The return of Input/Output!

The title says it all hehehe

But first, a rundown of the past few days...

I now have a Meat Guy. A friend of mine works at Walmart in the meat department. He has now heard every meat-related gay joke, but more importantly he can inform me of special deals and sales before the general public knows about them! For instance, he got me a ten pound bag of chicken leg quarters for 5 bucks 0.0 That's less than half the best price I found at Costco... There are also plans to go to a huge processing plant called Minder's meats when I have some cash, Meat Guy in tow.

Speaking of when I have cash, the first things on the list for new trials include: lamb shanks, chicken liver pate, and (once again) bone marrow. I want to try the bone marrow in a different way though - maybe in a thick stew or something like that. There's also a recipe for pork shoulder boiled in milk (YUM) and steamed whole fish. I've been eying the eels in the freezer at the asian section in the grocery store... they are really loaded with fat and I loved the broiled eel sushi I've tried. Also want to try some duck again in the future - not that it would be new to me, but it is loaded with fat and very tasty. Also expensive, so I will need to get some free from hunters or go hunting myself... And duck season is several months away :/

Anyway, I got to talk to a vegetarian the other day. It was the first time I've ever had to confront someone about the way I eat. He claimed to be a vegetarian because of environmental reasons, citing land use as a major reason. Of all the reasons to be a vegetarian, I think I dislike this one the most. Essentially the solution to the land use/environmental issues is to have fewer people in the world. I don't want fewer people in the world, but I still want to eat meat. Since I live in America, where land use is essentially a non-issue, I considered that argument especially silly, but we chatted about it for a bit anyway. I tried to tell him that animals using land is a relatively efficient use of it, since grass grows almost anywhere year long and doesn't sap soil of nutrients as much as, say, corn does; meanwhile, a cornfield is harvested once a year and requires specific soil and weather conditions. We didn't come to a consensus here but we managed to move on anyway. He asked me if I was afraid of vitamin deficiencies and the host of usual questions, to which I responded flatly "no." I then showed him the nutrition data on various meats, eggs, and butter and showed him that by following a diet consisting only of them I would get almost all of the vitamins and minerals I needed in a day except vitamin C (calcium and vitamin D are the only ones that would be low if I were brave enough to eat liver, and by eating small bony fish I could fix calcium, and sunlight would fix vitamin D). I also brought up the fact that it seems that vitamin C is not necessary for low-carbohydrate diets for some reason, as the inuits show. He insisted that there must be something the body needs that you can only get from vegetables... I answered with fiber, but I haven't had any problems. I had him pretty well flustered, hopefully it will be enough to make him reconsider his vegetarianism... hahaha. No but seriously, I hope it will be enough for him to not think that meat is really bad for your health, which it is not.

As for food adventures, nothing too special except that I ate about 2 sticks of butter on thursday... I also made some teriyaki marinated chicken from the Meat Guy. I was out of ginger though, so the recipe was a bit off. There was a little honey on the marinade, but I don't think much of it ended up in the chicken. At any rate, I'm not worried about the carb content. The story is good though...

The chicken came in a bag and there were 9 leg quarters in it (included pope's noses!). They were all frozen into a truly solid block of ice and chicken parts. After letting them sit in a giant bowl of water for several hours, I managed to pry them apart. I let them thaw some more while I made the marinade. The marinade had some soy sauce, garlic, chives, honey, wine, and cloves (may have been more, but I can't remember). I stuffed the chickens into a baggy with the sauce and let them continue to thaw and marinate for half the day. Then after a long day of tutoring, I started roasting the chickens at 9:30... It was supposed to take only an hour... But 45 minutes in, my oven crapped out and cooled down to about 200 degrees. So the chickens never got above 150ish, and when I cut one of them open it was bleeding. I tried cooking the chickens more, and after giving them 25 minutes it still wasn't enough. I let the chickens "rest" for a bit (LOL cooking term!), not knowing what to do... then I decided to boil/steam them in a skillet. After 20 minutes the coldest spot was just under 160, so i decided I'd just give it a few more minutes... then lost track of time and came back about 25 minutes later and the probe was practically at 200... lol. I was pretty sure the chicken was toast, but it tasted great - I cleaned up an entire quarter and then broke open the thigh bone for the marrow - and that was amazing. Unfortunately, by the time I was done eating it was 1:30...

Basically I've decided that I need to eat more poultry, it's basically my favorite food.

H'okay, so, It's really late and I want to get this written before I forget about it so I'm going to do my best now.

INPUT
Breakfast: Half a super quiche, no bacon
Lunch: 4 eggs with hollandaise sauce, chopped up bacon, about 3 pieces
Afternoon Snack: 2 eggs basted in butter atop shredded cheese melted on half a can of tuna, 2 very small pieces of ham, all topped with the remainder of the hollandaise from lunch
Very Late Dinner: One chicken leg quarter, marinated in a clove teriyaki sauce (end result was very little added anything)
Throughout the day, times unspecified: about 1 cup of milk and about 4 cups of tea, an americano with a little half and half

OUTPUT
One mid-morning, nothing abnormal

Success!

Easter!

Happy Easter! It's a little late for sure but I don't care.

Easter is a day about eating eggs apparently... I'm not even sure I want eggs much now lol - at least not hard-boiled eggs.

I spent the day at my sister's house and ate a LOT of sugar and starch... and I have to say I can tell. My stomach is feeling a bit upset, and despite sleeping for most of the day I've been feeling sluggish. I'm sure it will pass soon. I'm going to try to make up for it by being extra strict for the next couple days.

Anyway, the food we had was a strata, which is like an epic bread pudding. It has half and half and cream cheese and I think sour cream mixed with bread and eggs and spices and topped with jam. Then it gets baked. We also had some monkey bread, which is like a cinnamon roll baked in a bunt pan covered with cream cheese frosting. We had some raspberry cupcakes but I abstained. For dessert we had hokey-pokey ice cream... vanilla ice cream with crispy caramel candy stirred in... it really IS what it's all about.

In addition to the goodies, I also ate a lot of bacon, chicken, and sausage. And of course eggs. I also discovered that my sweet tooth is not entirely outside of my control... I may be willing to try a no sugar (not even milk) experiment temporarily... but I still don't want to become lactose intolerant so maybe not.

I also went the to gym before breaking my diet for the first time since being sick. I can say for sure that the strength has returned (or was just never gone) but the stamina is lacking :/ I think I just need to get back into making it a regular thing and soon everything will be normal again. Also, I'm really sore today XD

I finished reading the rest of Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat. My final conclusion is that I like it generally and think he is right generally, but he makes some assertions and logical jumps that maybe he shouldn't have. I won't get into specifics but I will say that I really liked it and highly recommend it. It has however, convinced me that I will lose weight on my diet XD which explains the initial weight loss and why I am still down about 5 pounds from the starting weight. I've been inspired by this to start including weight in my updates at least once a week.

My sister recommended that I try baked cheese chips from central market. I decided to take it a step cheaper and make my own. They made a mess of the kitchen when I scraped them off of the cookie sheet, but they were tasty. I want to try them microwaved because in my crappy oven it took forever and they baked unevenly. I also need parchment paper...

Anyway, I'm at school and it's really close to Earth Day so I don't wanna catch the ire of some angry vegans so I'm off! Till next time!

Ze goalz: Essential Readings

So far here is my list of essential readings, I will list them in order of importance (aka, ease of reading) and then give brief summaries because I know at least a few of you won't read them (or can't).

1. The Letter on Corpulence http://www.archive.org/details/letteroncorpulen00bantrich (this is the best link I've found, the PDF version is good enough, the pamphlet is in the public domain so this is completely legal)
2. The blog, Inhuman Experiment http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com/
3. "Adventures in Diet" by Vilhjalmur Stefansson (this is the best link for it I could find, and it's not very good...)
4. This scientific paper, published in Clinical Calorimetry in the 1930s about the aforementioned Stefansson, experimenting a one-year diet of just meat (not light reading, but very very informative).
5. Gary Taubes' blog http://www.garytaubes.com/
6. Gary Taubes' book, Why We Get Fat (can't get this for free yet, find it at your library or local bookstore and park it and read it - it's what I did)

If you are interested in the health risks or benefits of eating meat and especially fat, you must read and absorb all of these. In addition, they will improve your understanding of diabetes and diabetes treatments, and of dieting and weight loss.

I also recommend a few videos that are available on the internet, a series by the BBC called "Why Are Thin People Not Fat." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6-A0iHSdcA

I also recommend Fat Head which is a movie critical of Supersize Me. In Fat Head the host loses 13 pounds in a month eating fast food, and actually generally gets healthier. The movie itself is not terribly educational, but in my case I found it to be inspirational. If you are reading my blog, you are already inspired and can skip Fat Head (the quality of the movie is a bit low, and the humor is often stupid... but it is still interesting).

So for the summaries and why they are so interesting.

1. The letter on corpulence details the trials of a fat man trying to lose weight. This is one of those rare moments when the person who is distributing this information was not an expert, was not out to make money, was not some thin healthy person telling you to do what he says because he's healthy, wasn't some college athlete who "got out of shape" then started working out and got back in shape, and was instead a man who understood the ins and outs, the emotional roller coaster, and the physical difficulties of being obese. He gives his account from beginning to end, from failed early attempts to his success on a meat-centered diet designed for the treatment of diabetes (this is mentioned in passing and not referred to by name, but this is indeed what he was speaking of). I found his story compelling despite being short. You will love the writing style if you like mine, and you will wonder why you have never heard of this, especially if you are a dieter (tbh, I'm not too surprised I've never heard of this because I've never really looked into diets before).

2. Inhuman experiment is a blog about self-experimentation for the purpose of improving one's health. His goals are different from mine but I don't mind. Unlike many people who experiment with things like this, this guy isn't out to sell anything. This guy examines scientific evidence and tries to avoid anything he can that will muddy up the info with preconceived notions. The reason you need to read this blog is that it will open your eyes to the scientific evidence out there that vegetarians will insist doesn't exist -- studies showing correlations between eating meat and being healthier among other things. It will also hopefully prove to you that a meat diet isn't insane (mine might no be so god at that...). This is one of the few sites out there that isn't pioneered by a madman who thinks his diet cured his BO.

3. Adventures in Diet will open your eyes to the fact that meat diets are not at all new, and are likely even more natural than the diets we eat today (excuse the use of natural, my intention is just to point out that our diet is forced rather than coming naturally). It's the story of a man who lives with the Inuit for several years on and off, and eats their diet of mostly fish, seals, and caribou. His health doesn't deteriorate, he doesn't get constipated, and he learns to like boiled aged fish. It will hopefully answer the question of why fat tends to be something we desire to eat, and hopefully show you that it is not bad for you. It will also show you that adapting to a diet is possible even if one must eat despised foods, as tastes can be changed. It is also very brief, and fairly easy to read. Despite the cheesiness of the site it is found on, it is a legitimate story (you can find it on other sites if you need to cross-reference it). I find the story interesting,, and if you're like me it will make you hungry for scientific evidence...

4. This study examines the results of eating an all-meat diet for an entire year. The two men in the study experience almost no adverse effects. It also goes in-depth into some things a bit over my head, such as the kidney function involved (the conclusion still makes sense - this wasn't bad for the kidneys). This study will prove to you that a year on meat alone will not cause anything near death, and will likely only improve your health. You will wonder what truly causes scurvy, and start to wonder if you could ever eat enough fat to meet the guidelines of this study. If you try this, you'll probably lose weight. You'll wonder about the importance of fiber, and water-soluble vitamins. You will consider if you could ever eat cow's kidneys and lots of other gross stuff. It's not light reading but it's not really long, and it's the largest source of scientific support for my diet. It will make you wonder why there aren't more like it.

5 and 6. Taubes' blog will be the substitute for his book if you can't find it. Among other things, he gives the results of his blood test (his diet is similar to mine). He tends to be long-winded; many of his posts are longer than the letter on corpulence. Taubes will make you want to read Atkins, but he's less "try my diet" and more critical of nutritionists and scientists. He counters the conventional notion of laziness and overeating causing fatness, and suggests that fatness causes laziness and overeating. He asserts that hormones and genetics cause fatness, which in turn causes the overeating and laziness. Traditional diet and workout plans, he says, are not sufficient for the majority of overweight people to lose weight for the long term. Instead, he suggests people ought to reduce the foods that raise insulin levels in order to lose fat. Interestingly, he also exposes the prejudices normal people (especially thin, healthy nutritionists and doctors) have against the obese, and the difficulties they face, especially when they are constantly told they are fat, lazy, stupid gluttons.

Why are thin people not fat details attempts to make naturally thin people fat by making them eat twice as much as usual. All of the people in the study gain weight (not a huge amount). All of them lose all of the weight they gained without exercising or dieting. It's an interesting look at how little control we actually have over our weight.

Whew, that was longer than expected! Enjoy!

Brief Update

I need this to be brief or I won't get breakfast this morning lol

This is a statement of my goals for the near future: I want to compile a list of essential reading for this blog. Anyone who reads my blog should read certain scientific papers, experiences, and books in order to understand much of what I speak of (and to understand that I'm not nuts). I also want a list of my favorite recipes so I can share and get new recipes.

I'm sure there was more than this when I planned this in the shower, but something has been lost in translation... oh well. That's what the "edit" button is for.

Until next time.

Recovering

I am recovering from being sick finally. I know this because my cough is now producing legitimate results, my throat hurts less and I'm able to survive once again on fewer hours of sleep.

Enough of that though. Today I want to discuss something that has been weighing heavily on my mind ever since I first read the story of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (say THAT five times fast). In case you forgot, he's the guy who lived with the Inuit people on and off for about 9 years, eating their diet (90% fish, seal, and caribou) and later took part in a study in which he ate only meat for an entire year (there's a link to that story in my first blog post). This has been weighing heavily on my mind because truth matters more to me than so many other things; and when I see controversy surrounding truth, I have to wonder what the truth of the matter is, and what the truth behind the controversy is. In this case, I am of course wondering about the answer to the question, "Is fat bad for you?" and why it has become so controversial.

I like to think of myself as a relatively simple person and I like to project this onto other people. In my mind then, this ought to be a simple matter (I will explain my theories as to why it may not be, but bear with me for now). To figure out if fat is good or bad for you, all that needs to be done is an experiment that controls for any sort of potential confounding variable that tests the hypothesis that fat is good or bad for you. If results are inconclusive, it seems obvious to me that fat is neither good nor bad for someone. This makes me think that there must be ulterior motives -- if there were not ulterior motives, no one would have a reason to create a huge fuss out of something this simple. So what are the motives for stating that fat is bad for someone if it is not... I can think of a few, mostly by calling upon my own prejudices, and one very important one that is not based entirely on my prejudices. I want to list them all anyway just for fun:

Hippies got into doing science and want to be able to say high fat diets (which consists of animal products) are bad for you so that people will stop eating meat and eggs from those poor birdies. Vegetarians want people to believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong, because they are self-righteous hipsters, so they want the information to come out in support of them. People for whom low fat diets work think fat people need to practice more self-control and discipline in order to lose weight. Farmers who produce vegetables want people to buy their products instead of animal products (hurt the competition to better oneself). Lastly, people (similar to vegetarians) who believe they are right and who would lose positions of power if they were shown to be wrong don't want information to come out that shows them to be wrong (obviously).

I hope you can understand that the last reason is devoid of my bias. I can understand why someone in such a position of power would behave this way (not that it excuses it). I can even understand the hippies' position even though I disagree with it. But what this amounts to is sufficient reason to create controversy in all levels of society among both lay-people and scholars. Essentially the point I'm trying to make is that nutritionists don't want to say, "Fat is not so bad for you," because if they were to do so, people would react by saying, "Well, what good are you if you didn't tell us this sooner?"

To get back to why this isn't quite so simple is to point out the simple fact that nothing about the way the human body processes food is simple. Especially, doing a long term study of the effects of a particular diet is a daunting task - one that even has moral implications - in addition to practical implications like the prohibitive cost, and the difficulty of controlling for variables (like midnight ice cream binges).

So, to reiterate, we have two big reasons for a difficult question and an apparently unfounded controversy. Namely, to answer "Is fat bad for you?" we first have to consider how difficult it is to study such a thing, and why certain people in positions to study such things may be opposed to it.

Well, after that crazy tangent, I come back to my main point - there is indeed someone who has studied this controversy in relative detail. His name is Gary Taubes (see his blog: http://www.garytaubes.com). I've been reading one of his books, called Why We Get Fat, when I get no-showed by my students at Barnes and Noble on Thursday nights (and after I see them when they actually show up... it's just more fun to complain, amirite). Anyway, his book details something that makes me feel so much better about not being a hipster...

Way back before the internet age, in like the 19th century, there was a pamphlet published called Letter on Corpulence. This pamphlet essentially detailed my diet: high meat, little to no carbohydrates, no beer, and was published in 1863. It tells the story of a man who tried and tried to lose weight and finally, by trying a high-fat diet, managed to do so. As it turns out, it was actually well known that this was the only effective means of controlling weight by diet. Only later on did we recoil from this idea and start trying low-fat diets for weight loss. In other words, the idea of eating high fat is not new, it has only gone out of fashion. So while I can't slip on my hipster glasses as I tell you that I'm a pioneer in the world of eating, I can still tell you that you've probably never heard of it as I sip organic fair trade coffee (which I don't actually like, it just makes me feel better about my carbon footprint - or something like that).

In addition to bringing up the Letter on Corpulence Taubes also reviews mounds of scientific studies that show that, for instance, the American Heart Association's diet doesn't actually produce heart healthy (or even lean) people, and other studies to that effect.

I feel like wrapping this up now, so I'm only going to make a few more closing comments. Taubes makes another point that perhaps the reason we have found it so difficult to understand obesity is because of the tacit prejudices towards the obese. While I don't necessarily like the specifics of his argument, he makes a good point - why is it that we tend to think people only become obese by being lazy or eating too much? I could tell you the sob story of my battle with my weight, but honestly it's not that sad - more aggravating than anything really. Like I said, I'm not really fat, I just would rather be less fat than I am and don't seem to be capable of it because I like food too much. The only thing I've wondered is something like this "Why is it that people who are less active than me and who eat more than me can stay thin, whereas I will get fat if I don't go to the gym 4 days a week and eat nothing but lean fish and green veggies?"

A better question for me to ask is this: "How have I not become morbidly obese?" Not just to say that I haven't always lived healthy, but to consider people in situations similar to mine who have become obese. They didn't become obese because they were more lazy than me -- I'm not even sure that's possible. They didn't become obese because they ate worse than I did. Indeed, by any standard I ate way too many treats and even my ordinary diet was too high in anything everyone will tell you is bad. One would think I ought to be at least be MORE fat than I am, if not obese.

Taubes asks us to consider genetic and hormonal factors, and what affect our diet has on them (and also how the modern diet isn't very good for most people). It brings to mind the question I asked earlier, "What does it mean to say something is healthy anymore?"

I don't feel like detailing input and output today, so I'll skip to food adventures.

On the recommendation of a distant friend, I decided to make a crustless quiche. Now, I know real men don't eat quiche, but this had bacon in it.
4 eggs
1/2 c salted butter, melted
3/4 c milk
4 slices cooked bacon, chopped
2 c shredded cheddar cheese
pepper
thyme
Preheat oven to 450. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl (be careful not to cook eggs in melted butter or with bacon). Bake for 20 minutes uncovered, then cover with foil and cook for 15-20 minutes more (cover sooner if it begins to brown too much).

It was amazing :) Thanks Ashley

Until next time...

*I had to edit a few things in this post because of inaccuracies. My bad!

Still Sick

I am still sick and have developed some nasty complications. I'm also trying to type on the laptop so try to bear with the typos. I have to recall the food adventures too, and future food adventure plans.

So for the food adventures: I had a friend over and we tried to make some liver and onions and bone marrow with roast beef. The beef liver was horrible - it just had the nastiest flavor ever. I'm pretty sure I'm done with liver and onions, but I might try it marinated for a few days because letting it soak in milk for an hour wasn't enough. The bone marrow was once again a disappointment for two reasons: One was that the bones were big soup bones from the ends of the legs so they were mostly hard spongy bone with very little accessible marrow; two was that the flavor and smell were no better than last time. The marrow was actually cooked this time though, so it wasn't bad smeared on top of a slice of roast beef. Speaking of which, the roast beef was phenomenal - lots of onions and leeks in the broth that tasted so good after stewing for a couple hours. And the beef tasted good too of course. Cooking it was tough though :/ my oven is a bit touchy, and I had to watch it to make sure the temperature wasn't wrong for two whole hours.

In addition to liver pate, I'm really looking forward to experimenting with duck and duck innards. I have a friend who loves to hunt, and even though it's not really duck season right now, there's still a chance that I may be able to get one before too long (ducks are very expensive at the grocery store). I also found a recipe in a cookbook for a pork shoulder simmered in milk for a few hours that I think sounds really really good. I'm also looking forward to doing a bit more with cheese and cream, since I've been doing so much with eggs and butter it's time for a change of pace.

That reminds me of something else! Butter basted eggs are amazingly good! I've also found a way to soak up leftover oils from my plate when I'm done - canned tuna. It goes great with a couple of basted eggs and some shredded cheese and bacon. I've graduated to whole milk from 2% and I don't think there's much of a flavor difference, but it makes the fat goals a little easier to reach. So do breve lattes, though they put a dent in the wallet a bit more than I like.

So, about being sick. I figure that all I have is a cold, but it's been especially uncomfortable and today marks one week of it. I've had an unproductive cough and a shockingly painful sore throat. The cough has been intermittent but really bad when I have it, to the point where I've developed either a cracked rib or a strained diaphragm that hurts really bad at the bottom of my ribcage when I stretch or cough. I've been experimenting with treatments for it and found that none of them I have tried have done much of anything. Aspirin and Acetaminophen are good for the sore throat but do not help the cough. Caffeine makes me feel good, but doesn't really help any of the symptoms. Alcohol and prescription cough suppressants make me forget I'm in pain but also make me dizzy. Hot tea is soothing, but doesn't do much aside from hydrate me.

It's too late to try to recall past inputs and outputs, but I want to mention that I ate some bread the other day. My boss had a meet and greet for her tutors, and I was among them, and she offered us bread and other starchy foods. I didn't want to be rude, or reveal myself as being a complete whackjob in front of my boss and peers, so I just ate. However wonderful I think it is to be a meatetarian, I'm not going to be upfront about it like vegetarians endlessly are - I know that eating in a strange way is strange, so I don't want to appear strange if I can avoid it, especially in cases where money may be an issue. If I had told my boss, "Oh, no thanks. I don't eat plant products." I would have been stared at blankly, asked if I was crazy and treated oddly, much like I treat most vegetarians. The way I eat ought not to inconvenience anyone who tries to give me food in order to be polite, so I will politely eat what I am served.

So to reiterate, no formal input and output for this post, I'll try to get back into that soon. Probably when I'm no longer sick. I'm convinced that the dehydration has had an effect on it, even though it hasn't been devastating and hasn't led to diarrhea. I also haven't been going to the gym - I don't want to tempt the cough.

Until next time.

Sick

I am sick, so for the moment this blog is going to be less interesting. I'm gonna skip recalling input and output because at this point I just don't remember back to sunday. There will be more later.