Post Thanksgiving Musings - A "Normal" Holiday

Had an awesome Thanksgiving - filled the house with family and enjoyed every minute of it. Company started arriving Wednesday and the last left yesterday afternoon. The house seems a little quiet today as we are all winding down and getting ready to head back to work tomorrow.

So how did the holiday go food/exercise wise? It went exactly as planned - as a normal part of life. This is my second Thanksgiving since changing my life and at this point after 19 months everything seemed normal to me. I ate primal/lowcarb the whole time - smoked turkey, ham, roast cauliflower, butter, fage, cream, awesome pecan pie bites, apple chutney, etc.... it was downright luxurious and I never felt one iota of longing for any of my "old" treats.

It is very liberating to feel normal again - I am reminded of it everyday as life goes on everything that I changed to lose all of the weight has become normal. It is not a burden or some overly complicated routine of measuring, counting, timing....It is not angst and hand wringing every time I go out to eat or have a work function. If I go out - there is always something on the menu that I can fit in with my primal diet. If I go to a work function there is usually something I can snack on or worst case I do an impromptu IF.

I always thought the whole room would notice, that someone not eating the bread would be the three headed gorilla in the room....nope as is the case with myself people are generally most interested in what they are doing/eating and not what others are. Reading the message boards I see the angst and trepidation a lot of newcomers have about how in the world will they survive "going out", "a family function", "Thanksgiving", etc....my answer is you don't "survive" these events! Rather learn to incorporate them into a normal lifestyle.

This doesn't mean foregoing your dietary goals and plan, but rather adapting to the situation and realizing that 99.9% of the time you should be able to enjoy the event whether it be eating some portion of the food, requesting small modifications if you order, or even skipping the food every now and then as part of an IF. Absolute worst case - a small surrender will not derail all of your progress - however in 19 months and almost two complete set of holidays, business lunches, birthdays, funerals, weddings,etc.. I have not found this to be necessary even once!

I wish I knew now what I didn't know then as I was packing that extra 180 pounds of weight or suffering with it for all those years dragging on my existence. If I knew I could live happily, enjoy life including food and activity, and be fit without it being a constant burden maybe I would have started sooner and I would now have a couple extra years of happy memories.

Hindsight is 20/20 - hopefully for those out there waiting to get started or even along the way you can incorporate this advice: whatever you are doing to change your life - remember you need to make it your new normal. Do this and hopefully like I have experienced - staying fit and healthy will become almost effortless in your mind regardless of the difference in effort between the old you and the new you.

-LL

My Calorie Manifesto

I frequent a lot of lowcarb, paleo, and fitness websites and blogs and it seems there is a persistent "discussion" regarding whether one needs to count calories when low carbing and/or eating primally. Some folks insist they can eat whatever they want as long as they eat under X grams of carbs. While others insist anything over 1500 calories per day and they stop losing weight and gain.

So I would like to join the discussion by saying yes and no!

Let me explain....

No they don't count:

If you have a lot of weight to lose, have been eating a high sugar, and refined/processed diet - than initially calories aren't nearly as important as reducing the carbs and normalizing your insulin levels. This was me the first year or so - I lost over a 100 lbs. without watching my calories only the carbs.

I will not say that I ate huge calories over the whole time though because as the weight dropped and insulin response improved I ate less calories (how much I don't know and don't care). So this is where the calorie side of the argument says see it's just the calories and that they do count.

It is six, half dozen, one or the other..... the whole argument to me is stupid. For the person losing the weight initially what matters PRACTICALLY is that if they can start by reducing the amount of carbohydrate than they will lose weight.  Why burden them with counting calories on top of everything - with the obesity crisis in full swing we need to start people down the right road as soon as possible with the best chance of them sticking to it.

If we could only get people to reduce carbs and go to whole foods without ever mentioning calories - what a HUGE monstrous impact we would have on the obesity problem.

With that said....

Yes they do count:

Standard Life verse Primal Life Plane Ride!

Wanted to share a quick note in one of the joys my low carb/primal transition has brought to me.

The last time I flew was to Europe on business at or near my high weight of 415 with a waist size of 56 inches. At the time I knew I was not going to fit into one seat and decided to purchase a second - one of the most embarrassing things in my life at the time was asking the administrative assistant to add a seat and informing my wife I had to spend our money on an empty seat to accommodate my girth. 

Logical Dietary Goals

After a lot of reading and researching it was apparent that a diet low in sugar (i.e. carbs), high in saturated fat, and moderate protein made the most logical sense. I am not going into details here but a couple quick simple logical arguments/thoughts that support these for those repulsed by the idea of "low-carb/primal" diets:


1. We evolved without abundant sugar and carbs over tens of thousands of years - does it really make sense to make carbs the main component of our diet? Nothing evolves that fast.
2. Our body fat is saturated, our brain is approximately 2/3 saturated fat, and cholesterol is essential for cell structure and repair - why avoid these if the body runs on them (and if you critically review the studies they really do not increase heat disease/deaths)?
3. Your body can make carbs from protein - but not protein from carbs - which is essential?
4. If you were surviving in a forest or any other wild area and could only eat what grew naturally or what you could kill - what would your diet look like? Have you ever seen any overweight true hunter gatherer's?