Quick catch-up over here. too

Apologies for not posting for so long. I posted a short explaination over on the Thrifty Mom blog.

So, the financial news sucks, but the diet news is much better.

I'm down to 168lbs, that's over 150lbs lost. I read about a theory that when a person is on a high fat diet, such as mine, that any excess protein can trigger an insulin response and stall weightloss. I decided to try cutting back my protein, and upping my fat, and, obviously, have had a good response to it!

I'm also doing strength training 4 times a week (crunches, squats, push-ups, free weights) and, by golly, my thighs are getting pretty muscle-y!  LOL!

But here's the best part for anyone who has followed me on my low-carbohydrate diet journey then onto the Paleolithic diet WOE, I went to the doctor for my annual check-up.  It was a blast.

These folks hadn't seen me since my six week post partum (this is my OB I'm talking about, here) check up and I weigh 155lbs LESS now. Also, after getting all the girly stuffs (oh, how we look forward to the boob squishing!) out of the way, I requested that my BP and cholesterol be taken.

Well, my blood pressure was fine and my cholesterol was 136. ONE THIRTY SIX. That's 10pts lower than it's ever been in my life!  Bodog, whom I put on low carb as soon as he came home from hospital, has seen his BP and cholesterol sink to normal.

After eight months of eating fat, meat, eggs, cheese, butter, and v. limited green veg, my cholesterol has IMPROVED.  I would love to have had the whole profile done, but, alas, it costs too much.  Perhaps next year when I've been eating paleo for 20 months.

Right. That's all I have to report today. I'll keep you updated on the diet, the financial situation, etc. Please feel free to join us on the Evil Genius Woman forums where we have a small (so far) but enthusiastic community of dieters.

Also please check out my newest website The Thrifty Mom Dot Com, your one-stop source for all things parenting, dieting, and snarky!  We'll be showcasing our new diet/foodie t-shirts and gifts there soon.

Eat me. No, wait ... I mean, eat yourself.

This hilarious post by Tom Naughton over at Fathead has me still giggling.

It is true when you think about it and I am SO gonna start calling the established nutrition anti-science crowd "The Holy Church of Accepted Advice For Living A Long and Healthy Life".

Skinny Asians and Leaner Pigs

I am constantly fascinated by Twitterers and bloggers, article writers and folks IRL who faithfully regurgitate non-truths and anti-science from the low-fat, high-carb establishment.

I've already had one Tweep storm off in a huff, taking her ball and going home on Twitter because I dared to say that I disagreed with her opinion that overeating causes us to be fat, period, and that furthermore, overeating was a compulsion that we could not control.

(She never explained how I had lost 140lbs if I was labouring under this brain-grip.  I was keen to know.  Thought I had Heroes-like superpowers.)

At any rate, here's two more articles full of bullshit that were Tweeted today:

(NOTE: I do not know these Tweeps, so I do not know what their opinions are on said articles. They may think they're craptacular as well. I'm not saying that they agree, just that these articles might be taken on faith as actual science by the credulous.)

This one, about the Korean rate of obesity being so low is interesting:

"the obesity ratio for Korea was 3.5 percent. Closely trailing Korea at 3.9 percent was Japan, which is the other Asian country in the Western-heavy club. The fact book is based on a survey of people aged 15 or older conducted in 2006 or the latest year available. Switzerland came in third with an overall obesity ratio of 7.7 percent. Norway and Italy came in at 9.0 percent and 10.2 percent, respectively.

Bringing up the rear was the United States which had a chunky ratio of 34.3 percent. Other countries with the highest obesity rates were Mexico (30.0 percent), New Zealand (25.0 percent), Britain (24.0 percent) and Greece (21.9 percent). "

Yow. We're 1/3 fatter than our closest continental European fatties? And Sumo Supersized compared to the asians?  Argh!

But then the article wraps up with this odd statement:

"A Ministry of Strategy and Finance official in charge of dealing with OECD reports said the healthy condition for Koreans and Japanese seems to be due to traditionally vegetarian diets for the Asian countries. "

Eh?  I've always understood the asian cuisine to be mostly veg and meat w/ rice and noodles as a side dish. NOT vegetarian.  In fact, Wikipedia sez of Koren cuisine:

"The consumption of pork and beef increased vastly in Korea in the 1970s. The per-capita consumption of meat was 3.6 kilograms in 1961, which increased to 11 kilograms per person in 1979. The result of this increased meat consumption brought about the increase of bulgogi restaurants which gave the middle class of South Korea the ability to enjoy meat regularly. The consumption of meat rose to 40 kilograms in 1997, while fish consumption was 49.5 kilograms in 1998."

Hmm. Koreans have eaten dog for centuries. I'm pretty sure that's not vegetarian.

Speaking of not vegetarian, here's a smackdown of my fave meat, pork.  It's full of outdated thinking and they start in on the fat-bashing immediately. Wanna bet 89% of the people who read this over breakfast were snarfing a bagel or a bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs?

"whether a meat is red or white isn't the best indication of the type and amount of fat it contains, Brewer says. A serving of chicken from the leg, skin on, contains more saturated fat and about the same amount of cholesterol as the same-sized serving of 95% lean ground beef."

They even invoke the idiotic 'study' about meat=death. *yawn*  You remember that one? Where the meat eaters who died just happened to be the sedentary, overweight, smokers ... but it was that damned red meat whut killed 'em!

Here's an interesting tidbit:

"Pork is leaner today. Several decades ago, the meat industry responded to consumer demand by finding ways to make meat less fatty. The pork industry, in particular, began to breed for leaner pigs. The result, says Ceci Snyder, assistant vice president of the National Pork Board in Des Moines, was that the average pork loin on the market in 1982 was 64% leaner than one in 1970. The fat content of pork has continued to drop -- albeit more slowly -- since then."

So ... wait.

About 40 years ago we all dropped our fat and upped our carbs at the advice of the FDA, and real butter, lard, real cream, etc left our supermarket shelves; all our dairy products became low fat, and we all started nervously watching our fat intake to the point where we demaned they breed leaner livestock?  And at the same time our rates of diabetes and heart disease and obesity began to climb to the percipitous rise they now enjoy?

But fat is bad for us?

As a lolcat would say: ai haz a confoozled

Paleo diet = grapefruit diet? Give me a break!

Our Stupid Article for the Day has been found!

(I thought about doing a Stupid Article Saturday every week, but, honestly, I find stupid diet articles several times a week.  And why wait?  Why delay gratification for snark?!  Let's get at it ...)

WebMD's Worst Diets Ever - diets that don't work.

Uh-huh. Grab your tinfoil hats, folks!  Let's see what Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD, LD has to say!

First paragraph she jumps right on us primal types with this snotty little snippet:

"You've heard of them, maybe even tried them: miraculous-sounding diets that claim to melt off pounds with minimal effort. There are hundreds of these quick-fix diets out there, from the grapefruit diet to the detox diet to the "caveman" diet."

Ohh, burn!  Put us in quotes like the Paleolithic / Primal Way of Eating is a freaky fresh diet some new-age hippie in Cali just pulled out of his homeopathically cleansed arse.  Nope, honey. Been around way longer than every other. Try 2 million years.

Wow, and Ms Dawn Jackson-Blatner (Say that out loud. I guarantee you'll laugh. Sorry ... unnessessary snark. I'm OK now. ... *snort*) is so far off the farkin' mark I can barely see her from here:

"One reason's it's so hard to tell the difference is that even the worst diets will likely result in weight loss, at least initially. But it does little good to lose weight, experts say, if it comes right back.

"Don't be fooled into thinking it is because of some magical food, pill or potion. What causes weight loss is eating fewer calories than you burn," says Dawn Jackson-Blatner, RD, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association (ADA).

WTF? Are real professional people STILL clinging to this insane, untrue and fully disproved notion?!  It is NOT that simple, people. Fat metabolism is a complex, dynamic process. It's NOT just "calories in, calories out".

Brace yourself, there's more from ol' Jackson-Blatner:

"Crazy, unbalanced diets cause weight loss because they are basically low-calorie diets."

Golly bob howdy!  Really?  I my own self have, to date, lost 140lbs on a "crazy unbalanced diet" and am currently losing on 2500-3000 calories a day.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Do I have special DNA altered by space aliens?  Cool!

On to the worst diets. Diet number one is us paleo / primal people (ohh, should I have put that in quotes?)

"1. Diets that focus on only a few foods or food groups (like the cabbage soup diet, grapefruit diet, strict vegan diets, raw food diets, and many low-carb diets). Beware of any diet that rules out entire food groups. People need to eat from a variety of food groups to get all the nutrients they need, says ADA spokeswoman Andrea Giancoli, MPH, RD."

Another little nugget of wisdom from the faux science sector. *rolls eyes*

People.  The 'balanced diet' concept is a fallacy.  Seriously.  We do NOT need grains or legumes or starchy tubers. Our bodies do not require bread, crackers, cookies, cake, corn, rice, oatmeal, potatoes, beans, or peanuts. We ran, hunted, bred, gathered, slept, and raised babies for 2 million years without any of these foods. 
That's a hella long time.  We get every vitamin and mineral, every nutrient our bodies need, from meat and veg.  If we "need a balanced diet" to survive then why aren't we extinct?

o hai, perhaps we are going to be soon!  According to these guys we all just lack willpower:

Yale University's David Katz, MD, author of The Flavor Point Diet, says that while restrictive diets do work initially, they fail over the long haul. You can lose weight on diets that focus on single foods (like cabbage soup), but how much cabbage soup can a person eat? Before long, you grow weary of eating the same foods every day, and cravings for favorite foods lead you back to your former eating behavior.
Keep in mind that all foods can fit into a healthy lifestyle in moderation -- even things like bacon, super-premium ice cream, and chips. And when diets forbid certain foods and dieters envision a life without their favorite treats, those diets usually fail. "Any time you restrict a certain food, it triggers cravings for the forbidden fruit and sets up a restriction-binge cycle," says Blatner. "

Yeah, yeah ... right. Poor us. We all have no control over ourselves whatsoever. *sniffle* and are entirely incapable of saying "Holy cow!  I'm the size of a cow!  If I don't stop this crap, I won't be alive to see my grandchildren!" 

We're all gonna fail without the sage advice and comforting wisdom of the misinformed nutrition industry!  Show me the food pyramid!  Show it to me! *weeps* If you need me I'll be running around, screaming, with my hands in the air!

...
...

Right. Did we get that out of our systems?

Let's look at the truth, shall we?

Thanks to the FDA and the nutrition industry we, as a people, have been nomming more and more carbs and sugar during the last 40 years and correspondingly growing more and more obese whilst opting in for such fun extras as diabetes and heart disease. (If fat is so bad for you, howcome heart disease is skyrocketing when everyone is obsessively watching his fat intake, hmm?)

Many of us are insulin resistant, almost all of us are bombarded with creamy, gooey, flakey, crispy, carby, sugary CRAP all day every day. No wonder we can't stick to any diets. We have become addicted to soda and crisps, to pizza and candy bars.  50 years ago, a delicious treat, eaten AT MOST, once a day, after supper, was a fresh apple pie made from butter, flour, sugar, spices, and tart apples.  Just plain food with the minimum sugar cuz it was expensive.  And it was a special treat.  Things like candy and ice cream was a rare indulgence when you went into town.  You drank water or cider or tea and ate meat and veg the rest of the day.

Nowdays our feet hit the floor and we start sucking down the carbs/sugars. We eat nasty breakfast cereals with scoops of sugar, toaster pastries, jellies on our 2 slices of toast.  We snack all day on crisps and candy and cookies; we suck down sodas and sports drinks and flavoured waters. Even V-8 is loaded with carbs and sugar!  We have dessert after both dinner and supper - we snack in between. We gorge on fast food and worry about the fat. Have you looked at the carb and sugar content of that chinese take-away?!

We are a nation conditioned to eat and stimulated to do so by the carb/sugars we consume. They raise our blood sugar, then crash it, insulin floods in, and we eat. Rinse and repeat, over and over.  All day.  Every day.

You have to break this cycle.

I'm NOT trying to flog the Paleo Way of Eating.  It's not right for many, but it does work.  The truth and the real science is that you can lose weight and keep it off if you quit listening to the nutrition and diet industries.  Stop eating processed foods, cut out most of the carbs and sugars, eat more vegetables (NO, corn and potatoes are not vegetables!), move your body more, get outside in the sunshine without your SPF15.

No, it's not easy to start and there will be some rough patches. There is no magic pill. Like a marriage or like raising a kid, changing the way you eat permanently is tough. You have to have the determination to do it.

But all those things are worth it, doncha think?


Thoughts? Brickbats?  Have you lost weight and kept it off on anything the industry would call a fad diet?  I'd LOVE to hear about it!

Today's funneh

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