Ho man I slacked yesterday. Oh wait, that’s not the way to start off a post. Okay, yesterday was the 15th day of my 30 day adventure, so I took, like, an All-Star break. There, that’s better. The topic of the past few days seems to be sleep. Everyone and their uncle who has ever low-carbed it has been contacting me sharing their stories of sleeplessness, which even one of the godfathers of carb hatred, Michael Eades, admitted to having the same issue. In the words of Professor Scooby D. Doo, Ph. D., “rut row!” I’ve got two sleep-less philosophies. When I first restricted carbohydrates to a moderate level 2 years ago (about 100 grams per day), I noticed that I had excellent sleep quality but no matter what time… Read more »
FUMP Day 14
Well, so much for feeling run down. When I went to sleep my heart was pounding and my body was achy. When I woke up (with the roosters as usual), I felt next to amazing. Sorry about all the blog turmoil lately. First I changed the domain name, throwing everybody for a loop, and then I totally transformed the look. Along those lines, I did have someone that was very displeased with the black background because it was “hard on the eyes to read.” If you are having trouble, save this under your “Favorites” in the Feed section. Then it’ll pop up nice and plain, simple, with nothing but text – black on a white background. The thyroid has been the hot topic the last couple of days. It’s quite… Read more »
FUMP Day 13
When I was in 6th grade my class took a big school trip to the nation’s capital. One of the defining moments in my life occurred at some shopping mall right in good ole’ D.C. Growing up in Tennessee we had absolutely no sushi. Sushi was just something us yungins had only heard about. But sho’ nuff, right there at that good ole’ D.C. shopping mall, square in the middle of the food court, was the first sushi I’d ever seen. My friends hit Mickey D’s, and I, without even thinking twice about it, ordered the weirdest sushi on the menu. I took my tray back over to the homies, and it was octopus and raw fish nigiri sushi galore. My friends were amazed… and disgusted. Right in front of… Read more »
FUMP Day 12
Yesterday we addressed appetite, metabolism, lipolysis, and some goodies like that as it relates to carbohydrate consumption. I would go into far more detail today, but I’m having some trouble sleeping on this all-meat diet! Dream recall is the best of my life; however, but for the last decade the majority of my dreams involve either urinating or defecating or both, and not being able to stop, so I can’t say the dream recall really thrills me. I go through at least 20 times the quantity of toilet paper in my dreams as I do in reality. Actually, my sleep has felt pretty good, and my energy levels are very stable and lasting. Still, the dark coloration under my eyes ain’t lookin’ so pretty. Energized perhaps, but a friend of… Read more »
FUMP Day 11
The lack of hunger… On my commemorative 10th day I pointed out an unusual but fully expected phenomenon of hardcore carnivorism – lack of hunger. I attribute this primarily to a drop in insulin levels and the subsequent release of stored fatty acids through the pipes. On a recent trip to D.C. I visited the Library of Congress and dug up a nice classic on obesity, entitled, oh so cleverly, Obesity, edited by renowned obesity researcher M.R.C. Greenwood. Greenwood, in the final chapter in which he authors, goes into detail on perhaps the most important fundamental of appetite and obesity as they relate to the hormone insulin. The concept of fuel-partitioning, or as I’m now calling it, “the calorie greenhouse.” I’ve gone into detail on this phenomenon a couple times… Read more »
FUMP Day 10
I’ve made it to a nice even number now – 10 days. What’s weird is how normal eating this way feels already. I mean, to someone who’s never tried it, eating an all-meat diet sounds pretty out there. Yet, the meat diet has such an appetite-stabilizing effect that food becomes little more than something you chew and swallow at a few particular times each day. My neutrality with eating differs little with how I feel about brushing my teeth. It’s just another daily ritual to file away with all the others. So much for Michael Pollan’s advice to “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” What’s next Mike? “Douse yourself in gasoline, don’t burn yourself, light a match?” Although 10 days can’t reveal much, here are the following things that… Read more »
FUMP Day 9
Day 9 and going strong… Got a little exercise today and definitely felt a little faint in comparison to my usual self. My heart was still pounding unusually hard and fast for the amount of exertion I was putting out there. I was really busy doing a bunch of other writing today. As we speak I think I’ve already topped the 20-page mark, so I’ll save my juice for the commemorative Day 10, which is, for those who aren’t mathematicians, tomorrow. Today’s menu was pretty exciting. I cooked for convenience today, not variety, and it wasn’t all that enjoyable to be honest. Still, the nice thing about the diet so far is that food is something you stick in your mouth, chew, and swallow. It’s like a whole new level… Read more »
FUMP Day 8
Today was definitely the most easy-breezy day. The system feels like it’s starting to normalize. Sleep was a little better. My eyes did not glow red when I asked for things like kegs of beer. I’m really having to remind myself to eat now because I just don’t think about food or have any hunger signals. Crazy I know. Back to the conversation on up and down regulation however before leaving that near and dear topic:When you get off of a beta-endorphin spiking substance for example, or even quit a beta-endorphin spiking activity like intense exercise, receptor sites for beta-endorphin begin to open up again. The lower the levels of endorphin, the more receptor sites are open. This is what sets a person up for relapse. Consider the simple scenario… Read more »
FUMP Day 7
Okay, it’s late and I’m way too tired to write much. I did experience some nausea last night in the middle of the night. It was not pleasant. I didn’t hork but the feeling I had was so disgustingly awful. It didn’t beckon me to eat carbs or anything, heaven forbid. It did make me want to steer clear of pork for a while though, which reminds me… I forgot to mention my menu du jour yesterday. To the best of my memory, it was: Breakfast: 5 eggs fried in 1T butter. 2 ounces Brie Lunch: 1 pound pork belly Dinner: 1 pound pork belly Today I hit some low carb irritability. It was beyond rational. I’m lucky all my personal possessions are still intact. It was very reminiscent of… Read more »
FUMP Day 6
I’m noticing some really strange symptoms all of the sudden. The tips of my ears are slightly pointed. This seems really odd. Just came out of nowhere. In addition to that, I’m noticing a few hairs growing in on my forehead. It’s the weirdest thing. But strangest of all is that I saw a friend of mine today, and instead of giving him a normal greeting I just couldn’t resist the urge to sniff his hiney. I’m a, I’m a… OOOWWWWWolfman!!!!! Ha, ha. Okay I did have a little bit of headache today, but all else seems Jim Dandy. Even running up this big hill didn’t noticeably make my heart pound, which is a first since my FUMParoodling began. My skin is so awesome though. It makes a baby’s derriere… Read more »
FUMP Day 5
This all-animal stuff is a piece of cake. Uh, uh, I mean piece of uh, flesh. I’m not suffering in any shape, form, or fashion at the moment. For the last two mornings I did have very slight signs of fecal compaction, but I wouldn’t call it constipation, it required no straining (the key), and I even had deuce deuces today, so I think I’m in the clear on that one. Kinda pressed for time this evening, so the discussion of addiction and up/down regulation will have to wait for tomorrow. I will say that I had a slight anorectic moment this morning. I had four or five bites of my delicious eggs and suddenly thought I was going to puke. But hey, I powered through it all the way… Read more »
FUMP Day 4
Things are starting to go really well. My skin is phenomenally clear and moist. The fluttering heartbeat that often accompanies a big shift like this is gone. In fact, my resting pulse was back to normal – low enough to set off the “minimum” alarm on a heart rate monitor. I have little body odor, no morning breath, my hair has softened, my eyes are clearing, my tongue has fantastic color (although I’m noticing a very small V appearing in the back of the tongue – Acupuncturists feel free to drop some knowledge in the comments section). Interestingly, I’m not showing any overt signs of ketosis, the metabolic state that Dr. Fatkins and other low-carbers refer to as being some kind of holy grail (a line of logic that doesn’t… Read more »
FUMP day 3
“over the past 6 months I’ve been following a low carb candida diet 20-30 grams of carbs a day…” “…my severe constant runny nose got better but i still had days when I was having constant post nasal drip all day-I’m itchy at times, every few weeks I am up all night-insomnia but otherwise, I am also very tired and sleep 10-11 hours a night, hypoglycemic feeling/low energy-(I can barely work too low energy), low weight, I lost weight and can’t seem to gain muscle despite working out, body odor, bad breath, i cant tolerate cold temperatures that well, occasional diarrhea-i thought this was yeast die-off, upset stomach. I still have mild acne, and bad dandruff especially if I don’t wash hair…”This was written to me in a personal email… Read more »
FUMP Day 2
“The platoon suffered from dehydration, low chloride reserves and low vitamin C reserves…The platoon was and had for 2 days been suffering from a severe acidosis as evidenced by gross ketonuria and ketonemia. During these 2 days medical examiners had already noticed acetone in high concentration on their breath.” -Canadian Military report on switching the troops to an all-meat Pemmican diet like that which arctic explorers, trappers, and natives supposedly thrived on Excerpt taken from Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s Not by Bread Alone, 1946. This is the result of suddenly dropping carbohydrates to zero from an otherwise normal diet rich in sugars and starches. The Canadian military were completely wiped out by this dietary experiment in a few short days. They couldn’t eat, were vomiting, and probably had muscle cramping, severe headaches,… Read more »
FUMP Day 1
Today was the first full day of the purely carnivorous FUMP diet. Now to be honest, I have dabbled in carnivorism in the past. Several months ago I thought I’d give it a shot for a week, but only made it three days. I was quite pleased that my skin cleared to a degree that I’ve never before experienced. My reason for doing it though was that I had some acid-indigestion that had troubled me, ever-so-slightly, for many months. It was no big deal, I just couldn’t chug water after meals without getting a little indigestion. I had this funny feeling that eating nothing but meat would turn my stomach into a furnace and give me a reprieve from my troubles. My hunch was right on. After only three days… Read more »
The First Supper
Like the character Kip in the movie Napolean Dynamite, as he dutifilly grates some cheddar atop a large pile of nachos-to-be, “I’m really busy right now.” However, I couldn’t not include the nutrition geek blogosphere in my current personal experiment – especially considering the recent battle royale between Charles and Bruce… First off, as just a tiny bit of background (and I’ll add plenty more as we go along day by day), nutritionists have long been debating the viability of a purely carnivorous diet – for humans. On the one hand you had the Eskimos, who were all like, “I think it might be possible to eat only animals you guys.” They came to this conclusion as a result of eating like this for centuries while managing to get the… Read more »
Diverticulosis
This week is evidently digestion week. It began with an email from a friend on helping out with a digestive condition called “diverticulosis,” which she referred to, unknown of the spelling, as “diver-tickle-o-sis.” Next, some friends came over for dinner and, naturally, we talked about IBS while eating. I’m a classy dinner host no doubt. For starters, diverticulosis is a condition, an extremely common one, where pockets form in the intestines and fill with fecal matter. They are basically small blowouts in the intestinal walls, where it balloons out and gets clogged. As this mass ferments and continues to stretch out the intestinal walls, inflammation can set in, causing the development of a condition called diverticulitis. As with IBS, these conditions are both caused and exacerbated by malabsorption, and more… Read more »
Hypothyroidism
It’s amazing to me how some of the most important realizations that I’ve come to over the past year have come from fragments of information obtained from some really misguided people. One of the biggest discoveries was differentiating between how complex starches and simple sugars affect the human body, shown to me by Terry Shintani, the author of a book touting an extremely low fat vegan diet. Through his work, he was able to show that complex starches leave sugar in the blood to be used as fuel, unlike simple sugars from fruit, cookies, breakfast cereals and the like, which causes insulin to rise higher than the level of blood sugar and induce hypoglycemia. This idea was further reinforced by Francine Kauffman of the American Diabetes Association, who discovered that… Read more »
Layla’s Pearly Whites
“When we saw someone with really bright skin and shiny hair we used to assume that they were eating a lot of butter.”-Layla Sheikh’s remark watching me snarf up ridiculous amounts of butter Recently I crossed paths with a Somalian refugee living in political exile here in Maui. Her name is Layla Sheikh. But don’t think that she’s some poor peasant girl fresh outta the Somalian desert sand, begging for food. She sports a stylin’ fro and highly fashionable clothes. She cruises in an SUV, and has her own two-bedroom apartment 200 yards from the Pacific ocean. She works as a professional model, getting gigs like holding the round cards at the UFC fights over in Lahaina, as well as doing plenty of photo shoots and fashion shows. Basically, she’s… Read more »
Excerpt from "FATZILLA!!!"
…The creation of fatzilla was flawed from the get go, and has reached the point of absurdity, confusion, and contradiction in the year 2008. Worse still is that dietary fat can be used as a fierce weapon against the increasing rates of obesity, heart disease, and a long litany of other ailments, including even mental and emotional disorders of varying degrees of severity. The megaphobia that surrounds fat; however, is preventing many from succeeding. We’re stuck. Plain and simple, fat has nothing to do with the heart disease and obesity phenomena. Sometimes the answers are simpler than we think. I remember back in college I partnered up with two exchange students from Mongolia on a project. The two girls were lean and attractive (hellooooo). For the rest of the semester… Read more »
