If you're like me (which you probably aren't, but let's pretend), you may find your food tastes expanding as you adapt to a low carb way of eating. Over the last few months, I have added several foods to my dietary repertoire, and I have eaten more of some other great foods than I ever did in the past. In general, I eat more whole foods now than processed/ packaged foods. Nuts, seeds, berries and fish are classes of foods that I always liked, but eat significantly more of on my low-carb … [Read more...]
Progress report 7-3-11
On May 7, I set a weight goal of 215 pounds by Labor Day 2011. At that time, I weighed around 241 pounds. Yesterday, I weighed in at 227.6 pounds. So in the past two months I have lost 13.4 pounds on my low-carb way of eating. The pace has slowed. In the first two months of low-carb eating, I lost about 19 pounds. Nevertheless, I am on schedule to meet my Labor Day weight goal, perhaps with time/ pounds to spare. Frankly, weight loss is a secondary issue for me. More important is … [Read more...]
Blame it on hunger
Weight loss is about caloric net loss. Of course, the key lies in achieving healthful weight loss and sustainable weight loss. Consuming 600 calories of Haagen Dazs — and nothing but 600 calories of Haagen Dazs — a day will certainly lead to weight loss, but it is also unhealthy and unsustainable. -- Andy Bellatti, Don’t Blame Obesity on Carbohydrates. On his Small Bites blog, Andy Bellatti describes himself as “one part vegan chef, one part nutritionist, and one part food policy activist” … [Read more...]
Low-carb road-trip eating
When my wife was 11 years old, she was mesmerized by Peter Tork, a member of the Monkees. Depending on whom you ask, the Monkees were either actors in a TV comedy or musicians in a rock-band. Or both. My wife would say both, and more, but her focus was always on the blond, hazel-eyed Mr. Tork. It still is. All of this explains why she and I drove to Merrillville, Indiana, yesterday to watch the Monkees (three of the four, anyway) perform at the Star Plaza Theatre. It was a stop on the … [Read more...]
Make mine water
Since going low-carb, I’ve mostly avoided drinking diet pop or making recipes that include artificial sweeteners. Over the past four months, I’ve downed three bottles of Diet Coke and used three small packets of Stevia (a sugar substitute). I’ve also bought and consumed a four-pack of an Atkins chocolate milk-shake product that contained an artificial sweetener, the only packaged low-carb treat that I've tried. Otherwise, except for berries, I have forgone sweet flavors. It could be I’m … [Read more...]
The Tech Guy and low-carb eating
I first heard about low-carb way of eating and the work of Gary Taubes from an unlikely source: Leo Laporte, a.k.a The Tech Guy. Leo lives on the West Coast. Every Saturday and Sunday, he does his Tech Guy radio broadcast; the rest of the week, he records and live-streams tech-oriented net-casts from his studio in Petaluma, California. His network is called TWiT, which stands for "This Week in Technology," the name of his flagship program. I became a fan of Leo when he was one of the … [Read more...]
The reason low-carb diets work
You look trustworthy, so I’ll let you in on something. I’m going to tell you the secret of how a low-carb diet helps a person lose weight. But first a word from our sponsor . . . Oh, wait -- we don’t have a sponsor. I keep thinking I ought to monetize the blog, put up a few discrete blinking ads for Carb-Free Pudding or Miracle Weight-Loss Body Lotion (in five delicious flavors!), or at least add links to my books on Amazon.com (when I get them written), but I have … [Read more...]
The ups and downs of weighing in
In any endeavor, we want confirmation of our success. It's nice if the confirmation comes with a plaque and some folding money, but at the least it needs to be objective. We want something we can show people, something to point to, something more substantial than a feeling of satisfaction. This explains why mobile phones have cameras in them. If you are lucky enough to achieve something -- and let's face it, luck is the major factor -- you can whip out your smart-phone, snap a photo and send … [Read more...]
Remembering my dad
My father was a Flint guy, Great Depression edition – blue-collar even when he was in management, hands-on, patriotic, optimistic, and altogether typical of his generation. As a young man, he played baseball, drank beer, smoked whatever cigarettes he could afford, and helped save the world for democracy. Like his father and his only brother, Dad was an autoworker. All three men worked for Buick, a General Motors division that at its peak employed nearly 30,000 people in Flint, Michigan. Buicks … [Read more...]
Get Rosie a beer
Today, I washed down my frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts (made by the United Steelworkers) with two excellent union-made beers: Schell’s Zommerfest from New Ulm, Minn., a local farming community just under two hours from Minneapolis, and Leinenkugel’s, from Chippewa Falls, Wis. --Manny Herrmann, Choose Union: Raise a Glass for the Working Class, June 16, 2011. I'm not sure what disturbed me the most about this quotation from an AFL-CIO blog: that the United Steelworkers have been … [Read more...]