notice any ill effects. Two is that aside from an often unpleasant frequent urge to use the toilet, I didn't feel bad... there was no pain or cramping or headaches or those sorts of things that you might expect with this sort of issue. Three is that my over-consumption of cayenne pepper did cause a certain amount of unpleasantness... Combined with diarrhea it was actually really unpleasant at times... I'm trying to cut back (but it goes so well with roasts!) Four is that it went on for about a week, probably a couple days more. Since then I have been intentionally trying to eat more salt and more fat, and the problem seems to have cleared up.
I believe it may have been less severe than what the study mentioned because I was still eating mostly fat, rather than mostly lean - just not enough fat. But honestly who knows. I'm gonna try to stick to what I'm doing now though to basically avoid it. I wish I could pin down the cause more accurately, but there's no way of knowing without intentionally trying to force it to happen again - which I don't want to do.
*POOP WARNING OVER*
Anyway, I think it's time to end this post. Until next time.
Monday, February 13, 2012
So it begins again...
Hey... It's been a long time, so you may be wondering why I haven't been blogging much.
The real answer is that I've been really lazy about almost everything, so this rather small and unimportant part of my life was naturally the hardest hit. What I would tell you if I didn't have the facade of anonymity to protect me, however, is that I have been so busy with real life and school and work that I haven't had time to focus as much on my meatetarian diet, so there hasn't been much to blog.
Well, there hasn't been much to blog either, so that's actually part of the real answer too - I was bad over the holidays - as was to be expected - and since a few days after New Year's I've been pretty consistent. I've also decided to try adding more salt to my diet - it wasn't a lie that I've been busy with work, and when I'm gone for long periods of time, it's easier to pack a lunch than to buy one while I'm out and about... So I've been eating a lot of boiled eggs, and peeling them in my car while I'm stopped at lights (or on the ferry). And in the process, I've been eating my foods with less salt than is usual. I've actually had some bowel issues recently, and I think this (and stress) may be a part of it.
I also read a book - I think I listed under my "required reading" post - Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. The book was filled with a wealth of information about research done on the relationship between diet and health, mostly chronicling how utterly lacking it is. It did, however, point out that the theory that fats and cholesterol in the diet are harmful is simply unsubstantiated; and it presented a more thoroughly (though not entirely) substantiated theory that carbohydrates - particularly sugar - in the diet are harmful. Basically, it confirmed what I have been telling you from the beginning in ways that I could not begin to have access to (such as reviewing the relevant statistics/scientific papers). It was far from light reading, however, and even though I read it recently, many of the finer details escape me. For example, I was relaying this bit of information to a friend, and aside from Dr. Atkins (who was a clinician, not a researcher) I could not name a single researcher who had come to the conclusion that fats in the diet are harmless and nonfattening. Not that there weren't several researchers in the book mentioned by name who made such claims... it's just that there were so many that after a while I started forgetting names or blending them together. Those names that stick out were towards the beginning of the book, and the beginning of the book was about the faulty hypothesis of the evils of dietary fats.
Anyway, here's a brief summary followed by details: Taubes begins with an interesting introduction about President Eisenhower's attempts to follow a "heart healthy" diet, and descending into heart disease despite his efforts, eventually dying after experiencing eight (could be wrong on the number) myocardial infarctions (I love that expression). He then details the theory that dietary fats and cholesterol cause heart disease, and explains why it's wrong, and how it came to dominate the medical/research communities. Then he details a (not so) new hypothesis that dietary carbohydrates cause heart disease and fatness, and explains why it makes more sense (and explains how before the mid-20th century, this belief was widely held). Then he gets a bit specific about how we fatten, and how we get heart disease, and discusses some clinical diet trials showing that high fat diets tend to result in better weigh control, whereas standard calorie restriction diets almost invariably fail. He explains that the theory of "calories in, calories out" fattening/weight loss is faulty, and it makes more sense to base our theory of fattening and weight loss off the effects of hormones - in particular insulin. Towards the end he details some theories about obesity and diabetes and metabolic disorder and essentially concludes that we would be a lot better if if we ate more meat and less carbohydrates - virtually the exact opposite of what we have been told since the '50s and '60s.
On that note, Ancel Keys was the first to bring the fat-is-bad hypothesis to mainstream science, and he based this jump to the mainstream primarily on what is known as the "seven countries study." The seven countries study examined the relative risk of heart disease among middle-aged men in seven countries: the US, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Japan. The study showed, according to Keys, that among populations with high saturated fat intakes the rate of heart disease was increased.
The problems with Keys' seven countries study can be separated into many issues: First is that the study was initially of 22 countries, and if the 15 "discarded" countries are included with their dietary data, the alleged correlation between dietary saturated fat intake and heart disease starts to disappear; Second is the fact that the study was seen as being so conclusive - even if higher heart disease rates could be correlated with higher saturated fat intakes, that does not imply that the saturated fat intake causes the heart disease, or that adopting a low saturated fat diet could reduce your odds of developing heart disease ( however, it's quite obvious that this has been the conclusion of at least the American Heart Association and the like); Third is that Keys seemed to have intentionally misread the data to make it look as if dietary fat, especially saturated fat, were the culprit, when physiological studies implied the exact opposite; Fourth is that using the same data, we can see that higher sugar intake correlates much more strongly with higher heart disease rates than does any other variable in diet.
I could go on for more, but the point has already been made. Keys made an incorrect or at least extremely biased conclusion about diet and health, and pressed his point until everyone in the medical/research communities agreed with him. Other researchers followed in his footsteps, making similar mistakes by being blind to anything that didn't agree with what they expected the outcome to be. This led to the belief that eating meat makes you get fat and then get diabetes and then heart disease and then you die - which I hope my (almost) year has shown to be false.
Meanwhile, there were at least a few researches showing that high meat consumption was far from the ocean of maladies it was claimed to be. Vilhjalmur Stefansson (I've talked about him before) was part of a study about the effects of a year-long all-meat diet, about which many papers were written. There was a researcher by the name of Banting (related to the Banting who wrote his Letter on Corpulence) who discovered insulin, who was followed by researchers who delved into diabetes research, which led to a theory which is today known as "metabolic syndrome." Metabolic syndrome is essentially a less severe form of (type II) diabetes, characterized by a resistance to insulin, which tends to lead to fatness. This theory was developed by Gerald Reaven, who was also a proponent of low-carbohydrate diets (I'll admit, I had to look up Dr. Reaven, even though I remembered the name metabolic syndrome). This all makes sense, of course, based on the fact that diets high in carbohydrates necessarily force your pancreas to produce more insulin (in order to deal with the blood sugar). Chronically high insulin levels lead to insulin resistance, which leads to a vicious cycle in which the pancreas must produce even more insulin in order to keep blood sugar at healthy levels.
In addition to detailing studies that show meat isn't harmful but carbohydrates are, Taubes also demonstrates that the mainstream medical community seemed to shun those who disagreed - many of the researchers he mentioned lived in obscurity despite their cutting edge research (he mentions one man, whose name I cannot remember, whose experience working on the Manhattan Project and giant centrifuges led to the discovery of the many different particles which carry cholesterol, known collectively as lipoproteins, who worked in obscurity because his research showed that overall cholesterol levels barely correlated with heart disease risk - though particular types of lipoproteins were strongly correlated with increased heart disease risk, and with high carbohydrate diets).
He then takes apart the weight loss theory of calories in, calories out by revealing that even the medical communities that encourage people to "eat less and move more" accept that this lifestyle change is not enough to make most people lose weight for a significant period of time.
This whole idea of the ivory tower in a science with practical applications is something that had never occurred to me. Sure it can occur in a science like psychology - which has limited practical applications beyond making people feel good about themselves- and it does, considering the sharply skewed views of psychologists (I don't have to reveal how I feel about it here - google it if you must). But in a science with real, researchable, practical, and significant applications to how people lead their daily lives - which allegedly has physiology to back it up - I could not imagine scientific bias possibly being an issue.
Basically, this has been my review of the book - but this final point I'm trying to make is far and away the most significant one. The book reads like an expose on the flaws in the philosophy of science surrounding such areas of study as diet, nutrition, health, obesity, and even statistics. It is at times exciting, disheartening, victorious, and downright depressing - and perhaps I only found it so because I have developed a passion for these areas of study. But I can assure you that if it is read with an open mind, it will change your life in significant philosophical ways... This is not to say that you will find Jesus if you read this book, but hopefully you will no longer read headlines in newspapers and magazines, or listen to commercial on TV and believe a single word said without looking into it more deeply.
If I could add anything to the foreword of the book, it would be this: Forget everything you ever thought you knew about diet, nutrition, and health. Not because it is necessarily wrong, but because no one has ever told you the how and why of it because they deemed you incapable of understanding the science behind it. This grievous insult ought not be taken lightly - the problem with this is that the basics of statistics are the only aspect of the science that needs to be understood (the workings of the physiology are either true or untrue - proven or unproven and stated as such - your capacity to understand what it means for the advanced glycation end production to bind to the protein [mostly made up fancy concoction of words] is unnecessary, provided the physiology is being accurately and truly described), and the basics of statistics are this: correlation does not imply causation, and true conclusions about correlation can only be drawn from experiments with correctly controlled variables and those conclusions can only be about those variables (not related variables which were not controlled).
Enough about that book... lol.
That's enough for now - I really am trying to be better about my blog updates, but I wasn't lying about being busy. It's a blessing and a curse - since I enjoy this so much, I hate to have it taken from me by force - but working more and making money has its perks too :)
Until next time! Never eat sugar again... lol
The real answer is that I've been really lazy about almost everything, so this rather small and unimportant part of my life was naturally the hardest hit. What I would tell you if I didn't have the facade of anonymity to protect me, however, is that I have been so busy with real life and school and work that I haven't had time to focus as much on my meatetarian diet, so there hasn't been much to blog.
Well, there hasn't been much to blog either, so that's actually part of the real answer too - I was bad over the holidays - as was to be expected - and since a few days after New Year's I've been pretty consistent. I've also decided to try adding more salt to my diet - it wasn't a lie that I've been busy with work, and when I'm gone for long periods of time, it's easier to pack a lunch than to buy one while I'm out and about... So I've been eating a lot of boiled eggs, and peeling them in my car while I'm stopped at lights (or on the ferry). And in the process, I've been eating my foods with less salt than is usual. I've actually had some bowel issues recently, and I think this (and stress) may be a part of it.
I also read a book - I think I listed under my "required reading" post - Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. The book was filled with a wealth of information about research done on the relationship between diet and health, mostly chronicling how utterly lacking it is. It did, however, point out that the theory that fats and cholesterol in the diet are harmful is simply unsubstantiated; and it presented a more thoroughly (though not entirely) substantiated theory that carbohydrates - particularly sugar - in the diet are harmful. Basically, it confirmed what I have been telling you from the beginning in ways that I could not begin to have access to (such as reviewing the relevant statistics/scientific papers). It was far from light reading, however, and even though I read it recently, many of the finer details escape me. For example, I was relaying this bit of information to a friend, and aside from Dr. Atkins (who was a clinician, not a researcher) I could not name a single researcher who had come to the conclusion that fats in the diet are harmless and nonfattening. Not that there weren't several researchers in the book mentioned by name who made such claims... it's just that there were so many that after a while I started forgetting names or blending them together. Those names that stick out were towards the beginning of the book, and the beginning of the book was about the faulty hypothesis of the evils of dietary fats.
Anyway, here's a brief summary followed by details: Taubes begins with an interesting introduction about President Eisenhower's attempts to follow a "heart healthy" diet, and descending into heart disease despite his efforts, eventually dying after experiencing eight (could be wrong on the number) myocardial infarctions (I love that expression). He then details the theory that dietary fats and cholesterol cause heart disease, and explains why it's wrong, and how it came to dominate the medical/research communities. Then he details a (not so) new hypothesis that dietary carbohydrates cause heart disease and fatness, and explains why it makes more sense (and explains how before the mid-20th century, this belief was widely held). Then he gets a bit specific about how we fatten, and how we get heart disease, and discusses some clinical diet trials showing that high fat diets tend to result in better weigh control, whereas standard calorie restriction diets almost invariably fail. He explains that the theory of "calories in, calories out" fattening/weight loss is faulty, and it makes more sense to base our theory of fattening and weight loss off the effects of hormones - in particular insulin. Towards the end he details some theories about obesity and diabetes and metabolic disorder and essentially concludes that we would be a lot better if if we ate more meat and less carbohydrates - virtually the exact opposite of what we have been told since the '50s and '60s.
On that note, Ancel Keys was the first to bring the fat-is-bad hypothesis to mainstream science, and he based this jump to the mainstream primarily on what is known as the "seven countries study." The seven countries study examined the relative risk of heart disease among middle-aged men in seven countries: the US, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Japan. The study showed, according to Keys, that among populations with high saturated fat intakes the rate of heart disease was increased.
The problems with Keys' seven countries study can be separated into many issues: First is that the study was initially of 22 countries, and if the 15 "discarded" countries are included with their dietary data, the alleged correlation between dietary saturated fat intake and heart disease starts to disappear; Second is the fact that the study was seen as being so conclusive - even if higher heart disease rates could be correlated with higher saturated fat intakes, that does not imply that the saturated fat intake causes the heart disease, or that adopting a low saturated fat diet could reduce your odds of developing heart disease ( however, it's quite obvious that this has been the conclusion of at least the American Heart Association and the like); Third is that Keys seemed to have intentionally misread the data to make it look as if dietary fat, especially saturated fat, were the culprit, when physiological studies implied the exact opposite; Fourth is that using the same data, we can see that higher sugar intake correlates much more strongly with higher heart disease rates than does any other variable in diet.
I could go on for more, but the point has already been made. Keys made an incorrect or at least extremely biased conclusion about diet and health, and pressed his point until everyone in the medical/research communities agreed with him. Other researchers followed in his footsteps, making similar mistakes by being blind to anything that didn't agree with what they expected the outcome to be. This led to the belief that eating meat makes you get fat and then get diabetes and then heart disease and then you die - which I hope my (almost) year has shown to be false.
Meanwhile, there were at least a few researches showing that high meat consumption was far from the ocean of maladies it was claimed to be. Vilhjalmur Stefansson (I've talked about him before) was part of a study about the effects of a year-long all-meat diet, about which many papers were written. There was a researcher by the name of Banting (related to the Banting who wrote his Letter on Corpulence) who discovered insulin, who was followed by researchers who delved into diabetes research, which led to a theory which is today known as "metabolic syndrome." Metabolic syndrome is essentially a less severe form of (type II) diabetes, characterized by a resistance to insulin, which tends to lead to fatness. This theory was developed by Gerald Reaven, who was also a proponent of low-carbohydrate diets (I'll admit, I had to look up Dr. Reaven, even though I remembered the name metabolic syndrome). This all makes sense, of course, based on the fact that diets high in carbohydrates necessarily force your pancreas to produce more insulin (in order to deal with the blood sugar). Chronically high insulin levels lead to insulin resistance, which leads to a vicious cycle in which the pancreas must produce even more insulin in order to keep blood sugar at healthy levels.
In addition to detailing studies that show meat isn't harmful but carbohydrates are, Taubes also demonstrates that the mainstream medical community seemed to shun those who disagreed - many of the researchers he mentioned lived in obscurity despite their cutting edge research (he mentions one man, whose name I cannot remember, whose experience working on the Manhattan Project and giant centrifuges led to the discovery of the many different particles which carry cholesterol, known collectively as lipoproteins, who worked in obscurity because his research showed that overall cholesterol levels barely correlated with heart disease risk - though particular types of lipoproteins were strongly correlated with increased heart disease risk, and with high carbohydrate diets).
He then takes apart the weight loss theory of calories in, calories out by revealing that even the medical communities that encourage people to "eat less and move more" accept that this lifestyle change is not enough to make most people lose weight for a significant period of time.
This whole idea of the ivory tower in a science with practical applications is something that had never occurred to me. Sure it can occur in a science like psychology - which has limited practical applications beyond making people feel good about themselves- and it does, considering the sharply skewed views of psychologists (I don't have to reveal how I feel about it here - google it if you must). But in a science with real, researchable, practical, and significant applications to how people lead their daily lives - which allegedly has physiology to back it up - I could not imagine scientific bias possibly being an issue.
Basically, this has been my review of the book - but this final point I'm trying to make is far and away the most significant one. The book reads like an expose on the flaws in the philosophy of science surrounding such areas of study as diet, nutrition, health, obesity, and even statistics. It is at times exciting, disheartening, victorious, and downright depressing - and perhaps I only found it so because I have developed a passion for these areas of study. But I can assure you that if it is read with an open mind, it will change your life in significant philosophical ways... This is not to say that you will find Jesus if you read this book, but hopefully you will no longer read headlines in newspapers and magazines, or listen to commercial on TV and believe a single word said without looking into it more deeply.
If I could add anything to the foreword of the book, it would be this: Forget everything you ever thought you knew about diet, nutrition, and health. Not because it is necessarily wrong, but because no one has ever told you the how and why of it because they deemed you incapable of understanding the science behind it. This grievous insult ought not be taken lightly - the problem with this is that the basics of statistics are the only aspect of the science that needs to be understood (the workings of the physiology are either true or untrue - proven or unproven and stated as such - your capacity to understand what it means for the advanced glycation end production to bind to the protein [mostly made up fancy concoction of words] is unnecessary, provided the physiology is being accurately and truly described), and the basics of statistics are this: correlation does not imply causation, and true conclusions about correlation can only be drawn from experiments with correctly controlled variables and those conclusions can only be about those variables (not related variables which were not controlled).
Enough about that book... lol.
That's enough for now - I really am trying to be better about my blog updates, but I wasn't lying about being busy. It's a blessing and a curse - since I enjoy this so much, I hate to have it taken from me by force - but working more and making money has its perks too :)
Until next time! Never eat sugar again... lol
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