Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Turkey-Day to all of my low carb friends and acquaintences online!! I hope that your Thanksgiving holiday was fun, full of good food and good times with friends and family!

This year we did turkey at our house. Our oldest son came home to be with us, and so our immediate family was all together, and that was nice.

We typically go out to see family or to a restaurant, but this year was different. I wasn't worried as my wife knows enough about cooking to pull as through, but then she got sick and it was all on me (EEeeek!). The latest cold/flu bug has hit our house and several have got a cold and are laid low now. I got the flu shot this year and an anxious to see if any of the immunity I was hoping for will be there for me this year. This is the first year I have ever done that either.

I am not a chef or cook and have never carved (let alone cooked) a turkey! In the end, I made a turkey, half a ham, asparagus cassarole, asparagus, green beans, creamed corn, cranberry sauce, yeast rolls, yam/sweet potatoes (both low carb and another sweet potato casarole that was definitely high carb), etc., and it all turned out great according to reports from the family. I of course only ate the low carb fare, but it was enjoyable, I ate till I was full, and it was a huge relief that I was able to even do it. My wife gave me pointers at critical points, and thanks to the Lord for our many blessings and the dinner working out after all!!

This morning, I checked the scale and I was another pound down, on down to 303.6 lbs. Ye 'Ol belt is about to get another notch or two in it soon as well. That is awsomely excellent! I was grinning ear to ear this morning as I got off the scale. :)

Minor Victory - 19" Collar

A tiny report of some minor victories. Probably doesn't mean alot to anybody else, but I am now in a 19" collared Oxford style shirt, without the blood flow being constricted to my brain or the life being choked out of me. This is something that I tried but was impossible a number of weeks ago (not too long ago).

My weight loss has slowed a bit the past weeks, but I am still losing down to lower and lower levels (new lows). Last low was 305 lbs. My weight is still fluctuating up and down by 5 or sometimes 10 pounds. I have been working on reducing portion sizes - staying on the same low carb track that got me here otherwise. Meat and eggs and low carb veggies and some few nuts and cheeses here and there.

It's nice to celebrate all the little landmarks as I reach them and pass them by on this low carb journey! This one was kinda neat! At my highest weight last year I was wearing a size 22 inch collar, which now hangs way down around my neck in almost comical fashion.

My waist size has also been slowly and continually declining as well. That's also nice to see!

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Some interesting articles and blog posts to point you to:

Required Reading: Dr. Eades Responds to reports of a study indicating low carb diets cause higher inflamation. Links to an excellent study by Jeff Volek and others.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/2007/11/08/more-on-the-low-carb-study-at-the-aha-meeting/

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/2007/11/06/does-the-atkins-diet-damage-blood-vessels/

Jack Lalane vs. Ancel Keys (Timely reading if you are reading Good Calories, Bad Calories) features a great video link to a younger Jack Lalane talking about sugar and it's impact on health ("sugarholics").

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/2007/11/04/jack-lalanne-vs-ancel-keys/

Wishing you all the best on *YOUR* low carb journey!!

Origins of Low Carb: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

Brillat-Savarin

In reading the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes I am pleasantly surprised to find a good deal of the long history around low carb and low carb science. One of the "fathers" of the low carb premise was Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a French lawyer and physician who lived from 1755 to 1826 (to be 70 yrs and 10 months of age at his death).

And in stumbling around the Internet looking for writings of low carb superheros (like William Banting, and Dr. Atkins, and Dr.'s Eades, etc) I found the famous writing (see the web link below) of the aformentioned low carb supergenius.

It is an excellent read, and well worth spending some time perusing! I have included a handy glossary below for some of the excellent words found within the translated version of this low carb treatise.

The Physiology of Taste

by Brillat-Savarin

MEDITATION XXI.
OBESITY

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/brillat/savarin/b85p/part26.html

Word Fun - Glossary

(not in any alphabetical order):

.............................................................

Corpulent:

fat, obese, overweight

Gastrophoria:

One kind of obesity that is restricted to the stomach

Gastrophorous:

Those afflicted with the aforementioned condition

Obesity:

that state of greasy congestion in which without the sufferer being sick, the limbs gradually increase in volume, and lose their form and harmony.

farinacious: (it means starchy)

1 : having a mealy texture or surface
2 : containing or rich in starch

feculent:

foul with impurities, fecal

feculaferous:

see feculent

embonpoint :

plumpness of person : stoutness

apoplexy:

crippled by a stroke

dropsy :

retention of water, edema (perhaps as a result of congestive heart failure)

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13311

The discovery of a new dish

does more for human happiness

than the discovery of a new star.

.

-----------

.

By this and similar conversations I elucidate a theory

I have formed about the human race, viz:

Greasy corpulence always has, as its first cause,

a diet with too much farinacious or feculent substance.

I am sure the same regime will always have the same effect.

.

Carniverous animals never become fat.

One has only to look at the wolf, jackal, lion, eagle, etc.
Herbiverous animals do not either become fat

until age has made repose a necessity.

They, however, fatten quickly when fed on potatoes, farinacious grain, etc.

.

-----------

.

The second of the causes of obesity, is the fact that farinacious and

feculaferous matter is the basis of our daily food.

.

We have already said that all animals that live on

farinaceous substances become fat;

man obeys the common law.
.

The fecula is more prompt in its action when it is mingled with sugar.

Sugar and grease are alike in containing large

quantities of hydrogen, and are both inflammable.

.

This combination is the more powerful,

from the fact that it flatters the taste,

and that we never eat sweet things

until the appetite is already satisfied,

so that we are forced to court the luxury

of eating by every refinement of temptation.

.

-----------

.

INCONVENIENCE OF OBESITY (excerpt)

Obesity has a lamentable influence on the two sexes,

inasmuch as it is most injurious to strength and beauty.

...
It lessens strength because it increases the weight to be moved,

while the motive power is unchanged.

...

It injures respiration, and makes all labor requiring

prolonged muscular power impossible.

...
Obesity destroys beauty by annihilating the harmony

of primitive proportions, for all the limbs do not proportionately fatten.

...

It destroys beauty by filling up cavities nature’s hand itself designed.

...
Nothing is so common as to see faces,

once very interesting,

made common–place by obesity.

Celebrating One Year Low Carbin' It

An Old Familiar Landmark with a Big Giant One!

Well, it's officially been a year Low Carbin' it!!!!

I started Nov 1st, 2007! YEEEEeeeee Haw!

I have been camped out by the mailbox (like a kid on Christmas morning) awaiting the results of a recent blood test at work. It was part of a health fair and the first I've done since going low carb. I haven't really got a full time doc overseeing my health. More on emergency basis only, as needed. So this was nice to get a bit of a checkup, through work! It was conducted through LifeSigns, and the lab work was done via LabCorp.

The verdict is in. It is certainly better health stats than a year ago! Still not everything I had hoped for. But it is good, and I hope to do better as I lose more weight on low carb, and get into even better health and shape.

Here's my Blood Workup and Health-Check stats:

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BMI: 43 (this one and the next one calculated on one of those hand-grip BF testers)
BF%: 40 (Yes, high. But less than a year ago!)
BP: 142/96 (High, but not as high as before)

--- Blood Test Results ---
Glucose, Serum: 102 (borderline high)
Cholesterol, Total: 209 (borderline high)
Trigycerides: 79
HDL Cholesterol: 52
VLDL Cholesterol: 16
LDL Cholesterol: 141 (borderline high)
LDL/HDL Ratio: 2.7

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There were lots of other test results - but all thankfully solidly in the normal catagory. The tests they ran for medical geeks out there were (CMP14+LP+CBC/D/Plt) whatever that means. It was testing alot of stuff including kidney and liver function, Lipids, WBC/RBC, Sodium, Potassium, etc., etc.

Also, I took a look at my "Estimate of 10-Year Risk for Coronary Heart Disease Framingham Point Scores" today on the net, while trying to understand the test results. That also turned out pretty OK. You too can try that here:

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/cholesterol/risk_tbl.htm#men

Also, this afternoon the family made a trip to the tiny little library in our small town. The non-fiction (non-kids) books line maybe a half dozen or slightly more rows of shelves, tops.

To my amazement, they had a fresh new hardcover copy of Gary Taubes new book: "Good Calories, Bad Calories" in stock. So I checked that puppy out in a heartbeat. Also a hard cover copy of "Protien Power" and "The Paleo Diet". I can't wait to read them all!! I started today reading the prolouge of Gary Taubes book, and it is awesomely awesome! Man, I'd like to slide back in time and thank these doctors and Mister Banting myself!! What a difference eating and living low carb has made in my life!!!