I tried going gluten/lactose free briefly, then back to more normal (on the theory of waiting until my tests, and because we were on vacation), but I just felt crappy on a normal diet, so I am back to paleo (or more accurately, Primal, since I am in the middle of The Primal Blueprint). I figure I'll ask the clinic whether a weird diet is an issue for their allergy tests. I am eating lactose, at least. thisisjeff seemed to think the clinic diagnoses everyone as gluten sensitive, so I dunno how meaningful the tests will be.

Anyway, today I did a down day w/ Shannon, and I am having trouble even finishing my dinner!

100 cal bar around noon
50 cal pear at 3pm
230 cal paleo kit at 7:15pm
rock climbing, grocery shopping
Dinner: 5cal pickle, 50 cal peach, 5 slices of turkey (80cal), wedge of Brie (80cal), 3oz blueberries (45cal) + 1 cup yogurt (140cal).

That's it, unless I'm forgetting something. I never thought of myself as particularly carb sensitive, but...I really feel better eating this way. I don't plan to do 100% paleo/primal (don't have the willpower), I think I will mix some IF down days with some occasional cheat/binge days ("refeedings" is the nice term - and some of the diet/fitness experts I read believe that occasional high-carb days are actually good for your metabolism.)

Quitting caffeine, well, let's just say that it's so easy I've done it several times in the past week :). But I am cutting back, subbing in decaf coffee when I just want the warmth and flavor.

My jaw, while quite functional for eating and talking, does ache frequently, probably I am overusing it. Sleep was good a week ago, has not been so good in the last week.

I almost posted another judgmental statement of values this morning about how I value emotional control (some call it repression, but I prefer the Regency / Victorian attitude that it's just good manners), but I had to run off to willmagics to talk about the seastead book, give a dramatic interpretation of a poem his uncle wrote, and watch bits of a movie with PUA themes (Vicky, Christina, Barcelona) - great male bonding!

Good thing, too, as the post would probably have eliminated the few remaining women in my readership, given that the married moms prob. hate me for defending the cheating governor, while the unmarried women hate me for dissing childlessness, and all of 'em will hate me for approving of emotional control. But those few who stay, well, they are the truly awesome, and quality is better than quantity when it comes to people, any day.

(and don't start arguing w/ me about emotional control, there are so many caveats and nuances to my belief that by the time I got through with them there practically wouldn't be a thesis left. I'm just as against the resentment and passive-agressive behavior that stems from emotional repression as I am against outbursts of negative emotions. Perhaps it would be clearer to say I value non-reactivity? Mellowness? I dunno. It really isn't worked out very clearly yet, which is another reason I haven't posted it)

Ok, I think I'll try this crazy diet thing. Several commenters reported substantial results. One did the experiment and had no results. Either way, it will remove uncertainty, which is a good thing.

I have contacted the local health clinic so I can start w/ blood tests.

From Misc 2009

Dinner for Shannon:

Chicken Caeser Salad: 230 calories

Dinner/Snacks for Patri:

Chocolate Raspberry Milanos: 910 (65 cal/cookie)
Little Debbie Pecan Spinwheels: 800 (100/spinwheel)
Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies: 2040 (170/cookie)
Hershey's Bar: 210 calories
3 Musketeers Bar: 260
Bottle of Champagne: ?
Perfectly Protein Mocha Cappucino: 700 calories (for breakfast tomorrow - that's an entire down day worth of calories. And the whole Protein thing is a big lie).

(I doubt I will actually eat very much of this tonight, it is just an amusing contrast. So far I have been much more interested in documenting the food than eating it. Most of it will probably end up as snack food for the van to Disneyland tomorrow.)

jhogan posts four principles for effective dieting.

Other than booze, I very rarely drink liquid calories (milk, non-diet soda, fruit juice, etc.). Here is an analysis of a paper about liquid calories:

Looking globally, drink patterns have shown massive growth with soda products being consumed at a rate in excess of one billion drinks per day (makes you wish you’d bought stock, huh?). Beer consumption has shown the greatest increase with tea showing a slight increase. Wine and milk consumption have fallen globally, presumably due to the introduction of all the drinks that have made America rich, proud and very fat (my comment, not theirs).

The next section of the paper got into what is arguably the most important issue of the paper: the simple fact that for all but the last 11,000 years, the predominant fluids consumed by humans were water and breast milk and nothing else. Now, they go out of their way to point out that milk is a complete beverage containing protein, carbohydrate, fat and water. Water is, of course water which provides no calories. This is important because numerous studies have shown that humans show poor compensation for fluid calories.

Let me explain that a bit. Compensation means that the body will adjust caloric intake at other times of the day (or days later) for a given caloric load. So say you eat a bunch of candy earlier in the day and it provides 450 calories. What you might see is that, later in the day, folks eat a few hundred calories less than they’d normally eat. The body ‘compensates’ for the food you ate earlier. The problem is that most liquid calories aren’t compensated for well and figuring out why is of some interest to researchers.

This is also a big part of why all of the furor over HFCS is mis-placed in my opinion: the problem isn’t with the HFCS per se, it’s the form that people are getting it which is liquid calories. Which the body doesn’t compensate for well. But the body wouldn’t compensate any better for a sucrose containing drink, a glucose containing drink or any other caloric drink. Get it?

It’s got nothing to do with the HFCS content, it’s got to do with how the human body handles non-milk caloric fluids. Which is poorly.
...
Of some interest (especially to me since I like jelly beans) one study compared the intake of 450 kcal or jelly beans to 450 kcal of a soft drink. The jelly bean consumers actually reduced their food intake by slightly more than the 450 calories in the jelly beans (Coming soon: the Jelly Bean Diet) later in the day.

The carb containing soft drink group not only failed to compensate for the drink but also increased their intake of other foods slightly. That is, not only did they get the added calories from the soft-drink, they ate more food as well; a double whammy in terms of weight gain.

Sugar water, in all its variants, is not part of a healthy diet. A little bit of them is ok, but you should think of them as being like an unhealthy dessert - to be used in moderation. As Lyle concludes:

Ultimately, I don’t think people should be drinking sugar sweetened drinks period. Whether they are sweetened with HFCS, sucrose or glucose is irrelevant. Drink diet soda (now the aspartame maniacs will be after me), or water, or sugar free crystal light.

I don’t usually talk in absolutes about nutrition but this is one time I will:

Don’t drink sugar sweetened soda of any form regardless of the sweetener; They offer nothing to the diet that can’t be had elsewhere and I see no reason for their consumption at all, regardless of what sugar is present.

I would add fruit juice and low-fat milk to that category, although the case is slightly weaker. Yes, they have vitamins and minerals - but in the form that is quickest to digest and least satiating - the worst form for your body (compared to whole fruit and full-fat or even better raw milk).

I've always been a big fan of the concept of "Energy Density" of food. That's one of the main things I look for on a food label - low energy density. Here's an article by Lyle MacDonald about it.

Despite little heavy weightlifting and no intermittent fasting for almost 3 weeks now, my body has stayed looking good. I'm pretty happy about that. We'll see when I get back if I've lost much strength, but I bet it isn't too bad. While I haven't been doing hard IF, I rarely eat more than 1 big meal a day and sometimes eat almost nothing before dinner. It also helps that it's quite easy to eat paleo here, other than the fast food at the food court the meals are pretty healthy.

I did one dumbbell workout, and a few bodyweight workouts. Haven't worked hard more than once a week, but I get in a fair number of handstands, jumping squats, pushups, and short planche attempts. Anyway, dunno if strength is just slow to atrophy, or if my muscles hold up particularly well. I will work them hard during my few days home.

I've been thinking about a black light tattoo, now that the tech is pretty good. I want something clever, though. Ideas so far are "SECRET MESSAGE", and a third eye on my forehead. What else would be neat to have hidden and only occasionally revealed?

We make a fair number of trips b/c Shannon gets cabin fever easily, so I haven't gotten in as many working hours as I would like. OTOH, with offline gmail, and wifi in the hospital and parts of the mall, I've been able to get a fair bit of work in even while we are out. If we are eating at the mall I'll often bring my laptop and work while we wait for food, for example. And yesterday, we drove 2 hours to Portobello on the Caribbean side, where we spent a few hours, and drove 2 hours back, and I got in a good 2-3 hours of work, mostly while driving. (Portobello was interesting, but I am not optimistic about the economic prospects for a city whose main claim to fame is that it was an important port hundreds of years ago.)

There is exciting news about the IVF, but Shannon wants to break it first. I paid the IVF fee in cash, which was fun, this is my first time using poker winnings to pay for major expenses (since last year was my first significant winning year). Have hardly gotten any play in this year, though, with all the travelling. I may try to get some hours in while I am recovering from jaw surgery, maybe go to LA or Vegas for a weekend or something when I get cabin fever.

I can see why people retire here. It's pretty nice. It is cheap in the rural areas, even if not in Panama City. Personally I am willing to deal w/ US taxes for the advantages of the US - I like the fast life and network of interesting and talented people. I think to me, it comes down to ambition. I don't want to relax and enjoy the weather, I want to change the world, and I think the first world is much better for that. If that fire ever burns out, I could enjoy someplace like this...but I don't know that I ever want it to burn out.

Ok, should get back to work.

I remember hearing that as a response to Super Size Me, someone ate only fast food and lost weight, to demonstrate that what matters is calories and calorie composition. You can diet, or stuff yourself, at any type of restaurant. Well, that guy has finished a movie called "Fat Head", which is apparently a movie by a comedian about how anti-fat hysteria is bologna. The details

But what really bugged me was when I realized Spurlock’s math didn’t add up. I spent a good part of my adult life as a serial dieter, so I have a pretty good idea what the calorie counts are at McDonald’s. When Spurlock’s nutritionist told him he was consuming 5000 calories per day, alarm bells went off in my head. There’s no way you can consume that many calories at McDonald’s if you’re following his supposed rules.

Q: So in your opinion, Super Size Me is essentially dishonest.

A: Yes, it’s dishonest. Long before I saw it, I heard people talk about how Super Size Me shows what would happen if you just ate three meals per day at McDonald’s. But that’s not what it shows. It shows what would happen if you decided to stuff yourself like crazy so you could gain weight and make a movie about it. You could stuff yourself at a vegan restaurant and gain just as much weight, if that was your goal.
...
Q: Are you worried that you’ll be seen as an apologist for the fast-food industry? After all, they’re not exactly selling health food. As you may recall, that’s one of the reasons I was hesitant to even be interviewed for this movie.

A: No, they’re not selling health food, and I don’t portray it as health food in this film. In fact, when I met with some people from McDonald’s to get permission to shoot in their restaurants, I made it clear I wasn’t going to claim their food is good for you.

But it doesn’t have to be bad for you either if you’re smart about the choices you make, and that’s one of the main points I was trying to make in this film. You can make good choices or bad choices at McDonald’s, just like you can make good choices or bad choices in the grocery store. People are going to eat fast food in today’s society, like it or not, so they may as well learn to make reasonably smart choices.
...
Q: So you lost weight on a fast-food diet, and you demonstrate pretty convincingly that Morgan Spurlock’s numbers don’t add up. But there’s a whole lot more to this film than just disputing Super Size Me.

A: Absolutely. Once I started working on this film and doing some research into the so-called obesity epidemic and what’s really causing it, and especially once I started looking into the research on fat and cholesterol and heart disease, I was stunned at how much nonsense passes for real science these days. Most of the dietary advice we’ve been hearing for the past 40 years is just plain wrong. In fact, it’s worse than wrong; it’s harmful. That’s when it began to sink in with me that this film should be way more than just a reply to Super Size Me.

Lots more good stuff in the interview. HT to justin owings.

For those of you wigging out over HFCS, research suggests there is nothing especially evil about HFCS compared to any other sugary sweetener.

This is not to say it is not bad for us - it is. Not to say you shouldn't avoid it - you should. But if you focus on this one thing, demonize this one additive, while ignoring the sugar content of your food, food manufacturers will just switch to something else that's just as bad for you.

Similarly, processed foods aren't all bad. Fish oil is highly processed. The problem is that processed foods tend to be all carbs, no water/fiber/vitamins. But if you just focus on processing, you might eat lots of honey and bananas, which are far worse for you than a protein bar or a shot of fish oil.

Pay attention to macronutrient composition (carbs/fat/protein), and calorie density (carrots may be all carbs no fat and protein, but they are also 90% water, so they are healthy). Don't obsess about a single thing like "trans fats", "HFCS", or "Processing". Nutrition is a little more complicated than that - but not so complicated you can't understand it. Doing what you know you should - now that's the hard part!

Like I said awhile back...duh...

Science is verifying what many overeaters have suspected for a long time: sugar can be addictive.

In fact, the sweetener seems to prompt the same chemical changes in the brain seen in people who abuse drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

The findings were to be presented Wednesday at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology's annual meeting, in Nashville.

"Our evidence from an animal model suggests that bingeing on sugar can act in the brain in ways very similar to drugs of abuse," lead researcher Bart Hoebel, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, said during a Dec. 4 teleconference.

"Drinking large amounts of sugar water when hungry can cause behavioral changes and even neurochemical changes in the brain which resemble changes that are produced when animals or people take substances of abuse. These animals show signs of withdrawal and even long-lasting effects that might resemble craving," he said.

Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, added: "The big question has been whether it's just a behavioral thing or is it a metabolic chemical thing, and evidence like this supports the idea that something chemical is going on."

Study Suggests Sugar May Be Addictive

(HT Justin)

My habits are getting much healthier as I'm getting older and less able to tolerate crap. For example, I handle alcohol much worse than I used to, so I drink much less often.

I'm eating less fast food, too. Fast food is yummy, but it often makes me nauseous afterwards. It just doesn't feel as good in my body as, say, an apple & an Aidell's sausage.

These things are weird to me because they are new...I don't think I'm learning to notice that they bother me, I think my body used to not care as much.

choiceful has been doing alternate-day caloric restriction with me for 2 weeks.

She has lost approximately 6 pounds. And she says it hasn't been that hard.

I'll let her speak for her own experience, but...this shit works, folks.

Having gained and then lost 25% of my bodyweight, I now have no sympathy for anyone who is unhappy with being overweight. Fasting takes no expense - no equipment, no drugs, no trainer, no expensive high-quality food. It *saves* you money by reducing calorie consumption. It invokes a metabolic response that reinforces the fasting - helping you burn fat, feel less hungry, crave less sugar. And unlike conventional diets, there is no permanent denial of satisfaction. 4/7ths of the week, I can eat whatever I want. Gratification is never more than 24 hours away.

You can be thin and healthy, if you want. You can do it. You may not want to, and that's fine. But if you want to, the tools are there. All you have to do is ignore the screwed up world of mainstream nutrition & exercise, and combine intermittent fasting with strength training.

Here's Brad Pilon of Eat, Stop, Eat:

If left unchecked there are people who will tell you that weight loss is impossible and that it involves EXTREMELY complex mechanisms that you or I couldn't POSSIBLY comprehend.

They will do their best to make you feel hopeless, then, they will offer you a multi-billion dollar solution in the form of "life-long" therapy with weight loss drugs.

Now, here is the real kicker...

Right now pharmaceutical companies are working very hard to create drugs that can mimic..you guessed it..the metabolism that occurs when a person is fasting.

That's right - they are looking for a pill that can reduce insulin, increase growth hormone, grehlin and FGF-21, and increase the sensitivity of the enzymes responsible for releasing fat from your body fat stores.

We are led to believe that we couldn't possibly lose weight without their help.

But the truth is, we really don't need any help at all.

As I have said before...Since the day we were born, our bodies have known EXACTLY how to burn body fat.

There is a serious of 6 detailed posts up at Modern Forager about What Happens To Your Body When You Fast?, that may be of interest.

I posted on Tuesday about having 1.5oz of Jack Daniels b/c I had so much calorie budget left. Yesterday I ended up having just 565 calories, when my target of 40% of my requirements is 750. Here's what I ate:

milk in tea: 60
Apple, 2 slices canadian bacon: 135
fish oil: 100
orange: 25
2 pickles: 10
dinner: campbells chicken noodle soup + veggies: 210 (soup: 150, carrots: 25, 3oz tomato: 15, 5 oz celery: 20, spices: 0)
orange: 25
-----
total: 565

And this morning, w/ my usual low morning hunger, 1 orange was enough. I'll eat a solid lunch and dinner, I'm sure. Of note is that Wed. night we stumbled across a new Fondue / Hot Stone restaurant in downtown Sunnyvale, and had a huge fondue dinner there. So that helps, I'm sure.

Wow, ADCR sure does get easier! After 2 weeks of somewhat difficult down-days, today I was hardly hungry all day long. 380 calories by 8pm was no problem. As a result of all that slack in my calorie budget, I had 1.5 oz of Jack Daniels (90 cals), and so now 20% of today's cals so far are ethanol. Mmm....

Note: fasting w/ Jack Daniels is not officially recommended by the Patri Health Plan. Don't try this at home. For advanced practitioners only.

Which reminds me of the 12 Beer Diet.

So I've switched from a mix of Warrior and Eat Stop Eat to doing the Johnson Diet (Alternate-Day Calorie Restriction), because the latter seems to have solider evidence for activation of SIRT, and it's the first thing which seems to be making progress on my stubborn fat.

But as someone who finds Warrior very natural, ADCR is kinda tough. The down days (700 calories) are a little tough (I eat *lots* of fruits and vegetables!), and on the up days I don't feel that much extra hunger. Today I had breakfast and lunch (neither huge), and at 9pm after my workout, I still wasn't hungry for dinner. 1.5 meals a day is plenty for my body, I guess. But if I don't eat more on the up days, I think the down days would be even harder.

I'm going to try ADCR for a couple more weeks and see if it gets easier, but given that I need to find a "lifestyle", not a "diet" (ie something that I can stick to for the rest of my life), I dunno if it will work for me. Maybe some variant like 60% of cals on down days, and no breakfast the day after would work. (I'm on 40% of cals for down days as I don't need much weight loss, the author is on 50% and says that is enough for SIRT activation although he recommends less).

I will again "talk my book" by saying that if you don't have a good diet and exercise program, you are not maximizing your power in life. (Unless you're under 30, in which case you have the power of youth, you little scamp, but it will soon desert you and leave you wondering why you keep gaining weight and looking rounder and rounder in the mirror every year until you actively do something about it. Unless you're one of those metabolic freaks who stays naturally thin all through life. Damn you).

For my own reference, since I've started doing alternate-day-calorie restriction (700 calories on Tu, Th, and Sat). These are the sorts of things I eat on my down days:

1/2 cup milk: 75
fish oil pill: 10
clementine (small orange): 40
Bartlett pear: 100
Fuji Apple: 80
tomato: 30
bell pepper: 30
celery: 6 cals / medium stalk
large kosher dill pickle: 5
1 pack of baby carrots: 35
1 warrior protein bar: 190
1 fried egg: 90

---

Eating 700 calories really isn't that bad (although it may get worse as I continue)? I can have 2 eggs for brunch (180), plus milk in my tea (80), a shangri-la dose for lunch (100 cals of fish oil taken as pills w/ no flavor for an hour before or after), and a huge dinner of vegetables (A full plate of apples, oranges, bell peppers, tomatos, celery, cucumber, pickles, sweet peppers...) and a little protein (100-200 cals of protein in a shake, bar, or deli meats). Not only is it healthy b/c it is fasting, but note that part of doing low cal w/o too much hunger is to load up on your fruits and vegetables. I also have some protein to reduce muscle wasting.

I gotta say, the increased mood that happens whenever I start a fasting program is quite nice! In the past it hasn't lasted, we'll see whether it does on this program, which is the result of some testing and analysis of how to keep high levels of SIRT gene expression w/o going into starvation mode or having to restrict yourself for more than 2 days running.

I'm using 40% of my cal requirement for down days, the author does 50% but recommends 20% if you can handle it. Since my goal is not weight loss (or rather, just a tiny bit of stubborn fat loss), 40% seemed pretty reasonable to me.

In a post of mine awhile back, triath objected to the characterization of sugar as a drug. I just read an excellent book on Alternate-Day CalorIe Restriction (shown on the right), which had this passage:

The regulation of food intake is a complex feedback system affected by environment and pyschological factors, but that system is made dysfunctional when we eat foods rich in fat and sugar.

These foods activate the brain's "reward" system, which means that we are eating not because we need the calories for energy but because our brain is responding to the food in the same way it responds to an addictive drug. Levels of brain substances that make us feel good - such as dopamine, serotonin, and endogenous opiates - rise, and because of this we eat longer and more ("going back for seconds") than we normally would

At the same time, these foods blunt the satiety signals that would normally tell us it's time to stop eating.

Over time, we adapt to high-fat, high sugar foods by increasing the amount we eat in order to get that mental "fix". It feels like we're just satisfying our hunger, but from the standpoint of brain function, we are reacting as if we were enjoying the effects of a drug "high."

Note that what is going on here is more general than just a drug. Similar (possibly identical) brain circuits are invoked in addiction to gambling, for example. Generally what we're talking about is activities that strongly activate the brain's reward circuitry.

Now, it may be that there are distinctions between eating foods that strongly activate the reward circuitry and drugs like nicotine or heroin that do the same. Those distinctions may matter, such that we shouldn't call food a "drug", as we wouldn't call gambling a "drug". On the other hand, the similarities are strong enough that any such distinctions are subtle. Not only the patterns of use and abuse - of craving, tolerance, dose increasing, rationalization, and addiction, but also the neurochemistry itself tightly links all of these activities that result from overdoing something that invokes our reward circuitry.

I like calling sugar a drug (you put it in your mouth, it raises serotonin and dopamine, and you get conditioned to want to do it more), but I'm not saying it is a slam-dunk case. But as the passage above indicates, the case for calling our relationship with sugar (and calories) "an addiction" is pretty strong.

And while the effects are chronic, not acute, and so not as noticeable as drug addiction, it is fair to say that as a nation we are killing ourselves by overdoing eating. Calories consumed, obesity, and all the diseases that go with it have skyrocketed in past decades, and if current trends continue, in 30 years only 10% of the population (the 10% who can eat ad libitum and not gain weight) will not be obese. The same is true in Europe - even France, one held up as an example of a thin first-world culture.

Anyway, this book is awesome, and if you are interested in extending your lifespan and/or improving inflammatory diseases (asthma, arthritis, artheriosclerosis, type-2 diabetes...), check it out.

A couple studies have come out recently showing that substituting protein for carbs at breakfast helps people eat less calories during the rest of the day and lose weight.

So if you eat a high-carb breakfast, and you'd like to make a simple change that may help you lose some weight, try replacing your bagel/cereal/toast with the Ultimate Breakfast Food - eggs. Hopefully you'll notice increased alertness during the morning, and less need to snack.

While I only eat breakfast once or twice a week, I do put a little protein powder and milk (~50-100 calories) in each of the 2-3 cups of green tea I have between waking up and 2pm, on the theory that having some protein while (mostly) fasting will reduce muscle loss. Guess it decreases appetite too!