As a follow up to my most recent post...

I explained some of the "why" of why low-carb appears to be more effective for weight loss than other weight loss programs.

If you'd like to hear someone else explain it who has reviewed a great deal of research and wrote a wonderful book on the subject of diet and health which covers the subject in extraordinary depth without trying to sell you anything then check out this article on Mother Earth News.com, a periodical all about living better.

Also feel free to check out these articles that Gary has written. The beautiful part about his writing is that he is interested in truth and challenging bad science, not selling diet foods, getting you to follow his diet, or treating patients.

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

Does Exercise Really Make Us Thinner?

I've read both of these articles and I enjoyed them both. There's more to the story than obesity. Gary also covers the science of heart disease, cancer, dementia, and other chronic illnesses in Good Calories, Bad Calories. I highly recommend reading it, but realize that it is lengthy and in depth. To quote Gary, "it is written for the intelligent layperson". If you don't find yourself interested enough to read it yet, please feel free to email me or post a comment if there is a particular health concern that you're interested in.

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat!

Why low-carb and not something else? Part 2

Let's talk a little about why studies show that people are more successful on low-carb than on other approaches.

If you haven't noticed already, you're body is pretty good at holding onto weight once it gets it and if you're someone who has been challenged with being heavier than you'd like for a good part of your life, then you've probably noticed that your body may have an affinity for adding on extra weight even after you lose some.

From what I've learned by reading Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes where Gary cites well known medical facts as well as in depth of analysis of the studies that have been done to give us the currently accepted "healthy" diet recommendations. The main culprit is insulin.

Insulin is a hormone secreted by your pancreas to help regulate your blood glucose levels as well as regulate fat storage and use.

To summarize how your body handles carbohydrates:

1. Eat carbohydrates.
   
2. Blood glucose levels rise as carbohydrates are digested.
   
3. Insulin output increases to reduce blood glucose.
   
4. Blood glucose gets moved to fat cells or to glycogen stores in muscle tissue.
5. If you're a person who is predisposed to fat storage continue to step #6, otherwise stay skinny and fit.
   
6. Energy levels drop because too much energy is moved to fat cells.
7. Eat more carbohydrates because you're hungry, tired, etc.
   
8. Repeat, starting with step 1.

So why does this happen to you and not others?

That's the million dollar question.

There are those of us who are predisposed to this from birth, it is simply a question of when the problem manifests. For some people it comes early in life for others it comes much later. Many people wrongly assume that the excess weight is because they're not as active as they used to be or that they just eat too much, but those are merely symptoms of the problem. For me the obesity came in my teens, but the lack of energy came much younger.

If you're overweight or obese, then you're problem isn't one of overeating or not exercising enough, it's a disease of excess fat storage. Your body is so good at storing weight that when you eat your body doesn't want you to use it, it wants to store it.

What happens?

Your body stores weight instead of telling you to go burn it off. You try to lose weight by eating less, or exercising more, but your body remains good at storing fat. If you eat less and your body is still good at storing, you may find it hard or impossible to lose weight or you may find that you lose it but are constantly hungry or tired.

Why do you gain the weight back?

Your body is still good at storing weight and it drives you to eat more so that you can maintain the fat storage.

Why doesn't exercise help?

If you exercise more, you think you can fool your body by not eating enough to make up for the exercise, but eventually your body continues to drive you to make up the difference and you obey because BIOLOGY RULES! You don't tell your body's biology how to work, it tells you what to do.

Why you've failed...

• I have no (or not enough) willpower.
• I must not be trying hard enough.
• I'm just not disciplined.
• I'm just lazy or unmotivated.
• I know what you need to do, you just need to do it.
• I am just predisposed to being overweight or obese and there's nothing I can do about it.

Have you ever thought any of the above?
Has anyone ever told you any of these?
Have you ever thought this of someone that was overweight or obese?

I have. About me and about others. I was wrong. If you answered yes to any of the question above, so are you. Think I'm wrong? Let's duke it out (verbally, of course). I love to debate this as I find the subject fascinating! Post a comment or send me an email.

Trying to resist your body's propensity for fat storage by reducing calories or exercising doesn't work for most people because BIOLOGY RULES! Let's say you need to go to the bathroom, but you can't find one, or you're busy, or it's the wrong time. What do you do? Your resist biology. You tell your body "this will have to wait". But you can only hold out so long. It doesn't matter the circumstances, eventually you will have to give in. It doesn't matter how inconvenient or inappropriate it would be, you will have to give in. Your body's drive to store fat is the same. You may resist for some time, but eventually you'll fail if your fat storage process stays broken.

So, why does low-carb work?

1. If insulin regulates fat storage and use and insulin increases in response to carbohydrate consumption, then if you reduce carbohydrate consumption insulin production will fall.
   
2. If insulin production falls then fat will be used for energy more easily.
3. When stored fat is used for energy you will have more energy and need to eat less. Your body won't be constantly trying to put those calories away for later.

That is what makes low-carb different from any other diet. It may not be able to fix your broken fat storage mechanism, but it can work around it in a way like no other diet can.

Soon I'll talk about some of the challenges you'll face on low-carb and how to ensure your long-term success.

In the meantime, if you have questions about a particular dietary approach you want to talk about or need some advice or guidance on, feel free to write to me at lowcarbnewengland@gmail.com.

If you have success or failure stories to share, please post a comment. I'd love to hear about what's worked or hasn't worked for you. If you are trying to troubleshoot why you're not losing, let's talk about it and see if I or any of the other readers can help.

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat!

Should I be a vegetarian?

I was listening to NPR the other day and they covered a story about a U.N. recommendation to eat less meat to help reduce global warming. You can read about the recommendation on the Fox News site here.

This is one of the many moral quandaries I find myself in now that I have discovered how healthy I am on a low-carb diet.

The article is quoted as saying that a 2006 study done by the U.N. found that 18% of greenhouse gas emissions come from methane released from cattle, sheep, and pigs. I can't contest that and I won't try. The suggestion from Dr. Rajendra Pachauri of the U.N.'s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that I heard on NPR was that there are also green house gases released from the production of feed for these animals as well. This logic makes sense to me as well.

I won't dispute the findings of this committee but I think people should always take any scientific "facts" cautiously and make sure they consider the case fully before drawing any conclusions and I must do the same.

Regardless of the rationale behind these recommendations, I agree with the spirit of the recommendation, although I have a slightly different idea of how we should reduce our consumption. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri recommends "Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there,". Dr. Rajendra Pachauri is a vegetarian and I can see how he would advocate this. I don't.

I do think we should try to minimize our waste of precious resources. For instance, instead of farming millions and millions of acres for soy, corn, and rapeseed (canola) to make "healthy" vegetable oils, we have an abundance of animal fats that are being wasted because they are perceived as unhealthy. I think we should go back to the way our ancestors used an animal and wasted nothing from it. Let's go back to putting real meat back in companion animal foods and get soy and soy byproducts out of our food.

If we're concerned about the environment and not just global warming, we need to reform our farming practices too. Farming corn is extraordinarily damaging to the environment, just Google "gulf dead zone" to better understand the effect of all the fertilizers from our corn farming. Also, check out "soy herbicides" to learn a little more about soy farming and all the herbicides it uses. Those can't be good for the planet either.

Where is the recommendation to help reduce the population? If people had fewer children and we were able to reduce the world population even a little, it would have an astounding effect on the environment. Can you imagine if we reduced the world population by even 1%? That would be 67 million fewer people making demands on our limited resources. Developed nations may eat more meat and drive more cars, but we also have fewer children and make a up a smaller portion of the world population.

If you're a person that is obese or overweight and you suffer from diseases like heart disease, diabetes, or other chronic illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia, a healthy low-carbohydrate diet could benefit your health.

To pass up the opportunity to be healthy and happy based on a recommendation like the recent one from the U.N. is crazy to me. I won't do it.

Here's what I will do. I will make sure that whatever resources I do use I will use as thoughtfully as possible and as conservatively as possible. I will try to use no more than I need. This should be a rule we all live by. Not just for food, but for everything. Energy, plastics, glass, metals, everything should be conserved.

I drive a compact car. I bike to work occasionally. I recycle. I buy local stuff sometimes. I chose to have only one child.

I try to make the most out of the life I've been given and I want to be the healthiest I can be while I walk the Earth. That's why I'm committed to a healthy low-carb lifestyle.

I won't give up meat. It's my life's blood and I need it, but I respect that there is a cost to it.

Your thoughts?

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat!

Why low-carb and not something else?

Why not just cut your calories?
Why not cut the fat from your diet?
Why not exercise more and eat less?
Why not allow yourself to have a little bit of everything, but do so in moderation?
Why not take a weight loss drug like Alli?

For that matter, why not go on the beet diet, the green bean diet, or the grapefruit diet?

These are questions you must consider before embarking on taking on a healthy low-carb lifestyle. Why? Because they are questions that will challenge your will along the way and they will jeopardize your progress and your health if you do not remain committed to your new lifestyle. If you don't buy it at first, it's okay, but trust me when I tell you that your long term success depends on your understanding of why this diet will help you lose more weight, maintain your weight loss, and stay healthier than other diets.

Let's talk about why you might follow some of the above diets:

• You think that eating too many calories is responsible for your extra weight, thus cutting calories will help you lose weight.
  
• Fat is bad for your health because it causes heart disease and it has lots of calories, therefore if you cut the fat, you'll lose weight.
• You exercise more because if you burn more calories than you take in, you'll lose weight.
• There's no such thing as a "bad" food as long as you don't eat too much.

I assume that like many others you have tried "dieting" and lost weight only to gain it back. Perhaps in the process, you've seen your health deteriorate in the form of diabetes, hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol and other blood fats), fatigue, varicose veins, edema (swelling), joint pain, or back pain.

Think about why you failed on those other diets. I'm betting it was one of a couple main problems with "dieting".

1. You made changes you couldn't stick with and gave up.
2. You couldn't take the chronic hunger.
3. You felt chronically tired and out of energy because your body didn't have enough fuel to run on.
   
4. Social pressure made you feel like you couldn't enjoy the same things as other people or made you feel awkward when around other people.
5. The diet was too complicated and you got tired of keeping track of things or measuring things all the time or these things contributed to reason #4.
6. When you're asked to give up certain foods, which you relate to happiness, you're back to reason #1 or #4 and giving up on your diet.
   

Many of us, me included, have tried diets where we lost weight. I bet we're not all that different.

1. We lost some or all of the weight and we eventually fell off the wagon for one of the above reasons.
   
2. You know that if you can just get back to what worked before, you'll lose the weight again.
   
3. When you do eventually get back to trying that diet, it doesn't work anymore or one of the above throws you off before you make any serious progress.
4. Repeat, starting with step 2. Skip step 1.

Over the next couple posts, I'll talk about what makes a healthy low-carb lifestyle different from other diets you've tried and how it can help you overcome some of these obstacles. I'll also talk about some of the challenges you'll still face when you choose low-carb and how to ensure your long term success.

In the meantime, if you have any stories to share about your failure or success, or challenges you'd like to discuss, feel free to tell me about it in a comment or by email at lowcarbnewengland@gmail.com.

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat!

Pulled Pork - Slow Cooking, but worth the wait

Start with a Boston butt pork roast. If you're not sure what this is, ask the person behind your butcher counter. The folks at my local Hannaford are always really friendly and helped me when I didn't even know I was looking for a Boston butt.

Don't be turned off by the name of the hunk of meat you're buying. It's not really a "butt" like the backside of a pig. A butt portion of a pig comes from the top part of the shoulder. Here's a link to the Wikipedia explanation if you're interested.

When you're ready to cook this, you can coat it with my spicy spice rub recipe or another great option is the Memphis Dry BBQ Rub from 500 Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender. I can't post the recipe as it would certainly be in bad taste for me to plagiarize and it would probably be illegal too. Pick up the book. Not all the recipes are winners, but there are a bunch of good ones. If you buy the book and you find some recipes you love, tell me about them with an email or post a comment. If you want to know my favorites, you can drop me a line or I'll eventually get around to posting about some of the low-carb books I've read.

Once you've coated your roast, you can either wrap it all up in foil to keep the moisture trapped, recommended if you're going to have to pull this apart another time, or you can set it out on a broiler pan and let the juices drip down. I've done it both ways. If you wrap it, more of your spice rub will come off in the accumulated moisture, if you don't your roast will have a nice spice crust on the outside and may be slightly more dry.

Roast at 225 F for 10 hours or until it reaches 175 F internal temperature, I did mine overnight. After ten hours, it's time to either put it away or pull the meat apart. The best way to pull it apart when it's hot is to use two forks and pull across the grain (the direction of the muscle tissue). If you start getting stringy chunks of meat pulling up with your forks, then you're doing it right. Sorry this is hard part to describe. Maybe I'll post some cooking videos sometime so things like this will be easier to visualize. If I don't do that sometime soon, someone nudge me and remind me what a good idea that might be. ;)

Once you've got your pork pulled, either add a little more of your desired rub sprinkled on top or use some reduced sugar BBQ sauce like Kraft's "Light Original" Reduced Calorie Barbecue Sauce or KC Masterpiece "Low Calorie Classic Blend". Both are worth trying, but my wife and I seem to prefer the Kraft one.

If you're looking to go all out BBQ, whip up some homemade cole slaw no milk, no sugar (Splenda instead) and you're good to go.

If you give this a try and have some questions or suggestions, drop me a line or post a comment. I'm sure others would be happy to hear what you have to say.

If anyone has their own low-carb recipes that you'd like to share with the world, feel free to send them my may and I'd be happy to post them and give you all the credit.

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat!

Spicy dry hot wings

This one's a simple recipe, but I absolutely love these and when I brought them to my company holiday party last year, they were a big hit!

The secret to making these great is long cooking time, plenty of seasoning, and turning the wings halfway through cooking.

I like to buy chicken wings when they get marked down at the store, but every once in a while I splurge and pick up a pack at full price. It's still cheaper than going out for wings!

First I make a double batch of the Delicious spicy spice rub recipe.

Next I start with a big tray of chicken wings from the supermarket. I think it's around 3 to 4 pounds of chicken wings. If you buy whole wings, as I do, trim off the little inedible part of the wing first, then cut through the joint between the drumstick and the wing piece, if you want.

Lay out the wings on a broiler pan or some other pan where the juices and fat can drain off.

Sprinkle the wings generously with the spicy spice rub and bake at 400 F for about 30 minutes.

Remove the wings from the oven, turn each wing over and sprinkle the unseasoned side with the spicy spice rub.

Return to the oven and bake for at least another 30 minutes, more if you like the skin really crispy. I usually bake for another 45 minutes to an hour after returning them to the oven because I love the skin really crispy.

Serve them with some ranch or blue cheese dressing, or do like I do and just eat 'em plain.

Have you tried this recipe? What did you think?

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat!

Delicious spicy spice rub recipe

I have a delicious spice rub that I use for steak, wings, pork ribs, pulled pork, and any other meat you can think of. I bet it would be awesome on salmon as well. It's pretty spicy, but you can tone it down with less cayenne pepper if you like.

Can't you just buy a good spice rub? Sure you can, but it'll cost you and you need to watch out for sugar in all its form in store bought rubs. Save yourself some dough and some searching and give this one a try. It's an Alex original.

Ingredients

• 1 and 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 3/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cumin

Combine all spices in an empty spice container, cover tightly, and shake vigorously to combine.

Like I said, this has some kick to it, so if you're a little timid when it comes to spicy, you might want to lighten up on the cayenne pepper. If you're interested in mixing things up a little, you can substitute ground chipotle pepper for the cayenne pepper.

Let me know what you think of this recipe and how you used it.

Cheers,
Alex

PS. Don't fear the fat! (Not that there's any in this recipe, but don't fear the fat from whatever you smother with it)