December Update

December wasn't as great as November but I lost 3 lbs anyway. Seems that I need to continue IF and almost all meat with some dairy. The foods I eat now do not cause any inflammation and if I stick to them I will probably lose more in January. I've now lost a total of 30 lbs from my highest weight.

Who Knew?

Over the years I have read so many low-carb and paleo books that I should be a complete expert regarding this way of eating. NOT!

So I have not been cheating at all since November 1st. Mid-December I decided to make my very own beloved german red cabbage. I controlled all the ingredients: red cabbage, onions, apple cider vinegar, bacon fat, lard, salt and pepper. I decided not to add apple. Made 8 - 1 cup servings some of which I froze.

I ate 1 cup of red cabbage daily with all my other foods and each day my feet and ankles swelled, I gained 1 lb every day for 5 days, cravings started kicking in and ended up scratching my head trying to figure out what it was about the red cabbage that was causing all these symptoms. After all, it's one of the low-carb darlings as well as blueberries, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, etc.

Don't know why I waited the 5 days, but then I did 2 - 24 hr fasts eating nothing but eggs, cheese, coffee and cream and dropped the 5 lbs and my feet went back to normal.

Still trying to figure out what triggered the inflammation, I accidently came across a thread on a low-carb board that spoke to Fructose Malabsorption. The poster stated that she had this condition and listed some of the low carb fruits and veggies that contained high levels of fructose.

My red cabbage, onions and apple cider vinegar contain high amounts of fructose to which I am very sensitive: one of the few women that suffers from gout. Was I so naive and dumb that it never occurred to me that veggies could also contain fructose? I guess I was.

I have now properly researched this and compiled a list of fruits and veggies that are low in starch AND also LOW in fructose.

Live and learn!

November was fantastic

November update

Total lost: 12.4 lbs

Stats:  Fat 75%  Carbs 5%  Protein 20%

Notes:
1. ate a few more carbs early in November
2. by late November ate very few carbs, mostly meat, fish and eggs
3. mid-November added a 36 hr fast weekly
4. decided to keep my foods simple, no low carb replacements for frankenfoods
5. am feeling great
6. seems like metabolism is kicking up a notch as I'm jumping around doing stuff just to move
7. Inflammation has gone down (I can tell my the no-swelling in my feet as I slipped on my winter boots yesterday - my feet look normal again)
8. Did NOT cheat once this month, woo hoo

November was a fantastic month and I hope to duplicate this in December

Lifelong search

Low-carbing has given me back my health. No longer plagued with migraines, depression, arthritis, high cholesterol, bloating, inflammation and other health issues, I am extremely grateful to have found this WOE. However, at my age and metabolic condition, low-carbing has been unsuccessful in contributing to weight loss and loss of cravings.

SO..., I've gone back to meat, fish, eggs, a daily coffee with cream and an occasional onion. Started on November 1st and all my cravings have vanished, I eat once or twice a day and have lost 5 lbs. The edema in my feet has vanished and I have been able to put on my winter boots with no problems so I can shovel the tons of snow off my car and take it out for a spin before my auto mechanic gives me shit for letting it sit during cold weather.

This diet needs to be tweeked by everyone because everyone is different. I found that I can't tolerate whey protein and coconut oil so I've switched to real meat/fish and butter and lard. I can tolerate my one cup of coffee a day with cream. Right now I've got a beef stew in the crock pot with 1/4 onion and no other veggies.

Hopefully, this can be sustained until I lose all the weight I need to lose. When that happens, I can then decide if I want to go low-carb. But for now, it's mostly meat and eggs.

August Update

I actually made it through August with only 1 little cheat which is great for me. Monthly stats are as follows:

Fat 73%
Carbs 9% (including fiber)
Protein 18%

Average of about 30 carbs  and 1600 cals daily

Checked urine with ketone strips and definitely in ketosis.

Dropped 5 lbs. Don't you love being an overweight, older women when it comes to weight loss? If I was a young lad I would have lost at least 25 lbs.

Found seasonings for beef and pork that do not contain wheat or msg and enhance the taste of the meat, which had been a problem for me in the past. How ironic, I can eat liver by the ton with no problem but the smell of cooking beef turns me off. No more.

Propaganda against meat

Read this on BBC online today:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28797106

Why is it people lie so much? They talk about being a carnivore so they increase their meat intake and continue to eat buns, bread, etc with it. Then they write a piece for the BBC.

A carnivore is an entity that eats meat/fish/eggs/animals exclusively with a blade of grass here and there just for the fun of it.

I emailed the author asking him how he could have made those statements without actually being a carnivore. Let's see what the response will be if any.

I was a carnivore for 6 months once until I fell off the wagon. Those 6 months were the best in my life and I'm striving to get back to feeling as good as I did and I'm almost there.

Meryl Streep is some lady

I'm not usually a follower of the stars and don't know most of the younger ones as I don't watch TV or go to movies and they (the stars) just don't interest me. However, I inadvertently came across some information about Meryl Streep that made me respect her even more than I did. She's been married to the same man since 1978, has had 4 children with him, has not had her breasts enhanced and, as far as I can see, has not had any plastic surgery. The latest picture of her shows every wrinkle she has earned and no make-up. She sure is a class act.

When I was young...

When I was young I seemed to thrive on new and exciting things. There was constantly something happening in my life that caused happiness or sorrow. There was never a dull moment.

Now that I'm much, much, older I am blessed with very little drama in my life now that I don't have to worry about my parents. Little things such as filling my planters with pansies in the spring makes me happy. Deciding when I'll make an appointment to get my teeth cleaned, when I'm going to do the laundry, what book I'm going to read next, when to go shopping or when to take my car out for a spin on the highway to get it de-carboned, is about as exciting as it gets. Yet I love the sheer lack of drama and stress in my old age very much.

Some of it is due to lack of relatives and living alone. Sure, I meet my sister and/or friends once a month for dinner, talk on the phone to another friend who lives in the next province once a month, keep tabs on my relatives in Ukraine via Facebook, but other than that, I'm all alone and loving it.

Since my eye surgery I've had my nose in several books non-stop. An amazing author I've recently discovered and who is brilliant is Alan Bradley. First novel The Sweetness at the bottom of the pie won several awards and the heroine (Flavia de Luce) now has a fan club world wide. Check it out, I promise you won't be disappointed.

Going out with the girls

Going out with two of my dearest friends today for dinner. Both are a tad older then me and have a lot of health issues. Both are slaves to their doctors and are on several medications. One is addicted to pain killers and can only stay out for short periods of time before her skin starts crawling and she needs another fix. However, she keeps telling me that my eating a lot of eggs and bacon is bad for me.

I haven't kept my diet a secret and I haven't been pushing it on them, but you would think that they would at least do some research on their own. Instead of being pro-active with their health they just trust everything to their doctors and think that all their problems are caused by just being old. It is so sad.

I love only you

Tina Karol, a Ukrainian singer, singing "I love only you" after the death of her husband of stomach cancer in 2013.

Weird Logic

My sister has been lamenting over the health of her friend who also happens to be a co-worker making it difficult not to avoid her. Seems like the friendship as been souring for quite some time as her friend has been very irritating (bitchy, always complaining), very sick, very overweight. She has been assigned light duties at work under the recommendation of her doctor.

This friend is in her early 50's, very overweight, with all sorts of health issues including a heart condition.  My sister, who lost 70 lbs, has been trying to get her friend to lose weight for some time. Here's where the weird logic comes in. Instead of her friend asking my sister how she lost so much weight, she doesn't think it will apply to her. She actually told my sister that she's fat because she has heart disease. Instead of blaming her diet (and weight) she blames the heart disease. She's told my sister that a diet won't help.

It's very hard to understand the reasoning. Either she's very stupid or she's in denial or both. What I can't understand is how someone who is so obviously dying at a very young age would not want to do something about it. Kind of reminds me of Jimmy Moore's brother, who would have had Jimmy as an example yet continued on a suicidal path.

I love liver

We were poor immigrants coming to Canada in 1953 when I was 3 1/2 years old. Needless to say, my Mother never had a feeding problem with me. I would eat anything she would make and liver being very cheap in the old days was served at least once a week in great quantities fried with lots of lard and onions, which were also cheap. In fact, the leftover liver did not make it to the next day because I'd be in the fridge grabbing it and eating it cold as a snack. That's how much I loved it, almost as much as garlic and lard.

Anyway, today I had free-range chicken livers which were recently added to product sold at my favorite butcher shop, along with hearts and gizzards. I prefer my liver baked, with a sprinkling of salt, onion powder and curry powder. Then once it's baked (and oh so tender), I eat it with a small, green salad. Hope that the leftovers last until tomorrow but I highly doubt it, lmao!

Gluten Sensitivity

All this talk of how "real" diagnosed celiacs feel about us "gluten sensitive" people trying to share their limelight when they should be the only ones being taken seriously, and how all the food manufacturers' doing damage control funding "mickey mouse" studies proving there is no such thing as a gluten sensitivity has got me fuming.

How do I know gluten sensitivity is an issue for me? Well I'm a logical person and have always tried to test things out for myself. I can eat a bushel of wheat/rye/etc and my stomach won't issue even the slightest sign of protest. Neither will my intestines. They will just continue on their merry and happy way as if nothing untoward happened. However, within 12 hours of ingesting wheat/rye/etc, all of the following occur:

• swollen ankles
• headache
• joint pain, especially left knee and right hip

Within a day or two of eliminating gluten, all symptoms disappear. I have tested this theory several times and it works every time. Of course, it's just my imagination.

My new bionic eyes

Alright kids, I am now equipped with two super-duper bionic eyes that make me feel like I've never felt before even as a kid. I CAN ACTUALLY SEE! Woo hoo! Only need glasses for reading and am popping into Walmart to pick up a cheap pair today. So far absolutely no complications from surgery. I had some fun on surgery day with a few people in the waiting room with a weird sense of humor like mine ending up laughing our faces off to the shagrin of those around us, the anaesthesiologist with which I had a conversation about natural relaxants like camomile tea, one of the nurses who marked my left eye in the shape of a flower, and, since I was the last patient for surgery that day, my specialist. Kept asking him if he wasn't in a post-lunch sugar crash, did he need a nap?, how was his energy level? All in all a great day and perfect success.

Next doctor to torture me will be my dentist as I broke off a piece on one of my molars. Just wish I had had a bit of peace between tortures. Ah, the joys of getting older.

Observations during eye surgery

Eye surgery went well on Thursday. Some observations:

1. All the nurses were fat. There were about 7 or 8 of them, some of them male.
2. The diabetics went into surgery first as they were fasting for a while. Upon their return, they were given fruit juice and cookies to break their fast.
3. Once my surgery was done, they were giving me the same snack. I asked for water instead. Nurse asks, "Are you diabetic?" I say "no, but I don't want to be."

That was it. No pain or complications here. Eye needs to stabilize and both eyes are not working together. Left eye to be done on May 1st. Maybe then they will be coordinated.

Off topic, did our primitive ancestors have access to and seek out resistant starch? Is resistant starch tasty? Besides helping the gut supposedly, what other benefits does it have if you are eating a low-carb, ketogenic type diet? What if your gut is already really healthy?

Happy Dance

Both my new doctor and I were doing the happy dance today (I wasn't surprised but he was) after we got the results of my latest blood work due to my impending cataract surgery on April 17th. In fact, several of my stats were stellar, especially. kidney function. Everything but my trigs were normal. My ECG was normal. Bone density is good but not perfect. Blood pressure is 140 over something so a bit high. We are still a work in progress.

Total cholesterol: 4.70 (182)
HDL 1.64 (63)
LDL 2.26 (87)
Trigs: 176 (155) ok these are a bit high and I'm working on it.
Ratio: 2.9

Not bad for a 64 year old taking NO meds except ventolin. That's probably why my stats are so good: I DON'T TAKE ANY MEDS.

So, I just need to lose about 90 lbs and I'll be perfect.

Ho Ho Ho the cracks are widening

There's no clear evidence supporting decades-old dietary guidelines to cut our saturated fat intake to promote heart health, a new review concludes;

Full article.

Resistance is Futile!

Health Issues

My eyesight has been deteriorating at an alarming rate so I went to see my eye doctor. Well the bad news is that I have cataracts and they have to be removed. The good news is that it's a relatively simple procedure. The bad news is that any medical procedure is bad news. The best news would be to not have to endure any procedure. But, once again, real life throws us some curve balls and we have to adapt. Could be a lot worse so I'm thankful it's just cataracts and not, say, cancer or something worse.

Needless to say, all the books I ordered like Cholesterol Clarity, Death by Food Pyramid, and Dr. Cate Shanahan's and Dr. Tim Noakes' books I've lent to my sister to read, as my eyes are bothering me too much at the moment.

And, of course, not much posting here.