It should come as no surprise to those few of you who actually read what I write here that I changed my way of eating a while back. I’ve cut out pretty much all processed food from my diet. As much as possible, I eat locally raised pastured meat. I’ve also started eating eggs from a small local farm, which has surprised quite a few people. Also surprising to many who know me is that I’ve started eating salads. I drink coffee with cream, tea with milk and water, lots and lots of water. I try to buy raw milk whenever possible. Whenever I can’t get it raw, I at least try to get it from grass-fed cows who roam free on pasture. At the moment, my carbohydrate intake is extremely low and what I do get is usually in the form of nuts or the aforementioned salad. I plan on increasing my carbohydrate intake soon, but I’m going to do so slowly and I’m going to be very careful about how I do it. The net result of this is that I’ve lost 60 lb and 6 inches off my waistline since sometime late last year – probably around October or November. I feel better and stronger than I ever have before, which is a stark contrast to the last time I lost this much weight. I haven’t been sick in a long time, even when those in closest proximity to me for extended periods of time were suffering from pretty severe bouts of flu. I haven’t had any blood work done in recent times, but I never had any done before now. I plan on getting it checked relatively soon, but I’m not worried.

All this came about when I learned a few things. These things blew my mind, because they went against conventional wisdom. Mind you, I’ve never really been one to follow conventional wisdom blindly. I’ll try to list them all, but I may miss one or two. I’m only going to mention these on a high level. Things are much more complex, but for the most part, this is the important bit. Here we go:

• Eating fat does not make you fat. The human body can’t actually store dietary fat.
• Whole grains are no better for us than refined grains. Sprouting the grains makes some difference, but it’s not common practice.
• Eating cholesterol does not increase your cholesterol.
• Cholesterol is not bad for you. It’s basically the body’s fire department. Blaming it for heart disease is like blaming the fire department for setting a fire, just because they’re at the scene putting it out.
• There is absolutely no proof that saturated fat causes heart disease.
• The human brain is made of saturated fat. It needs saturated fat from food to operate properly and repair itself.
• Vegetarianism is damaging to our health and the environment.
• The statistics about how many people we could feed vs. how many cows on the same food assume grain feeding.
• The human body will try its damnedest to maintain a state called homeostasis, or staying the same. This is the main reason eat less/exercise more doesn’t work in the long-term. Of course, there are exceptions. Give the body less fuel, it will slow your metabolism and burn less fuel.

It’s led to some interesting times, especially living with someone who has been eating vegetarian or halal in varying degrees. Fortunately, she agrees with the simple natural food aspect. I even have a few friends who have decided to forgo as much processed food as possible for a month. Unfortunately, though I applaud their efforts, I believe they’re throwing out the baby with the bath water by also going vegan for this month. I have also run across many many fat phobic folks, which is not surprising, since I was once one of them. Of course, it’s not without its downsides. My levels of agitation are rising as I continue to hear the trite old phrases “artery clogging saturated fat” and “heart healthy whole grains” constantly being trotted out. Unfortunately, those using these supposed truisms have no idea how wrong they are. Two of these fat phobic individuals come to mind immediately – Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.

These two British chefs have a lot in common. They’re both incredibly passionate about what they do and the food they create. I know Ramsay’s no fan of Oliver, but I’m unsure of how Oliver feels about Ramsay. They’re both trying to get us back to eating good quality simple food and they’re trying to improve our health by doing so. Unfortunately, they’re working on the premise that the government food guidelines and the lipid/diet heart hypotheses are true. Now, I’ve seen Gordon Ramsay cook some amazing stuff (the most amazing as he likes to say – a lot) and it’s certainly not all low-fat. Take his scrambled eggs for example – plenty of butter and a spoon of crème fraîche to boot. Unfortunately, it seems that everything he teaches amateur cooks on his quest to “get Britain cooking again” revolves around these false mantras.

Jamie Oliver is also on a quest, and that quest is to completely overhaul the food we feed our kids at school. There’s no doubt that this is absolutely necessary. I have an 8-year-old and he goes to school. I get to see the kind of prepackaged processed junk they’re doling out to the kids in the name of health. Part of this laudable quest is a TV show about his progress at a school in West Virginia. The city this school is in was rated unhealthiest in America, so it’s a logical place to start. I watched the first couple of episodes, and I’ll probably keep watching it, just to see how it all pans out. I had high hopes up until he tried to shock the parents with what their kids were eating. Unfortunately, the chosen scapegoat was saturated fat – a necessary nutrient for growth and development.

I’ll do a follow-up on my thoughts of Jamie Oliver’s show, but at a later date. For now, I’ll just say that a change is definitely needed. We need to go back to eating real, wholesome food – the kind we used to eat before all the packaged junk and industrial vegetable oils. We also need to lose our fear of real food and natural fats. Our grandparents and great grandparents ate these foods and they were nowhere near as fat or unhealthy as we are today. Let’s go back to the way we were, back to reality, back to simplicity. Throw out the boxed mixes and frozen ready meals. Put some love into your food.

I’ll leave you with a quote (possibly) from Albert Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. The current dietary guidelines are not working. The time for change is now. Let’s make sure we change enough.

It’s rare for me to see something featured in a dish on an episode of Iron Chef America, only to have it end up in my kitchen shortly afterward. Recently was one of those rare times. As anyone who followed my daily progress in February knows, my breakfast consists mostly of bacon and beef. It intrigued me then to find out that there was such a thing as a bacon like breakfast meat made of beef. As luck would have it, my wife then discovered such a thing was on sale at one of the local Halal markets, so I asked her to pick some up. Little did I know that there was a miscommunication between the supplier and the market, meaning that the only size package available was 5lb.

Of course, now I had 5lb of a strange meat product in my fridge and I’m no Iron Chef. Off to the almighty Googles I went and searched for this wondrous new meat stuff. I discovered that it needs a little more attention than its piggy cousin, but can be prepared in much the same way. As far as taste goes, it’s definitely both beefy and bacony. Luckily, those are both flavors I happen to like quite a bit. Is it an acceptable substitute for regular old bacon from pigs? Not a chance. Is it another delicious meat product to add to my regular rotation? You bet!

The other day, I roasted a chicken for myself. I tried a coffee rub to season it, which was moderately successful. Had I paid attention to which way up I had the bird, it may have been better. Naturally, I plated some up for my 8 yr. old. As 8 yr. olds can be, he’s an incredibly picky eater and was having none of it. Thus began the typical parent/child stand off.

As the battle continued, I had an idea. I asked if he would like some chicken nuggets. Of course, the answer was a resounding yes. I took the offending chicken, which was in the form of bite size chunks of breast meat, and chopped it up fine. To this I added an egg and mixed it all together. I rolled spoonfuls of the resultant mixture in breadcrumbs and fried them off in a little bacon grease.

My creation was deemed delicious and was wolfed down. Net result, not only did he eat the chicken I had given him earlier, but he got the added benefit of an egg as a bonus. Furthermore, I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes, presentation is key.

I’ve been losing weight for a while now, as I’ve posted about a couple of times. Today was another landmark. For the last few years, I’ve been wearing the same size/style of jeans – Old Navy Loose 36×30. I typically wore these pretty low, beneath my belly. I’ve noticed over the last while that I could pull my jeans up higher and that I needed to cinch my belt tighter and tighter. I was also told that my butt was disappearing in the jeans and that the style was not flattering. That brings us to today.

We headed over to Old Navy in Roseville and I tried on a couple of different styles of jeans. The first style I grabbed was a boot cut, followed by a straight fit, both in a 34″ waist. As a backup, I grabbed the same style as always, but one size down, as with the others. First I tried on the straight fit, which fit pretty well. Next up was the boot cut, which fit even better. I emerged from the fitting room and asked my wife how they looked. She approved and so I was sold. The fact that they were on sale for $19 didn’t hurt either.

So there we have it, a new pair of jeans in a smaller size and a much more flattering style. This is the first of many indications that I’m shrinking around the middle. I’ll be sure to update with any other indicators, mostly because I enjoy bragging about it.

On Monday afternoon, since I had the day off work, I headed over to Blue Goose Produce in Loomis, CA. My reason for doing this was not to get fresh, locally grown produce as you may expect from a store with such a name, but rather to pick up some of their grass-fed beef. While there, I had the opportunity to pick up some pork from another local producer – Coffee Pot Ranch. I had the good fortune to run into Bob from Coffee Pot selling his wares at the Foothills Farmers Market yesterday afternoon. I asked him if it was a regular occurrence and he confirmed that it was. Pickings were a little slim due to the late hour, but I did score some pork fajita meat for a nice price. There was a little over a pound in the package and about half of it became my breakfast this morning.

This particular farmers market is held in the same parking lot as Whole Foods, who have started to promote a new supposedly healthy eating initiative. Unfortunately, it’s the same old low-fat nonsense that has made Americans fatter and sicker over the last 20 years. This is a shame, because Whole Foods is one of the few places I can find grass-fed beef and other high quality meats. In fact, it’s where I got the bacon I ate for breakfast with the pork. Hopefully their new found enthusiasm for the way of eating they’re promoting doesn’t stop them stocking the good quality meats they carry. If they do, Bob and I will get much better acquainted, which is probably a good thing.

I’ve been updating my daily stats, menus and photos for a week on my tumblelog. I’ve been trying to keep the order the same – photo first, stats second. My main reason for doing it in this order is that I’m including the two most recent posts on this site in a sidebar widget. The main drawback to that is that I have to wait until I get dressed in order to publish my first update. If I get distracted, like I did yesterday, the photo update may not happen until quite late in the day. I was at work and the lighting was awful, so the photo turned out grainy and dark.

One of the motivations behind this is to be able to track what I’m eating and see what’s giving me the best results. I also want to see if there’s anything tripping me up. Hopefully it will inspire me to prepare more meals for myself on work days, since those days seem to cause the most issues. I’m also noticing that I need to stock up on beef and bacon.

I’ve decided I’m going to post daily status updates over on my tumblr site. These will include a daily weigh in, plus what I’ve eaten that day and a photo. I may at some point turn the photos into a time-lapse video, but I haven’t really gotten that far yet. Today was the first update and I’m going to try to keep updating for as long as I can. I’ll also be embedding these updates from tumblr on this site in a sidebar. That pretty much sums it up. Come back every day if you want to see what I’ve eaten and what I look like that day. I’m sure it will be thrilling.

Maybe there’s something to the old adage, but it’s certainly not that simple. The nutrients we eat get absorbed into the body. In order to get our vitamins and minerals, we need to eat foods rich in those nutrients. For that reason, it’s true on the micro level, but not so much on the macro level.

Eat fat, get fat. That’s what we’ve been told. It’s complete nonsense. There’s only one macro-nutrient that can be stored by the human body as fat and that’s carbohydrate. Carbs get broken down into blood sugar, which causes insulin to be released, which in turn causes the body to store fat. Insulin is a direct response to sugar. No sugar, no insulin. Without the sugar to burn, the body starts burning fat. This is known as ketosis, which is not to be confused with the harmful ketoacidosis. In order to get the body to burn fat, we need to eat it and the best type of fat to eat is saturated fat. I know, it blew my mind too.

I used to subscribe to the whole “healthy whole grains” low-fat mentality. I’ve been overweight pretty much my entire life. I did something about it maybe 8 years back and I actually got skinny. It was hard work and I was miserable. I cut out all the things I was supposed to – ate lean meat, mostly low-fat turkey and chicken and avoided fat wherever possible. It all came back and then some. Recently, I decided that enough was enough and I actually started to do some proper research on the subject.

Carbohydrates, even the supposed healthy whole grains convert very quickly to blood sugar. This is an extremely easy fuel for the body to burn, but it’s not very efficient at doing so. When blood sugar increases, insulin gets produced to try to regulate it. When excess blood sugar exists, it gets converted to fat for storage. This is for future use. The problem is that it’s much easier to burn carbohydrate than fat, so that when we’ve used up what’s available, the body looks for more. If we keep munching on the carbs, those fat stores never deplete and actually get bigger.

Conversely, eating fat triggers signals to say that the body is satisfied pretty darn quickly. Fat is pretty dense stuff in energy terms and it takes a while for the body to burn it all up. While it’s burning what you’ve eaten, it’s also pulling from those stores that it has accumulated.

I mentioned in the last proper post on here that I’d been eating a lot of grass-fed beef. I’ll elaborate on that now. Breakfast most mornings is a couple of slices of bacon (usually from Niman Ranch) and half a pound of grass-fed ground beef, shaped into a couple of quarter pound patties and fried up in the grease resulting from the bacon being cooked. This is often enough to keep me going for quite a while. I’ll snack on almonds throughout the day and often won’t even bother with lunch, especially if I’ve had a breve (latte made with half & half instead of milk) that morning. Dinner is usually either steak or pork chops (the bacon wrapped pork chops from Niman Ranch are amazing). Occasionally I’ll go for some halibut or mahi-mahi.

Eating all of this, I feel satisfied. Along with that, I’ve lost over 30 lb and feel better than ever before. I’m not done yet by any stretch of the imagination either. I’m not worried about the usual warnings that get trotted out. There’s been absolutely no proof that high cholesterol causes heart disease or the hardening of arteries. It’s all anecdotal. The results of the studies that supposedly prove these things are no more than correlation and correlation is not causation. Smarter people than I have written this in much more detail, like Dr. Michael Eades and Jimmy Moore.

In conclusion, I’ll just say that I’m glad I finally decided to look into all of this instead of relying on what i “knew” not be true. It turns out I really didn’t know anything at all.

I’ve been eating a lot of grass fed, pasture raised beef recently (more on that soon). The flavor is by far more intense than “regular” grain feed, feed lot raised beef. I often see so called “natural” beef being sold in stores, touting “all vegetarian diets” and proclaiming that the beef is “corn fed”, as if that’s a good thing. The “all vegetarian” point is a no-brainer. What else do herbivores eat? On the other hand, corn, wheat and soy aren’t good for cows. Eating these types of grains makes them fat and unhealthy. Combine this with a life kept in close proximity to hundreds of other similarly fed cattle and it’s a recipe for disaster.

I grew up eating grass fed beef. I grew up in the west of Ireland and we didn’t call it “grass fed, pasture raised” – it was just “beef”. We weren’t exactly short on fields of grass for the cows to munch on. The dairy and beef marketing folks also know that this is how cows are supposed to live. Look at any advertising for beef or dairy – the Real California Cheese or similar milk campaign is a prime example (pun not entirely intended). The cows depicted live on rolling hills, chewing on grass. Ask any child where cows live and what they eat. Unless they have been indoctrinated, either by modern agri-business or hippy dippy parents like me, they’ll tell you that cows live in fields and eat grass.

If all you know is grain fed beef, do yourself a huge favor and track down a grass fed steak. If at all possible, look for something as local as you can. It won’t be as fatty (but the fat will be of much higher quality), so it can dry out more quickly. Sear it in a rocket hot cast iron pan and cook it to medium, medium well if you absolutely must, but no more. If you can do medium rare or rare, so much the better. This is a joy I only came to know once I moved to the US. As I look back now, I find it somewhat ironic that I grew up eating some of the best beef in the world, but had it cooked to oblivion. I guess we live and learn and some times we need to go back to some of the first things we learned, like where cows live and what they eat.

I read an article a while back about how major corporations are trying to get in on the recent “buy local” trend. Even though these corporations may have stores in your area, shopping at them is not shopping locally, unless of course you happen to live near their corporate headquarters. Shopping at one of these stores instead of online does indeed mean that your tax dollars stay locally, but it also means that the profit goes elsewhere. Shopping at locally owned companies means that the profits also stay in the area.

Take, for example, retail grocery. I split my time, for the moment, between Fresno, in California’s Central Valley and Roseville, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I will be moving to Roseville full time shortly, but that is another story. In these areas, the major players in the grocery arena are Safeway (Roseville)/Vons (Fresno), Save Mart (Both), Raley’s/Bel Air (Roseville). There are other stores, such as Whole Foods, Nugget Markets and Trader Joe’s, but I would class those in a separate category. The big box stores, Target and Walmart are also making their way into the grocery market.

If we examine, for a moment, where these companies are headquartered, we can see where the profits are going. From a Roseville perspective, the most local company is Raley’s/Bel Air (they also operate Nob Hill Markets in the San Francisco Bay Area), which is based in West Sacramento. Next to that would be Save Mart, based in Modesto, but with a major distibution point in Roseville, and Safeway, based in Pleasanton. From a Fresno perspective, the winner is SaveMart, with Vons, owned by Safeway, coming in second. With all of these stores, the profits stay in Northern California. Contrast this to the big box stores, headquartered in Minnesota and Arkansas.

Once we start talking about speciality stores, it gets a little more complicated because of local purchasing. For Roseville, going by my earlier position, Nugget wins, being based in Woodland, Trader Joe’s comes in second, being based in Southern California, followed by Whole Foods in Texas. As far as locally sourced products, Whole Foods seems to come off a little better than the others. Nugget Markets don’t have a presence in Fresno, but the other two do. Of course, none of these stores are quite as good as shopping at local farm stands or farmers’ markets. This is something I have been trying to do more of recently and will likely feature more heavily in the future.