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