Just because, here was my weigh-in on the first.

01 February 2012 at [...]]]> I’m about this close to putting WordPress through the nearest wall. Not major shit, but it dumps in my lap right when everyone in the household except the cats is annoying me–and give the little fuckers time, they’ll think of something.

Just because, here was my weigh-in on the first.

01 February 2012 at 209.5 pounds

I was going to do up a whole beginning-of-month thang with the weigh-in and pictures and stuff but I don’t think that, as an over-200-pound person, five and a half pounds is going to look all that different on me. I think I might do photo updates every ten or twenty pounds instead, rather than going by calendar date. More likely twenty. Also, I was way busy on the first because the other adult in the house’s tax refund came in and we’ve kind of been doing the Kid In A Candy Store routine. (He put some aside in savings and hopefully we won’t spend it all.) Which has meant going out a lot. I don’t get how people can be constantly on the go with work and school and after-school activities and a social life. I have been more or less alone* for so long that my tolerance to that level of stimulation has declined alarmingly. What you guys pass off as normal would leave me in the fetal position on my bed, either sobbing my eyes out or catatonic. Alas.

Anyway. Today’s weigh-in:

04 February 2012 at 208 pounds

I have actually been quite naughty since the surgery. Relatively speaking. (I would still put your average SAD eater or low-fat dieter to shame.) I suspect a lot of my frayed-nerves thing today is me trying to readjust to a lower-carb intake. It ain’t pretty. I even went to Noodles & Co Thursday with my daughter–and I could have gotten a salad. I really could have. But I was craving noodles in the worst way. Right down to envisioning what it would feel like to bite into them. Sorry about the visual. I regretted it immediately afterward. I got sleepy. You know all that crap that was circulating on the Internet after this last Thanksgiving where they were saying it was the carbs making people sleepy rather than the tryptophan? IT’S TRUE, YO. I’ve had this happen to me twice now that I’ve noticed, and I’m sure it’s happened way more times than that but my tiredness got blamed on something else.

And part of the trouble has, as usual, been the kitchen. I am so angry about that. I am actually fairly fucking fed up with telling the other adult in the house anything because he doesn’t listen. It’s bad enough I only have two people to talk to in my entire damn offline life, and one of them’s not even ten yet. But to have the adult blatantly not listen to stuff I have told him over and over has got me borderline homicidal and you better bet I would attempt to use the He Needed Killin defense in court. Watch your cooking temperature so the grease doesn’t spatter everywhere, asshole. Use a plate as your spoon or spatula rest, fuckstick. Don’t stack plates on top of glasses on the countertop, rectum-breath. What the FUCK is wrong with people? I’M the one who has to chisel all this shit up and our kid is the one who has to live with the mess til I get around to it.

And it’s really tough cooking anything when every dish that gets used gets given its own place on the countertop rather than it all stacked in a reasonable way (i.e., NOT plate on top of glasses–bearing a startling resemblance to the Space Needle, only lots less safe). So you start taking shortcuts for meals and next thing you know you’re backsliding.

I’m glad wheat and sugar make me feel like shit. I still occasionally indulge the wheat, but I have to be SO good about both now because they are self-correcting. I have that going for me, at least.

Oh, and because someone on my Facebook page wasn’t sure: I’m off all the meds now. Done with the antibiotic, done with the painkillers and I have much less numbness in my tongue now. We’re playing fuck-me games with me getting my followup appointment, but my surgeon does a lot of cancer surgeries and so I don’t begrudge him. One of these days I’ll get in and that’s all I care about. It’s just followup anyway. No big.

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*Technically I am not alone but when the people you see have the same two people every day for six or seven years and you’ve been going to a homeschool gym class with your daughter for about four or five months and only NOW has anyone bothered starting a conversation with you (and you’ve tried starting them instead and it’s been pretty much fruitless in terms of interaction away from the class), it feels pretty isolating.

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31 December 2008, frontal view, weight unknown

31 December [...]]]> Want you to take a look at these four photographs of me. These are only thumbnails so you will have to click on them to see the entire image (each will open in a new window or tab). Pay close attention to the dates.

31 December 2008, frontal view, weight unknown	31 December 2008, profile view, weight unknown
01 January 2012, profile view, abs relaxed	01 January 2012, face, profile view

I have no idea what my weight was in the first two pictures. But at the time I took them*:

• I was suffering from a lot of edema, especially (for some reason) in my right foot, and edema = more water weight; and
• I definitely weighed a good bit more than I weigh now.

And yet, if you take a close look at where my gut ends relative to my boobs (yeah, I said to look at my boobs–don’t get too excited there), taking into account that the shirt kind of skims off in the first two photos, it looks pretty much the same. Also, I included a picture of my face from the beginning of this month so you can see that the jawline doesn’t look terribly different either. I’m still not sure at this point how much of that is fat and how much is just the crappy jawline (the under-jaw area has always hung down a bit, I’m sorry to say), but still.

It kind of makes you wonder where the weight loss came from, huh? Sort of makes you wonder if the sugar junkies are right that all you ever lose on low-carb is water weight.

Well, first off, if I were carrying around forty pounds of water weight (and that’s about how much weight I’ve lost from my known heaviest), and then lost it all from my legs, I would know. Take a look at that first picture because I’m wearing my nasty old baggy capris. (I just got rid of those at Goodwill the other day and I WAS SO FUCKING HAPPY.) See any spare tires around my ankles? No, you do not. They’re thicker there than they were supposed to be, but they weren’t that bad. Not forty pounds’ worth of bad, for sure.

Second off, when I took that first photo, I had this problem that every time I was in a seated position and leaned over between my knees to tie my sneakers, I would knock some of the air out of my lungs. These days I can do it with no problem at all. And my tummy is squishier than it used to be–which feels really weird, by the way.

Third off, it is much easier for me to bathe myself than it used to be. I take up a noticeable amount less space in the tub if I’m taking a bath, and when I’m in the shower it’s easier to reach everything. Those of you who’ve lost a lot of weight know exactly what I’m talking about.

I suspect that what’s needed now is an exercise program. It’s possible that strenuous movement a few times a week will increase the amount of fatty acids I release and burn, and if I keep on top of my carb intake I won’t be storing as much fat on the front end in the first place. So that could accelerate the fat loss somewhat. But more importantly I need to be doing stuff that strengthens my core muscles. They have been in sad shape ever since I gave birth to my son almost sixteen years ago (OMFG), and they need help. I’m lucky I haven’t destroyed my back, and I need to take action before that does happen.

I have a feeling that at that point we’ll start seeing a lot more inches lost just from the muscles tightening up. Which would not hurt my feelings at all. I am not doing this just so I can keep looking like a fatass even when I’m not anymore, you know?

This is not even getting into the change in my random sugars, from somewhere in the 120s or 130s down into the 80s less than an hour after eating. Not enough data to tell me I’m really doing OK (and I got a fasting sugar of 100 when I went in for surgery–happy to say that the Ohio State University Medical Center is now checking ALL their patients’ blood sugars, and good for them!–but slightly higher fasting sugar is normal for some people on low-carb), but it’s encouraging by itself.

I mean, I can’t remember the last time my fingers resembled sausage casings–another occasional symptom of the edema that has plagued me for years. I’m feeling pretty damned good about the direction I’m taking.

Point is, don’t get discouraged if your weight’s not moving or if your waistline doesn’t seem to be shrinking. Your clothes could still fit differently and you might still feel differently from the inside. Pay attention to everything that is going on with you, and listen to your body. Eventually your weight will catch up too.

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*Yeah, I took them! I have a Gorillapod and I just hooked my camera up to my daughter’s toy kitchen and set the timer. Ha!

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In other news: Ho-hum.

28 January 2012 at 207.5 pounds

I’m recovering OK from the surgery earlier this month. Couple nights ago I noticed a shift in sensation on the tip of [...]]]> I just got a trackback from Lew Rockwell in the past day or so. BWAH. Wait’ll he gets a load of me.

In other news: Ho-hum.

28 January 2012 at 207.5 pounds

I’m recovering OK from the surgery earlier this month. Couple nights ago I noticed a shift in sensation on the tip of my tongue, and suddenly I can feel more and it’s gotten a bit easier to talk. I can talk anyway, and the differences are subtle enough that a stranger wouldn’t notice I was having issues (I sound like a bit of a mushmouth anyway thanks to my longstanding speech and orthodontic problems), but I definitely noticed. So, yay for that.

But I’ve only been off the antibiotic a few days and by the end of my dosing period, my insides were beginning to behave as if I were eating gluten. Which I haven’t been. Even with my illicit sour-candy eating and so on, I’ve still been staying away from the wheat. I guess the bugs in my innards are just mad at me, and it’ll take some time to fix.

Well, so the other day the other adult in the household was headed to Kroger and asked me if I needed anything. Yogurt, I said to him, thinking he’d come home with my usual Greek Gods full-fat plain.

…I looked in the fridge after he got back and it was Kroger’s organic label. LOW-FAT.

…

Is it too much to ask that when I have been preaching for months–nay, years by now–about the virtues of full-fat over low-fat dairy, and when this asshole has seen me selecting full-fat plain Greek yogurt, that he not get me a type that is thickened with starch? Seriously. Next time you’re at Kroger, if it’s in your area, go to the health-nut section and look at their store-brand organic yogurt. Oh, it’s organic starch. I don’t care! It’s useless crap! There’s no starch in milk, people!

I ate it anyway–am still working on it, in fact–because I need the bugs. I just hope I’m actually getting some and they’ll do me some good. Holy crap. I’m not happy about that. I’m not exactly raging either, but we have had longstanding issues around here with him not doing what I ask and paying more attention to frivolous shit where I am concerned than with helping me get my actual needs met. The one area in which he excels is making sure I have insurance coverage, and the insurance company is doing all the actual work and he should have had me insured eight years ago. Now I’m having to play catchup. Thanks.

Yeah, I’m ranting after all. Just… If you yourself are not low-carbing, but your significant other is (we’re not actually significant others, but in a lot of ways that’s how the relationship is shaped) and you know they have a family history of diabetes? Don’t be a stumbling block and don’t be an enabler of bad habits. Just don’t do it. It’s just the same, ethically, as if you’d hauled off and punched them in the nose. This idiot is going to wind up having to settle for visitation because I don’t see how this situation is sustainable long-term. I am getting better at sticking up for myself and holding myself accountable, but I don’t need to be tripped up in the process.

OK, enough of that. In other news, I’m debating whether I want to maintain a pictorial record of my progress once a month, or once a quarter, or what. What do you think? I’m coming due for another picture set soon. I hate doing these things. I have more thoughts about that but I think I’ll put them in another post.

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I tell ya: if nothing else, the State of Colorado’s latest shenanigans have finally beat the correct spelling of dietitian into my thick skull. I had been spelling it wrong all this time. Thank you, State of Colorado! Nuthin’ but love for ya! *mwah*

wait a minute… What am I saying???

Along with pushing [...]]]>

I tell ya: if nothing else, the State of Colorado’s latest shenanigans have finally beat the correct spelling of dietitian into my thick skull. I had been spelling it wrong all this time. Thank you, State of Colorado! Nuthin’ but love for ya! *mwah*

wait a minute… What am I saying???

Along with pushing batshit crazy unhealthy diets and looking like they could stand to take their own damn advice–or maybe they do and, in that case, they serve as a warning to us all to do no business with them–dietitians have apparently gotten onto this trip that they cannot possibly practice their profession unless Big Daddy Guvmint* steps in and beats up everyone who looks at them cross-eyed. I heard the beginning rumbles of this diarrhea puddle all the way from California a while back and now, apparently, it is spreading to points east.

In short: the State of Colorado is ruminating over a bill that would require licensing for practicing dietitians within the state. And anyone performing dietitian-type tasks would be fined for practicing without a license.

Understandably, given my interests and therefore some of the friends I’ve met online, I saw much brouhaha about this yesterday on my Facebook feed. Finally, late last night, I went digging on Google to see what I could come up with.

First off, it’s a bit difficult to find info about this on Google outside the blogosphere. I didn’t even bother looking up the blogs on Google. I wanted a news story, and there really aren’t any. That’s kind of odd. So I did the logical thing next and looked up the Colorado Dietetic Association. Here is their position paper, and you will need a PDF reader to load it.

Next I looked up the bill number and had a bit better luck; there’s always some government site with bill texts and summaries available. Here’s the text of Colorado bill HB 12-1060, also in PDF form.

Now, inasmuch as dietitians ever need to be licensed, and we could argue about this all day long and probably still hit an impasse–most of the bill seems reasonable-ish. I guess**. What concerns me, at least on a first half-assed glance-through, is this language right here, starting at page 13 and line 22 of the document, paragraph (e). This is one of the classes of people exempted from the dietitian licensing requirements–in other words, they’re not required to get licensed:

A person or retailer that does not purport to be a licensed dietitian from furnishing oral or written general nonmedical nutrition information related to food, food materials, or dietary supplements, if the person is not engaged in the practice of dietetics, including medical nutrition therapy and the nutrition care process[.]

Oh yay! I bet you’re thinking. So we can still blog about nutrition and that’s OK!

But wait a minute. Here’s the central problem: DEFINE “NONMEDICAL NUTRITION INFORMATION.”

Oh shit! I hope you’re thinking now. THERE AIN’T NO SUCH THANG AS NONMEDICAL NUTRITION INFORMATION! Because–right. Nutrition affects how the body works! Therefore, anything it does to the body is… drumroll… MEDICAL! That’s the ENTIRE BASIS of dietetic practice, right?

NOW you get it.

Honestly, I am not sure how this would work with blogs. No one can say I am practicing dietetics in the state of Colorado even if I keep on with the blog the way it is, because I’m based in Ohio. I get on the Internet from Ohio, and my hosting service is based in Utah. But there are health bloggers based in Colorado; this fairly well-known low-carb blogger is one of them. What will this bill mean for Jamie if it becomes law?

And this is personal to me in another way.

See, according to the United States government, hysterectomy is the second-most common surgery performed on women in the U.S. One of the stated reasons for hysterectomy being performed is abnormal menstrual bleeding.

The women in my family have seemingly been plagued by all manner of female pathologies resulting in removal of the uterus. My mom’s had one, her mom had one, and I don’t think either of my maternal aunts are still intact. Never heard about the “uterine status” of my grandmother’s sisters but I’d be surprised if they didn’t meet the same fate.

When my cycle returned after the birth of my second child, it looked for a while as if I would be carrying on this dubious family tradition of my female line. And really, at first, I’d had so much social and health trouble during my pregnancy with her, and was so sure I’d never want to have another kid that I’d contemplated tubal ligation after she was born. Never went through with it, and now I’m more open to possibilities depending on how my life goes. I probably still won’t have another baby, but I want the choice.

And for a while it looked as if I wouldn’t have that choice. I would bleed so heavily the first day to three days of my period that often I’d have to break out my rag bag (literally, a bunch of old washcloths that I used for general cleaning around the house–and I laundered them too) and stay home for fear of accidents. I had let my Medicaid coverage lapse and after the way my doctors had behaved about my thirty-pounds-in-six-weeks postpartum weight gain and my questions about my thyroid, I wouldn’t have trusted them anyway. I could have gone to Planned Parenthood but I was scared to death they’d find something wrong (yes, I know that was irrational, thank you). And I went on like that for something like three years.

It was thanks to the Weston A. Price Foundation that I was finally pointed in the right direction. Something they said about vitamin A being important for reproductive health prompted me to take a critical look at my prenatal and postpartum diet and to realize that even with my liking for carrots and sweet potatoes, perhaps that was not enough for me to get sufficient vitamin A. Within a few months of my supplementing A from fish liver oil, my periods normalized.

I have since heard from another low-carber friend (not Jamie) that she has had the same experience with improvement of her menstrual cycle since she heard my story and tried the supplementation herself. And I have recently learned that the link between low vitamin A levels in women and heavy menstrual bleeding has been known since at least 1977, and I also read that vitamin A is now given in developing countries to women with heavy bleeding, though I can’t find that reference just now. (If you search “vitamin A menorrhagia” on Google, you’ll dig up some stuff.)

If laws like Colorado’s were in place all over the country–or worse, if there were a federal version–there wouldn’t have been a WAPF website for me to find. I wouldn’t have known about vitamin A being important in reproductive health; up to that point all I’d ever heard was vitamin A is good for your eyes and might help with immune function. And I probably would have gotten up the guts to get back on Medicaid and try to find out what was wrong, only to have them yank out my uterus because what’s a stupid scumbag welfare bitch going to do with another baby anyway***.

Would have really sucked had Mister Right ever come along and had I ever gotten my act together, huh?

You have to wonder how many women didn’t get lucky like me and had major surgery to remove a major organ (the uterus puts out hormones just like the ovaries do, and cutting it out interferes with circulation too, not to mention a woman’s sex life) when all they had to do was pop a vitamin capsule once a day and they would have been fine.

Even if dietitians gave out this specific type of advice about vitamin A, which I am having a hard time believing? I would have needed insurance to go see one. How many dietitians take Medicaid? Fuck if I know. I certainly didn’t have the money to go paying a private insurer. I would have been stuck anyway.

And that, boys and girls, is what we’re in for if bloggers are not allowed to talk about how health is affected by nutrition anymore. Weight loss is nice, but you don’t want your future health and fate to rest entirely on the whims of a profession which is funded by these assholes. Dietitians need to spend less time harassing diet bloggers and more time losing their own damn weight. All I’m saying.

Colorado folks can register their displeasure at this attempt at dietitian monopoly here.

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*I don’t like the phrase “nanny government.” I am tired of every damn bad thing that happens in this country being blamed on a female figure of some type or another. Also, the nanny is there taking care of you because your fucking parents can’t be bothered to raise their own damn kid. If we have a nanny government it’s because the people who are supposed to be taking care of this country are not pulling their weight. If you don’t like us having a nanny government then maybe you should take a good hard look at your own life and the bad anti-civic behavior that you and people you know are guilty of, and start thinking about making some changes. Besides, any authority figure backed with really big guns and nuclear bombs doesn’t scream “nanny” to me. It screams “Daddy is home from work and heard about you shitting in the dog’s supper dish. Here comes the belt!”

***Oh, you only think society doesn’t see us that way. Keep dreaming, Sunshine. (I wasn’t actually on TANF, but as far as most Americans are concerned, any anti-poverty program is welfare.)

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Aw Ma, do I gotta?

Well, I guess I should behave as if I live in consensus reality. That includes occasional commentary on stuff that hits the news. And it beats the hell out of Jimmy’s interview with Nutty Anti-Low-Carb Person.

All righty then. For those of you who still think we’re at war [...]]]>

Aw Ma, do I gotta?

Well, I guess I should behave as if I live in consensus reality. That includes occasional commentary on stuff that hits the news. And it beats the hell out of Jimmy’s interview with Nutty Anti-Low-Carb Person.

All righty then. For those of you who still think we’re at war with the Soviets because you have been living in an underground bunker for the last fifty years, we now have cable television and one of the channels available is about pretty much nothing but food. And they have cooking shows. And the star of one of those cooking shows is one Paula Deen from Savannah, Georgia, who has become notorious for cooking everything in butter–including, apparently, sticks of butter. (Or maybe that’s exaggeration. I haven’t been following her show, because I don’t give a sweet shit, despite the fact that she hails from one of my very favorite cities EVAR.) Now it transpires that she was diagnosed type 2 diabetic three years ago, and is just now going public about it because she has worked out some sort of endorsement deal with a pharmaceutical company to hawk diabetes meds.

Commence collective eyeball-rolling from all the animal-food-o-phobes who JUST KNEW all that butter-eating was going to make Ms. Deen sick one day. Examples:

Dr. Michael Smith of WebMD: “She never shies away from her love of all things fatty. Needs more butter, ya’ll!! Followed by that wonderful laugh. But in the back of my mind, I always feared that her story would take this all too common turn.”

Chris from Medad News: “Paula ‘put a burger and bacon and a fried egg between two donuts’ Deen rumored to have type 2 diabetes? It would have been more shocking if she didn’t.”

Joan Rivers: “Paula Deen and a stick of butter is kind of like Melissa and me. Sooner or later we’re going to kill each other.”

Steve Barnes of the Table Hopping column in the Albany, NY Times-Union (who, by the way, is very low down on my personal list of food writers whose personal habits I should emulate–check out his picture): “I am opposed to independently owned restaurants being required to print nutritional information on their menus… Still, I think it’s in their best interest to develop lower-calorie dishes that are also lower in fat and sodium, and to let their customers know such options exist.”

Karen Stabiner of the Los Angeles Times: “Paula Deen came out last week. The cookbook author and television personality, known for her enthusiasm for high-fat and fried foods, has been a closet diabetic for three years — and for the moment, she’s the chef we love to hate, having seduced us with unhealthful recipes on the one hand while she checked her blood sugar with the other… [snip] In the battle between healthcare reality and fantasy, Paula Deen is small potatoes (steamed, skins on, no butter)…”

Sarah O’Leary of HuffPo: “Marketing mixes and Type II Diabetes can’t be fixed, much to Ms. Deen’s chagrin, with a sweet smile and pound of butter.”

Some of these good souls have been intelligent enough to at least give Deen’s sugar intake equal press time with her fat intake. But over and over again I hear tired references to her butter intake being the chief element to blame for her disease.

I am not going to get into a big tirade here about how stupid people think you can raise your blood sugar by eating a stick of butter. I mean, IF you could finish the stick of butter in the first place (and you must eat it all by itself, no breading or added sugar allowed), this claim is so easy to test. Don’t eat past midnight the day you test this. Get up, don’t eat breakfast, don’t drink anything, and take a fasting blood sugar with a glucose meter. Eat that stick of butter. Shit, eat a tablespoon of it. Eat or drink nothing else for an hour afterward. Test your sugar again. I will be very, very, VERY surprised if your blood sugar has gone up at all. If it has gone up, it probably hasn’t gone up more than ten points, and then I’d be wondering what the hell your liver is doing. (The liver is known to dump sugar into your bloodstream from time to time. See item 8 here.)

But you get the idea. The claim that butter causes diabetes can be checked. If a food really contributes to diabetes then it should be sending your blood sugar all over the map because diabetes of either type is a disorder of blood sugar metabolism, either because you make no insulin (type 1/”juvenile”) or because you can’t respond to your insulin (type 2/”adult-onset”). Fat has nothing to do with this, because fat isn’t sugar.

Some folks in the low-carb community are leery of combining fat and sugar because they say that makes saturated fat dangerous in the body. I think sugar can aid in the storage of dietary saturated fat in your fat cells, so you could potentially gain more weight by combining the two. But at the end of the day you need saturated fat to be healthy, and your body likes you to eat more than it can produce. And you don’t need sugar. So to me the combination of the two isn’t an issue. Just don’t do it. See? Simple. (Didn’t say “easy,” said “simple.”)

And actually, I doubt that combining saturated fat and sugar is dangerous per se. Actually? I’m suspicious that the reason Paula Deen was diagnosed with diabetes at age sixty-one–instead of at forty, as my mother was, or all these poor kids getting it under the age of 20–was because she was eating all that fucking butter.

Let me elucidate a bit.

• Paula Deen was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, so we hear, around the age of sixty-one. Not fifteen, not twenty, not forty. Sixty-one. Bit more of a normal age for “adult onset” diabetes.
• We weren’t hearing a lot of stories about Deen getting sick before this. Believe you me, if she were having issues with her blood sugar, we’d have heard about them, because everyone was looking forward to that little trainwreck. Deen has been making enough money over the past decade to go to the doctor for annual checkups. Doctors are becoming quite a bit more vigilant about checking blood sugar, and they tend to be extra-careful with celebrities. So I think they caught this disease process in Deen right about the time she transitioned from pre-diabetic to diabetic, as opposed to her going ten years with diabetes and no diagnosis.
• Most people who get type 2 diabetes are not going around eating bacon cheeseburgers with Krispy Kreme (or whatever kind of) donuts as the bun. Or deep-fried sticks of butter. Or Oreo-stuffed chocolate-chip cookies. My mother certainly never ate things like that, and she went diabetic twenty years younger than Deen.

Something was keeping Deen from going diabetic at age ten. Something kept protecting her through all the excesses of her twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties. That something, in fact, protected her despite her greater-than-average consumption of the worst sugary crap possible. And if doctors, scientists, and celebrity diet goo-roos had an honest bone in all their bodies put together, they’d be asking why this blatant dietary miscreant got away with her bullshit for so very long.

HMMMM.

Going back to my mother, also a Southerner and given to eating (her area’s version of) Southern cuisine: Mom has spent most of her adult life in poverty. Her personality’s even more difficult than mine to deal with and I’ve been poor most of my adult life as well, so I haven’t been able to help her. Can’t speak for my brothers and one of them has been dead for over a year now. So, that’s Mom’s situation. So Mom has never really been able to afford large amounts of butter. As with other poor Southern people, she resorts to margarine instead, and as far as most of the South is concerned, butter and margarine are pretty much the same thing. (My dad even argues that Country Crock tastes better than butter. I think Dad was born with his taste buds on backwards.)

Also, being poor, Mom eats some cheap cuts of meat, such as hamburger–but she can’t afford large amounts of it. As with other poor people generally, she stretches her food dollar with cheap starches like rice and pasta. On top of that, rice is an ethnic food in her area of the country, giving her even more reason to eat it.

On top of that, while Southerners have never completely bought in to all the “healthy food” notions the USDA tries to cram down this country’s collective throat, they did long ago substitute Crisco for lard. A few holdouts still use lard, but most have transitioned over. I don’t think I ever tasted lard til I’d grown up and left home, and if I did, I didn’t know I was eating it and I got it less frequently than once a year. I never saw it in the pantries of my mother, my grandparents, or any of my other relatives. My family also makes extensive use of soybean oil in their cooking, especially deep-frying.

Lots of starch, no butter, not enough meat, lots of trans fats and polyunsaturated oils. Does this sound familiar? It should, if you’re not a blind snobby classist twit. It’s how poor people eat all over the United States today. Now who has the highest rates of diabetes of all the social classes? I dunno… take a look.

In light of all this, I don’t think Paula Deen’s hawking of butter, lard, meat, and cheese is going to do the greatest damage to her fans. I think a combination of her hawking a diabetes drug (none of which are entirely safe–even metformin, recommended by Dr. Atkins when he was alive, depletes B12 and folate) and retconning her recipes to be “healthier” is going to be the real problem. Because in the end, what we’ll be looking at is a Paula Deen repertoire that is heavy on starch, lacking in butter, cutting back on the meat and upping the “vegetable” oil (or, just as bad, canola).

And when that happens, to whom will Southerners turn to help them out of their dietary tailspin?

Paula Deen is missing a tremendous opportunity here, and I’m sorry to see it.

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21 January 2012 at 207.5 pounds

Well, honestly, I haven’t been on the straight and narrow with the carbs. I was straighter and narrower than someone on the Standard American Industrial Diet, but I was [...]]]> Nothing like a crappy appetite due to a lack of crapping to keep one on the straight and narrow.

21 January 2012 at 207.5 pounds

Well, honestly, I haven’t been on the straight and narrow with the carbs. I was straighter and narrower than someone on the Standard American Industrial Diet, but I was trying to use sour candies to keep my saliva gland going (turned out the candy wasn’t sour enough) and didn’t want to mess myself up with maltitol. It’s a toss-up really. They were sour gummies and had a good bit of gelatin in them and I think that’s why their carb count wasn’t through the roof.

On the other paw I’ve been pretty good about wheat avoidance. I won’t pretend I have been perfect about it because I’ve eaten at restaurants a couple times and you and I both know they love nothing better than to cut all that good food with wheat and soybeans. Yuck. But I avoid wheat enough. If I know it’s wheat, I don’t eat it. Amazing how my insides are so much calmer without it, and that wasn’t all the Percocet putting my GI tract to sleep. I was seeing benefits from wheat-avoidance before the surgery–which happened 11 days into the month, just as a point of reference.

Years ago I had tried the blood type diet for type Os, which still lets you eat grain* but not wheat. Just from that I think I lost about ten pounds or so. No serious reduction in carbs–in fact I never saw an amaranth pancake I didn’t like, during that time. Dr. Davis is on to something, whether people want to admit it or not.

Still. Slowly but surely. I’m kind of tired of slowly. Surely. But we’re getting there, in both a healing and a weight-loss sense. I still have numb spots on my tongue, and the Perc every six hours wasn’t so hot so I’m back to every four, but I function, which is good. I could use more energy, but one goal at a time.

Isn’t that always the way, though?

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*Let me get a few details straight here because, unlike most people who talk shit about Peter D’Adamo, I have actually read some of his books. I think trying to follow his protocol 100 percent will give you a raging case of OCD, and his protocols become more detailed and more OCD-ish the more recently they have been published. That said:

It is OK to disagree with the guy on scientific grounds, assuming you have better grounds than invoking “everybody knows” arguments or pointing out his lack of an MD. But holy shit, quit making shit up. I don’t know about your local public library system, but mine carries quite a few of his titles. It costs you nothing to look for yourself.

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OK, here’s a timeline so far.

January 11: Surgeon went digging around in my lower jaw to get a rock out of my head.

January 13: Woke up in major pain because I’d gotten cocky because I had not [...]]]>

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OK, here’s a timeline so far.

January 11: Surgeon went digging around in my lower jaw to get a rock out of my head.

January 13: Woke up in major pain because I’d gotten cocky because I had not severely hurt right out of surgery, nor the day after surgery, so I thought I could go easy on the Percocet, when actually the anesthesia had not worn off all the way yet. NEVER AGAIN.

January 15: Finally was able to go Number Two-o-o after four days of nothing and a couple doses of Colace. Not being able to go Number Two-o-o is one of the side-effects of Percocet. Being in awful pain and being a huge fucking grouch are side-effects of NOT taking Percocet as directed, post-surgery. You see my dilemma here: be full of shit, or be impossible to be around. I finally resolved that little, erm, impasse. Thank you, Colace. You love me more than Percy does. Mwah.

Same day: Realized I was experiencing dry mouth and that it likely coincided with the Percocet because when I would hurt I would also drool like crazy, and after the meds kicked in, no more drooling. Looked up Perc on Google. Bingo. Not a side-effect they harp a lot about, but still a side-effect.

GEE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE IF MY SALIVA GLAND SURGEON WOULD HAVE WARNED ME ABOUT THIS. At least things seem to be healing well, still.

January 16: Finally achieved a pain-free wake-up after setting the alarm clock on my phone to go off every four hours overnight. Switched to half a Percocet for my daytime doses in hopes that I could still have pain control but not be so zombie-ish. So far, it’s working. Also, I pooed again. YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW THAT ABOUT ME, DIDN’T YOU.

We’ll be on half-Percs until either (1) I run out or (2) I start getting sleepy on the half-dose. There is no cross-scoring so I will just stretch out dose intervals at that point. If I still get sleepy I will just quit the Perc and put up with whatever discomfort is left over.

In the midst of all this I have had zero energy and have even–gasp!–taken naps. And eating has been catch as catch can. With that, I’ve still done fairly well but I’m not sure I’d trust a scale til I’d gone Number Two-o-o three or four days in a row. I have a feeling Colace is about to become the best buddy that Percocet has already been for most of the past week. Oh well.

So this is why nothing, and I mean NOTHING, has been going on here. I update Facebook when I feel like joking about bacon. That’s been about it.

I have also been invited to listen to a podcast by Jimmy Moore wherein he interviews one of my very favorite anti-low-carb people in the whole wide world–not invited by Jimmy, who doesn’t care who listens to his podcasts as long as they get something useful out of it, but by one of my blog readers. She’s curious to know my opinion. I am not sure I want to put myself through that much torture this soon after a stranger dug around in my lower jaw. I’m actually not sure I want to put myself through that much torture anytime, but I’ll think about it some more.

You can probably expect a weigh-in on Saturday whether I trust the scales or not. Slow blogs are boring.

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I had this condition in my left submandibular (“under the lower jaw”) saliva gland. It was about 6mm by 6mm, or about a quarter-inch in diameter. The saliva duct, [...]]]> Those of you on my Facebook page are aware that I had surgery on Wednesday. In case the rest of you aren’t aware, here you go.

I had this condition in my left submandibular (“under the lower jaw”) saliva gland. It was about 6mm by 6mm, or about a quarter-inch in diameter. The saliva duct, meanwhile, is about 1mm to 1.5mm in diameter. Not a good fit. The surgeon did his best to catch it with an endoscope anyway, but it was nuthin’ doin’. So I have lovely stitches under my tongue now, and am hopped up on Percocet and Advil because I tried flying with just the Advil and you wouldn’t like me on just Advil right now. It ain’t pretty. OW.

Unfortunately Percocet has the unwelcome side-effect of slowing down the lower GI tract. Not to be crass, but I have been full of shit since Wednesday. I at least have also not been eating much (I could, I just haven’t wanted to), so I’m not THAT backed up, and a lot of it has been meat and fat and broth, so there probably isn’t much waste anyway. (Contrary to vegan propaganda, if you have a proper amount of stomach acid, you have zero trouble breaking down animal protein–and you tend to use a lot of it, too.) But I’ve also been noshing on my black-bean-and-cocoa birthday cake (something like this), so I’ve still got some stuff to clear.

Not even the coffee is clearing me. That’s pretty sad.

So I’m taking a break from the whole weigh-in thing this week, til I literally get my shit straightened out. I’ve got a few tricks to try and if they don’t work I’m hitting me some Colace.

Have fun getting that visual out of your heads, kids. See ya later.

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07 January 2012 at 210 pounds

Food record for the day:

Also, it’s interesting that I seem to be sleeping better. [...]]]> From this point on I think I’ll be doing this weekly, every Saturday like I was doing in the previous incarnation of this blog. Here’s today’s weigh-in.

07 January 2012 at 210 pounds

Food record for the day:

Also, it’s interesting that I seem to be sleeping better. I’m not surprised but it’s still interesting. I have yet to get blackout shades for my bedroom and there’s still too much light coming in the one window. I had put aluminum foil over the other one thanks to the neighbors doing rehabbing on their second floor and not turning off the lamp at night. They’re done now but I’ve left it up. We never open that blind anyway. But the other one still lets in light from the street. Despite that, I have much less trouble falling asleep and several bothersome symptoms I had been suffering at night seem to have disappeared.

Yesterday I think I hit upon something else that might help. I got unusually sleepy and wondered what the heck was up, then remembered I’d gone for a walk with my daughter. So when I get around to adopting a regular exercise schedule I think that’ll be another nail in the coffin of my insomnia.

Could explain why my headaches seem to be improving, too. I’ve woken up several mornings in the past week afraid that a migraine was brewing, but after I got up and moved around and had some coffee, I was fine. Very NOT like my experiences in the past couple months or so.

Hey, I’ll take it. Not 250 anymore, better sleep, and fewer headaches. Low-carb is SO unhealthy.

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First I decided [...]]]>

I mentioned on day one that I had estimated my bodyfat percentage at 45%. I also mentioned I would write a post later on how I calculated that number. I do not promise utmost accuracy but here is the method I used in case anyone else wants to play with it.

First I decided that for now, my goal weight is 140. But I don’t just want to weigh 140. I want to be at about a 15% bodyfat as well. Then I realized that’d be a useful way to guesstimate what my bodyfat percentage is now. Dr. Michael Eades has said in at least one of his books that we tend to lose a bit of lean mass if we’ve started out very fat because some of that lean mass came from lugging lots of weight around. But if you follow a dietary pattern that allows for plentiful fat and protein, it’s difficult to say how much lean mass you will actually lose. And to me what’s important is that end result, where I’d have a decent amount of lean mass anyway.

So to me the salient question was, What would my lean-tissue weight be if I subtracted 15 percent? What is fifteen percent of 140? That would be 21. What’s 140 minus 21? 119.

That would make my lean weight 119 if I were 140 pounds at 15% bodyfat.

Now let’s look at this logically. Assuming NO loss of lean weight because I have no idea how much I would actually be losing. Let’s say my lean weight is 119 right now. Not too difficult to envision. Under the lard layer, I still have spaghetti arms, almost 20 years after I was failing in the Army.

My weight currently is 210. Subtract 119 from 210 and you get 91.

What percentage of 210 is 91? That’s roughly 43%.

Hey, look at that! My percentage dropped. OK, not really. Some of that “bodyfat” is actually water weight. But as you can see, it’s still a working number–and if you can’t find anyone to use calipers on you, can’t afford a bodyfat-measuring scale and laugh at the notion that you could ever pay for a BodPod or DEXA scan? It’s better than nothing. Still has the potential to give you a sense of progress.

So there you go. Just in case this might help someone out there.

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