The Low-Carb Curmudgeon

More admin note

Dana Seilhan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:09:46 +0000

FYI, I weighed in at 225 this morning. STALL-ing! DUM-DUM-DUUUUMMMMM!

No big secret why. I can haz comfurt fuds? I can haz sushi? Today it was a Crimson Cup latte. I asked for sugar-free syrup but there was enough hidden sugar elsewhere in the drink that I was out of ketosis by the time we got home this evening. Whoops.

OK. I’m waiting for software to get here. Then I am going to reboot this sucker. It’s time I made it look like an actual semi-professional blog instead of this… whatever this thing here is that I’m doing.

Stay tuned… DUM-DUM-DUUUUMMMMM!

(Also? Anything I ever said about thinking I had a future with my high school sweetheart? Forget I ever said it. Completely off-topic, but… yeah. Wanna know why I’ve been depressed? There you go. At least now I don’t have to be anymore, ’cause I know what’s going on.)

Admin note

Dana Seilhan — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:44:39 +0000

I am not sure how much I want to bother with weekly features after all, other than the usual weigh-in day. It seems like too much trouble to keep up with right now. I am going through some pretty ugly depression, although I suppose it could be worse because at least I can recognize it and admit to it, but I find myself with a serious case of CBA. For you Yankees, that’s “can’t be arsed.” Don’t know when it will lift. It’s pretty heavy right now.

I’ve got Living Cookbook software on the way in the mail and can at that point make more of an honest woman out of myself with the diet, since I’ve been going way off the beam with it for a while now. Not horrible cheating, but sushi more often than usual and stuff like that. And still not eating enough. And it is maddening. So hopefully I get that reined in soon too.

As you can see on the skinnyr graph at the blog, I hit my lowest weight in over a year recently. But now I’ve put two pounds back on. No damn good. Got to nip that in the bud. Gee, this is gonna be fun. Ever fight depression and your weight at the same time? Oh, who am I kidding? My audience is primarily carb addicts, I think. Of course you fight depression and your weight at the same time. Ain’t it fun? Well, that’s where I am right now. Yay. Blah.

A public service announcement for sellers of stevia

Dana Seilhan — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:15:37 +0000

Dear stevia sellers:

If you are jealous of the success that sucralose (Splenda) has enjoyed in the marketplace, and want a piece of the action yourself, here are a few hints for you:

1. Make your crap taste better. It’s nasty, 99 percent of the time.

2. Make it cheaper. It’s ridiculously expensive. For Pete’s sake, it’s a fucking dried leaf. This is not rocket science.

3. I was going to say “make it stand up better to baking” but this page says it can bake at temperatures up to 400 degrees F without breaking down, and most baked-good recipes call for temperatures lower than that. I’ll take their word for it. It’s still not an ideal substitute for sugar because it can’t do everything sugar can do. Neither can sucralose, I’ll admit, but polyols can, and health nuts don’t like those either.

That’s all you have to do, guys. Quit it with the bullshit hysteria campaigns. I just saw something on Facebook that said sucralose was initially developed as an insecticide. They also said that bulked out sucralose affects you the same way sugar does. I commented on the post thusly:

If they think this stuff affects you the same way as sugar just because it has maltodextrin and/or dextrose in it (depends on which form of Splenda you’re talking about, granulated or packet), they’re crazy. I get sick from eating table sugar because my body is no longer accustomed to it. I don’t get sick from Splenda. Now, I don’t generally eat huge amounts of it either. I have a couple packets here, a couple packets there–nothing like the sugar I was consuming years ago.

It’s still not as bad for you as sugar is. Anyone who says otherwise obviously thinks losing eyesight and kidneys and feet is no big deal. I have type 2 diabetics in my family and can’t play around with this.

Stevia? Make it taste better first. And stand up better to baking. And frankly there have been some concerns about the safety of stevia too. Let’s just say sweetness is poison and accept that if we’re going to have a lot of sweet stuff, REGARDLESS of the sweetening agent, that we are taking risks with our health and lives. How about that?

and…

Other comments, based on what I’ve read here:

http://www.downtoearth.org/health/vitamins-supplements/sucralose-dangerous-sugar-substitute

1. The thymus gland is supposed to shrink. You’re supposed to have barely any thymus left by the time you’re an adult.

2. My hemoglobin A1C was normal when I last went to the doctor, which was this most recent July. I’ve been using Splenda for years now. That glycosated [sic] hemoglobin they’re talking about is what the HgA1C measures.

For what it’s worth. I’ll keep my mind open about the insecticide thing but really, you eat herbs, don’t you? They kill bugs too.

Seriously, have you looked into the toxicity of herbs? I love them, I love learning about herbal medicine and I think that on balance they’re better for us than the chemical soup presented to us by the pharmaceutical industry, BUT, they’re still dangerous if you use them wrong–even the culinary herbs. They use thymol, one of the most important constituents in thyme, rosemary, and culinary sage, as an antifungal preservative for the original United States Constitution. If you opened the capsule the Constitution is kept in without taking proper precautions, you’d get sick.

These nature nuts (and I mean that in the best possible way) will get hysterical about a few atoms of chlorine but make themselves sick cutting all the fat out of their diets, or ingest an essential oil they’re not supposed to eat and die of liver failure. It’s insane.

I was reading a comment today on the California Avocado Commission’s fan page by someone who throws avocado pits into their Vita-Mix when they use avocados in a smoothie. The CAC’s response was something like “OMG please don’t do that, that’s bad for you.” WTF people? You’re on Facebook advertising your stupidity to the world. Do a goddamn Google search. Your liver will thank you.

But I WAY digressed there. Dear stevia sellers, if you would just work a little harder at selling your product on its own merits (and giving it more merits–it hasn’t enough yet, if you ask me), you wouldn’t need to smear the competition.

I want to like your stuff. Really, I do. I’m trying.

Oh, and it would help if you would be more forthcoming about the potential hazards of YOUR product. I’m just sayin’.

No love,
Me.

Wednesday weigh-in: 224

Dana Seilhan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 03:59:04 +0000

248.5 | 224 | 140

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Sorry about the blur! It looks worse in closeup. I do a rush job sometimes because I don’t want the scale shutting off before I get the picture taken. D’oh!

My appetite’s still pretty good. I had a bit of weight gain over the weekend but it seems to have mostly gone away again. I must confess, I’ve been really bad with the sushi in the past month. I am one of those people who goes for the comfort food when life seems really topsy-turvy. Nobody told me that a long-distance relationship with someone I know and someone I really, really want to be with would be this damn hard. Considering all that, I think I am doing really well. Even a year ago I might have really lost my shit by now.

Seems amazing to realize that food affects your mental health… but it sure does mine. If you are struggling with depression or other mental or emotional issues (same thing, really), you might take a good hard look at your diet. Especially you low-fat low-carbers out there. What ARE you thinking? The only kind of low-fat low-carbing anyone should be doing is the kind of low fat that comes from being normal weight! But I digress.

I confess I am not being the most disciplined person lately. I’m still eating mostly low-carb, but we’ve had a lot of sushi around here lately. And I mean the stuff with rice. Once a month is one thing; I’ve known of low-carbers who give themselves a monthly free day. (Comes in handy around the holidays.) This has been a lot more often. I think it’s the emotional eating creeping in again. But I don’t generally eat enough to knock me out of ketosis, and most of the time I’m what you’d call “good.” Most of the lack of discipline is a lack of meal planning, really.

I also still need to kick in a regular exercise program. Still trying to figure this one out. I don’t want to spend my time running and jumping around. I need to work on my muscles actually. I’m pretty weak and stuff is pretty out of shape and pathetic. I suspect that if I get that squared away, my cardio endurance will improve too. That’s what Fred Hahn seems to think, anyhow. Because it means I don’t have to jog around town with my bits jiggling, I shall defer to his greater wisdom in this regard.

note: Egads! I started this post on Wednesday all right… then I didn’t finish it and publish it! So some of this got written on Thursday. D’oh! But I am dating it Wednesday. Deal.

Monday Musing: Surprise benefits of exercise

Dana Seilhan — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:35:02 +0000

Ever since we moved into this house last year I’ve spent most of that time depressed and stagnant. A lot of it was (1) having to give up my apartment, which at least afforded an illusion of independence; and (2) having to move in with a guy who, let’s face it, has put me through the wringer quite a lot in the last eight years. He and I are getting along pretty OK if I ignore the hints about him wanting to reconcile, but I’ve still been pretty mopey. Getting back in touch with Craig changed a lot of that and I’ve gradually been lighting a fire under my own ass and trying to get myself back on track. Have had a few setbacks, but generally the direction I’m moving is forward these days.

So, I have a lot of accumulated schmutz to deal with. One of the jobs I’ve put off is regular cleaning of the basement, especially the area where I lock up the cats at night. It’s a large area of the basement, and I put them down there so that one of them in particular is not peeing all over everything because she knows I’m not looking. She is still peeing, but it’s at least on concrete floor and a heck of a lot easier to clean, rather than on carpet or the couch or my favorite chair or my little girl’s blankie or… you get the idea. She also likes to knock on my bedroom door at night so I’ll let her in to sleep with me, but since she’s peed on my bed twice since I moved in here, that’s not going to happen. (I have a mattress protector that works very, very well. Thank God, because it’s a new bed.) It’s not fair if I lock her up and let the other three girls run free. So… The basement is Kitty Jail at night.

(She probably has crystals in her urine, at least occasionally. We can never seem to get the money together to get her to a vet, though–and we need the vet to look at her because there are two kinds of crystals a cat can get, and the treatment for one is the polar opposite of the treatment for the other. Getting it wrong will make the problem worse, so I can’t just put her on special food at home without the vet visit.)

I had been dreading the job but finally tasked myself with doing it this past weekend. And I discovered some interesting things along the way.

First off, my exercise endurance has improved. I got through mopping that large expanse of floor without a hitch, sometimes mopping an area more than once. I did take breaks, but mostly because sections of floor needed to dry so I could move things around that were being stored on the floor.

Even my edema was not the problem it usually is. Normally I can’t even get through hand-washing a couple loads of dishes without my fingers swelling up like sausages. They did this time too, but not as much as usual and range of motion was not affected at all (usually when they swell up, they feel a bit stiff). A lot of times doing strenuous chores will make my feet swell up too. They did a little bit, but I could still get my right shoe on when I had to go back to Kroger without having to loosen the laces. And the swelling went away quickly, rather than lingering for hours.

It’s funny because when people go on low-carb diets, frequently they experience an upsurge of energy after the first week or so, where all they want to do is move around and exercise and stuff. I haven’t experienced that, so I figured that just wasn’t in the cards for me. But I forgot I wasn’t all that energetic a person before I got fat. It seems that my version of “getting my energy back” involves having better reserves so I am not wiped out by exertion that a physically fit person would shrug off.

Something else I noticed when I was buying supplies to get started on the basement was that I felt better emotionally after shoving a cart around that was loaded down with bags of kitty litter. (We have seven boxes in the house, two on the first floor and five in the basement. The cats are not allowed on the second floor.) And while I was working on the basement, my daughter decided to be Miss Persnickety, complete with whining every time she had anything to say. Normally this drives me round the bend. I still yelled at her a couple times when she was really going overboard (it’s a shock to the system kind of thing to get her attention and break her out of her loop–normally I hate yelling), but mostly I could let it roll off my back and not bother me. Interesting.

Funniest of all? I’m hungry again! For a few months now I’ve been getting by with one meal a day, two at most, with the occasional very small snack. But last night I was cooking a flatiron steak at one in the morning, and today I suspect this protein shake isn’t going to cut it for breakfast. (I’m drinking it slowly and we got up around 10. I tend to feed the kiddo first and worry about me later.)

What do you know! Gary Taubes was right. He thinks the advice to exercise “to burn more calories” is misguided because exercise… induces hunger!

But! This could work in my favor! You know how I have been complaining for MONTHS now that I can’t seem to get in enough calories and how I’ve been afraid that’s been stalling my weight loss? Now I seem to have figured out a hack for the situation. Find ways to work out strenuously several days a week–that’ll do it! It’s not making me crave carbs, either–just making me hungry in general. So I can do this, stay on plan and maybe I’ll get things revving after all. If I’m right and my not eating enough is part of what’s got the weight loss going so slowly*.

Hm. Body working better, emotions more even, life more tolerable, I can eat more nummy food… what’s not to like?

I love it when I solve problems accidentally. It’s kinda fun.

—–
*I don’t buy into that whole hypothesis about “set point,” and “starvation mode” is ketosis, not “hoarding calories.” You hoard calories when you get fat, remember? I’ve run across some info lately to make me believe that what slows fat loss down is malnutrition–that if you don’t properly nourish those organs that govern fat-burning, they’re not going to be able to do their jobs properly. Well, the fewer calories you eat, the more likely you are to be malnourished. Stands to reason. That’s why so many low-cal-low-fatters suffer terribly on their diets and experience health damage.

Wednesday weigh-in: 223

Dana Seilhan — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:18:42 +0000

248.5 | 223 | 140

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After that one week where I lost eight pounds, sometimes it feels like I am swimming through molasses with the weight loss. Fun! But at least it is still a general downward trend.

I have pretty much lost all fear that I will ever see the 230s again. That’s awesome. And it’s looking more and more like I will be in the two-teens within the next month. Right now I’m wearing a pair of shorts that I could sort of squeeze into when I began this latest journey in February, but that now fit me something like normally. I am completely comfortable in them at this point. Even when they’ve just come out of the drier and I haven’t stretched them at all yet. (They’re denim.)

I can’t wait til they’re loose on me.

Still not happy with my eating patterns, with the exception that when I do eat I make it count, choosing to snack on cheese or meats rather than crap. Still wondering if I would lose faster and at a more steady pace if I were getting more calories. Still haven’t found out. This is shaping up to be the Holy Grail of my weight-loss journey, I tell ya. That, or a snipe hunt.

I am taking supplements, though. I’ve been better about that, in fact, than I’ve ever been all along. Most days now I remember to take them, and I chase ‘em with a protein shake. (Part coconut milk, part water, part heavy cream [but not much], a scoop of whey protein powder and a couple packets of Splenda, shake well and chug.) If I can manage nothing else I make sure to get my A and D. If I can manage everything else I’m also, at the moment, taking these:

vitamin A in oil capsule
vitamin D in fish oil capsule
calcium and vitamin D (much smaller amount) in liquid suspension capsule
co-enzyme Q10 (in case I’ve fried my arteries at all over the years)
glucosamine and chondroitin tablets (my joint problems are mostly inflammatory and have calmed down, but still)
liquid multivitamin
thyroid supplement including powdered organs, iodine, and L-tyrosine
milk thistle capsule (I probably gave myself a raging case of fatty liver along with the ab fat)
iron and zinc that I take on alternating days
selenium that I take daily along with the thyroid supplement
liquid multivitamin that covers the other stuff I don’t take separately

My goal is still to get most of the nutrition I need from my food, but I’m not there yet and I am not making my body wait until I do get there. It has suffered too much already. And I must be doing something right because I feel better, don’t crave a lot of crap, and my mental processes are slowly improving.

By the way, if you supplement both iron and calcium, and you happen to take them on the same day, take them several hours apart. They are antagonistic to one another. I am not up on how all the vitamins and minerals work together, though, so I can’t give you much more advice than that where minerals are concerned. Do take them with fat-soluble vitamins and another source of dietary fat, though, when you can. You get maximum benefit that way. I don’t take the iron and zinc every day because the doses are like 300 percent of the recommended daily value and I know my body will store some of it. The selenium I am constantly short on, or so I notice when I track my food, and it’s an antioxidant mineral that my thyroid really needs for optimum function, so I’ll be taking that one daily for a while.

In other news, if you come back here soon and the blog looks funny, don’t panic. I have been putting off updating to the latest version of the Atahualpa theme I use because I know all my settings will be lost. The latest versions of the theme let you export a settings file, but not the version I’m using. So I will have to bite the bullet and set aside some time to tweak the site again after the update. Apologies in advance for the anticipated visual clutter.

Monday Musing: I need to write a better blog

Dana Seilhan — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:39:00 +0000

Seriously? I know I’m better than this, capable of better than this, can write a blog that keeps people reading. I’ve really been slacking lately and I’m getting sick of myself.

What would you want to read more about here, if you had any say in the matter?

Shortest. LCC post. Evar.

And now ze weigh-in ees postponed!

Dana Seilhan — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 03:10:29 +0000

Good thing I weighed in Monday, huh?

Some of you may not be aware but I am living platonically with my little girl’s dad. Long story, probably boring to most of you, just we’ve got sort of a family arrangement here without in fact being what conservatives would call an “intact family.” Part of that involves helping one another out with health issues and such.

Well, today he went in for knee surgery. Thea and I accompanied him and I drove him home afterward and I’ve been running and fetching about half the time today ever since.

All on two hours’ sleep. Truth be known I was awake by 4:15 this morning because we were supposed to report at 5:45 to a surgical suite that wasn’t open til 6. Unless somebody out there’s got a TARDIS I don’t know about, this was a fustercluck in the making. Somehow we got through it. But it was so early and I needed to get something into me quick, fast, and in a hurry since all they had to eat at this medical building was Tim Horton’s(!!!), I hit a protein drink and decided I can go without a Wednesday Weigh-In every now and again.

But it’ll be back next week, assuming I don’t suddenly need knee surgery. Seven days is a long time to hold one’s breath, but hopefully y’all will be looking forward to that.

Monday Musing: Tea is a displacing food of modern commerce

Dana Seilhan — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:54:59 +0000

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I know it’s not time for the official weekly weigh-in, but I don’t often illustrate my blog posts anymore so I thought I would throw this in here and let y’all see how I am doing. I seem to be doing that teetering-back-and-forth-in-a-five-pound-weight-range thing that I always do right before that certain time of the month. Awright, Aunt Flo, any damn time you wanna. I’m about done waiting.

Anyway. If you are anything like me, your political inclinations are somewhere between liberal and libertarian. You’re cool with individual rights, but you also recognize we live in a community and are somewhat accountable to one another whether we want to admit it or not. So it may annoy you more than a little to discover that the non-vegetarian, pro-natural-foods reform movement has attracted more than its share of Tea Party types and other right-wingers.

I “liked” the topic of raw milk on Facebook. It is an owned topic, which means someone started what used to be called a “fan page” on the subject. Well, the person in charge is one of those teabaggers, and has attracted more than their fair share of same. My discovery of this uncomfortable fact went something like this:

RAW MILK: Look at this story of the government passing yet another stupid regulation!

COMMENTER: OMG socialism!

ME: Will people please stop using the S word every time the government does something they don’t like? *inserts exposition on the history of socialism and what Marx actually taught and points out that if we ever had real socialists here they’d be lined up against the far wall and shot, just like Trotsky was way back when*

RAW MILK: Yeah, just keep on thinking that while the government is taking your rights away.

ME: Correcting someone about the meaning of socialism and being for overbearing government control are two different things. And where’s it say in the Constitution what kind of economy we’re supposed to have? Socialism is an economic model. Oh, never mind… *flounces out without another word*

RAW MILK: *grumble-grumble-grumble-grumble-grumbles for three more comments that I ignore since I’ve unliked the page and it’s not worth the blood pressure spike*

You know what? Here’s a clue for you. If you’re going to run a food reform movement of any type, even if it’s a stupid Facebook page, your first goal is to help people. That should be your focus. Not pushing your political ideology on other people. I don’t give a shit if you’re for or against abortion, for or against gay marriage, scared of socialism or wishing fervently for it, or what. That’s not why I’m associating with you. I’m associating with you because you advocate making healthy food more widely available to more people because they need it or they will always be unhealthy.

When you insert your political beliefs into it then you push people away. And those are people you are never going to be able to reach because they will think you’re crazy, therefore everything you believe in is crazy. They’ll go back to believing soy is a miracle food, meat is murder, and fat is evil.

I mean, if you want to help that Ebil Nasty Socialist Gubmint destroy people’s health and tighten its control over the populace… by all means keep making enemies everywhere you go by telling them they’re evil socialist sinners bound for hellfire and damnation.

Knock yourself out.

But quit lying about your purpose in life because it’s plain to anyone with one eye open and an attention span longer than an inch.

Do I talk about politics here? Yeah, sometimes. But this is a blog, not an organization. You know coming in here–or I hope you do–that while this is not strictly a personal blog, it IS a blog about my personal journey. Therefore I’m going to interject my opinions into the material from time to time. I am not trying to organize people from all walks of life to accomplish a specific goal.

Aside from that, making any reform movement Tea Party-ish in nature is just insulting. Every time I try to delve into their movement and figure out what they stand for–or what any pseudo-patriotic group stands for, really–I come out feeling filthy and disgusted. They only want constitutional rights for themselves. They only want freedom for themselves. They only want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for themselves. If you don’t look, believe, and act like them, you need not apply.

That kind of bullshit does not belong in any reform movement as far as I’m concerned. It’s DEforming, not REforming. We need to fix what’s broken in this country, not break it some more.

The dentist Weston A. Price referred to industrial foods that destroy human health as “the displacing foods of modern commerce.” The Tea Party is similarly a displacing ideology of modern politics. When people should be learning more about how the world works and what has brought politics to the state it’s in today, they buy into slogans and doctored pseudo-history instead. Rather than being nourished by a sound knowledge of where they come from and what it all means, they are becoming poisoned by lies and deceit.

Whatever other overbearing control our government may be guilty of, it’s not yet making you take your cod liver and butter oil. Likewise it’s not going to force you to educate yourself on American history. If you really care that much about the direction this country has taken then you owe it to yourself to quit parroting the Tea Party’s sloganeering and crack open a book occasionally.

And if anyone out there knows of a WAPF-related group that isn’t overrun by reactionary assholes, give me a shout, won’t you? I know they’re in short supply, but they must exist somewhere. Thanks in advance.

Wednesday weigh-in: 224.5

Dana Seilhan — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:52:53 +0000

248.5 | 224.5 | 140

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I had a bad moment a couple days ago when it was looking like I might inch back up to the 230s. Nooooo! Not after all this work! Never again! Ew ew ew ew ew!

*whew* Looks like it was a false alarm. Hopefully after Aunt Flo visits, I’ll see even more of a drop.

Yeah, the weekend sucked. All the way to today sucked. I got nuthin’ else right now.