Sanguinia

These people are awesome! Their friends ROCK and I want to get to know all of them. May they have as joyous a life together as they gave me in those five shared minutes.

Link

Reminder: I’m not a doctor I’m just a person on a journey just like you.

I’ve been doing research on how I can change my eating style within the boundaries of my new lifestyle of being on the path to a PhD. So far, it has been rocky going. I haven’t even walked in a week again. Mainly because I’ve had to restart my experiment due to circumstances beyond my control (the roof of the greenhouse leaks and despite being told about it for over two years they are just now working on it).

I strongly believe, energy in - energy out = weight loss or gain. However, the research consistently shows that people that keep weight off eat breakfast.. my least favorite meal of the day. But.. I’m trying to switch. Currently that’s not leading to weight loss but I’m going to take it as if I’m quitting smoking and keep trying till I figure it out.

Study after study says we need to eat breakfast.

escience news
webmd
AJCN
meals matter
Science Direct
Harvard

According to AJN:

Fifty-two moderately obese adult women were stratified according to their baseline breakfast-eating habits and randomly assigned a weight- loss program. The no-breakfast group ate two meals per day and the breakfast group ate three meals per day. The energy content of the two weight-loss programs was identical. After the 12-wk treatment, baseline breakfast eaters lost 8.9 kg in the no-breakfast treatment and 6.2 kg in the breakfast treatment. Baseline breakfast skippers lost 7.7 kg in the breakfast treatment and 6.0 kg in the no-breakfast treatment. This treatment-by-strata-by-time interaction effect (P less than 0.06) suggests that those who had to make the most substantial changes in eating habits to comply with the program achieved better results. Analyses of behavioral data suggested that eating breakfast helped reduce dietary fat and minimize impulsive snacking and therefore may be an important part of a weight-reduction program.

Hmmm..that’s 25% or greater increase in weight loss by eating breakfast. There are other studies:
Journal of the American Dietetic Association

Breakfast eaters generally consumed more daily calories yet were less likely to be overweight,

Eating more and weighing less..sounds great.

Really I could go on endlessly quoting and linking studies that reinforce breakfast being so important, but this is the one that kicked me over the edge: Nature

We have previously defined some behaviors that are common to successful weight-loss maintainers in the NWCR (4) . These include: eating a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet; regular self-monitoring of body weight and food intake; and high levels of physical activity. We now add a fourth behavior common to these individuals—eating breakfast on a regular basis.

Truth in blending statement: I never ate breakfasts except late night at Denny’s And.. I’ve been slipping in that self-monitoring part and the physical activity part (where I am aiming at compromise with being more active NOT ‘exercising’).

It is striking not only that breakfast eating is a frequent behavior among individuals within this group, but also that such a high proportion (78%) report eating breakfast every day of the week. It is also striking that very few (less than or equal to 5%) of these successful weight-loss maintainers report never eating breakfast. Skipping breakfast seems to be far less prevalent among successful weight-loss maintainers than among the general public (9).

Less than 5 percent of those who are successful at maintaining weight loss skip breakfast… sighs.. Time for a lifestyle change, I mean..c’mon, it’s NATURE, you don’t get much more peer reviewed than that.

Of course, you need to use a trained and skeptical eye when reading reports. Even one from the American Heart Association. In April of 1998 a research article came out stating that high fat breakfasts lead to an increase in factor VIIa, a blood clotting factor, which they claim leads to a likelihood of a heart attack. They went on to say that it didn’t matter which kinds of fats you ate, factor VIIa levels would increase for hours afterwards. Their belief was that Factor VIIa becomes Thrombin which creates fibrin which causes clotting which might lead to increased heart attacks.

But then, you have to read the fine print. They tested four different fat combinations and extrapolated to ‘all fats are bad’. As those of us who have been reading along in this diary series know, all fats are NOT bad. Which aren’t bad? Omega 3s, but we’ve narrowed it down further here, to DHA and EPA. ALA, while essential, doesn’t become DHA and EPA in great enough amounts in the human body to balance all those Omega 6’s we take in. So what fats did the study test?

In the study, four different fat-rich breakfast diets, each of which contained 50 percent of calories from fat, were tested. The diets differed in fatty acid composition. One had palmitic acid (a highly saturated fat found in animals); one had stearic acid (found in beef and cocoa butter) and the other two contained different ratios of linoleic and linolenic acid (found in corn, canola and other vegetable oils).

So.. what’s fat is missing? Yes you guessed it, Omega 3’s. Linoleic acid (LA) is an unsaturated omega-6 fatty acid. y-linolenic acid is also an omega 6 fatty acid while a-linolenic acid is indeed an omega 3.. it’s the weak one ALA.. not the best ones DHA and EPA. Further, their sources of ALA are from canola and corn oils which are really high in omega 6’s and therefore BAD FOR YOU. Ratio is important and judging from their list of sources they were using high levels of Omega 6’s to a very minor level of Omega 3’s. But most importantly, it’s not DHA or EPA.

Even within the article is another clue that we should be skeptical of the study:

“It is not clear if factor VIIa is a causal risk factor for heart disease, but if it were, this would mean that individuals would be at risk for heart attack after a fat-rich meal,” he says.

So.. I’m changing my lifestyle, I’m eating breakfast and going back to recording everything I eat and weighing in daily. I’m sure this is going to cost me in my study time but what good is it to get my PhD and die three days later? I need to put more emphasis on getting healthy.

This leads me to what I’m eating in my new breakfast regimen and why I dissected the study from AHA. I’m eating jack mackerel patties.

Here’s my recipe:
1/3rd can jack mackerel mashed
1 egg
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon mustard
1/4 tablespoon garlic
1/4 sweet onion

Cooked in an enamel pain with no added oil. I eat it with a couple pepperoncinis and a dill pickle.

Calories 342
Protein 154.1
Saturated Fat 49.3
Unsaturated Fat 70
Carbs 68.3

Add ten calories from the pepperoncinis and 10 calories from the dill pickles and that’s a hearty 362 calorie start to the day. I started at half a can of mackerel and two eggs at 500. That seemed too high so I’m tweaking it down, at least to start. The ‘Big Breakfast‘ folks think I should keep it at the first level. I’m going to run the experiment on myself and see what I think. I’ve been doing it about a week now and one thing I have found is that I’m hungrier than before. So now, I need to take more snacks to school. It’s all about balance and making things EASY. Right now, I’m in transition. So far, I’m staying stable without my daily walking. I hope once the walking gets added back in, I’ll start dropping again. I’d also like to start using steel cut oats instead of rolled oats for the added nutrition but that requires another lifestyle change that I’m not up to yet.. I’d have to put the steel cuts to soak the night before.. or maybe even cook them the night before then add them in the morning. That’s too much to ask of myself in one month. Plus, I got the COSTCO sized box of rolled oats …almost a lifetime supply!

Oh, and about eggs.. I just don’t believe that eggs are bad for you. I think it’s a case, just like eating butter in moderation, that has been confounded with bad sources of fat like crisco and corn oil. Eggs being bad for you has been disputed in a zillion studies as well. Almost all cholesterol in the human body is produced by the liver. You want links?

AJCN Again:

The serum cholesterol distribution curves of the subjects according to tertile of egg intake were almost identical, and no relationship between egg intake and coronary heart disease incidence was found. It is concluded that within the range of egg intake of this population differences in egg consumption were unrelated to blood cholesterol level or to coronary heart disease incidence.

Or PubMed:

Plasma cholesterol levels were more sensitive to dietary fat quality than to cholesterol quantity. The results demonstrate that the responses to dietary cholesterol and fat are highly individualized and that most individuals have effective feedback control mechanisms.

Meaning for most people dietary control of cholesterol, certainly within reason, doesn’t affect blood serum levels. Let me repeat, I’m not a physician. Maybe you’re one of the few it matters for. But for the vast majority of us we’ve been giving up a great source of nutrition for no real reason. It’s only an issue in people who’s feedback mechanisms are failing.
And finally these two studies show that people who eat eggs are just healthier overall than those that don’t including cholesterol levels:

People who reported eating >= 4 eggs/wk had a significantly lower mean serum cholesterol concentration than those who reported eating <= 1 egg/wk (193 mg/dL vs. 197 mg/dL, p < 0.01). More frequent egg consumption was negatively associated with serum cholesterol concentration (ß=-6.45, p < 0.01).

Conclusions: In this cross-sectional and population-based study, egg consumption made important nutritional contributions to the American diet and was not associated with high serum cholesterol concentrations.

However, data from free-living populations show that egg consumption is not associated with higher cholesterol levels. Furthermore, as a whole, the epidemiologic literature does not support the idea that egg consumption is a risk factor for coronary disease. Within the nutritional community there is a growing appreciation that health derives from an overall pattern of diet rather than from the avoidance of particular foods, and there has been a shift in the tone in recent dietary recommendations away from “avoidance” messages to ones that promote healthy eating patterns. The most recent American Heart Association guidelines no longer include a recommendation to limit egg consumption, but recommend the adoption of eating practices associated with good health. Based on the epidemiologic evidence, there is no reason to think that such a healthy eating pattern could not include eggs.

from here.

One more thing, it appears for it to be breakfast you have to eat it when you first wake up. My dietitian told me within half an hour. Online reading says 1 hour. Those weight conscious body builder sites say within 1-2 hours. But that seems to be the max. I can’t eat a cooked meal within a half hour of getting up but I am trying to get it down below an hour. In the poll below, I would prefer if you kept your definition of eating breakfast to generally eating within 2 hours of getting up. I haven’t seen any studies on the effects of eating brunch….

How is everyone else’s diet going? Are you doing better than I? Is it time to push ourselves a little more as the sun starts poking out and we’re past the blah February days? How about you? Do you eat breakfast and are you maintaining weight loss by doing so?

Worse than I thought, I’m up to 233.4 lbs. 44.7% fat40.4% water. I hate being more fat than water! At my weight, 4.3% difference means I need to lose 10 lbs of fat to become tied. Since I like being more water than fat, I’m going to set my first minigoal at 18 lbs. It could take as long as 2 months to lose that much weight at a reasonable pace and that’s a long enough time to work towards a goal. It might come off quicker though since 15 of those pounds were put on in the last month. I ate a lot of processed foods and I find they stick to the linings of your body a long, long, long time. One of the many negatives of highly processed foods. Since I’ll be replacing those HPC’s (Highly Processed Carbohydrates) with minimally processed carbs I hope to lose some of that baggage quickly. By the way, when I reach a minigoal I reward myself. But NEVER with food. Rewarding yourself with gorging or eating something you’ve decided isn’t healthy for you just imprints on your brain that you are punishing yourself by eating your new way. Why would you want to feel that badly about yourself? Heck no. Every day you eat things that are good for you you’ll feel a little better. Your knees and hips and back and most of all your FEET will hurt a little less, you will feel proud of yourself for your accomplishments.

Let me start out with why I think people like me are fat. I like to eat and I hate exercising. That deserves emphasis:

I like to eat and I hate exercising!

Seriously, any diet that has me eating something smaller than the palm of my hand and doing jumping jacks is going to fail. 98% do fail, guess why. People like to eat and we don’t want to exercise. It’s genetic. The desire to eat very little and run in place for 2 hours is abnormal. Seriously. The availability of large quantities of unhealthy food and the freedom to lounge around is very new. We don’t have genes that are adapted to that. So we need to figure out ways to work with our innate desires rather than fight them. I do that by eating large volumes of very low calorie foods and two potatoes a day. That’s right, two whole potatoes a day. One sweet potato and one baked Idaho tater along with a large assortment of veggies/salads, some fruits and fluids. Good carbs. Lightly processed.

I don’t have time to put everything up here in one day and this is probably not going to be laid out in the manner you’d (or I) would like. But I feel I have to tell you at this point that the first thing you have to do is figure out how many calories you should be eating a day to not gain weight. There are 3500 calories in a lb of fat. To lose 2-3 lbs per week you have to eat 7-10 thousand calories less than you burn. How many do you burn? Well here’s your first guesstimate at your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) I did the calculations using my information:
—————————————————————————————
English BMR Formula
Women:
655 + (4.35 x weight in lbs.) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)
Men:
66 + ( 6.23 x weight in lbs.) + ( 2.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in year )

Age 53
Height 66
Weight 233
Harris Benedict Formula
Daily Calorie Needs
BMR Sedentary Light activity Moderate
Women 1739.65 2087.58 2392.01875 2696.4575
Men 1995.39 2394.468 2394.468 2394.468

Be Honest! It will show up when you do not lose weight otherwise.
Sedentary very little or no exercise
Light activity light exercise 3 days a week
Moderate moderate exercise 5 days a week

Activity Multiplier Used above

Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little or no activity, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (light activity/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate activity/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard activity/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extr. active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily activity/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.)

—————————————————————————————

So we can see from the above that at my age and weight I need 2392 calories a day to stay right where I am (more or less) assuming I’m lightly active. I know, I’m asking you to do math. And worse yet, over time you’ll need to do that math again. Why? Because as you lose weight, your caloric needs go down. Doesn’t THAT suck.. sighs.. well it’s reality. You can mak,e up for it somewhat if you put weights on yourself all day long, I don’t think that’s the way to go. Afterall, the biggest benifit of losing weight is not having as much pressure on your joints and those poor little feet! I highly recommend putting the formula into excel or one of the free spreadsheet programs. Set it up so it uses the age and weight cells and not so it’s just a formula that way as your age goes up (sorry, although I hope you feel younger I haven’t figured out how to reverse the fourth dimension) and your weight goes down you can just stick the new numbers in and see what your goal calorie figure is. Also, your activity level might increase… when your feet feel better you just feel like walking or dancing more. Let me stress that this is just an estimate of your caloric needs. I found it was consistantly slightly low for myself, maybe I was more active than I thought.

OK so now I have a number 2392 calories a day, times 7 is 16744 calories a week. To lose 2 lbs a week I would have to eat 7000 calories a week less which is 1000 calories a day meaning 1392 calorie a day diet. But because I take Fridays off the diet (we’ll discuss why later) that 7000 has to be divided by 6 instead of 7 bringing it to 1166 calories a day less which gives me 1225 calories a day of food I can eat and lose 2 lbs. a week. To lose 3 lbs. a week I’d have to reduce my consumption to 1041 calories a day OR increase my activity level by which I do not mean exercise.

One more thing for today then I’ll stop. For lunch today I had a baked potato with a cup of salsa and a cup of brocolli. For dinner I’m planning a giant salad with a few nuts and a small amount of cheese. I also plan to eat a yellow sweet pepper, an apple, and maybe some carrots.

Tomorrow I want to talk about another useful too, the kitchen scale, measure my starting stats and talk about how not to exercise and lose weight.

First, some caterwauling:
The information I’m going to post on this blog, is, by virtue of me posting it here, copyrighted. That means don’t try to repackage it and claim it’s yours and sell it. If you like the plan and it works for you, please point people here.

That title reminds me of Trek..oh well.. onward.

More correctly, today I’m going to talk about Thermoregulation which includes Thermogenesis and the caloric usage of cooling methods. Thermogenesis is the effect of a living being producing heat. There are two main ways to produce this heat, NEAT (Non Exercise Associated Thermogenesis) and EAT (You guessed!.. it’s Exercise Associated Thermogenesis). We covered one aspect of NEAT already, fidgeting. But I want to talk about another aspect.

Humans are mammals and as such are all homeotherms (with the possible exception of Darth Cheney) and as such have to maintain homeostasis (or a constant temperature). When our environment is too hot or too cold, we make adjustments (or more accurately, our mitochondria make changes) to maintain an internal temperature at which our enzymes can perform their at optimum functionality and at which our constituent cells don’t die. The advantages of homeothermy are many (including allowing Fred Flintstone to outrun that T rex JOKE!) but one ‘disadvantage’ that we can turn to our advantage is that it requires more food to be burned.

So how do we use Homeothermy to our advantage and save the environment all in one fell swoop? In the winter, you turn down the heat a few degrees and in the summer you don’t turn on the air conditioning quite as often. Since it’s Winter here we’ll talk about keeping the temperature a degree or two cooler first.

There are three main ways to turn up your internal thermostat: movement, chemicals and shivering. Movement we’ve talked about but it always bears repeating. If you turn down your thermostat one degree lower than normal and you start to get cold, get up and march in place for a minute or chair boogie! You should be fidgeting anyway and therefore producing more surface internal heat. Let’s not counteract that by cranking the heat so we have to do less thermoregulation!

There are also chemicals that increase your internal thermostat. That’s how caffeine works to help you lose weight as does capsicum, ginger and ephedra. I’m not a fan of caffeine as it does many other things especially to those of us already prone to diabetes or heart disease.

Moderate negative effects of caffeine include:

* Headaches
* Irritability
* Increase in breast tenderness
* Restlessness
* Mild insomnia
* Increased heart rate
* Increased blood sugar
* Difficulty concentrating
* Mild stomach upset

Severe negative effects of caffeine include:

* Panic attacks
* Irregular heartbeat
* Sleep deprivation
* Continuous stomach problems
* Prolonged depression
* Sleep disorders

Nor do I advocate ephedra because, you know, it’s a drug and I’m trying to avoid taking drugs by losing weight.

Possible Side Effects of Ephedra

* nausea
* headache; dizziness
* irritation of the stomach; diarrhea
* anxiety; psychosis
* kidney stones
* tremors
* dry mouth
* irregular or rapid heart rhythms; heart damage
* high blood pressure
* restlessness; nervousness; sleeping problems
* decreased appetite
* flushing; sweating
* increased urination

Use of ephedra has also been associated with stroke, seizures, psychosis and death.

Ginger and capsicum (spicy component of hot sauces and peppers) I use all the time though because they enhance my culinary experience! Whenever I make tea I toss in a dash of ginger and I warm up not just from the heat of the drink but also from the effect of the ginger.

Shivering is great if you’re going to freeze to death but I’m not advocating turning the heat down that low. Really, that would be too uncomfortable to become a lifestyle for most people. I’ve dropped the temperature to about 63 during the day and 57 at night for the general house and it’s 2 degrees F warmer in here because of all the electronics and the large aquariums and ponds. If that’s too cold for you, just turn it down one degree. Go on, you know you want to. What’s one degree? 1 degree can reduce your carbon footprint and cut your heating bills by 10 percent and help you lose weight.

Babies (and hibernating mammals) have a fourth way called brown fat which is actually a form of muscle and which has a lot more mitochondria (leading to the brown color). Remember when two decades ago they said you could produce more by eating brown rice or whatever they were advocating that day and create more brown fat. Well, not so much. We have what we form as a baby and that as they say is that, for now. They are working on genetic therapy ways to stimulate the formation of more brown fat in adults but we won’t see that for a decade or longer.

I don’t know about you but I can’t wait that long to lose weight! By then I might be just bones! Additionally I wonder if producing a bunch more brown fat cells won’t lead to feeling hot all the time or at the worst moments I might start sweating. Oh wait, we already have that it’s called menopause.. blech!

Additionally, you burn calories to cool yourself off. But this is a lot trickier. Most of what you lose when you’re really hot is just water. This is especially true for women, while men actually sweat fats and oils (and toxins!), darn them! It is critical that you drink water and compensate for the salts and minerals that you lose through sweating. Frankly I’m not the least bit concerned about water gain, but I do worry about water loss. Remember on that first day when I talked about wanting to be more water than fat? I still do. But, turning that air conditioner up a degree is good for the environment, your heating bill and can make a small difference in calorie usage so why not?

Today’s weigh in is falling in line with my weight loss goals:

226.0 lbs 99.2 lbs fat 92.4 lbs water and 34.4 lbs other. GO WATER GO! Fat.. just GO!
That is 7.4 lbs lost in 3 weeks plus those inches we chalked up yesterday. I’m happy!

Today is my breakover day so expect a bounce up tomorrow and Sunday as processed foods hit my system. I wish there was better food at the tavern!

Oh, yeah what about that EAT portion of thermogenesis? We don’t say the E word here. More movement is great though! In fact, why don’t we all get up and boogey to the kitchen and get a cup of three of ginger tea? I know I’m going to.

Image Credits to:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2045/2105724861_de303117e5.jpg?v=0
http://www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images/YL/watch-thermostat-tip-2-lg.jpg
http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-17343563.jpg?size=572&uid={793d7a0a-f05c-44ab-956f-32c5b2b6bbfb}

Reminder: I’m not a doctor I’m just a person on a journey just like you. Today we’re going to talk about onions. Onions and their cousins garlic are members of the Allium genus and have an strong aromatic scent, a bit of bite and a touch of sweetness. They are composed of protein, sugars, cellulose, a fixed and essential oils and a lot of water. But most importantly, they have Inulin and Oligofructose (a type of Inulin)
Why is this important? Because Inulin and Oligofructose are a very different kind of fiber. Neither is digested in the small intestine and therefore it’s caloric value is not as great as it appears. That, in and of itself, makes onions very valuable to those trying to diet. It also makes them a special kind of sweet fiber. Normal Carbs produce 3.9 kcal/g, Inulin has been estimated to produce between 0 (yes that’s zero) and 2.5 kcal/g eaten (normal estimate used is 1.4 kcal/g). It’s also believed that it decreases the digestion of fats thus reducing more than it’s share of calories. But most importantly, it makes you FEEL full. Nothing is more important when trying to cut calories than not being hungry.

These two components, Inulin and Oligofructose, have other special properties. They don’t raise blood glucose (and therefore do not cause an increase of insulin), they encourage bifidobacteria growth, moderate lipid, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, prevent cancers and prevent osteoporosis.

In addition to calorie and fat reduction, fiber effects, lipid modulation and bifidus stimulation, the results of studies have also indicated positive effects on calcium absorption in rats and humans and cancer prevention in animals. It has been shown in over 10 studies that inulin and oligofructose increase both the absorption and the deposition of calcium in the bones of rats and humans (Coudray et al. 1997, Delzenne and Roberfroid 1994, Lemort and Roberfroid 1997, Ohta et al. 1993, 1995 and 1997, Scholz-Ahrens et al. 1998, Shimura et al. 1991, Taguchi et al. 1995, Van den Heuvel et al. 1997). There are promising indications that inulin and oligofructose may contribute to the prevention of osteoporosis.

Results of recent studies that have been completed in animals suggest that inulin and oligofructose may also play a role in the prevention and inhibition of colon and breast cancer. These are early studies and further studies will be completed, but initial results look promising (Cooper and Carter 1986, Gallaher et al. 1996, Koo and Rao 1991, Reddy et al. 1997, Roland et al. 1994a, 1994b, 1995 and1996, Rowland et al. 1998, Taper et al. 1995 and1997).

But if you’re on a low calorie intake plan, you can actually boost your innulin and oligofructose intake by eating a sweet onion on a daily basis. Onions have significant amounts ranging from 13 to 28 g per 100 g of inulin and 11 to 13 g per 100 g of oligofructose. Onions aren’t the only source of Inulin and Oligofructose of course. There are a whole host of of fruits and veggies that help you boost your intake levels. In the chart below the first number is gInulin/100g and the second is the midpoint of the Oligofructose content t/100g:

Banana
Raw 0.3–0.7 0.5
Raw-dried 0.9–2.0 1.4
Canned 0.1–0.3 0.2
Aparagus
Raw 2.0–3.0 2.5
Boiled 1.4–2.0 1.7
Chicory root 35.7–47.6 22.9
Dandelion greens
Raw 12.0–15.0 10.8
Cooked 8.1–10.1 7.3
Garlic
Raw 9.0–16.0 5
Dried3 20.3–36.1 11.3
Globe artichoke 2.0–6.8 0.4
Jerusalem artichoke 16.0–20.0 13.5
Leeks
Raw 3.0–10.0 5.2
Onions
Raw 1.1–7.5 4.3
Raw-dried 4.7–31.9 18.3
Cooked 0.8–5.3 3
Wheat
Bran-raw 1.0–4.0 2.5
Flour-baked 1.0–3.8 2.4
Flour-boiled 0.2–0.6 0.4
Barley
Raw 0.5–1.0 0.8
Cooked 0.1–0.2 0.2
Rye
Baked 0.5–0.9 0.7

Onion Nutrition:
per 100g serving

Calories 32 kcals (normal calculation)
Protein 0.8g
Fat 0.08g
Carbs 7.55g (but remember these are 1.5 calorie carbs NOT 4 kcal carbs!)
Calories 13.9 kcals (adjusted calculation)

Studies have shown that inulin-rich plants dominated the dietary intake of our ancestors in these regions, with about 60 per cent of the calorific intake coming from such sources. Currently Americans consume on average 1-4 g of inulin and oligofructose per day. It’s unlikely that we will reach the levels of Historic American Indians but we certainly can work to increase our consumption!

Here’s a recipe for pie..yes onion pie! From the Food Network:

Vidalia Onion Pie

Ingredients
Crust:
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 tablespoon sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon kosher or Hawaiian salt
* 1/4 cup cold all-vegetable shortening, cut into small pieces
* 1/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
* Cold water

Filling:
* 1/4 egg yolk and 1 teaspoon water for egg wash
* 1/2 cup unsalted butter
* 2 pounds Vidalia onions, thinly sliced
* 3 large eggs, beaten
* 1 cup sour cream
* 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 1/4 teaspoon kosher or Hawaiian salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* Freshly grated Parmesan

Directions

For the crust: All ingredients should be cold. Combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add shortening and butter. Using a pastry blender cut in the shortening and butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Drop by drop, add cold water. Mix in with the fingertips, not with the hands as the palms will warm the dough. Continue mixing water in until the dough begins to hold together without being sticky but not crumbly. Place dough in plastic wrap. Fold over plastic wrap and press down to form a disk. This will make rolling out easier after chilling. Finish wrapping in plastic and place in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Lightly spray a deep 9-inch pie pan or an 8 1/2-inch fluted flan pan. Roll out dough and place in pie plate. Return to the refrigerator until filling is ready. Makes pastry for a 9-inch single crust pie.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

For the filling: Brush egg wash on the inside of pie crust. Return to refrigerator until filling is ready. Over medium heat, melt butter. Add onions and saute until translucent. Do not brown. Combine eggs, sour cream and flour. Add onion mixture. Season with salt and pepper and pour into chilled pie crust. Top with Parmesan. Bake for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees F for the last 20 minutes or until center is set.

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My personal weight reduction journey is back on track having lost the 2 lbs I gained while taking my PhD exams and being back to a better activity level. I’ve changed my diet considerably because I now eat a significant amount of jack mackerel for breakfast. I haven’t calculated it all out yet I hope to have that for next week.

Midweek I wrote a short diary that can be read here. It was inspired by an article on MSNBC called: Want to live longer? You need this nutrient by Taras Grescoe. It is hands down the best article I’ve read on why we need omega 3’s in our diet and why all the ‘live like your ancient ancestors and eat a cow (really, how many ‘cows’ were there in the paleolithic age anyway?). I promised to expand on my comments during the weekly 2 potatoes diary which I’m moving back to Friday.. reasons below.

Reminder: I’m not a doctor I’m just a person on a journey just like you.

I’m sorry for bouncing this diary back and forth between Friday and Sunday. As I discovered last week when I missed writing the diary on Sunday too, I just don’t have much control over my life and time at this point and weekends are no more my own than weekdays now that my experiments are full speed ahead. (I passed my PhD’s qualifier exams!) That said, many more of you seemed to like the diary on Fridays. So, I will leave it where it started and just hope I can keep up my end of the bargain.

Now where were we.. oh yes, Omega-3’s. First let’s talk about what that means, I’m going to talk some chemistry but don’t get scared. Those of you that know more chemistry, feel free to skip ahead, I don’t want to bore you or insult anyone’s education. If you know your chemistry already and just want health info go to the prety blue flowers. If you’re sold on Omega 3’s already and just want good, ecologically sound choices head down to the fish.

Carbons can have four connections at one time and sometimes they can be connected to things multiple times. Think of it as if you are a chimpanzee and can hold onto things with your feet as well as your hands. You can hold onto four of your ape friends, or hold onto three friends and a tree limb, and sometimes you might decide to hold onto one friend with two hands leaving just your feet to hold onto other chimp buddies and this would be a double bond.

Fatty Acids are straight chains of carbon atoms meaning they are holding onto only 2 other carbons at most and are hanging onto little hydrogen atoms with their free limbs. They end with a carboxylic acid group written as COOH which means the last carbon is holding onto an oxygen with two hands, the next to last carbon with one foot and the last foot is holding onto an Oxygen with a hydrogen in it’s other hand. Oxygens, like humans can only hold onto 2 things with their hands.

Unsaturated fatty acids have at least one double bond within the carbon chain. Mono unsaturated fatty acids have one double bond, poly unsaturated fatty acids have two double bonds within the chain. All Omega’s (3, 6 and 9) are poly unsaturated.

The term Omega refers to the opposite end from that COOH end. Now we’re going to locate that double bond closest to the omega end. Being an Omega-3 means the last double bond is between the 3rd and 4th carbon counting from the omega end. An Omega-6 has it’s double nearest the omega end between the 6th and 7th carbon. I bet you can guess where the Omega-9 has it’s double bond…

While we’re here.. let’s talk about those pesky trans fats. Trans, means on opposite sides and it’s referring to the position that the hydrogen is in the two carbons involved in the double bond. Naturally occurring fats are in the cis position. See the picture:

As you can see the effect of twisting the hydrogens to opposites sides is to straighten the molecule out. Which is the same problem with saturated fats. Without that double bond the chain is straight and mostly flat and that seems to lend itself to laying down on your arteries, being inflexible because all the hydrogen wants to be as far apart as possible and other really bad things.

So now, what is an essential fatty acid? That’s a fatty acid that the human body doesn’t make and so you have to eat them. There are two for humans, LA (Linoic Acid-an Omega 6) and ALA (alpha Linoic Acid-an Omega-3). In theory, all the other fatty acids can be made but DHA and EPA are almost essential acids. That’s because although they can be made by humans from ALA very little actually IS made and therefore we really do need to eat them because we use far more DHA and EPA than we make from ALA.

So what’s wrong with Omega 6’s, we need them don’t we? Well yes we do, but only in a good ratio with Omega 3’s. The Omega 6’s and 3’s can be converted into other fats in their type… like LA being converted to another omega 6 arachidonic acid which is suspected of being an inflammatory agent. Omega 3’s are believed to be anti inflammatory agents explaining why you need to keep them in balance. There are studies showing this Omega 6 fatty acid in the brain causes depression. Depressed Rats have High Omega 6 concentration in Brain.

We examined the fatty acid (FA) composition of selected brain areas in an animal model of depression, the Flinders Sensitive Line (FSL) rat, and compared the findings to controls fed identical diets. In all brain regions studied, the concentration of arachidonic acid was significantly higher in the FSL rats: in the hypothalamus by 21%; in the nucleus accumbens by 24%; in the prefrontal cortex by 31%; and in the striatum by 23%. No significant differences were observed for n-3 PUFA, or for the saturated and the monounsaturated FAs. Our results confirm the existence of altered brain PUFA composition in an animal model of depression. The finding of increased arachidonic acid, an n-6 PUFA, rather than decreased n-3 PUFA, emphasizes the importance of both PUFA families in the pathophysiologic processes underlying depression.

It may exacerbate Alzheimer’s

The brains of normal mice and mice genetically engineered to have an Alzheimer’s-like condition were compared by the scientists. They found raised levels of a fatty acid called arachidonic acid in the hippocampus area of the brains of the Alzheimer’s mice (the hippocampus is a memory center that is severely affected by Alzheimer’s disease). Arachidonic acid is used to make the blood-brain barrier. It is this barrier that protects the neurons in the brain from being contaminated by toxins as it filters the blood stream entering it.

Omega 6’s

Dietary fish oil causes its prostaglandin-lowering effects through three different mechanisms, says Dr. Smith.

First, the much fewer prostaglandins are made from omega 3 fatty acids as compared to the other class of fatty acids in the body, the omega 6 family of fatty acids that originate in the diet from leafy vegetables and other plant sources.

Second, the omega 3 fatty acids compete with omega 6 fatty acids for the same binding site on the COX 1 enzyme that converts the omega 6 fatty acids to prostaglandin (which is why the COX 1 enzyme and its COX 2 cousin are the targets of anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen). The more omega 3 fatty acids present to block the binding sites, the fewer omega 6 fatty acids are able to be converted to prostaglandin.

Third, although omega 3 fatty acids also are converted to prostaglandins, the prostaglandins formed from omega 3 are generally 2 to 50 times less active than those formed from the omega 6 fatty acids from dietary plants.

Among other things the Omega 3’s keep our cell membranes flexible and block inflammatory agents from moving into our cells.

The scientists found that two types of lipids in omega-3 fatty acids—protectins and resolvins—were the cause of the protective effect. To reach this conclusion, they studied four groups of mice with an altered gene making them obese and diabetic. One group was given an omega-3-enriched diet and the second group was given a control diet. The third group was given docosahexaenoic acid, and the fourth received only the lipid resolvin. After five weeks, blood serum and liver samples from the test mice were examined. The mice given the omega-3-rich diet exhibited less hepatic inflammation and improved insulin tolerance. This was due to the formation of protectins and resolvins from omega-3 fatty acids.

Anti diabetic properties of Omega 3’s

OK so let’s all agree we want more Omega 3’s in our diet and especially, we need DHA and EPA directly because we are very poorly equipped to do the conversion. The question becomes how. And hopefully how to do it in a sustainable ecologically sound way.

One thing we can try is to tweak our conversion ratio. The conversion of ALA to EPA and DHA is directly affected by how much competition for the required enzymes (desaturases which form double bonds and elongases which hook the short chains into longer ones) there is from Omega 6’s. Therefore, if you reduce the omega 6 content of your diet you can consume more plant generated ALA such as from flax seed (the king of ALA producers), broccoli, green leafy veggies. What are the worst offenders as far as Omega 6 content in the American diet? Animal products and processed foods–including lots of foods eaten by vegans! No one has it easy here. To be avoided: corn, cottonseed, peanut, safflower, sesame, soybean, sunflower oils and generic ‘vegetable’ oil and margarine.. and now you see why processed foods, like cakes, breads and fried foods, are such a problem.

Ultimately, the best thing to do is increase our consumption of algae and fishes and some shellfish. But it’s still not that simple. Our oceans are being harvested in unsustainable ways. Let’s start with which fish to avoid from a dietary standpoint:

First of all, skip most farmed fish. Remember the Tilapia fuss? Well that also includes catfish. While they don’t warn against farmed salmon and trout I’m going to flag ALL farmed fish as, get to know the farmer. The problem is that we’re doing the same thing to fish as we did to beef. We’re feeding them grains. Especially bad: corn. These jack the omega 6 levels so that the fish is no longer beneficial in our quest for a higher omega-3 to omega-6 ratio.
If you can find a farmer that’s feeding a natural feed and you trust…personally, I’m taking a pass.

Mercury: Many fish higher on the food-chain contain higher amounts of mercury due to bio accumulation. Thus you should restrict your intake of fish known to contain mercury to 1-2 times a week unless you’re pregnant or a young child in which case you should abstain all together. This means the sum total of your elevated mercury burdened fish should be 12 ounces inclusive of all mercury laden fish you’ve eaten… not two servings of tuna and two servings of cod!

PCB’s: Proving once again that our government is insane.. especially the FDA… farmed fish are governed by the FDA and wild fish are governed by the EPA. The amount of toxins allowed by the EPA is much less than that allowed by the FDA.. to the tune of 10X more PCB’s are allowed in farmed fish than in wild caught fish. I’m sure it’s a matter of convenience because most of those farming situations probably use PCB laced plastic piping. And farmers are trying to improve their methods, but right now, they aren’t good enough for me to recommend them.

Let’s cut to the chase!

What fish are good for you and ecologically sustainable?

Here’s the list, Omega-3’s are per 100 grams eaten:

Anchovies 1.48g
Mackerel (Atlantic not Spanish or King) 2.45g
Oysters 0.68g
Sablefish 1.66g
Sardines, Pacific 1.9g
Rainbow Trout 0.986g
Tuna canned albacore 0.95g
(Look for fish caught in the U.S. Atlantic by trolling or pole-and-line gear as they result in almost no bycatch.)
Farmed Caviar 6.6 g
Crab (1 time/month due to contaminants) 0.3g

If you want to read more on fish the Environmental Defense Fund has a great website on health and ecology info of the fish you eat.

* Albacore, bigeye, yellowfin and skipjack are resilient to fishing pressure because they grow quickly and reproduce often.
* Bluefin tuna, on the other hand, grow slower and take longer to reproduce. This, coupled with their exorbitant value in the sushi market, has led to severely depleted populations.
* Bigeye and yellowfin, also known as ahi, are common in sushi. Both types, along with bluefin, are high in mercury and should be eaten infrequently, if at all. (Our expert on mercury in tuna sushi.)
* Most tuna are caught by purse seines or longlines, which have moderate-to-high bycatch of seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals.
* Pole-and-line caught tuna is less common but is a better environmental choice.

They also have a great deal of info on the safety of your fish oil choices.

I’ve been reading a lot of labels lately. Interestingly The Meijer’s brand of salmon, both red and pink, has more fat per unit weight than Demmings. If one assumes this is just because they use fattier cuts of fish then the amount of omega-3’s should increase correspondingly. By my estimation 43% more. It may be cheaper and better for you! Once again our efforts to reduce fat may be backfiring by demonizing the good omega 3 laden fish oils with the bad ones. I’ve been working with the buyer and the packer at Meijers trying to get down to the bare facts but they have not gotten back to me with the numbers in time for this dairy. I will update the information when I receive it, here or in a future diary.

And my favorite additive source: Krill oil

Truth in Blending statement: I use MegaRed but I don’t work for them and they don’t pay me.

Algae oil

Algae is the ultimate source of the good omega 3’s in fish. If you really want to avoid eating fish then you’ll need to go to the source. If you want to eat your algae then you want to pick up some Nori. That’s a flattened, dried red algae that’s frequently used in sushi and Asian soups as well as a common ingredient in ice cream! I have some Dulse Palmaria palmata) that I use in soups. You’ll have to poke around in a few Asian stores to find it though, you can’t get it at Penzeys!

Algae oils on the other hand are relatively easy to find. They don’t cause fishy burps, don’t kill anything above the plant level and seem sustainable. Hopefully, it’s not Soylent Green! I haven’t tried this yet. I’m still committed to trying to alter my diet through mainly consumption and not additives. But if I trip across these sometime I might try them out. How about you? Have you tried any of these? What’s your take?

Oh, and I’m recommitting to my diet tomorrow. I gained a lb instead of losing one this week. I have been sitting and reading too much, not being active enough and eating too much cheese! Time to get right!

First, an apology. I was so busy running up to and taking my PhD last chance qualifier last week that I had no time to do my diary. Then, I have been trying to catch up on everything this week (including getting together with non-virtual friends whom have also been ignored) that I didn’t get the diary done by Friday either. I’ve decided to move the diary to Sunday when I can control my available time better even though I will summarize the week from Friday to Friday since that is how my diet sheet is set up.

Also, it was Darwin’s 200th birthday this past Thursday (and we ecology gals went out and celebrated it yesterday). In his honor I’m going to present my feelings about why a varied diet based around mostly foraged foods is good for you. I made a short comment to someone well after the last 2 potatoes diary was posted and I’m going to re post and expand upon it here. Reminder: I’m not a doctor I’m just a person on a journey just like you.

I’ve responded several times to folks who want to tell me that because our ancient ancestors were hunters that we should all eat a meat based diet. What they fail to realize is two things:

1. Pre-historic man was a hunter GATHERER.
2. I believe in evolution.

People dismiss the gathering part of our heritage constantly and it’s a mistake. Plant foods leave far less evidence than big animal bones but that doesn’t mean we weren’t getting the majority of our foods by gathering. There have been many studies done showing that we are descended from peoples who primarily gathered and who supplemented our diets with hunted foods. Just this week there was an article on the teeth of A. africanus by David Strait et. al. at State University of New York at Albany. The feeding biomechanics and dietary ecology of Australopithecus africanus

In the study they postulated…”key aspects of australopith craniofacial morphology are more likely to be related to the ingestion and initial preparation of large, mechanically protected food objects like large nuts and seeds.”

They go on to clarify that the food of choice was fruits and that nuts and seeds were perhaps foods of last resort. However, it was an important enough food that genetic changes to dentition and facial bone reinforcement was advantageous.

Another article from 2000 Diet Diverged In Earliest Human Ancestors states:

that even the dental fossils of the oldest human ancestor studied — Ardipithecus ramidus — showed signs of a generalized diet. A few hundred thousand years later, the fossils show larger teeth with thicker enamel, and a million years later the fossils sport larger teeth and heavier jaws suited for heavy chewing of hard, brittle foods. But microscopic marks on the teeth also indicate that the hominids had not lost the ability to eat soft, tough foods, like fruit.

“You’re seeing an ability to broaden the diet,” Ungar said.

This generalized diet became crucial 2.5 million years ago, when our human ancestors split from the specialized forms of hominid species that eventually died out. Researchers speculate that the hominids with a more varied diet were able to survive environmental changes, while the specialists could not adapt quickly enough.

A related question is whether earlier humans had a healthier lifestyle.

Lifespan	Currently	Pre Industrial	2nd Millenium	1st Millenium	1 Millenium BC	Bronze Age	Neanderthals
Time	Now	1700-1900 AD	1000-1700 AD	0-1000 AD	700-0 BC	2000-700BC	130-28 KYA
Avg. Yrs.	77	36	30	30	19	25	35

References here and here. As you can see in the above chart we have only recently begun extending our lifespan greatly. Meats supplemented our mainly gathered diets tremendously 100,000 years ago but it seems foolish to me to romanticize early human lifestyle and suggest we emulate it today. If there is one thing that human history has shown is that we are adaptable and we evolve. Take the appendix for example, an organ which aids in the digestion of vegetable matter and which has atrophied over time showing that we used to eat a lot more leafy matter than we do currently. To use the logic of some trying to apply ancestral life choices to current diets: we should be eating far MORE vegetable matter than we do now not specializing on meats. Or, look at our closest living relatives: the great apes. 98% of their food sources are vegetative.

You could also look at at the traditional vs current diets of various tribes and you’ll find the increase in meat related fatty foods and the reduction in vegetative component is a big problem.

Partly as a result of high-fat diets, Maori have, on average, the poorest health of any ethnic group in New Zealand, with abnormally high rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and heart failure.

At the NZ Dietetic Association’s national conference this month, health researcher Christina McKerchar will address the dramatic changes in Maori eating habits during the past 200 years in a talk called From Kereru to KFC.

If you want to read the full article it is here.

Or this article:

Grandma: Well, traditional foods that we ate were more natural…less refined. We ate wild berries, wild roots, nuts, vegetables such as The Three Sisters, fowl, fish, or wild game for meat, leaves, and flowers. The food rations from the government were canned meats, processed fruits and vegetables, fruit juices, powdered milk and eggs, flour, sugar, and shortening.

What we need to do, IMHO, is determine what kind of healthy lifestyle accommodates modern times and move towards optimizing those changes. By which I mean making the lifestyle that will most benefit us the most also the most fun, enjoyable, inexpensive and achievable lifestyle possible. I believe in being more active, obviously societal changes are moving very swiftly and we haven’t had enough time to evolve into inert creatures. I also think we’ve reached the point where we’re going to self destruct on our own waste products. Therefore we need to make some accommodations to prevent that from happening. Towards that end, eating less meat, not more, is a good choice for the environment as well as ourselves.

The average American diet requires the production of an extra ton and a half of carbon dioxide-equivalent, in the form of actual carbon dioxide as well as methane and other greenhouse gases compared to a strictly vegetarian diet, according to Eshel and Martin.

More here and here and here and here and.. well you get the idea. I’m not advocating giving up all meat. I’m not a vegetarian myself I just almost eat like one. I’m just saying, it’s good for you to eat a balanced diet, you can get protein entirely from plant sources easily and less resource intensive choices like fruits and vegetables are good for the planet you live on.

I believe highly processed foods (a very recent change) are bad for us. Separating calories from their fibrous containers is deleterious. But beyond that, we’re cutting down on the activities involved in obtaining nutrition (both in easy preparation and swift absorbption) without cutting back on the volume of what we’re eating. And those of you that have followed these diaries know that I believe that one reason diets fail 95% of the time is that fat people, like me, don’t want to eat tiny portions. So, if we’re going to eat a lot, it’s good if we eat things that are low in calories and that make less of an impact on the environment.

I believe in evolution. I think Darwin was right. I think we have the ability to adapt and evolve into healthier people living on a safer, cleaner planet if we give ourselves enough leeway to do so. To that end, I want to say, Thanks Chuck! And happy 200th birthday.

Oh, and as for my own personal struggle with weight, I lost 0.8 lbs in the last two weeks. Not great, but it’s still moving in the right direction during a very challenging time where I simply sat and studied and didn’t eat properly at all. This is especially true considering I’ve had three celebrations that my exams are over which involved many liquid calories in the form of beer. With my PhD qualifiers out of the way I expect the weight loss train to get up a head of steam here shortly. Speaking of the PhD exams… I will not know for sure until next week but I am optimistic. So that’s it for me. How have you been doing? What are your biggest challanges right now? Remember, spring is only 10-15 lbs away!

First, some caterwauling: The information I’m going to post on this blog, is, by virtue of me posting it here, copyrighted. That means don’t try to repackage it and claim it’s yours and sell it. If you like the plan and it works for you, please point people here.

This week I’m making up for those first two weeks of too long diaries by making only one incredibly short one. Monday I take my final PhD exam and life has not been conducive to blogging. I will tell you how my healthy week went below the fold.

Just to keep this political..you have a duty to get fit and stay fit because the only way we’re going to finally put the Republicans out of our misery is if we outfight(which will take energy), outsmart (OK we already have this covered) and outlive them!

So tonight, I’m going to babble just a bit about what I eat in an average day:

Breakfast is 2-300 grams of sweet potatoes that I eat a little while before I do my daily novel reading while walking on the treadmill. This week I’m reading a really great book called “The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield. It’s actually too good. I’ve been walking over 3 miles almost every day without even realizing it and my feet are getting sore. I’m not really in shape for 3 and should be cutting it back to 2 miles till I get in better shape.

Lunch breaks the primal rule: Never eat anything bigger than your head. I have a giant salad with lettuce, onions, shredded carrots, tomatoes and dried cherries and home made salad dressing and with one of the following: nuts, cheese, chicken, turkey, tuna or salmon.

Dinner is 300 g of Idaho baked tater and baked onion and 2 cups of broccoli and 2 cups of salsa with a little goat cheese.

Snacks are fruit and sweet peppers or a little cheese.

Your weekly recipe:

Bean dip:

1 cup of white beans
1 cup of chopped cilantro
hot sauce to taste
1 tbs of chopped garlic
1/4 cup yogurt
1/4 cup lemon juice
salt to taste

240 calories total
Protein 12.4 g
Sat. Fat .62 g
Unsat Fat 0.3 g
Carbs 45.5 g
Fiber 2.0 g

This is great with carrots, celery, green pepper slices, radishes, broccoli, asparagus, summer squash slices or other almost calorie free foods!

On to the weekly weigh in!
My totals this week:

lost 1.8 lbs
1 inch off each thigh
1.3 inches off my hips
1.25 inches off my waist

Bringing my total weight loss to 9.2 lbs

Are you shaping up to fight the good fight?

How many times do I have to say it… Processed foods = BAD!

More Problems

caption id=”attachment_361″ align=”alignleft” width=”150″ caption=”A sweet and Idaho Potato Snuggling”][/caption]First, some caterwauling:
The information I’m going to post on this blog, is, by virtue of me posting it here, copyrighted. That means don’t try to repackage it and claim it’s yours and sell it. If you like the plan and it works for you, please point people here.

I’d like to say I’m sorry about not posting this week but since I was busy with school and THE INAUGURATION!!! I just can’t say that :).

I’m going to give you a quick round up of my weigh ins this week. First off, I did nothing on inaugural day except celebrate, I didn’t weigh in and I surely didn’t count my calories. Evidently jumping up and down, crying freely and whoopin n hollerin burns a lot of energy.

Week 3 Calories and Weight

	Sat	Sun	Mon	Wed	Thur
kcals	890	996	1476	1346	1271
lbs	227	228.4	228	227.4	226.4

OK So if I’m so hot at this eating right thing why isn’t the weight rolling off? Basically, because I’m doing too much movement. I was a total slug for three months trying to pass my PhD. qualifiers (my retake of the final exam was moved back AGAIN! ARrrrggghhh!!). Now I’m walking some almost every day and have been putting on a lot of muscle. How do I know? Certainly not by the, admittedly, wonky fat and water readings on my scale. I secretly measured myself a few days after starting the diet. I meant to diary that part sooner but some days it is a choice between talking about lifestyle tweaks and actually tweaking.

So I took a third set of measurements today. Let’s see how it’s going:

Measurements Week 3

	Calf	Thigh	Hips	Waist	Upper Body	Arms
1-13	41.5	67	130	102	98	35
1-17	42	64	125	100	98	34
1-22	41	63.5	121.5	97	97	34

All I can say is: WAAAHOOOO!!! I’ve lost 1.5 inches off each thigh, 3.5 inches off my butt and 2 inches off my waist. And I’m finally losing a weight too.

Let me share with you my philosophy of taking my measurements. I know, if I’m feeling desperate, I’m going to try to cheat subconsciously by pulling tighter on the tape measure. So, I start out pulling it as tight as I can. These measurements are not good for buying new clothes unless you like feeling like you’ve been stuffed into a body stocking and have a pathological hatred of deep breathing. So you’ll need to take a second set if you decide you need to buy clothes. But it keeps me honest. I like to measure the six points on the chart. Upper body is measured by running the tape right under my armpits. If you want to do your bust instead of or in addition to your upper body remember to wear the right undergarments ladies.. they have to fit right! It’s also important to measure the same spots each time. I have a mole, a tattoo, a freckle etc. to keep track of where I measure.

It’s really hard for me to lose on my upper arms. I have frozen shoulder in both shoulders which restricts both my movement and my upper body strength. Also, I need to dance more. That will help a little. If anyone has any suggestions for working around my issues I’m glad to hear them! I hate that flapping underarm wing.

OK I promise to write more tomorrow.. no, really I do!