cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
So as I outlined in my ten year update thread, after hurting my back I packed on about 45-50 pounds and needed to get rid of it.
After looking at diet advice and what the experts had to say, there were so many contradictions, backtracks and funny science that I started reading the actual studies. Of course, if you do that, you realize that they're all a bunch of crap.
The "lipid study" done half a century ago that showed correlation between fat consumption and health? Bullshit. They took 20-something countries worth of data and threw out all but 5 to come to the conclusion that there was correlation. If you include all 20-something, there is actually negative correlation. You get funny stuff like Masai tribesmen who eat 60-70% saturated fat for their regular diet, mostly red meat and cows blood, and they have low cancer and heart disease rates. Take one to england or the US and feed them our diet of highly processed foods sprayed with sugar and loaded with high calorie starches, and they get fat and develop illnesses.
Take-away: Its not the fat, its the cheap highly processed, high caloric, low nutrition foods. Fat tastes good. Its satiating. It takes a long time to digest. Eat it.
The "salt studies" done for a century showed no connection between salt and high blood pressure, except that it temporarily does raise your BP until your kidneys flush it out. I learned this when I saw Alton Browns "Eat this rock" episode of Good Eats. "If you don't have a genetic predisposition to salt induced hypertension, you're getting plenty of fluids, and your kidneys work properly, you can eat all the salt you want. Science says so!". In fact, he's correct. The major intersalt studies were done because some doctors and researchers felt that salt DID raise blood pressure and cause hypertension, except the data didn't say that. So they threw almost half the data away, all of it where someone said they ate a lot of salt and were healthy, because "Obviously, they must be lying because if they ate that much salt, they'd be sick".
Eh, studies don't work that way folks. As we've seen recently in less tilted studies, salt is not only not bad for you, its good for you and the RDA is probably half to one third what you SHOULD consume.
Take-away: salt makes food taste better, including a wide range of bland and annoyingly nutritious foods. Eat it.
So whats killing us? Sugar and highly processed, highly caloric foods that are low in nutrition. It kills me when someone looks at a fast food meal and wants to crucify the meat and salt. Its the french fries that are 6x bigger than they were 50 years ago, the sugar laden drink that you can start an outboard motor in , the white flour bun and the mayo made from useless oils like canola or safflower.
So to make a change, I started reading product labels to find more sugar in some beef jerky than there is in a soda, that juice is just pepsi without the caramel coloring and caffeine, etc.
So my diet went thus: eating tasty fatty meats laden with salt, whole fruits and vegetables that grow above ground, whole wheat when I ate bread or pasta (which is infrequently) and stocking a load of tasty snacks that are good for me. If it has calories and no significant redeeming nutritional value, it stays on the shelf.
Eat plenty of probiotics. 70% of your immune system comes from your gut, and most of that depends on the type of probiotics you consume, and bad stuff comes from inflammations caused by bad gut bacteria. I went a little bit out there with this. I took an antibiotic to kill everything that was in there, and began eating yogurt (not the stuff with 35 grams of sugar in it) with berries, drinking stuff like Good Belly which has almost no calories, and eating fermented cabbages like sauerkraut and kim chi. Turns out that good old fermented foods are the best source of the best probiotics, and they taste good too! In the past year since starting this regime, I haven't gotten sick one single time, and I was good for 2-3 colds/flu's a year having a 7 year old in the house that contacts 500 kids a week.
I'm also not really bought into a lot of the edge food 'science'. I think antioxidants are useless, we just discovered that omega-3 supplements are worthless in improving health (but eating oily fish like sardines and salmon is on the list), and I don't take or eat anything without clear and non fuzzy science wrapped around it. Given that a range of prescription drugs that I used to take are in the news for causing strokes, kidney cancer and all sorts of other funny stuff, I've also tossed all of my prescription meds. My blood pressure medication is what really almost killed me. These work primarily by slowing your metabolism and heart rate down. Not really what a fat person needs.
At this point I take tri-flex glucosamine/chondroitin/msm and aspirin, and everything I eat is probably close to how we ate a hundred years ago.
My fats are lard, beef tallow, coconut and palm oils, and butter...preferably the expensive tasty irish stuff. Meat of all types is on the menu, the more exotic the better. The key is keeping the calories count down and getting 30-60 minutes of exercise a day, at least 20 minutes of which is high activity stuff.
What are my activities? I wanted a 2 for 1 benefit. So I don't run around in circles by myself, I dont go to the gym, and I don't stand around lifting heavy stuff to no purpose. I started cleaning and fixing my house and yard, take all 3 dogs on separate walks around the neighborhood, walk my son to school and back (1.5 miles round trip) and if it was within a mile or so, I walk instead of taking the car.
I also screwed my head on backwards for most of these tasks. If I did them with a motorized device, I shelved that and did it the manual way. I bought a push/reel mower (a realllly nice one) and parked my rider. Instead of a gas hedge trimmer, I put on elbow length gloves and dove into my hedges with a hand lopper. Washing and waxing your car is a great workout.
My objective here was at the end of a 'workout' to be able to say "I worked hard, my body is tired, and I have a nice/cleaner/improved something-or-other. Two pieces of gratification to help support the efforts!
It was a little hard at first. But my tummy shrank and now if I eat more than a cup of food I feel queasy and can't even swallow any more. If I put something sweet into my mouth, its cloying and I want to spit it out.
Snacks? Stuffed 'africa peppers' from costco @25 calories each, little sweet, little spicy, stuffed with goat and mizithra cheese and drizzled with sunflower seed oil. Popchips and terra chips when I want salty/crunchy, @100 calories a bag and I share them with Gabe and/or my wife. Sunflower seeds, pepitas, almonds, cashews, pistachios, those "bistro" premade salads that are 180-290 calories a pop, cut up or whole fruits, and lots of quick vegetables like cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. Hard boiled eggs or a piece of bacon is also fair game.
Otherwise primarily meats and seafoods and a salad or veggies that grow above ground. I occasionally eat a sweet potato or carrot. I shoot for 1500-1600 calories a day, and frankly I think 2000 is too much for almost everyone unless you work hard with your hands and legs all day. Some days I do a mini-fast, when I discover that its 2 in the afternoon and I've only eaten a few hundred calories, I skip until I'm really hungry and then eat something little. Maybe once a week I do this. Usually I eat 2000 calories a day before or after a fast. If you aren't hungry, don't eat. Use smaller plates. Take less and make yourself go back for more. If you're eating and find you're not hungry, put the food back. All the stupid small stuff you've heard for years...works!
Drinks? Water. Water, water, water. I think most people would lose a ton of weight if they made water their primary beverage and took a 30 minute walk around the neighborhood, preferably with a purpose. I splash a little cranberry juice or red grape from time to time to give it some flavor, bought one of those bottles with the built in carbon filter, and got some large thermal mugs and those all get refilled daily.
With fat and salt on the menu, fun mexican, asian and indian foods are all fair game, preferably if they're made with animal fats or coconut fats.
Results? I lost 81 pounds so far, and I got my blood results 2 weeks ago. A year ago EVERYTHING from my cholesterol to my blood sugar to my liver enzymes was in the red. This year, everything is in the green. I feel and look great. I was taking 17 prescription pills a day last year, now I take none.
I think people are very confused about what to eat and what not to eat. Big food conglomerates would love us to eat lots of vegetable/starch/sugar based products because they're cheap, they're easy to make and sell, and they're profitable. When you read about how crisco came to be because candle makers needed a replacement for expensive animal fats, and one of the scientists mentioned "If we added more of this, you could actually cook food in this instead of make candles out of it!". Then we were told alternatively that eggs were good, bad, good, bad, good, bad...hey, they're good for you if you don't eat six a day. They're fat and protein and vitamins. Then we heard that animal fats are bad and margarine and trans fats and polyunsaturated fats were the way to go. How'd that work out?
The epitomy of "holy ****" came to me when I watched a tv commercial full of people saying what I just said "The expert advice is confusing...first this is bad, then it isnt'. But I know good nutrition when I see it!". Good nutrition turned out to be a steamed rolled grain cooked in useless oil and then sprayed with sugar. Pretty much the worst thing on earth you can eat. A big bowl of useless high caloric, low nutrition food. Even when we rebel, we still get it wrong.
First thing you need to do is get rid of your excuses. Everyone has a couple of reasons why they're fat. Nobody cares, and neither does the health sucking wad of stuff hanging around your waist. I suffered excrutiating pain in my back and feet to the extent where standing for half and hour meant taking 6 prescription pills and lying in bed for the rest of the day. I got past it, took care of it, and then all the other excuses and pains that cropped up. Once I lost the weight and strengthened my core muscles, the pain became more manageable.
Next thing you need to realize is if you say "But I gotta have my...", that you're going to be fat and your ... is why. You're in charge of what you do and don't put in your mouth. If the food is in charge, you already lost. I had to have my Gatorade that I swilled by the quart while working in 100-110 degree weather. I haven't had a sip in a year now.
Good starting point is to watch Alton Browns "Live and Let Diet". We disagree about fats and red meat, but both of us lost 50+ pounds on similar diets. Looking at the Paleo diet is also useful, as is looking into coconut products. My wife makes a hell of a truffle out of whole ground coconut, almond butter, whole ground raw cocoa powder, a little honey, hemp seeds, chia seeds and a few other things. Low in sugar/carbs, they're a delicious snack for those with a sweet tooth, and they're loaded with protein and healthy fats.
Good Eats - Live and Let Diet [Full - HD Quality] - YouTube
Any questions?
After looking at diet advice and what the experts had to say, there were so many contradictions, backtracks and funny science that I started reading the actual studies. Of course, if you do that, you realize that they're all a bunch of crap.
The "lipid study" done half a century ago that showed correlation between fat consumption and health? Bullshit. They took 20-something countries worth of data and threw out all but 5 to come to the conclusion that there was correlation. If you include all 20-something, there is actually negative correlation. You get funny stuff like Masai tribesmen who eat 60-70% saturated fat for their regular diet, mostly red meat and cows blood, and they have low cancer and heart disease rates. Take one to england or the US and feed them our diet of highly processed foods sprayed with sugar and loaded with high calorie starches, and they get fat and develop illnesses.
Take-away: Its not the fat, its the cheap highly processed, high caloric, low nutrition foods. Fat tastes good. Its satiating. It takes a long time to digest. Eat it.
The "salt studies" done for a century showed no connection between salt and high blood pressure, except that it temporarily does raise your BP until your kidneys flush it out. I learned this when I saw Alton Browns "Eat this rock" episode of Good Eats. "If you don't have a genetic predisposition to salt induced hypertension, you're getting plenty of fluids, and your kidneys work properly, you can eat all the salt you want. Science says so!". In fact, he's correct. The major intersalt studies were done because some doctors and researchers felt that salt DID raise blood pressure and cause hypertension, except the data didn't say that. So they threw almost half the data away, all of it where someone said they ate a lot of salt and were healthy, because "Obviously, they must be lying because if they ate that much salt, they'd be sick".
Eh, studies don't work that way folks. As we've seen recently in less tilted studies, salt is not only not bad for you, its good for you and the RDA is probably half to one third what you SHOULD consume.
Take-away: salt makes food taste better, including a wide range of bland and annoyingly nutritious foods. Eat it.
So whats killing us? Sugar and highly processed, highly caloric foods that are low in nutrition. It kills me when someone looks at a fast food meal and wants to crucify the meat and salt. Its the french fries that are 6x bigger than they were 50 years ago, the sugar laden drink that you can start an outboard motor in , the white flour bun and the mayo made from useless oils like canola or safflower.
So to make a change, I started reading product labels to find more sugar in some beef jerky than there is in a soda, that juice is just pepsi without the caramel coloring and caffeine, etc.
So my diet went thus: eating tasty fatty meats laden with salt, whole fruits and vegetables that grow above ground, whole wheat when I ate bread or pasta (which is infrequently) and stocking a load of tasty snacks that are good for me. If it has calories and no significant redeeming nutritional value, it stays on the shelf.
Eat plenty of probiotics. 70% of your immune system comes from your gut, and most of that depends on the type of probiotics you consume, and bad stuff comes from inflammations caused by bad gut bacteria. I went a little bit out there with this. I took an antibiotic to kill everything that was in there, and began eating yogurt (not the stuff with 35 grams of sugar in it) with berries, drinking stuff like Good Belly which has almost no calories, and eating fermented cabbages like sauerkraut and kim chi. Turns out that good old fermented foods are the best source of the best probiotics, and they taste good too! In the past year since starting this regime, I haven't gotten sick one single time, and I was good for 2-3 colds/flu's a year having a 7 year old in the house that contacts 500 kids a week.
I'm also not really bought into a lot of the edge food 'science'. I think antioxidants are useless, we just discovered that omega-3 supplements are worthless in improving health (but eating oily fish like sardines and salmon is on the list), and I don't take or eat anything without clear and non fuzzy science wrapped around it. Given that a range of prescription drugs that I used to take are in the news for causing strokes, kidney cancer and all sorts of other funny stuff, I've also tossed all of my prescription meds. My blood pressure medication is what really almost killed me. These work primarily by slowing your metabolism and heart rate down. Not really what a fat person needs.
At this point I take tri-flex glucosamine/chondroitin/msm and aspirin, and everything I eat is probably close to how we ate a hundred years ago.
My fats are lard, beef tallow, coconut and palm oils, and butter...preferably the expensive tasty irish stuff. Meat of all types is on the menu, the more exotic the better. The key is keeping the calories count down and getting 30-60 minutes of exercise a day, at least 20 minutes of which is high activity stuff.
What are my activities? I wanted a 2 for 1 benefit. So I don't run around in circles by myself, I dont go to the gym, and I don't stand around lifting heavy stuff to no purpose. I started cleaning and fixing my house and yard, take all 3 dogs on separate walks around the neighborhood, walk my son to school and back (1.5 miles round trip) and if it was within a mile or so, I walk instead of taking the car.
I also screwed my head on backwards for most of these tasks. If I did them with a motorized device, I shelved that and did it the manual way. I bought a push/reel mower (a realllly nice one) and parked my rider. Instead of a gas hedge trimmer, I put on elbow length gloves and dove into my hedges with a hand lopper. Washing and waxing your car is a great workout.
My objective here was at the end of a 'workout' to be able to say "I worked hard, my body is tired, and I have a nice/cleaner/improved something-or-other. Two pieces of gratification to help support the efforts!
It was a little hard at first. But my tummy shrank and now if I eat more than a cup of food I feel queasy and can't even swallow any more. If I put something sweet into my mouth, its cloying and I want to spit it out.
Snacks? Stuffed 'africa peppers' from costco @25 calories each, little sweet, little spicy, stuffed with goat and mizithra cheese and drizzled with sunflower seed oil. Popchips and terra chips when I want salty/crunchy, @100 calories a bag and I share them with Gabe and/or my wife. Sunflower seeds, pepitas, almonds, cashews, pistachios, those "bistro" premade salads that are 180-290 calories a pop, cut up or whole fruits, and lots of quick vegetables like cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. Hard boiled eggs or a piece of bacon is also fair game.
Otherwise primarily meats and seafoods and a salad or veggies that grow above ground. I occasionally eat a sweet potato or carrot. I shoot for 1500-1600 calories a day, and frankly I think 2000 is too much for almost everyone unless you work hard with your hands and legs all day. Some days I do a mini-fast, when I discover that its 2 in the afternoon and I've only eaten a few hundred calories, I skip until I'm really hungry and then eat something little. Maybe once a week I do this. Usually I eat 2000 calories a day before or after a fast. If you aren't hungry, don't eat. Use smaller plates. Take less and make yourself go back for more. If you're eating and find you're not hungry, put the food back. All the stupid small stuff you've heard for years...works!
Drinks? Water. Water, water, water. I think most people would lose a ton of weight if they made water their primary beverage and took a 30 minute walk around the neighborhood, preferably with a purpose. I splash a little cranberry juice or red grape from time to time to give it some flavor, bought one of those bottles with the built in carbon filter, and got some large thermal mugs and those all get refilled daily.
With fat and salt on the menu, fun mexican, asian and indian foods are all fair game, preferably if they're made with animal fats or coconut fats.
Results? I lost 81 pounds so far, and I got my blood results 2 weeks ago. A year ago EVERYTHING from my cholesterol to my blood sugar to my liver enzymes was in the red. This year, everything is in the green. I feel and look great. I was taking 17 prescription pills a day last year, now I take none.
I think people are very confused about what to eat and what not to eat. Big food conglomerates would love us to eat lots of vegetable/starch/sugar based products because they're cheap, they're easy to make and sell, and they're profitable. When you read about how crisco came to be because candle makers needed a replacement for expensive animal fats, and one of the scientists mentioned "If we added more of this, you could actually cook food in this instead of make candles out of it!". Then we were told alternatively that eggs were good, bad, good, bad, good, bad...hey, they're good for you if you don't eat six a day. They're fat and protein and vitamins. Then we heard that animal fats are bad and margarine and trans fats and polyunsaturated fats were the way to go. How'd that work out?
The epitomy of "holy ****" came to me when I watched a tv commercial full of people saying what I just said "The expert advice is confusing...first this is bad, then it isnt'. But I know good nutrition when I see it!". Good nutrition turned out to be a steamed rolled grain cooked in useless oil and then sprayed with sugar. Pretty much the worst thing on earth you can eat. A big bowl of useless high caloric, low nutrition food. Even when we rebel, we still get it wrong.
First thing you need to do is get rid of your excuses. Everyone has a couple of reasons why they're fat. Nobody cares, and neither does the health sucking wad of stuff hanging around your waist. I suffered excrutiating pain in my back and feet to the extent where standing for half and hour meant taking 6 prescription pills and lying in bed for the rest of the day. I got past it, took care of it, and then all the other excuses and pains that cropped up. Once I lost the weight and strengthened my core muscles, the pain became more manageable.
Next thing you need to realize is if you say "But I gotta have my...", that you're going to be fat and your ... is why. You're in charge of what you do and don't put in your mouth. If the food is in charge, you already lost. I had to have my Gatorade that I swilled by the quart while working in 100-110 degree weather. I haven't had a sip in a year now.
Good starting point is to watch Alton Browns "Live and Let Diet". We disagree about fats and red meat, but both of us lost 50+ pounds on similar diets. Looking at the Paleo diet is also useful, as is looking into coconut products. My wife makes a hell of a truffle out of whole ground coconut, almond butter, whole ground raw cocoa powder, a little honey, hemp seeds, chia seeds and a few other things. Low in sugar/carbs, they're a delicious snack for those with a sweet tooth, and they're loaded with protein and healthy fats.
Good Eats - Live and Let Diet [Full - HD Quality] - YouTube
Any questions?