Author Paul - The Wry Eye Guy

Potatoes & Blood Glucose

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Potatoes & Blood Glucose

Potatoes

Earth’s Other Gold!

I just knew I shouldn’t have written about potatoes yesterday! Maybe it was in my head to do this already, but writing about it made it a certainty. I had spuds for dinner yesterday. Lots of them!

When trying to lose weight, one of the first categories of foods that fat people tend to drop is all the white stuff. Sugar, flour, rice & potatoes. While I’ve done that, & I’m sure I’ll do it again, it may not be necessary to do it all the time. Though not diabetic, I have one of those little glucose test meters. Every now & again, I’ll pull it out to test how my body is reacting to whatever my latest dietary penchant is. Usually, I’m doing it to prove I can safely eat more of something that I think I ought not to be eating. And spuds are one thing that I want to repeatedly prove that I can eat more of!

Most of the week, my glucose levels were between 5.1 & 5.5 mmol/l (92 & 99 mg/dl), even after meals. When I’m monitoring like this, my fingers look like pin cushions so I measured immediately after eating, one & two hours after eating, etc. That was still my range. Pretty good, eh! Yesterday, however, I boiled & cooled a huge pot of potatoes. I stuck them in the fridge to cool, in order to convert some of the starch to resistant starch (more on this another day). Then I pan-fried them, in the leftover grease from frying bacon (pasture raised this time), with an onion. Finally, I added a large pot of boiled Brussels sprouts to the pan. Along with all the herbs & seasonings. I ate dinner from the “bucket” that was the focus of my post from a few days back. I was stuffed. And I mean really stuffed. So what happened to my blood sugar level?

After eating, it was 7.2 (130 ml/dl) mmol/l. A little over three hours later it was 6.8 (122 ml/dl) mmol/l & this morning, it was 6.1 mmol/l (110 mg/dl). Those aren’t really awful, & they’re a little slow to come down for sure. Still, I prefer to be in the five point something range most of the time. I was, however, running low carb prior to this so maybe my body needs to get used to controlling carbs again? Hey, I like that concept … I’m going to feast on potatoes for the next couple of days to see if the glucose control improves! Whoohoo!

Oops! I forgot to mention something. I ate a large, oil & vinegar drenched, feta & tomato salad before the bucket of spuds. And someone might have left a bit of steak on their plate that I just had to have a taste of. In my defense, it was a grass-fed steak! And … about an hour after dinner … I had a big bowl of that raisin, nut & chocolate mix. With these really sweet, dried fig, mango & coconut balls. All covered in cream. I wonder if that did anything to the blood sugar! 🙂

I was also supposed to be on a one meal day fast, with dinner being the one meal. I guess it turned into three meals at dinner time. Is that okay, d’ya think!?!

Down 9.2 lbs.

More Spuds Please!

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More Spuds Please!

Rabbit

Rabbit looks happy on a Plant-based Diet!

I’ve been doing this for years, no … decades, but the more I delve into the world of diet & weight loss, the more I think I’m just following Alice into some surreal place of delusion & horror. Pick any dietary regimen you like, say the ketogenic diets for our purposes here, and then do an internet search for something like the “benefits of keto diet”. That brings up about 6.9 million hits. Looking for the “dangers of keto diet” only brings back 353 thousand, or about 5% of the first lookup’s total. Now try something that most would think contrary to keto: search for the “benefits of plant based diet”. That kicks back 15.6 million results. Doing the opposite: “dangers of plant based diet” yields a list of 784 thousand items. Again about 5% against. I know, I know, I could have used an alternative word to “danger” but the point is that there is huge support for just about any semi-reasonable dietary philosophy out there. And a very similar push-back ratio to both, quiet different, programs.

Just for fun: “plant based vs keto diet” provided 3.5 million results, with most on the first couple of pages favouring the plant based diet.

Let try one more. A couple of searches on the benefits of fasting vs the dangers of fasting produced 463 million on the positive side, with 1.7 million on the danger side. Only 0.4% were negative.

Now this is awfully loose data so we can’t call it science, but it does suggest some questions …

  • Why is fasting, with that massive 463 million hits, that much more interesting to people?
  • And perhaps most importantly, is fasting better than the other diets because of that high interest AND that low negative response rate?

Now I’m not making my dietary decisions on these seagull-in-the-sky views of unexplored data but I think it’s tough to argue that there isn’t just a little lack of clarity out there. There’s a lot. Though regardless of the program, there seems to be a lot of optimism among supporters that it’s the right one. Could there be more than one right one?

Despite the enjoyment I get from reading about nutrition, diet & weight loss, sometimes, I think I’d rather just be thin & get on with my life! I have this horrible, teeth-grinding suspicion that the words of my grandmother will ring true one day & that I’ll then be preaching that old parable … everything in moderation! Though likely with one significant difference … the foods in my fridge & cupboards are not the same as were in hers back then.

And now I’m wondering why plant-based positives had almost two & a half times the number of keto!!! Oh Boy, here we go again! 🙂

Can You Out-feast a Fast?

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Can You Out-feast a Fast?Dessert

You can! Or at least I can. And especially if I make poor food choices on an all-you-can-eat day, following a fasting day. But, of course, this is not the goal. If you’re mixing intermittent fasting with, say, a low carb diet that is working for you, then you should probably try to stick reasonably close to that low carb regimen when you decide to “fill ‘er up” on a feast day. You’ll eat a whole lot more but the menu should still, generally, adhere to the regimen that is working for you.

The beauty of fasting is that it can be very forgiving but don’t expect a minute by minute response on the scale. A big rib steak is going to sit in the tummy a little longer than a big bowl of salad. Both mind and body will look forward to a feast day. And you know you’ll just have to have dessert as part of it. Here’s a dessert I like to use on such a day. I know I should probably be heading off to the forest to pick wild nuts. And hacking down cacao pods to make my own chocolate. But I don’t! I buy a bag of Prana’s Kilimanjaro deluxe chocolate mix instead. Even the single raspberry came from a bag of frozen fruits. But I did pick the two mint leaves from my own garden. That’s counts for something, right!?! 🙂

The white stuff is 35% whipping cream, by the way. The other point of note is that my dessert is in a ramekin. Which I have to admit is a total con. I usually have my dessert in a large bowl or container! I should have gone with the bigger serving yesterday too because the smell of fresh baking brownies got to me later in the day. I stuck one of those bad boys in the bottom of a tall mug & covered it with frozen raspberries. Then I filled it to the brim with whipping cream. I really should listen to my own advice sometimes. Much though I enjoy it when I don’t.

Ah well, I wanted to try losing weight more slowly this time anyway! LOL

What on earth am I LOLing about, that’s just nuts. Or nuts & chocolate! LOL again!

Bit in a Bucket!

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Bit in a Bucket!Beef & Cabbage Chilurri

Whenever anyone asked my mother if her child would eat such & such a food for dinner, my mother’s standard response was …

“Just give him a bit in a bucket & he’ll eat it.”

Dismissive though it sounds, it was pretty accurate. I would eat anything. Indeed, I would probably prefer to have my meal served in a bucket because it held so much more than a plate or a bowl could. That proved all too prophetic as the years went by. Today, & I can’t believe I’m admitting this out loud, but when no one’s around, my preferred serving dish is a large, round, plastic storage container! Not only can this baby hold an amazing amount of food, but as you get towards the end, you can tilt it on its side to get every last morsel into the bottom “corner” to scoop it out. To make matters worse, it’s the best way to eat in front of the TV!

I try to justify this as being a hangover from my student days. It was really just a time saving techniques, wasn’t it? I only prepared meals in one pot, or on one pan, in order to reduce clean-up time. Dumping everything into a large bowl did the same. I would stir my tea with a dessert spoon & then use that to eat my dinner from the large bowl. Besides, forks might leave a morsel in the bottom! Efficiency was everything. Back then, there were too many pubs to visit. And life was too short to waste any of it washing dishes. And as children, we were encouraged to clean our plates so I was really just adhering to my childhood training.

Much though I hate skinny people telling me that “it’s all about portion control”, I know I’m a little beyond the pale with this particular one-bowl strategy. That said, it is what it is, & I do really enjoy my alone-time occasionally. With my favourite bowl.

When I’m paying more attention though, I do try to fill my big bowl with better choices. It’s an unbelievable way to eat massive amounts of poutine, for example. And if you don’t know what that is, you just have to pause & look it up. Okay so that’s NOT one of the better choices for weight loss! 🙂

Last night, as I’m trying to change things, I chose a “normal” bowl. And I filled it with a one-pot grass-fed beef roast & cabbage chilurry. Chilurry is my own special blend of chili & curry. I sometimes can’t make up my mind what I want so I combine the flavours. And grass-fed beef chilurri sounds so much more sophisticated than boiled beef & cabbage, doesn’t it!

How does it rate as a good dietary choice though? The essential fats balance of the grass-fed beef choice is probably understandable. Cabbage is a fantastic no-penalty volume veggie so it’s a no-brainer ingredient. Garlic & onions are essential, they’ve got miraculous super-food powers & stuff, & they taste so good. Add 2 litres of organic bone broth, thickened only by three (okay, it was five) potatoes, & it’s a dish fit for a king. Or for a fat guy trying to get thin!

Full disclosure … I had three of those piddly little bowls before I was happy. And the 2nd & 3rd weren’t like the one in the pic, they were filled to overflowing! 🙂

It does look nice though, doesn’t it!

Feeling Sorry for President Trump

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Feeling Sorry for President TrumpThe Die is Cast

I am so reluctant to admit this out loud, but I’m a big reality TV fan. I was first hooked by Temptation Island. I know, I know, but I couldn’t help it, I loved the show. I always thought that it was too easy though. They should have had longtime married couples on, instead of couple that were just dating. Now that would have had some serious emotional equity to challenge! I have no time for the loud housewives from any city but I still enjoy The Bachelor & Bachelorette shows. I stopped watching American Idol, in favour of The Voice. I thought the judges on The Voice were generally nicer to their contestants. For the past couple of years though, American politics is where it’s at.

Prior to Donald Trump getting into politics, I had such a low level of interest that I had to look up the party platforms, here in Canada, before going to the polling booth to vote. Regardless of your political leanings, you have to admit that Mr. Trump brings a high degree of entertainment to political proceedings. I wasn’t a fan of The Apprentice. Insensitive, overly loud & egocentric characters tend to turn me off. And he was all that. In the political arena though, it became far more interesting. It wasn’t Mr. Trump beating up on some subservient contestant, he was going up against a bunch of big, beefy professionals in the space. Far more interesting!

That didn’t stop him, of course, & he proceeded to run the White House pretty much the same way he probably runs his own businesses. The same way he ran his TV show. And he’s gotten away with it! Or at least ’til now. It’s taken ’til this week for the push-back to be significant enough for him to have to back off on anything. He brushed past a couple of faux pas in Europe, en route to Helsinki, for his meeting with the Russian President. And it’s from this that he’s had to backtrack on a number of his positions.

While I thought that racking up the hours watching CNN & Fox News were educating me, I’ve hit a wall of ignorance again. The big questions I now have surround US foreign policy. And the systems of checks & balances. For example, it looks like the President can have a differing foreign policy from the house & senate, despite them being of the same party. Is that possible? And what can the other branches of government do if they don’t like the President’s position? Is there an equivalent to the Vote of No Confidence that’s sometimes employed in many parliamentary democracies?

Though mostly Trump appointees now, it looks like the President doesn’t take his senior staff into his confidence. Nor does he seek their advice as he wanders the globe meeting foreign leaders. The clip of DNI Dan Coats at the Aspen Security conference yesterday was so funny. I felt the same kind of slight “wrongness” by laughing along, as I might feel laughing at a contestant’s predicament on a reality TV show. But it was still funny.

But that is also quite sad. Mr. Coats learned of the invitation for the Russian President to visit the White House during a televised interview. Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to discuss such things with his senior staff. He’s running the world’s leading superpower country. Alone.

I’ll leave it to others to comment on what policies are, & are not, right. But the sadness comes from the fact that a 72 year old man, powerful & successful by most measures & metrics, does not have a common-sense confidant that he can discuss his daily grind with. He has his own staff on board & he doesn’t seem to feel that he can speak with them. Or ask for their advice on such matters. And I think that’s both lonely & sad.

I hope I’ll be as healthy as he is at that age. Actually, I’m just hoping I’ll make it to that age one day! While I’d like to think I’ll still be motivated & inspired to do great things things as I grow older, running a country won’t be on my to-do list. In between blogging (I’ll probably still be trying to lose weight!), maybe I’ll golf a little. And probably with a cart. I hope I’ll have grandchildren to visit. And I’ll likely be making plans to spike them, just before I leave to go home, with a pocketful of red candies!