Starting Weight = 219.2 lbs. Ending Weight = 220.4 lbs. I gained back a pound this week. (OK, 1.2 pounds, but if you were a true friend, you'd let me say "a pound" and leave it at that.) How did this happen?! The average daily intake statistics provide an explanation. My percent of calories from fat dropped by about 5% and my percent of calories from carbs increased by the same amount. But how did that happen? Easy -- I let it happen. In fact, I did it deliberately. I was conducting … [Read more...]
Lacto-vegetarian lunch — oh my!
Working from home today, I put together a meatless lunch. It consisted of fresh avocado, hummus, mushrooms, and full-fat yogurt with blueberries. The yogurt had active cultures (probiotics), which are something I want to get into my diet more. Here's the nutritional breakdown for the food shown in the photo: Calories = 314 Fat = 23g Carbs = 24g Fiber = 9g Protein = 8g It was a low-cal lunch. Most days, I eat 400 or more calories for lunch. The question is, are 300 calories enough to sustain … [Read more...]
Of mice brains aflame and other travesties
A note to the editors of ScienceDaily -- this is what a high fat human diet looks like. Or it might look like a plate of scrambled eggs with bacon, or a green salad with cheese, avocado, and black olives. What a high-fat human diet does not look like is that pile of buns, pizza, french-fried potatoes, and onion rings that you used to illustrate your story about a recent mouse study. The collection of carbs shown in your photo would choke a moose, never mind a poor little mouse. Oddly, … [Read more...]
My low-carb week in review: March 15-21, 2015
It was a good week. I kept my daily averages to 34 net carbs and just under 2,000 calories, with 73% of my calories coming from fat, all identical to the week before. (If nothing else, I'm consistent!) As a result, I lost almost two pounds. My weight dropped from 229 to 227.2 pounds. For my low-carb reboot, now entering its third week, I'm down 4.8 pounds. There were a couple challenges. On Thursday, we ate out at our favorite Chinese restaurant in the area, which had been closed a year … [Read more...]
My low-carb week in review: March 8-14, 2015
The table here shows my average daily intake of fat, carbs, and protein for the week of March 8 to March 14, 2015. This was the first full week of my low-carb reboot. Not that I ever stopped eating a reduced carbohydrate diet in general, but I 'd gotten a bit lax and allowed some "carb creep." I was probably eating excessive protein, too. As a result, my weight loss that began in 2011 had stopped and then reversed itself. I'd gone from a low of 207 pounds in early 2012 back up to 232 pounds. … [Read more...]
Sugar is never free
I don't eat much sugar anymore, and I especially don't drink sugar, but I don't really see it as the root of all dietary evil, either. Just the root of some dietary evil. Perhaps most. Let's face it. Except for all its calories, sugar is an empty sort of carbohydrate. So I was happy to see The World Health Organization (WHO) take a stand against gorging ourselves to death on sweets. Granted, the stand is more belated than bold, but we have to take what we can get from main-stream health … [Read more...]
Lunch today: low-carb, yes, but is it high-fat?
For lunch today, I made salmon patties, which I ate with some canned spinach, butter, and a few olives. (Yes, canned spinach. I like fresh and frozen spinach, too, but canned spinach is what I ate as a kid -- what Popeye the Sailor ate to get strong -- so I have a soft spot for it. I like it, especially with melting butter on top.) The salmon patties were an experiment. I added a tablespoon of chia seeds to my usual recipe. I wanted to test the chia as a binding agent. It didn't work all that … [Read more...]
Setting the stage for tragedy: changes in the U.S. diet, 1970-2006
In the years 1977-1984, the U.S. government pushed out dietary recommendations to the American people to cut their intake of saturated fats (as in butter, lard and red meat) and increase their intake of carbohydrates and fiber (as in grains, fruits and starchy vegetables) and of "healthy" fats (as in poly and monounsaturated vegetable oils). The goal was to prevent heart disease. The theory was, dietary fat -- especially saturated animal fat -- causes a build up of fats in the blood, leading … [Read more...]
What is a low carb diet?
When I say that I follow a low carbohydrate way of eating, what do I mean? When you say it, what do you mean? I suspect we might all mean something a little different -- or even a lot different -- if we were to get down to specific foods we include or avoid, or to the number of grams of carbs we consume per day. The title of my blog -- "Life After Carbs" -- implies that I don't eat any carbs at all, but of course that's not true. The title ought to be interpreted as meaning, "Life after … [Read more...]
No hot dogs here
July 4, 2011 Listen to this post. Every 4th of July we gather to celebrate a special birthday — that of my father-in-law, Frank. ("Let me be Frank with you" is his self-introductory joke, and he has plenty to follow it.) He was born on this date in Italy in 1922. When my wife and her many siblings were small, they believed that the Independence Day fireworks were meant to honor their dear papa. Frank readily encouraged this belief. For the last five or six years, the party menu has revolved … [Read more...]