Friday, February 5, 2016

Friday

I read a super interesting blog post from Dr. Michael Eades yesterday (no link; got it in email), about the effect polyunsaturated oils may have on insulin sensitivity and weight gain. If his information is correct, all polyunsaturated fatty acid chains make tissues more insulin sensitive, so that they store fat from glucose as well as the fat itself. Which makes less energy available in the blood, which makes us eat more, besides making us fat from the storage. Not much different from straight sugar, and maybe worse.

What that tells me is that our eating more from restaurants and less from home is very much contributing to my problems maintaining the weight loss I did. Not that we didn't eat at restaurants during the year I lost the weight, but Lee and Elizabeth were gone much of that year, and my reaction was to eat burgers on the grill at home. And I stopped eating lunch at restaurants, by and large. So in addition to going VLC/ZC for months on end, I drastically reduced eating seed oils.  I still ate nuts, which are a natural source of PUFA - and I still do. And I notice that a) they're bloody addictive, and b) anytime I eat them, I tend to stall out on weight loss. That fits nicely with the information he provided. And, from a natural sense, completely convincing - nuts ripen in the fall, and are used by various animals to store energy for winter - either as body fat, or to be eaten to replenish body fat.

Now that I have this information, while I don't imagine that we will stop eating out completely, I can at least watch carefully what I do eat. Steak is okay. Hamburger is okay. Fries are not okay. Salad dressing is not okay. Green beans are okay. Baked sweet potato is okay if the butter is real. And so on. And if I ever find somewhere that still fries in tallow, I can have fried stuff there.

As for nuts, I can look out for macadamias again, since they're fully saturated. And with knowledge, I can make sure I'm fairly restrained in eating the PUFA nuts that are already in my house. Maybe even make them a seasonal thing, once we've finished off what we have.

All that said, I am at 157.8 this morning. Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • walnuts
  • cheese (3 pieces)
  • an apple
  • steak
  • salad with blue cheese dressing
  • a handful of salted dark chocolate almonds
  • a handful of cashews
That was it. Today will be similar, because Lee is feeling fairly awful, and I told him to stay in bed.

I did manage my shoulder exercises yesterday. I'm at 5 lb for 2 of them, and need to go to 10 lb on the third. I don't necessarily think that I gained strength prior to Mardi Gras by using the 3 lb weights, more that they were too light. And my shoulder is already feeling better. But with the new weights, I probably need to start back doing both arms again - I was just doing the messed up one to start with.

No walking yesterday. Probably not tonight, either. Maybe tomorrow morning.

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