Almost Pi day!

I love to change the subject when I have something I'm embarrassed about.  In this case, I haven't posted anything for about 5 months.  That's cool!  Pi day is tomorrow and I'm making duck pot pie from a mishmash of a few recipes.

Yep pot pie with real flour.

You read that right.  Flour.  But duck too.

Anyway, the food journal ended near the beginning of November.  I basically ate that way on most days, so I got a bit tired of recording it all the time.  I think food journaling is a great thing to do periodically, but I don't think it's really very necessary to journal for very long, and the instructive aspects of it disappear after the first few weeks.  Still, it's nice to have proof.  I will be posting it before long (I promise!).

The paper had to change direction just a little.  I left out a thorough criticism of popular nutrition, and focused mostly on some basic facts about how terrible the research is, and how easily misinformation becomes common knowledge.  There was also a touch of a historical perspective, borrowed heavily from Taubes.  I will post it soon too (I got a good grade, but I felt disappointed by my own work.  When I actually post it I might explain why.  No promises on the explanation, but the paper will go up.).

There's gonna be some changes come pi day!  In addition to the flour in the pie, I plan to change things somewhat.  March 14th is the unofficial two year mark.  This means it's time to begin a new experiment.

I've been toying with a few ideas... Vegan, vegetarian, vegan ketogenic, vegetarian ketogenic, and I have decided against them all for various reasons (vegetarian/vegetarian keto would end with me eating heaps of cheese and eggs... not much different from what I'm currently doing, just without cows.  Vegan would end with me crying in a corner over a lack of food that I actually enjoy, and spending uncountable millions of dollars on shipments of avocados in an effort to satisfy my cravings.  Or French fries.  Lots of them.).

I've decided that I want to try returning to a relatively ordinary diet, but not being afraid of fats.  In other words, I will now eat carbohydrates, but I'm still going to eat high fat.  How, exactly?  I want to add fruits and veggies, and I don't want to avoid carbohydrates in all form in cooking.  I will do this by actually using starches and such to cook.  Instead of using onions only when a recipe requires them, I will add onions to my beef because they taste good.  When I need to make a sauce, instead of laboriously whisking acids into butter, I'm going to use real balsamic vinegar so the sauce can turn a little syrupy.  When I make broccoli beef I will add a little cornstarch so the sauce isn't a runny greasy mess.

However, I'm not going to have "starch" as a component of meals.  Breakfast will never be eggs and hash browns, though it might be eggs scrambled with onions and a side of fruit.  Lunch won't be sandwiches, but I might eat an apple if I get hungry.  I will no longer be afraid of carrots.  In other words, I'm still not going to eat bread or potatoes very often, but it's not going to be something I completely exclude from my diet anymore.

What will I be testing?  I've managed to lose quite a bit of fatness without ever really worrying about how much I eat.  I've been eating until satisfied and often beyond with hunger as my guide, and it has served me well.  I am rarely truly hungry, and when I am I satisfy that need.  If I switch to a diet with carbohydrates again, will hunger be as reliable a guide?  What if I journal my food again (I intend to) and eat the same amounts I ate before?  Will I gain weight or gain weight faster than I did before?  Will reintroducing carbohydrates into my diet make exercising easier, or more difficult?  Okay, so trying to answer all of these questions is going to be basically impossible, but I still think they are interesting questions and I hope that this new experiment will shed some light on the subjects.

There will be a new post soon, probably on the 15th, of pictures from pi day, and with the previous food journal, and with the paper