The Carb-Sane Asylum

This post was inspired by my own "journey" through what I'm going to call  disabilesity.   It got insanely long and cumbersome, so I'll break it up into parts: Intro and My Own Journey of Disabilesity The Forgotten Disabilesity Epidemic How the Obesity Industrial Complex does a disservice to those at risk or suffering from Disabilesity It has been my observation for a while now that various interests I shall refer to collectively as the Obesity Industrial Complex, are only marginally interested in *fixing* any problems attributable to the obesity epidemic in affluent countries.  Instead, for various reasons and in varying ways, the different factions seem more intent on maintaining some level of the status quo for profit, relevance, notoriety or some combination of the above.

It's been a very long time since I've highlighted a post or podcast from someone else on this blog.  It's also no secret that my own blogging has fallen off big time.  This has been from a "perfect storm" of burnout, frustration, personal priorities, and search for a future focus/mission in blogging.    I feel like "I've blogged on that" a zillion times already.  Around a year ago I listened to a podcast from someone I'm honored to call a friend.  On my list of "people I've met online I must meet someday", she's right up on top.    I know it sounds egotistical to say this, but I don't care.  There are so very few out there whom I consider valued sources of information.  I try and link them up, support them, share their work.  I'm not a marketer, and although a few years ago I incorporated, I've yet to really take a leap into much in the way of selling anything or making any sort of living off of doing what I do...

A llow me to share just one "a ha" moment I came to in the beginning of 2016.    Me photobombing Nobel laureate Michael Brown and Kevin Klatt (aka @Nutrevolve) October 2016 I'm kinda cute, huh?     I met my now husband the October after graduating from college and getting my first real job.  He was a co-worker and friend of my apartment neighbors and friends.  At the time I was far from the fattest I'd been, but I believe the pants I was wearing were size 14 at the time.  We hit it off instantly.  Movie magical type stuff.  In my sleep-deprived state the next day at work I even told my co-worker friend that "last night I met the man I'm going to marry".

SUMMARY: Back in the early days of the Asylum, there was a commenter who repeatedly fixated on "why do we overeat".  Eventually I coined the phrase "why-ning" for this questioning. This post is about how seeking external whys in the scientific literature is most likely a futile effort.  Science can provide easy answers, it turns out, to how to eat to normalize weight.  Putting that into practice in the *real world*, is a whole 'nother issue!!! If you struggle with weight ... if you're putting all manner of effort in anyway ... this post is a suggestion to alter your "why-ning".  From unproductive questions of why, to more productive, individual and personal questions of yourself as to why. It is emotionally incorrect these days to acknowledge that for many, adult obesity is, indeed, a lifestyle choice.  It may not be conscious.  It may not have started out that way (e.g. if you have always been obese).  Nonetheless, it is far more within o...

Hello all, and Happy New Year! What?  It's the 18th already?  Yeah ... well ... that's about par for the course for me lately. I haven't updated much personally on this blog for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, because this is not a blog about my personal journey.  I realize that some of my critics don't seem capable of grasping that point, but that is what it is.  In addition, while threats to my security, that began to develop almost 3 years ago, have abated somewhat in the past year, they have not disappeared entirely ... and the internet, for better or worse, has a long memory.  Hopefully things continue to improve on that front, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you'll never have to!

You know the drill.  Beans and such have evil things in their skins, so traditional societies diligently soaked them to remove said evil things.  Furthermore, sprouting is known to improve digestibility and quality of the protein.  So soak and sprout your beans! I don't disagree with any of the above, I just -- taking off scientist hat -- wonder out loud if that's really why traditional cultures did these things. First off, I'm thinking that pretty early on, humans figured out that if you dried things, they tended to last a really long time in storage without spoiling.  Further, certain things may well have been discovered in already dried forms!  I planted green beans one year and went on vacation in August.  Well, you can guess what happened.  I imagine the "bean" part could have been saved and eaten, however.  I also think there's no better snack than snap peas picked fresh, so I plant those almost every year even if I don't bother w...

Wishing all of the inmates here at the Asylum a very Happy Thanksgiving!  It's been an up and down year for me, but all-in-all I have much to be thankful for.  As is tradition, the husband and I will be hosting dinner and  I'll make way too much food, but it's always good to have leftovers.   We shall have a "balanced meal" (LOL) of really good food.   First up will be crudite and stuffed baby-portie mushrooms (hot turkey sausage cuz sis and mom don't do pork, good old fashioned bread stuffing).  Might do deviled eggs too, but probably not this year.   Dinner begins with cream of wild mushroom soup.  I was going to get inventive and do something different this year, but the mushroom soup has apparently become legendary so it will be made!  I'll try and post a recipe for it.   Dinner proper will be turkey (of course).  My first T-giving I had no clue how to cook a bird and I roasted it upside-down like a dork.  ...

Well, the one good thing about storms like this, the clean-up crews don't spend time chipping up the wood when it's of more importance to just get the tree off the road and/or powerlines.  Hubs and I went out whoring for firewood.  Here's the two loads we got.  I'm a bit sore now, it's been a while since I hoisted logs over the side of that truck (the bed comes up to just below my shoulders) ... but as they say, it's a good kind of sore.   We also took the chainsaw to some stuff, but most of this will wait.  We'll cut it up and stack, but I think I've got enough wood from end of last year to split and burn this winter.  

Hope this post finds everyone safe and having not lost much in the wake of this massive storm.  I was semi-awake most of the night.  Our power went off a few times, and cycled on and off for a couple hours, but luckily it held.  There were no generators to be had as of early Friday afternoon ... this is something we need to get because all I could think of was our freezers full of food being lost.   Being at relatively high elevation and far enough inland, I wasn't worried about water too much, more about wind and our big tree.   One fairly big limb came down on our shed which then blew apart ... Not sure if it can be saved, but it is what it is, and relatively minor.  Quite a few smaller limbs came down as well.  Although it makes for less privacy, I'm happy our neighbor had some limbs on his tree  trimmed recently.  Still, something hit his house and ripped his fascia board off.   According to the hubs, we have a chicken in t...

UPDATE II:   Since Richard Nikoley has "declared war" on me and linked to this post, let's keep it all here shall we?  I'm going to keep this short and simple: It is simply mind boggling that someone who threatened me from the get go  and called me all manner of names throughout, finds anything inappropriate in my -- gasp!! -- calling him a misogynist.  Which is really the worst thing I've said about him.  It is rather amusing to see how it seems to have affected him over the past months, however. This is not a threat, it is a promise that I will make good on in my defense.  In his post, Nikoley made some things clear: Accordingly, and as it is a "war," I go "nuclear and chemical-biological" early. I will make zero pretense at "objectivity." This is for the purpose of  smear and annihilation  in words and images, with no mercy. I have no intention of fact checking, caring a lick about context, posting a scintilla of extenuating...

P ragmatic  A ncestral- L ineage and  E volutionarily  O riented   (Claiming copyrights!  You read that here first!) It's been a while since I wrote Me & "The Community" ~ Part I: Where I'm coming from ... , and this time of reflection in the aftermath of AHS12 seems like as good a time as any to finish off Part II which is about where I see myself fitting -- or not -- into the community as a whole.  These two posts were inspired by an email I received way back in June that read in part: Subject: Here's some support from a random paleo dieter

One of those posts I need to apologize in advance for the length of ... A goodly portion of this post was written around a week ago, and I was conflicted on whether or not to hit the publish button.  I'm not sure the wisdom of posting this ... but in the end I decided to, and I've interspersed some additional thoughts now that AHS12 is over.  I apologize for the various awkward wordings, typos and case changes that resulted that I just don't have the time or patience to correct. Let me start by saying that I am amused by the predictable reactions of some about the web to my not going to AHS12.  If I had a dollar for every time I've been accused of  "not having a life" I'd be rich, but when my life outside this blog actually gets in the way?  Well then, now there's really got to be some other reason, ulterior motivation or nefarious cause for my "backing out" of attending the paleo event of the year.  Well folks, it really is as simple as m...

Last week I was asked or told a few times that the purpose of this blog is unclear.  I suppose that's fair, but then again, how many people sit down and write a mission statement when they start blogging?  I dunno how many people in my audience here have ever blogged, but it's certainly a different animal than anything I've done in my life.  It is easy to get tugged in one direction or another based on how the audience reacts to what I write and my choice of topics.  It's difficult, sometimes, to stay on "message" when I've never had a specific message other than this.   I really did start this blog to sort through the peer review literature and what it says about the long term healthfulness of a VLC diet.   I've attracted a considerable readership of the science, but also of ex-low carbers and/or VLC'ers who have moderated their approach over the years.  Most if not all of these have improved their position -- be it weight or health -- often after...

One of the things that was an oddity about my upbringing, was that my parents always frowned on drinking with dinner.  Anything even water, any meals I just chose dinner.  We didn't drink with meals.  Sometimes tea or water or diluted juice afterwards, and later in life this seemed to have been relaxed.  But the notion as I understood it was that you weren't supposed to wash your food down. Whenever I went to a friend's house for dinner I was always asked what I wanted to drink.  Usually water or milk was offered, but occasionally soda too (that last one I think because I was a guest).  I would usually just decline as I didn't really like drinking milk.  To me most of their foods were more moist than I was used to anyway -- everything from salads with creamy dressing to white bread to breaded and fried fish vs. broiled.    In my binging days, I probably consumed the most milk of any time in my life.  Outside the little cartons in gramm...

Are you like me?  Do you have a terabyte sized pile of PDF files on your hard drive?  A zillion studies on a bazillion topics?  Don't remember where you got it from?  Forgot to rename the file when you downloaded it, and now you've got a file named ABCXYZ123whatever.pdf and no clue what it's about?  Sure, you can preview the PDF in Windows.  Sure you can search on the title and find the link quickly enough.  Sure you can be more fastidious about renaming files and organizing them in subfolders.  Oh ... but what if you use more than one computer?  File not there?  Again, sure there are other syncing apps and online drives/services out there.    But a couple of days ago I found a paper on Mendeley.com and they were touting  Mendeley desktop .  I downloaded it and I'm in heaven!!  I've only just begun to explore this, so I haven't put much into mine yet, but below are some screenshots of my current Glyceroneogenesi...

WARNING:  Rant! There's been quite the discussion going on in comments of The Men Who Made Us Fat , and I decided my commentary might be better organized in a blog post.  I can certainly see the positions of both sides there, but in the end I come down on the side of "Eric" when he says this: " Until we accept that Obesity is a lifestyle choice ( either voluntarily or by apathy ) no real fix can every be made without crushing regressive taxation on food. To blame "big food" is a dangerous cop-out that reinforces the negative cycle. " The so-called "simple obesity" -- the epidemic of indisputable overeating to the tune of an average of 500 calories per day -- is very much a lifestyle choice.  In my case, the obesity of the late 90's and the 2000's was in large part due to apathy or laziness.  Too many take out meals instead of cooking something.  And take out means too many fried, processed, calorie dense foods.  Or just eating cracke...

To all my readers who are Dads, I wish you a very happy day and hope you get to spend it with your kids (and if they're old enough, that they do something nice for you for all you do!) On the front here, we have a limited celebration in store.  But if this haze lifts there's supposed to be a nice day for it.  We're grilling up porterhouses for the red meat eaters, steamin' up a lobster and cooking up salmon filet in the fry pan.  This will be complimented with coleslaw - homemeade by me of course, a cold green bean salad from my maternal grandmother's recipe (with a vinagrette of sorts) - made by Sis, roasted yukon golds (me), and some sort of orange squares for dessert (Sis).   The plan is to enjoy food, and more importantly, family!

Yes, the inhabitant that should be on a carnivorous diet, is.  I just had to share the "cat in the box" picture.  He's always been a box cat.  He's too big for shoe boxes but that doesn't stop him if one is available.  Box full of stuff?  He's on top.  Cardboard tray from Costco?  You'd think I paid premium for it at the pet store.  I had used this "tray" to carry some stuff between rooms last night.  And this morning there he was sitting in it, like I meant to put it there just for him :-) Some other pics, not to step on Beth @ WeightMaven's toes with Friday Cat Blogging.  On the lower left, he loves to read my blog :-)  And check out that coloring, I think he's got a tarantula on his forehead!!  This guy doesn't have normal fur, it's a thick "pelt" is the only way to describe it. I call him my Gotta-Getta-Gund.  

Hey gang ... I'm working on the Big Fat Lies blogumentary ... just when I think I've found everything I'm remembering to include, I come across more.  But I'm near completion and after some time to do other things in my life (grin) will likely get to publishing it next week.  In the meantime, I came across a quote that really turned me off to Taubes when I heard it.  It really had little to do with his scientific manglings, but more to do with his attitude about fat tissue regulation showing an utter disregard for eating disorders.  I blogged on it once over on the Chronicles blog but couldn't find the quote at the time.  So when I heard it this time, you can imagine it jumped out at me!   As someone who struggled with ED's, and could just have easily succumbed to anorexia rather than what eventually led to lifelong struggle with overweight and obesity, I found this personally offensive.  It's moreso because I feel that Taubes misuses the works of Hil...

Been flicking through YouTube and music sites lately.  Came across this video of one of my favorite bands most Americans have never heard of, covering one of my favorite songs.    I saw them live twice, once at Toad's in New Haven CT when their lead singer was new.  He was sitting at the back of the bar going unnoticed before the show.  Got to chat with him.  I was 2-3 rows in on the floor watching a band that has packed Wembley.  Pretty cool.  Here's Marillion singing Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (I only wish they sang more, but this was just fun to watch)