Is Vegetarianism an Improvement on the SAD?

I really should be going to bed, as I want to be up early to go deer hunting (I will be posting some venison soon, Gods willing), but as often happens, somebody was arguing with me over the Internet (the gall!) and I feel the need to bring it up.

Paleo eaters love to pick on vegetarians.  This is an  interesting development, because it's perfectly possible to eat a vegetarian diet that is reasonably close to paleo principles, but we tend to single out vegetarianism because culturally we're really into meat.  It's a mutual thing, too... vegetarians, the evangelical kind anyway, loathe paleo diets because of the aforementioned meat-heaviness, even though we are more likely to buy meat from more ethical sources than non-paleo eaters.  Although honestly, I understand vegetarian hatred of paleo diets much more than paleo hatred of vegetarian diets.  At least vegetarians have a percieved moral basis for their ire.  We basically have butthurt... someone with absolutely no real power over us says meat is immoral, and we get indignant.  But that's a different story.

As often happens, somebody was making fun of percieved flaws in the vegetarian diet, and somebody pointed out that vegetarianism is better than the Standard American Diet (SAD), so we shouldn't be bashing vegetarians.

I agree on the one point... bashing vegetarians is stupid as fuck... but the idea that vegetarianism is better than the SAD actually really stings me.  And here's why:

There is nothing about vegetarianism that is inherently better--or worse--than the Standard American Diet.

Even if we're talking about veganism, the more extreme version of vegetarianism in which no animal products are intentionally consumed, there is a great deal of diet variability.  If you really emphasize whole vegetables and increase things like coconut oil and avocados to get some good fat sources, make sure you have adequate protein sources (even whole soy, although that's a paleo sin), watch your sugar intake, and supplement B-12 for Gods' sake, veganism doesn't have to be recklessly unhealthy.  On the other side of the coin, things like potato chips, soda, and everything on this list of foods I'll probably be forced to eat in hell, are all perfectly vegan, and yes, there are vegans that live almost 100% off of this shit.  And when you expand to ovo- and lacto-vegetarianism, you get even more variability.

And there is a huge push to get vegetarians to eat that junk, a push that is perpetuated by animal rights activists who are perfectly willing to potentially trash the health of a human if that human stops eating animals.  It's not really their fault, though... the mentality is more like this:  If people are going to be subsisting off of crap anyway, why not introduce them to vegan crap and at least save some animals?

A vegetarian diet can lead somebody away from a meat-heavy SAD if that's what they're after... it's just that there is nothing inherent to vegetarianism that will do that, and vegetarians are increasingly reaching for processed junk.  In addition, most vegetarians eat very grain-heavy diets even when they do try to eat healthy.  So vegetarians and vegans are gaining weight along with the rest of us, with all the lovely associated health problems.  I know that this is how I was when I was a vegan... I'd try eating whole foods, get really sick because whole wheat gives me cramps, and I'd make myself feel better by eating the giant vegan cookies at the convenience store that probably had eight-hundred grams of sugar each.  So weight gain and other problems among vegans is pretty common, and not the shock people think it is.

Me being every college vegan ever.

Keep in mind that I'm not damning vegetarianism, here.  This is common to every diet that isn't terribly specific.  Paleo eaters also have our own types of junk food... from homemade cookies, breads, pies, and cakes made with almond or coconut flour to Lärabars, there are even companies that make processed, packaged paleo bread, pasta, and other foods.  I still think this is an improvement on the SAD, but only for now.  I honestly feel that in the future people are going to be marketing shit like paleo soda (people already come up with recipes) and paleo God-knows-whatever-else.

The point here is that, yes, I agree that we shouldn't single out vegetarianism as somehow being worse than the SAD, because it isn't.  But we shouldn't give it a pass just because they aren't the SAD we all know and hate... they're prone to the exact same diet follies non-vegetarians on the SAD are.  Pretending otherwise just reinforces inaccurate beliefs about the healthfulness of vegetarianism.

In Which I Cook The Bird Of Peace

Mourning doves are kind of a controversial bird. In some states they're viewed as a songbird and as such are protected.  In Wisconsin, there is a season for them, and although I have neither the time (nor, honestly, the interest) to hunt most things myself, my brother does, and he also doesn't like doves, so he gifted me the four he shot on my property the other day.

To the right is the result... a few points, since Reddit and Facebook have already brought this up:

1. This is not chicken.  It does not need to be cooked well.
2. Actually, as it's a red meat bird, cooking it well will not do it justice.
3. My camera is actually kind of terrible, so it's not as raw as it looks.

Now that we've got that behind us, I have to make a confession here:  I don't think I've ever thought poultry was ever as delicious as this meal was.  It tasted a lot like steak.  I cannot wait until I get my  hands on some more of them.

This particular batch was just baked in a convection oven at about 400 degrees for a half an hour before being cut off the bone and presented (I added the rosemary because it was already pretty).  There was a dollop of coconut oil on the top, and it was seasoned with salt and pepper.

Next time I make it, I will be pan-frying the whole body first to caramelize it before baking it in the same manner.

I'm on the Blood Donation Boat

First off, my weigh-in today was 214 pounds.  Back to a total 55 pound weight loss.

I'm terribly sorry I don't have the link, but a while ago I recall reading an article about the Paleo movement in which somebody maintained we should all give blood because early man would have been regularly using it.

This has always seemed a silly hunter-warrior fantasy to me, the idea that men were constantly spraying blood everywhere and lived to tell the tale.  I don't know.  Never really bought it.

On the other hand, blood donation is a good thing to do both for your community and for your health.  Especially when you're like me and your body makes too much blood.  Which I found out a couple months ago when my routine hormone-related bloodwork came back and I was told I had secondary polycythemia.  This is the opposite of anemia... rather than having too few red blood cells, I have too many, which can eventually lead to a stroke or heart attack.

The treatment is frequent blood donations to lower the blood count, which I've been doing. 

So I guess I'm on that wagon after all.

Paleo Mayo and On Honey

Updates:  First off, I forgot this blog still existed.  But it does, so here I am.

Diet-related, I am giving up most dairy, at least for a while, to try it out.  My main exception is ghee, although I am a bit lax when it comes to butter.  I'm going to see how it makes me feel, since I stalled a bit weight-loss-wise.

I stopped tracking my food intake because it wasn't helping me.

I don't care very much about carb intake anymore, although I eat less fruit and more vegetables.

I weigh roughly 216 pounds now.  Which is good as I slipped up between now and the last post and gained some weight.  I'm fine now, though.

Next, the mayo.  And the honey.  I eat honey.  I don't eat like, buckets of it, but I eat it.  A lot of us do.  And the first response I got from posting this recipe was somebody telling me to omit the honey.

Uhhh, no.  You are not Paleo Czar and I will eat what I want.  Honey is a food that's found in the wild, has been eaten by humans for a long time, and gathering it is portrayed in cave paintings.  You can omit whatever you damned well please, but I like my mayo the way it is.

But yes, you can omit the honey, that's fine.

Paleo Mayo

First I should mention why I made this today.  At r/Paleo somebody posted a recipe with mayonnaise in it, and since most people associate mayonnaise with that soybean-oil-laden rancid crap in the supermarket, there were people questioning its involvement.

Maybe it was that supermarket crap.  OK, let's be honest, although it's not ideal, supermarket mayo is not the worst thing you can eat.  But if you have the time and elbow grease, a way better option is to make it on your own, switching the bad ingredients with good ones.  Because at its base, mayonnaise is literally nothing but egg and oil.

I used a recipe for this.  Kind of.  It's one by Alton Brown from the Food Network.  His recipe, of course, contains two problems:  Sugar and bad oils.  So if you follow this recipe exactly, switching out the oil for avocado or light olive oil and the sugar for honey--or omitting it entirely--you will have an ideal mayo.  If you are going to be eating it right away, you can even use hardening oils like coconut or bacon grease.

I made an additional substitution.  Since I had no dry mustard, I used some whole corn wet mustard--deliciousness in a jar--instead.  The result is s hown in the pictures, here:  A gorgeous-colored accompaniment to a naked BLT or an addition to some deviled eggs.

On the Vegetarian Mental Disorders Study

So on r/Paleo somebody posted a study showing that vegetarians have a higher incidence of mental disorders.  The gist of it is that they direct-matched data from vegetarians with non-vegetarians and predominantly-vegetarian-eaters and found that depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and somatoform disorders are more common in vegetarians.  More interestingly, the onset of these disorders tends to happen after people go vegetarian.

Do we really know why?  No.  There are undoubtedly paleo and primal eaters out there who believe it is a nutritional thing... I don't.  As an ex-vegan, I have my own way of looking at this, by which I mean this finding is not shocking when you consider what disorders we're talking about.  And while vegetarianism is not an inherently healthy lifestyle, I don't think it's due to the common nutritional errors in thinking vegetarians tend to make.  I think it has to do with the kind of mental environment they are in.

Depression and anxiety are both chemical and social disorders.  What I mean by that is that there are plenty of people who get depression and anxiety for what feels like absolutely no reason... there are plenty of others, though, that get depression and anxiety due to outside pressures.  In 2006 I was working on a political campaign for several months that led to harassment and property damage.  Even worse, we lost.  It got to the point where several of us needed psychiatrists because we were suffering from anxiety and depression.  I would have panic attacks over the phone to my parents.  And actually, during Wisconsin's recall election the same thing happened for the same reason.

Now think about the social environment of the vegetarian, especially the vegan.  Vegans are in the position where they believe 99% of the people they care for, that they associate with, that they are surrounded by every day are supporting cruel and murderous practices.  They are aware that animals are being killed by humans by the thousands in their own backyards and that there is very little they can actually do about that.  And while this comparison is inaccurate and rightfully seen as absolutely insensitive to most non-vegetarians, vegans easily view this as an animal holocaust that everybody seems to support except them.

Pile in the fact that people often outright refuse to accommodate their eating choices and make them the constant butt of jokes.  They're guilted by relatives for not eating the turkey, they constantly have to ask for modifications when they go out to eat at a restaurant, and they have to deal with a lot of insensitivity from other people.

This is enough to make anybody extremely anxious and depressed.  So that doesn't surprise me.

Then you have somatoform disorders.  These are maladies for which there is no apparent medical cause... hypochondria, for instance.  And every restrictive diet makes it easy to have somatoform conditions.  Have you ever witnessed a long-term vegetarian accidentally eat something with meat in it?  Some of them are chill about it, if annoyed, but there are a lot of them who will dramatically freak out over it, thinking they're really ill.  When I was at summer camp somebody put pepperoni in the spaghetti, which one of the vegetarians ate.  She bawled for hours.  People were reassuring her on ethical grounds without realizing that it wasn't because she had killed an animal, it was because she hadn't eaten meat since she was three years old and vegetarian culture--and her parents--had told her time and time again that she could no longer handle meat.  My vegetarian friends seriously do feel that this is going to make them violently ill.  One of my Facebook friends recently wrote a rant about how using the same knife to cut meat and then cut vegetables could cause a vegetarian to become sick because she "can't handle it anymore."

Alright, let's be really fucking blunt here:  Vegetarians are not going to get sick if they eat meat unless they have a legitimate (and rare) intolerance to it.  But they aren't just being dramatic, either.  When I was a vegetarian I decided I would try freeganism and bit into quesadilla made with ingredients I had rescued from being thrown down the garbage disposal.  Because I still had that vegetarian mindset, though, I wound up vomiting and getting a stomachache.  When I flat out gave up vegetarianism in favor of paleo, the first thing I ate was a steak.  I hadn't eaten meat in six years at that point (the quesadilla incident having been far gone) and suffered no ill effects.

The problem with using this to damn vegetarianism is that it's common among all restrictive diets, like I said before.  Personally?  I feel really ill when I eat grain, especially whole wheat.  Even when I decided paleo wasn't necessary, whole wheat gave me a stomachache the entire time.  But I can't entirely rule out the possibility that it is entirely somatic, because other paleo and primal eaters constantly talk about how much sugar and grain make them feel sick.  I have no doubt it does, and it's a perfectly good reason not to eat it... but without actual tests, we just don't know.  Just using testimonials we'd have to assume that everything anybody ever omits on a restrictive diet makes people ill.  Meat, grain, fruit, dairy, cooked food, raw food, Jesus, we can't eat anything without becoming violently ill!

The point here is, of course, that studies like this don't actually damn vegetarianism... all they really do for me is confirm what I already know about it, which is that culturally vegetarianism is great at churning out certain mental disorders.

On the other hand, though, not many environments aren't.

New Scale, and a Microwave Brownie Cake

A weight update and a recipe?  Madness!

I bought a new scale today.  It's a digital scale that also gives body fat percentage and a few other numbers, and is more accurate than my other scale, which could vary five pounds in a matter of seconds.

So my weight right now is around 220 rather than 218 like my other scale said... but that's not a big deal; just a two pound difference, and my weight varies more than that anyway.  My body fat percentage is roughly 40% which, despite being abysmal, is lower than I would have expected.

I've been having sweets attacks like mad, and because of this today I made a microwave brownie.  I forgot where I got the recipe I modified this from...I'll keep looking, but I can't seem to find it.  Whatever.

Microwave Brownies with Pecans

To make this, you need:

• 1/4 cup canned pumpkin or squash.
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder.
• 2 tablespoons whey powder or coconut flour (I've tried both, I prefer the whey but they're both good).
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans.
• 2 egg whites.
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey (or another sweetener if you want, or omit).
• a few pinches baking powder (makes it fluffy... you can omit if you want to avoid the corn or sodium).
• A microwave-safe soup bowl.
• Some oil.

Oil the inside of the soup bowl.  Add all the ingredients to it and mix until all the lumps are sorted out (if it's not perfect it'll still taste OK... in my example above I didn't get all the pumpkin mixed in).

Put in the microwave and cook on high for 1-4 minutes.  If you have a microwave that burns stuff really fast like the powerhouse we use at work, tend toward one minute.  My microwave gets it in about three minutes.

If you want to avoid the baking powder, I hear from some folks that you can just whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold everything else into it.  I'll have to try that before I actually endorse it, though.

Cherry Coconut Lemonade

Yesterday I had some really wicked soda cravings.  To get through that, I made this:

It's cherry lemonade made with coconut water (I use coconut water for a lot of things because it's good for blood pressure).  I don't have the ingredients down exact, but the gist of it is:

• Roughly a half cup lemon juice.
• Roughly a cup coconut water (or regular water).
• A little over a quarter cup cherries (I used frozen pie cherries) or other fruit.
• A tablespoon maple syrup (optional, depends on what fruit you use).

Put it in a blender.  It may be the blender or the fact that I used frozen fruit or something else entirely, but I wind up with a massive amount of pleasant-tasting foam on top that does not de-foam.  I'm thinking about trying this again and freezing the foam to see if it turns out like a sherbert.  Chill it for a while so the foam and other stuff separates and when you skim it all off you wind up with something like the above.

And it was pretty good... nailed the cravings, at least.

A Weight Milestone

I didn't eat bad yesterday.  I basically ate that container of apple cider pork I photographed, bacon, eggs, avocados, and one more apple.  I don't really have much to say about it so I'm not putting a run-down.  Those are going to come more sporadically because I'm bored of 'em already and I'm sure you are, too.

My milestone today?  I am in the 210s.  I weigh 219 pounds as of today, which is four pounds away from where I left off the last time I went primal, 39 pounds away from my goal, and a full 50 pounds lighter than my peak weight.

So break out the kazoos!  OK, never mind, don't do that.  'Twould be obnoxious.

To celebrate (or rather just because it's a good idea) my new "running goal" is to walk my dog every day.  Because he's a sweetheart who deserves it.

With a face like that...

And also to prepare for Pridefest which is next week.  In diet-related terms, what I am wondering is if I should take this as a cheat day or if I should try to primal-ize the experience.  Let's be honest, I'm thinking it'll be the former, because it'll be a day of street food.  Generally it is too expensive for me to overindulge there, though, so I'm not particularly worried.

Speaking of indulging, I don't know if I brought up my big problem, which is that my dad does not understand my eating decisions.  You know those lists of "Ten Things Never to Say/Do to a Dieter?"  Dad breaks a lot of those rules.  Many of them contradicting.  When I was younger, he was the one who most ragged me about my weight--I'm too old (and male) for him to really get away with it now, but he still has that kind of attitude... while at the same time trying to "help" me by buying me food.

It makes sense.  I'm his son, I'm low-income (I can afford food, but only barely), so he thinks that by buying it he's helping me.  The problem is that no matter what I tell him, he doesn't understand the basics of my diet.  He didn't when I was a vegan and he doesn't now.  So a couple days ago I was stressed out as all hell because he decided to bring home four packages of candy.  Because it was ethnic candy from a Mexican import store and one of the ingredients in one was sweet potatoes, which I have eaten occasionally, he assumed I would like it and brought it.

Like an idiot I told him I'd use it for cheat days.  What I need to tell him instead is "don't buy me food.  Ever."  I very nearly had a sugar binge on it.  Luckily for me, it was terrible tasting stuff with weird spices and so I only one piece of each variety (a total of around 400 calories) and spat out almost all of one of them (the most calorically dense, meaning I probably only actually ate around 250 calories).  I told him this when I got home and said not to buy food for me anymore.  He said he won't, but I don't know.

Well, we'll see.  Today was a good day, hopefully another tomorrow.

Apple Cider Pork

I make a lot of lunchboxes.  This isn't ideal, but I work long hours and away from home, so it's essential that I make good lunchboxes to avoid succumbing to Taco Bell like everyone else.  This is my new favorite lunchbox filler:

Apple Cider Pork
I make a lot of pork, for many reasons.  It's less expensive than beef, it's delicious, and it's my God's sacred animal.  I make a lot of it with apple cider these days, to avoid drenching it in barbecue sauce, usually just pan-fried in a little lard with some cider thrown in halfway through the cooking process.

This, though, is my favorite recipe.

I started with two large pork chops.  Start some lard (two teaspoons this time) on my frying pan and cut the chops into strips with a meat scissors.  If you're left with a bone that still has a good amount of meat on it, toss that in there too so you have something to chew after.  I brown the outsides a little before adding enough apple cider vinegar to cover them about halfway.

At this point I cut up an apple (in this case a red delicious, any apple works but a baking apple would be better) and an onion.  When they're cut, I put them in the mix with the pork and mix it all up.  Put some seasoning on it to taste (I admit I just use a little Lawry's Seasoned Salt).  Cover the pan and let it cook down.  I like it when everything's all caramelized and gooey, you can see some of the blackness from the vinegar and water having all cooked away.  Pay attention, though, because you don't want it too burnt.

It also tastes good if you just cook it down until there's a nice apple-onion-vinegar sauce.

Giving up soda step-by-step.

Bottled poison.

I'm a recovering soda addict.  That sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, but it was ridiculously bad.  And it's still ridiculously bad.  I haven't drank soda since the beginning of January, but when I walk past it in a store or when I am asked to buy it for someone else my hands shake.

If you're where I was, I'm afraid to say it'll probably never entirely go away... but that doesn't mean that you can't give up soda.  Although they may seem obvious, these are the steps that I took--and in many ways continue to take--to slay the sugary beast.

1. Start by raising the amount of calcium you eat.I actually supplement calcium specifically for this reason.  Paleo options for this include eating whole sardines and other small fish that still have bones as well as green leafy vegetables, those primal among us might choose dairy instead.  The reason for this is that addiction to carbonation may be a sign of a calcium deficiency.  It won't work for everyone, but it's worth a shot, right?
   
2.  Reduce sugar soda as much as you can.
   If you're like I was and you literally drink it every hour of your waking day, make a conscious effort to drink less of it.  For example, at my peak I'd drink roughly a can of soda an hour for twelve hours most days.  That's 1,800 calories and over 500 grams of carbohydrate.  Think about the impact one would make by cutting that in half; starting by drinking a can every two hours instead of one, then every three hours.
   You can also replace it with other drinks, but be warned...People have it in their heads that certain things are "good replacements," when they really aren't that great.  Iced tea might have less sugar, for example, but not always.  I have a resident who is trying to lose weight who overdrinks sports drinks like Gatorade and Powerade thinking it will help him.  These won't harm you if you are extremely active and athletic, but if you're not they are no better for you than a soda with some salt added to it.  Fruit juice, as well, may seem like a good choice... but wouldn't it be better to just eat the fruit?  In the long run, the only really good substitute is water.
3. Once you've reduced, switch to diet soda.
   This one is actually the most difficult for quite a few people to hear, especially if you're coming from a natural foods (or so-called-natural-foods) movement.  I tried this when I was still a vegan only to have a bunch of friends tell me how evil aspartame was.  And, well, it is, but I assure you it's way better for you than sugar soda.  Consider that a 20 ounce Mountain Dew has around 290 calories (enough for a whole fricking meal) and 77 grams of sugar (more than enough or a whole fricking day), getting rid of that is making an impact.  The caveat here is to make sure you either improve or don't change your other lifestyle habits; diet soda can encourage people to eat more because they think they've made up for it.
   Be warned, "real sugar" is not "diet."I remember one day my father--a diabetic--came home with a twelve pack of Sierra Mist Natural because they market it kind of shadily.  Sugar, in the long run, is still sugar.  And the same, unfortunately, goes for those natural sodas brewed with honey or maple syrup.  Still sugar.
4. Start going days without soda altogether.This is an optional step.  Personally, after a year of diet soda, I gave up soda cold turkey.  This step is if you can't do that.  Just start going days without soda.  If you're addicted, you'll shake.  Drink water.  Eat some fruit if you need to.  Know that the shaking is not because you need it; just as carb addicts may think they are going into sugar shock when they reduce their carb intake because their body reacts, your body might react to the lack of soda.  But make a conscious effort to cut it down.
5.  Give it up... for good.Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can drink it once in a while and be OK.  It took me ten years to give up soda because every time I'd give it up, it would be a half-assed "moderation" way of going about it.  I'd drink a soda--just this once--and it would spiral into four, five, six, or more and I'd be right back where I started.

PaleoTrack Analysis for May 29th

Alright, time for yesterday's PaleoTrack Analysis:

What I Ate And Why

I worked today, and miraculously it didn't harm my food intake that much:

 The list isn't all that accurate, but I'm going to assume it's accurate enough to not throw me off entirely.

For breakfast I had two rashers of bacon and two eggs fried in a little of the leftover grease, which is normal for me.  For lunch I had haddock cooked in coconut oil.  For dinner, which I ate at work, I had two chicken thighs with the skin.

For a throughout-the-day snack I made a trail mix with jerky (made from a grass-fed strip steak, this is where the "maybe not so accurate" thing comes up), home-dried bananas (another one) and a quarter cup of pecans.

There was no strange reason for eating any of this today.  I ate when I got hungry.  That part is a success for me.

The Pie Chart

Pie chart today is pretty damned good:

I didn't eat as many calories as I wanted, but it's not a huge deficiency and I'm not hungry.  My carbs are in a good spot at 31g.

The Labels

Hey, I gained one!

 No dairy today.  It's still ragging at me because of my omega-6 fatty acids, but I figured out they're high because of all the chicken I've been eating.  The skin has lots of omega-6s.  The pecans didn't help, but I wouldn't have gone over had it not been for the chicken.  And let's be honest, I'm not going to fret over chicken skin.

I went shopping today and brought back pork, lamb, eggs, and avocados.  So perhaps I will moderate the chicken better and I'll eventually get a magic "Strict Paleo" gold star there.  Not today, I'm afraid.

A PaleoTrack Warning

I love PaleoTrack.  It's great for when you're sick of SparkPeople or FitDay whining that you're eating too much fat and not enough carbs, and it'll even remind you of whether you are grain free, dairy free, and so on.

There are a couple of things that can be confusing, though, and I thought I'd draw your attention to them because I've seen multiple people  have these problems without really seeing what was going on.

The first and simplest is to make sure you have your time zone correct.  Foods I was adding were magically disappearing on me, and it turned out that my "today" was the program's "tomorrow" based on my time zone settings.

But that's not a big deal.  This next one, though, is.  A couple days ago I ate ten ounces of pork.  When it gave me the amounts, it didn't give an option for ounces, only chunks of three ounces.  So I put the number as 3.33 as a quick estimate and clicked "Add to journal."

It converted the amount to 9.99 ounces, which was sufficiently close, and so I didn't think anything further of it.

I added the rest of my food for the day and then found I had added the wrong number of beets to the wrong day (based on the problem above).  So I clicked the "Edit" button to change the beets.  When I clicked "Save," it said I had gotten over 3500 calories.  Which confused me because I had reduced the number of beets I'd eaten, and beets aren't that caloric anyway.

I actually wound up doing this multiple times, and the calorie count ballooned to around 23,000.  Finally I looked at the amounts to find that it thought I'd eaten almost 270 ounces of pork, 27 times what I actually did.

What happened?  Well, whenever you click "Edit," it reverts back to chunks of three ounces instead of the ounces it converts itself to.  What it doesn't do is recalculate the number.  So whenever you click "Edit," and don't bother making sure all of them are accurate, it'll multiply the number it calculated from your original entry by three ounces.

So if you start by adding 3.33 to signify around ten ounces, it'll multiply that to about 9.99.  Next time you edit you wind up with a little under thirty.  And so on.

Maybe this'll be fixed in the future, maybe it won't.  PaleoTrack is a great program, but you need to be careful with it.

Oil Pulling, Oil Swallowing.

Coconuts.

I started an oil pulling regimen.  Kind of.  Oil pulling is an Indian technique in which somebody takes a mouthful of oil, sesame oil being traditional, and swishes it around their mouth, trying to squish it between teeth and the like, for about twenty minutes before spitting it out.  This is meant to "pull" toxins out of the bloodstream through the mouth, particularly bacteria and parasites.  This is purported to "cure" all manner of ailments, such as allergies, diabetes, skin problems, etc.

I'm going to say this for the first time on this blog, although I've said it plenty of times before:  Alternative medicine is puffed-up and often useless.  When it is useful, it usually isn't for the ways its proponents say it is.  Going on an Ayurvedic diet, for example, will not give you any extraordinary benefits, but it does encourage dietary mindfulness, so plenty of people will do better on it than they would if they continued to eat, say, a SAD diet.  Drinking coconut water can reduce your blood pressure, but not because your body is "too hot" and coconut water is "cooling."

Oil pulling falls into this category.  I decided to try this, using coconut oil, because it's likely good for your oral health, and because my teeth are suffering from a triple-attack (years on the SAD, years of veganism and vegetarianism, years of soda addiction), this is something really important to me.  There is a big difference between the way I do it and the way others do it, though, and that's that I swallow the oil.

"What?  Blasphemy!"  OK, hear me out.  I'm not saying that you need to swallow oil after you pull it.  And if you believe the trotted out reason why it supposedly works, I don't blame you for being horrified.  I already explained it above... people seem to believe that swishing oil in their mouths is yanking parasites and bacteria from their bloodstream and that by swallowing it afterwords you're just letting all of those parasites and bacteria fester in your stomach.

Here's the thing:  Our bodies are intelligently designed.  That doesn't mean by a higher power (although I support that), but that we--like all organisms--are carved by millions of years of evolution.  Think about what happens when you're sick.  You might sneeze or snort stuff out of your nose, but you aren't carrying around a spittoon to ensure you never swallow it for fear you will be sick forever.  Your stomach is full of acid, which in addition to digesting food is there to keep this stuff from entering your body.

Does it always kill parasites and bacteria?  No.  But we need to remember something else here:  The oil isn't pulling parasites and bacteria out of your bloodstream to begin with.  It's reducing the number of bacteria that destroy your teeth, providing a temporary film on your teeth and gums, and some say introducing the oil sublingually... but it ain't pulling stuff out of your bloodstream.  It's limited to your mouth, and I assure you any bacteria and parasites that reside in your mouth are probably already draining into your stomach anyway.

Finally, the idea that you are swishing a tablespoon of now-incredibly-toxic-sludge in your mouth after twenty minutes of swishing is based on the assumption that you are incredibly toxic to begin with.  And you know what?  You're not.  Not in that way, anyway.  The average human being may be lethargic, overweight, and sick from diet and lifestyle conditions, but if you change your lifestyle habits your body will--barring certain afflictions--do just fine in getting rid of that stuff on its own.

That means that detox procedures in general may make somebody who otherwise eats like crap feel temporarily better, but eating right to begin with removes that need to detox altogether.  Your liver, kidneys, and other organs will do that job way better than juice, swallowing gauze, or colonic irrigation ever will.

Besides, coconut oil is better for you inside your body than spat out.

PaleoTrack Analysis for May 28

The Foods I Ate And Why I Ate Them

Yesterday I was at home all day, which means I was less hungry in general due to less boredom.

I had eggs and bacon for breakfast before doing a coconut oil "pull and swallow" (Oil pulling, except I swallow the oil.  I know, I know, the oil pulling shills hate me now.).  I had a pair of chicken thighs each for lunch and a late dinner.  I also had a 6 oz. haddock fillet and a pound of broccoli with butter.

Later as the day was winding down I noticed my bananas were going bad.  I put some in the dehydrator and made the remaining two into a banana pudding, hence the bananas, coconut water, and cocoa.  This radically changed the way the day was going, but not so much that it ruined the day.

Plus, I didn't eat anything that I didn't process myself, and since I was at home and not work it meant I wasn't distracted by other people eating or boredom.

The Pie Chart

Yesterday's pie chart wasn't terrible:

I didn't get under the 70 grams of carbs I intended because bananas are sugary, but I'm still in the 50-100 carb sweet spot popularized by Mark Sisson so I am satisfied.  I also kicked myself out of ketosis, but my body drifts in and out very easily so I'll probably be back into it by morning.

Half of my calories are from fat, which is acceptable, and I ate pretty much the same amount of protein as the day before.

The Labels

There is no difference here from my last entry:

Too many omega-6s, loss of the "dairy free" label due to butter (but only butter).  Not bad.  Still room for improvement.

Exercise for the Day

Today's activities included playing fetch with the dog, foraging for asparagus (without actually finding any), and a fifteen minute Men's Health body weight workout video that gets me really sweating. 

I overcarbed today, here's the recipe.

The actual dietary run-down comes tomorrow, and I'm still not doing terrible, but I did something I try to avoid usually, which is make a paleo version of a non paleo food.  Actually, since I did that today, I think after this I'll write why you should avoid that.

Banana Chocolate Pudding

•  2 bananas
• 1/2 cup liquid (I used coconut water, you can use milk, almond milk, water, whatever)
• 1 tablespoon powdered baking chocolate

It's really easy.  Just blend it all together until it's smooth.  Chill it.  It might be runny and it's definitely a dark chocolate taste.  You can also freeze the mix and blend it to make an ice-cream like treat.

It'll look something like this:

Which is, by the way, an actual picture of it that I just took.  Don't you hate it when people come up with recipes and then, instead of showing the actual results, they just Google a picture of something similar and pretend that's what it'll look like?  Ugh.  I'd rather not have a picture and leave you guessing than pull that.

The Road So Far

This is a bit of an introduction to my health and dietary life because, well, that's what this blog is about anyway.

I'm a 27-year-old, 230-pound transsexual food addict.  There are several foods that will make me an insatiable, hungry beast when I eat them--sugar and flour, mostly.  At my peak I could down a twelve-pack of soda a day.  In fact, for many years I drank soda every hour of my waking existence.

Did you know you can gain weight pretty easily on a vegan diet?  I do.  That's because when I went vegan in 2004 I didn't know yet that most of the foods that make me a ravenous beast are vegan.  I spent a big chunk of my life devouring vegan bagels and fake meats before realizing I had ballooned to a morbidly-obese 269 pounds.  I tried repeatedly to give up the things that I expected were doing this.  I switched to whole grains and diet soda, went long periods without soda before caving and drinking it, avoided meat substitutes, with no improvement.  I went ovo-lacto vegetarian four years later after repeatedly going to bed with excruciating hunger pains from trying to lose the weight I had gained.  It took away the hunger, but not the weight, although it stabilized around that time.

I went to a new doctor for my yearly check-up, like many people feeling embarrassed by the scale.  I said that I was more worried about diabetes and high blood pressure than my weight, but that I understood my obesity wasn't helping.  My doctor brushed off the number, saying that if I ate fewer carbs it would help reduce that risk.

I had a friend who had gone paleo and wouldn't shut up about it (I'm not knocking her, it's not like I shut up about being a vegetarian).  Due to my familiarity with her and holes being poked in my animal rights philosophy from all directions, I decided it was time to give up vegetarianism.

That summer I went mostly-primal.  I was working at a summer camp and had to deal with the food they gave me, so to ensure I wouldn't get total crap I was lenient.  I lost fifty pounds that summer and

Social graces got to me and after the millionth time my dad tried giving me fried chicken I gave in.  Bam, weight gain; not as much as when I was a vegan, but ten pounds isn't a small thing when you still weigh fifty pounds more than you should.  To make matters worse, I had just started testosterone therapy to transition from female-to-male, which ramped up my appetite as well as my blood pressure.

As I write this I've been on testosterone for five months.  I have a blood-work appointment in roughly one month, during which time I hope to have my blood pressure at a level that will not prompt my doctor to prescribe me medication.  My target weight right now is 180 pounds, which is roughly fifty pounds lighter than my current weight.  The last time I checked my blood pressure it was 138/89, which is lower than it was, but I'd like to control it further.

This is the initial purpose for this blog, but I do intend for this to be an overall lifestyle change and not just a thirty-day shindig.

PaleoTrack Analysis of the Day

Or rather, yesterday.  I am going to log everything I eat until at least my next bloodwork appointment.  I am using PaleoTrack to analyze each day of food, and I'll reflect on why I eat the way I do when I do screw up, goals for the future, etcetera.

The Foods and Why I Ate Them

Yesterday I actually packed out all my food, or what was supposed to be all my food.  This is due to the fact that every once in a while I'll pick up a twelve to fifteen hour shift at the group home I work at, and although I am allowed to eat the food I cook for my residents, it is very non-primal.

The star here was ten ounces of pork steak cooked in lard.  I also ate two eggs and a piece of bacon before I left, hoping to stave off the fake hunger pangs (those "I think I'm hungry" feelings that aren't actually hunger, but drug side-effects and boredom).  I brought along two pieces of bacon, three boiled eggs (they're labeled as "poached" here because I couldn't find "boiled" at the time), a bag of frozen broccoli, butter for the broccoli, an apple, an ounce of cheese.

I forgot to put on the list that I had a cup of French onion soup while I was there, but that had no carbs and only 20 calories so I'm not worried, although I'm annoyed that I ate something out of a box.  The soup was pure boredom eating.  The rest of my food was more than enough for the day, but I ate it early despite telling myself I shouldn't, finishing it all at around 3:30p.  Since my shift ended at 10p, it was rather annoying, but again, I survived, so no big deal.

The chicken was a last-minute addition.  I'd planned not to eat anything when I got home at 10:30, but I was legitimately hungry, so it's cool.

The Pie Chart

The pie chart on PaleoTrack gives a run-down of where my calories come from:

And I did eat more calories than I wish I did, but I did manage a reasonable level of carbohydrate (I'm aiming for under 70 grams) and the percentage of fat and protein is also pretty good.  Overall this was a success.

The Labels

PaleoTrack tells you, based on what labels are on the food you entered (contains dairy, contains grain, etc.) just how paleo your day was.  I'm not strict paleo anyway, so it's not a huge concern to me, but it is a good motivator.

Sugar-free, legume-free, and grain-free.  I did eat dairy today, so that's not on there.  I honestly don't know how to eat to get rid of the omega-6 label without cutting the fat off my meat (which I'm not going to do).  My Omega-6 ratio is around 7:1, which is a huge improvement compared to most Americans.  It's not a major concern to me although I will continue to try improving it further.