I started early before most of the diets began from the many New Years resolutions. From December 10, 2016 through January 4, 2017, I lost 13 1/2 pounds and I have never been overly hungry since the second day of this diet. My average weight loss is 1/2 lb per day during the first 25 days! Not bad.
To lose fat weight, you must work together with your body’s biology, not against it. For years and years, many dietitians, doctors, the processed food industry, health organizations, and our own government, have preached to us that a low-fat diet will help you lose fat or prevent you from becoming fat. They were all wrong. Eating fat doesn’t make us fat. However, eating sugars and starchy carbohydrates does make us fat. A diet of meats, fish, seafood, and non-starchy vegetables, is weight conscious and healthy.
Poor diet: Ingesting sugars and starchy carbohydrates will cause a surge in our blood sugar level resulting in an insulin response, which drives downward our blood sugar levels, causing hunger and causing our liver to convert sugar to fat and to store it in and around our liver, organs, waistline, and elsewhere on our bodies. Insulin is believed to be the fat storage hormone. I am sure there are a lot of other processes involved in regulating hunger and fat storage mode, which involve the thyroid gland, the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus region of the brain, all of which have a part in affecting the mode of our metabolism — either as being in “fat storage mode” or “fat burning mode.”
Good diet: Conversely, eating mostly protein and more good fats (without sugars and starchy carbs) will maintain more consistent and stable blood sugar levels. Consequently, we and our bodies will be and feel satiated (satisfied and not hungry). Our metabolism will shift into “fat-burning” mode, and not “fat-storage” mode. Stored fat will instead be utilized by our bodies for energy (heat and movement) rather than our bodies (liver) producing and storing more fat.
I basically changed the mix of what I eat and drink. I don’t need to count calorie intake or portion sizes on this diet.
It is what you eat, not how much you eat, that makes you gain or lose fat weight. I only drink water and sometimes green juices like juiced spinach. Remember to drink plenty of water to eliminate the ketone bodies and spent fats from our systems.
Here are my typical meals for the day:
- Breakfast: Eggs and ham or bacon or sausage for breakfast, with no toast, no bagels, no pancakes, no grits, no oatmeal, no orange juice, and no breakfast potatoes. I only drink plenty of water with every meal and between meals. I don’t drink orange juice or other fruit drinks to avoid the sugar fructose. I stopped drinking coffee because I don’t like it black and unsweetened (and I don’t want to add any sugar or artificial sweetener and no milk with the 6 carbon double bonded sugar known as lactose). Drink your coffee if you don’t add sugar, sweeteners or whiteners. The eggs are a great source of protein. By the way, dietary cholesterol in the egg yellow (or other high cholesterol foods) has very little to do with the cholesterol in your blood stream. Sugar is the culprit of high blood cholesterol because sugar (including sugar from starchy carbs) converts to lipids, triglycerides, and cholesterol in the liver.
- Lunch: Cabbage and onions stir-fried and steamed, or sausage and bell peppers, or any combination of these, made in a skillet / frying pan with a matching lid. I always use olive oil for the frying part. I don’t use coconut oil for stir frying because it burns too easily and is not healthy when scorched. I don’t use manufactured corn oils because they are not good for your vascular system. These lunch meals are relatively low starch meals and provides necessary fiber for your system. The fiber seems to be missing from the Atkins diet. I don’t add any noodles (starch) to the cabbage and onions. This isn’t standard haluski. I drink water, and I try to drink plenty of it. Never any soft drinks for me (neither sugary nor diet soft drinks).
- Dinner: Steak, lamb, pork, chicken or seafood (nothing breaded or battered), along with a green vegetable (green beans, asparagus, brussel sprouts, broccoli, etc). Use as much butter as you like in cooking. Butter is good and margarine is unhealthy. Avoid vegetable oils, corn oil and canola oil, etc (which are partially hydrogenated manufactured omega-6 oils). I use plenty of olive oil when cooking and in my salads. No baked potato and no mashed potato because starches turn to sugar quickly in your digestive system. I avoid sweet barbecue sauces when cooking ribs. That’s too much sugar and might put you into fat storage mode for the next 12 hours.
- Salad and Snacks: I make a nice large bowl of salad either as a lunch replacement or as my snack in the early evening. Use whatever greens and lettuce that you like as the base. For my salads, I chop some iceberg lettuce, add fresh spinach leaves, sliced fresh bell peppers, sliced “tamed” jalapenos (from a jar), sliced banana peppers (jar), green olives with pimento (jar) including a little olive juice for flavor, crumbled feta cheese, romano pecorino cheese, shredded cheddar cheese, olive oil and a splash of apple cider vinegar. This is really flavorful and filling. My snacks also include sliced pepperoni, slices of cheese, and no crackers.
Things that I Avoid: I avoid rice, potatoes, and breads, pastas and gravy made from flours; I avoid ketchup (which contain sugar or usually high fructose corn syrup), soft drinks (whether sugary or diet drinks), fruit drinks (too much fructose sugar and no pulp from the raw fruit); Avoid fresh fruits which for now contain too much fructose (but I will have them in moderation after reaching my weight goal). Avoid gravy (contains flour). I avoid tomato sauces because they taste way to sugary for me. Avoid the spaghetti, pastas, and breads (including pizza), which are made from starchy processed wheat flours. Note: The pizza cheese is fine being full of proteins and dairy fats.
Good Oils and Fats: Fish oil (contains essential fatty acids — short chain triglycerides); Coconut Oil (medium chain triglycerides); Olive oil and real butter and fats that are found in avocado, and fats in meats.
When I take my vitamin supplements at breakfast, I usually take a tablespoon or less of coconut oil (raw pressed, non-hydrogenated) with my meal. Coconut oil contains medium chain triglyceride that can be utilized as a food energy source by your cells, along with glucose. It doesn’t taste very good, but I ingest it any way. It is currently thought to be good for your brain cells / neurons. Remember Dr. Mark Hyman: “Eat fat, get thin.”
Myths about diet and exercise: (to be continued).
Forget about counting calories. A caloric deficit diet does not work. What I am saying is that the calories in / calories burned theory does not work for weight loss dieting in the long run. And, not all calories are the same. Like I mentioned above, “what you eat, not how much you eat, determines weight gain or fat loss. It is all biological.
For me, exercise has very little or nothing to do with weight and fat loss. But, I still exercise and lift weights for reasons of health and muscle tone and development. Aerobic exercise on treadmills and elliptical machines seems to me to be boring and rather useless in burning sufficient calories to cause any appreciable weight loss. In fact, current studies show that too much aerobics is counterproductive. I do walk (with my fitbit to keep moving) and I play sports two or three times weekly (not just as a weekend warrior). My diet above is very similar to a ketogenic diet which, hopefully, keeps my system in a constant state of ketosis. In other words, I want my metabolism to look for energy from my stored fat rather than from recently ingested sugars and starchy foods. My diet is sufficient for weight loss. On average, I am losing 1/2 lb per day in this first month. Not bad. The daily fat loss might slow down in a month or so.
Obesity is not a disease and it is not really a choice either when it comes to will power (not to overeat) and sufficient exercise, and all the things that we were told for years and years. We are not to blame for following expert advice that is clearly wrong. So, it is really not our fault that we become obese, but I believe that we can do something about it. For years and years, and even to this very day, we were told the wrong things about losing fat. If we could not lose weight, we were considered to be too lazy to exercise enough!! Understand that our strongest will power cannot overcome the hunger presented by biology. If we eat a low fat and high starch diet, we will be HUNGRY and continue to eat all the wrong things that continue to make us hungry and fat. When our body is in fat storage mode, we are hungry. No amount of will power can overcome that in the long run. On a restricted-calorie diet or a caloric-deficit diet, our bodies quickly adjust to the lower caloric intake. And, our liver will store sugar as fat (for a rainy day), thus making us hungry. All the will power in the world cannot overcome the body’s perception of hunger in the long run. Enough said.
About High Blood Pressure and Elevated Cholesterol. I hope to see a marked decrease in my blood pressure as well. The process in your liver of converting sugars to fats and cholesterol (“de novo lipogenesis”), has a by-product known as uric acid. The uric acid, often responsible for gout, also destroys endothelial nitric oxide synthase. Without the synthase, nitric oxide cannot be produced in sufficient quantities to properly dilate blood vessels. Consequently, our blood vessels are more constricted causing high blood pressure. Nitric oxide is also known as nitrogen monoxide (chemical symbol “NO”). Having high blood pressure (also known as “hypertension”) is a bad combination along with elevated (tiny dense pattern “B”) vLDL cholesterol, that can stick to coronary arteries and cause arterial sclerosis and atherosclerosis. If you want to know whether your LDL cholesterol (so called bad cholesterol) is Pattern A (fluffy bouyant and protective), or Pattern B (dense and tiny) that get into the pits and crevasses of the endothelial lining of your arteries, then ask your doctor to order a VAP test or advanced lipid panel, rather than the standard lipid panel which is normally ordered. Elevated total cholesterol is not a bad as long as the LDL portion is mostly pattern “A” protective LDL.
