Is it 'safe'? Starch my innards.

Over most of last year I shifted my diet away from low carbohydrate high fat  to lowish carbohydrate high fat + safe starches.

The notion of 'safe' starch may seem weird unless you have been steeped in low carb Paleo diet lore. 

Therein lies a debate...

...which I don't want to get into.

Nor am I going to bring you up to speed. You can Google 'safe starches' yourself.

But I will give you my anecdotal 2 bob's worth:

1. Much of this Paleo thing misrepresents the eating habits of 'ancestral' peoples -- ye olde hunter gatherers.To presume that 'their' diet was overwhelmingly low carb etcetera is not correct. Traditional diets certainly varied between environments but they were not exclusively as the Paleo-ists argue.
2. That said there are some problem foods in the transition out of hunter gatherer-dom -- foods like milk and grains (and more recently -- sugar and vegetable oils). As Vanessa Haynes points out:"The idea behind it is that our DNA profile determines that we should live in that way because for 190,000 years we were hunter gatherers. .... The modern diet, especially in the United States, is not probably the healthiest and probably not in Australia either. So educating children about eating naturally, I have no problem with that. Whether it should be the paleo diet, I think we have to be careful of that because we have had 10,000 years of adaptation to agriculture. Have we adapted to grains? Because the true hunter gatherer can't eat grains either. They have not adapted to drinking milk. But yet most Europeans have adapted to drinking milk. So we've got to take these adaptations into consideration."
3. While eating low carb (under 100 grams/day) I found that on those occasions I didn't (ie: ate more) my blood sugar spiked. You may think that's to be expected and while that may be presumed, the fact that the whole insulin response system wasn't being challenged meant that when it was it tended to over-react.So more carbs routinely rather than much less is probably a good thing -- for me anyway.
4. Because I was routinely taking blood glucose readings after meals I discovered that I could tolerate some carbs more than others...and the ones I'm tolerating the most are -- that's right -- the ones often referred to as 'safe' starches. I'm a bit touchy with rice but potatoes, sweet potatoes and the like come in under blood sugar budget. That is, so long as I don't pig out.
5. So I'm back eating these starches. Potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Yams. Oca (New Zealand Yam).  Rice ...and any  other, often exotic, starchy vegetable I can find and tolerate. But no bread. No sugar. No wheat. No pasta. No dried legumes. Since I can grow a lot of these veg, I'm on a great culinary and horticultural journey.
6. But the trick is in the mix. Starches plus....vinegar or yogurt or fats or pickles or some other acid or oil. No vegetable oils. A few nuts. Any other veg. I don't eat much fruit -- more from habit rather than preference.
7. And it's all good. I have more energy. I put on weight initially but now it is coming off. My gut is happier and my gastronomical universe has expanded.I'm eating about 400-500 grams of  these starches each day.My menu planning is easier and I've learnt to respect the nutritional value of these starchy foods -- not so much white rice, but the tubers are nutritionally rich.
8. I eat other veg of course -- especially colourful root vegetables, cucurbits, greens and herbs -- and meat (mainly lamb as it's my passion), fish and eggs. Steamed or boiled chicken. A little bit of pork. 
9. Blood sugars: doing fine. Occasionally pass my target threshold of 6.7 mmol one hour after meals but well within acceptable frequencies for a person with Type II Diabetes.
10. So all good...and I love these starches! It's like I've broken a fast. When you move away from a dependence on wheat flours and corn ... and base your meals on these other starches the menu is very different.
11. My regret is that I've drifted some way from my preferred Arab and Mediterranean culinary preferences as I'm now locating my menu hunting in the great tuber growing cultures of the world. But there are adaptions. The Koreans, for instance, make an awesome noodle out of sweet potato starch -- dangmyeon. And then there is the big wide world of rice noodles....
12. You can do a lot with tubers....
13. I don't drink much pure milk -- except a dash in tea -- but yogurt I indulge in.Yogurt is the primary solution to 'adapting' to milk...that and cheeses. 

Adventure in food combining

The PHD 

It is probably a very human trait to obsess over our food.

We are diet snobs. If not for religious purposes we'll format our menu on ethical or health grounds.

I'm no different -- but since I'm diabetic, 'diet' becomes a bigger issue for me as I want to keep my  blood glucose levels in control.

But being diabetic also means I can eat something and an hour or so later, test my blood to see how the food is impacting on my body.

I get to measure my own pathology.

Aside from some key very generic health symptoms,  blood glucose readings will decide if you are diabetic and how much of a diabetic you are.

After 3-4 years of eating a low carbohydrate diet (actually LCHF: Low carb/high fat) my blood glucose picture is such that I now usually fall within the 'normal range' :

 However, shortly after eating, the blood glucose level may rise, in non-diabetics, temporarily up to 7.8 mmol/L (140 mg/dL) or slightly more. For people with diabetes maintaining 'tight diabetes control', the American Diabetes Association recommends a post-meal glucose level of less than 10 mmol/L (180 mg/dL) and a fasting plasma glucose of 3.9 to 7.2 mmol/L (70–130 mg/dL).

Even after a meal my blood glucose seldom goes above 6.3-6.7 mmol, and breaching 7 mmol is, for me, rarer still.

So eating low carb works...for me.

However, over these years I've experimented with some dense carbs like sweet potatoes and white rice. Despite this indulgence -- my occasional splurge seldom led to major spikes in my blood sugar.

Why not? Aren't they as cabohydratey as a loaf of bread or a jar of honey?Am I not diabetic?

In short: no. Some carbs are kosher and they're called  safe starches. Not every gram of carbohydrate is equal.

Part of the background story relates to the question of Resistant Starch. Resistant Starch (RS) is starch and starch degradation products that escape from digestion in the small intestine of healthy individuals. It is resistant to digestion.

But there is more to the story too when you look at these safe starches.

• they are tubers, white rice and the like 
• they are not grains (ie: grass seeds, except for the rice)  

The key question is what these starches break down to.Therein lies a scientific debate which I won't go into. You'll have to do your own Googling.

But the 'concept' begins to explain my easy response to the carb dense foods I occasionally indulged in : white rice and sweet potatoes. These happen to be core 'safe starches'.

But that's  not the full story. It's also a question of how these foods are eaten and with what. And therein lies a fascinating story that relates to some challenging  anthropology.

Examples: Kitava, Okinawans, Tukisenta all eat very high carb and are all free from modern inflammatory diseases.

The whole rationale for the low carb menu -- and its buddy, the paleo diet  --  suffers from the complication that many societies survived and thrived on high carbohydrate foods without the western diet type consequences of  massive incidences of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

How is that possible if eating low carb tucker was supposedly the best of all possible dietary regimes god for all peeps?

That conundrum is where some of the online low carbers are trying to deal with and probably the best synthesis of that to register so far is the work of  Paul Jaminet and Shou-Ching Shih Jaminet.

Of course there is a lot of spin and rhetoric in the mix. But I can garner  enough  to register my own takeaways.

1. safe starches are kosher: go ahead, you  can eat them so long as you recognise that people are different  and responses will vary.
2. but make sure you eat your safe starches with fats, acids (like pickles, vinegar or yogurt) at the same meal along with your surfeit of meat, fish and eggs. The mix changes the digestive process esp as regards glycemic load.

Simple.

Of course I can't go chomping through starches willy nilly -- even 'safe' ones -- because I'm still diabetic so I need to take care as to quantities I put in my mouth. But that's something I need to experiment with. But with my trusty blood test kit at my elbow  I'm set up as my own laboratory..

LCHF weight loss? Plateau frustration.

Because my Summer was a tough one I put on 3-4 kgm -- and it ain't coming off in a hurry.

In the scheme of things maybe that's not a big deal, but if adipose tissue is granted an inch it may take you out a mile.

I'm still carrying a  lot more weight than the official body image data recommends. Despite what I eat/despite what I do.

I suspect that after a certain age losing weight becomes much more difficult. But then a lot of what I carry around is the denser, heavier muscle meat rather than fat because I do exercise one helluva lot. Unfortunately I carry my obesity about in the worse place for a bloke: in my abdomen.

Nonetheless, give or take a couple of kilograms, I have lost 10 kgms over the past couple of years by pursuing a low carbohydrate regime. And, until last Summer, I maintained that weight loss effortlessly. The genesis of the weight gain wasn't what I ate but that I was less active because of pain and stiffness due to Fibromyalgia festering in the Summer humidity.

I'm sure I can get back to where I recently came from....and therein hangs a challenge.

Metformin

I eat well and in the main I do indeed eat low down the carbohydratic totem pole. I suspect I consume around or under 100 grams of carbohydrate per day.  I know that that is the case because my blood sugars register between 4.2 and 6.2 mmol but usually I'm flagging fives, despite my low dose (500 mgm) of  Metformin.

So my diabetes is being 'controlled' -- sort of -- by diet. (You can't/I can't  cure it.) Therefore, thought I, since I have been such a good boy  maybe I could stop taking the drug.

So that's what I did: stopped taking Metformin. Gone cold turkey.

The main reason I did this is simple: Metformin' s primary side effect (experienced by up to 50% of its users) is diarrhoea, and I was suffering from that big time. In fact  that condition was worsening.

So far so good. There has been no major change in my blood sugar readings. If there is, I'll need to shave back my carb intake and fiddle with my exercise regime  some more.

Weight loss

That still leaves the chronic problem of  me being overweight. When you know you can lose weight and you know  that taking off x number of kilograms will mean that is x number of kilograms you won't have to drag around all day/every day ... the quest is like a chimera.

If only....

I'd like to lose another 5 kgm at least...making my total weight loss 15 kgm. That's a good result by 'diet industry'  standards and should be feasible without me getting all angsty or depressed if I don't attain that figure.

It also gives me something to do: an in-house project.

The question is: how am I gonna get there? What are my options?

1. LCHF. The diet regime I pursue is Low Carb High Fat so I'm tweaking that some more. I know it works. I eat very well indeed. It's sustainable long term. Suits me fine.  I just have to shave back my carb intake some more, at least for a while...and eat more fat (like coconut oil, which isnt my favorite)!
2. More exercise? I do plenty already and am master of my activities, but to my High Intensity Interval Training regime I've added rope skipping. That I have to lift my heavy frame so many times into the air per minute against the  forces of gravity must amount to lift offs of some significance. That a person my age skips surely must add more bounce to my ageing ounce. I used to rope skip/jump and I love it. It was a personal goal and I get a lot of satisfaction skipping as relentlessly as I can like a boxer training for a  fight.
3. Activity. My habit has been to often lie down during the day. I carry so much fatigue, stiffness and pain around that a good lie down -- a siesta -- has sustained me for years. The problem is that resting routinely like that drags down my metabolism and switches off a range of somatic challenges. So I've engineered more stand up into my day. I'm less sedentary. I no longer sit longer than 25 minutes at a time. I move around more and don't lie down during the day. I will nap after my evening meal for an hour or a couple of hours...and that will get me through each 24 hour period.  But in daylight I'm active and upright. My approach here has been fostered by the notions explored in Sitting Kills, Moving Heals: How Everyday Movement Will Prevent Pain, Illness, and Early Death  and Exercise Alone Won't by Joan Vernikos but the approach promoted by N.E.A.T is in the same parameter.

For now that's the limit of my imagination and creativity....

[The Weight Loss? graphic figures above are avatar mock ups of what I may look like now with my current weight and what I could look like if I took off some more.]

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Blood Sugar Adventures : three years on with diabetes

"Getting" diabetes ( albeit the Number Two kind)  was a terrible blow for me. Not only did I get to take on a range of yucky symptoms with potentially bad endings   but the diagnosis was a big shock to  my psyche.

Since I already had chronic ill  health what I didn't need in life was another layer of malady.

But three  years on, after due attention to tweaking my diet and lifestyle I can confidently say that I've 'dealt' with it.

While I  wish it would go away and never come back -- that's not gonna happen. It's in the fam gene pool, unfortunately, and I did well to starve it off or as long as I did.

I coulda done better if I knew what I now know.

But then, that's life, right?

Hindsight is a brutal bugger. Always right but never around when you need it most.

The good news is that I've just cut my diabetes meds in half. I do that and my blood sugar readings are still at fours and fives. That's sorta 'normal'...remarkably normal.

I've been able to do that because...well that's  the inspiring part:

• Because I tweaked my exercise regime to improve my insulin sensitivity. In that regard I dips my lid to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and lifting weights. I do, however, do a lot of exercise.
• Because I embraced a low carbohydrate diet -- and more recently  with greater success -- a Low Carbohydrate High Fat (LCHF) diet. Diabetics have to obsess about what they put in their mouths and in my case I'm eating low on the carb hierarchy:maybe 50-70 grams/day -- usually under 100 grams each day.

To do all this I more or less ignored my doctors. Not that they were telling me wrong but that they are constrained by a certain old school  and very generic point of view. (Diabetic diets is still a hot potato issue).

I still have a problem  with blood pressure which is a diabetic's  dead hand but if I can get that down further I'm sweet. 

Elevated BP is a family curse -- but , of course, as chance would have it, not from the side that passes on the diabetes!

Just on the doctor thing...Before I became a  client at a local indigenous health centre (and I'm not indigenous but they let me attend as a Migloo) local GPs treated my worsening blood sugar picture almost with fatalistic disdain.

"You're pre-diabetic (6-7 mmol/L), Mr Riley. (How about that...) Ok -- piss off."

Among Murris and Torress Strait Islanders, diabetes is a plague so the centre is geared to actively intervene and diagnose. Every visit included blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring. 

I owe so much of my  better health today to the team there...even if I do now customise my treatment regime.

I try to tell people -- if you are on a short list for diabetes (ie: you're over weight, sedentary and/or have a family history of diabetes) do stuff now so that you hold off crossing the nasty blood sugar threshold. If your blood sugar is OK, work to keep it that way. If it's 'pre-diabetic' work even harder.

If it is not being tested (and you are over 50) -- demand that it should be at every opportunity.

You don't want diabetes...at all. It's a bummer all round.

 That you could prevent it -- or at least slow its onset -- has to be a wonderful option.

In my case, a range of symptoms kicked in  and the friggin quacks never thought of seriously monitoring  my blood sugar levels...and when they rose: "Umph!"

That's "general practice" for you in the context of massive increases in the incidence of diabetes across all local populations.

4%  of Australians have diabetes. That's around 898,000 people.
This rate has risen from 1.5% in 1989.

So now I'm diabetes paranoid. People tell me stries about their bood picture with s casual indifference( over 12 mmol/L for one family member) and I think: what the f...! Do they realize how much damage  is happening to their body every time they put food in their mouths? We're talking major health complications and a greatly shortened life span.

Diabetes is  a real nasty. If you are on the short list for it there is one absolute necessity you have to do: Test. Test. Test.

Without pricking your finger and monitoring your own blood picture with blood glucose test strips you'll remain pig ignorant of what's a'happening. Occasional doctors visits won't suffice. What you eat  has to be ruled by the droplets of blood on your finger tips. 

There is no other option. 

Following a diet -- any 'prescribed' diet -- blind to your blood picture needs the feedback that can only be delivered in mmol/L. 

That's the irony: diabetes is the most democratic of diseases. Only you have the power  to treat it.

           

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A simple chicken curry served with mashed cauliflower is a low carb lesson

For those who eat low carb one of the great discoveries is how versatile cauliflower is. 

Since you are unlikely to be eating  neither bread nor rice nor potatoes -- as they all are all  dense in carbohydrate -- the humble caulie with around 16 grams of Carbohydrate in a whole head is a great filler-outer-er with some very useful nutritional properties. (That's equivalent to the carbs in one slice of bread).

This simple chicken curry (pictured left) -- I like  to add cloves, plenty of cumin seeds and a good dash of fennel seeds -- was delicious. The spices and a good thick coconut creaming kicked in nicely indeed. The fill out is the mashed cauliflower.

My guess -- as pictured -- 10 grams of  carbohydrate in the serve. (After a time you get skilled at estimating what goes into your mouth.)

When you do your homework nice things begin to happen and after three years of eating low carb I find the regimen easy to follow, the recipe experience both exciting and delicious; and the physiological consequences very pleasing indeed.

The one indulgence I allow myself is some sweet potato once per week. Sweet spuds aren't massively high in carbs but they are outside my preferred comfort range .  Sweet potatoes are nonetheless touted as the "low carb wonder food" because a normal sweet potato contains about 28 grams carbohydrate.

But I tell you: if the prospect of a Diabetes II diagnosis is threatening, this is the way to go. Low Carb is also great for weight loss and may impact on IBS symptoms.

My joke is that I tell my family, "I can eat anything. I just choose not to eat some things." The point being that if I increase my carbohydrate intake with one food, I can trade off that increment by eating some other food low in carbs so that my daily intake stays at a manageable level.

My current management preference is  somewhere under  50 grams of carbohydrate per day. You, on the other hand, may be consuming over 200 grams/day on a 'normal' Western diet.

Example:There are 47 grams of Carbohydrate in a Big Mac alone -- and that's without considering the Coke or the Fries...

I eat plenty. I don't restrict the quantity of what I eat at all. The collateral advantage with a low carb diet is also that you aren't hungry (or you are less hungry) so this may encourage you to eat less in way of caloric intake because you are more easily satiated...and this may be a big reason  why  low carb diets work  for weight loss.

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Low Carb and High Fattery

So how's it been?

Been? You mean since I started a diet based on a low carbohydrate and high fat intake?

Yes that 'been'.

Easy. In fact I'm pretty much over it and forget that I am on "a diet". It's all about style....and habit.

Style?

Yes: I'm eating Swedish. In Sweden the LCHF food regime is so popular that as Denise Minger writes," in 2011 a whopping 25% of Sweden’s population was trying to eat more fat and curb their carbohydrate intake, with 5% of Swedes identifying as hardcore LCHF adherents." Wow! How about them Swedes!

Yeah, I guess, that is some life style I suppose ... But what's with this"more fat"?

That's the wonder. So go read up. I'm too busy not eating stuff to spend time preparing info so you can digest it. However, the main takeaway is that it ain't exotic at all. You eat cheese, cream, olive oil, butter and similar fatty tucker  while cutting back on high carb vegetables  (and fruits). 

That seems easy enough if it would work...

Oh, it does work.I'm losing weight again and I don't bounce around the scales...

That's good.

Sure. But  I pay a price: No cereals. Always I gotta chase the very light-in-carbohydrate foods. I used to aim for foods that had less than 15 grams of carbohydrate  per serve but now I pitch for under 10 grams of carbs for each serve. The complication is that if you cut back on your total carbs you have to make it up somehow in way of caloric intake and I do that not so much by adding more protein ( such as  meat, fish and so) but by upping my fats.

So how does one do that?

'One' does it simply. For breakfast I may have sauerkraut or kimchi with a sausage or an egg or bit of bacon. For lunch I have a soup or sardines or a pawpaw (or pawpaw and avocado) smoothie on Greek yogurt or a salad. Evening meal is culinary open within the LCHF parameters.

And that is  eating the LCHF way?

Indeedy do it is.I have the blood sugars and the gradual weight loss to prove it. Mind you it's all customized. I don't see it as a strict regime as individual results will vary and you have to tweak it. But I guess I'm eating maybe under 50-70 grams of carbohydrates per day when you, eating a 'normal' diet,   are consuming perhaps  over three hundred. And I like the food. I cook, you see, and I appreciate the challenge offered by  such a diet.  And I eat well. It's all delicious stuff.(At least the way I prepare it). For instance, tonight I cooked a Shepherd's Pie but instead of  high carb potatoes I used mashed cauliflower. 

So there are work arounds?

For pasta there isn't. But I can eat  Chinese food or a curry without rice. No noodles unfortunately. For  high carb tubers like potatoes I substitue pumpkin. The only thing I miss is the ready use of thickening agents like corn flour. My  substitutes are Almond Meal or cream. I eat mixed nuts every day as a snack.. and red wine: I drink red wine.  So it's all do-able. No sweat.

But high fat?

I used to wonder about that. I mean it seems so naughty, right, so obscene? When I started this diet I tried to seriously up my fat intake but ultimately what decides how much grease you eat is how much fuel you need. That's because fats are gonna be your energy resource -- maybe more so than from carbohydrates.  The body, you see, changes its preferred method of energy harvesting. But then fats are more satisfying --- more satiating -- than carbohydrates.So over time my body and my preferences adapted. I thought I'd be eating heaps of fat if I cut back further on carbs -- but the actual shift was much less significant. While I eat fat without a conscience -- I'm not obsessed with eating grease and don't have to force feed myself with butter or oil. Low carb eating also means living with less hunger. I eat more cream than I used to and I don't  hold back pouring on the olive oil  nor do  I  trim the fat  from any meat ...  At issue is ('bad') cholesterol, of course, but I dont have the path results to share...yet.

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Tragedy may be easy but weight loss, like the comedy it is, is hard.

The Truth About Low Carb Diets  is a very useful handbook for those who have spent some time on low carbohydrate diets  and want to both understand the physiology in play and seek to tweak their own regime. 

A lot of the discussion is dense academic stuff that explores the logic of low carb eating -- albeit very pragmatically.

There is both good and bad with low carb diets and it pays to get a handle on the processes you unleash inside you when you cut them carbs. Other 'diet books' make it simple and all very partisan. Some promote Paleo lifestylism and hot bods. Jenny Ruhl , on the other hand, brings a sharp clinical eye to the diet and meshes that with her long term personal experience of diabetes and eating low carb as well as her ongoing relationship with so many low carb (and often diabetic) dieters.

Where the research papers run out or fail to deliver affirming evidence one way or the other there is a reasonable smattering of shared anecdotal evidence to draw upon. Handy advice.

So when you stop losing weight on a low carb diet -- or seem to have stopped (as it happens) -- this is a book to run to for assurances and possible tweaks.

Ruhl also tackles the question of the fat:carbohydrate ratio which is a seldom attended to conundrum embedded in the habits fostered by these diets. The LCHF -- Low Carb High Fat -- diet embraces the pairing but, as Ruhl points out, it ain't that simple, especially if you increase your carbohydrate intake while still eating high fat.

Prepare to balloon.

So all in all, this is the handbook low carb dieters need to refer to as required when some issue upsets their menu planning. For diabetics eating low carb -- I'd think this would be an essential resource as it is very empowering to put the means to control so many consequences of your condition by customizing what you place on the end of your fork.

For diabetics, Diet 101: The Truth About Low Carb Diets takes up where the work of Dr Richard Bernstein leaves off ... and carefully humanises his rather strict eating regime by bringing it up to date in line with more recent research and collective experience.

For people who aren't familiar with all of Jenny's good deeds she lives here: Diabetes 101 --  and has blogged about low carb eating and diabetes for years. It is also the best resource on the web for the recently diagnosed.

It's where I started....and I still come back for more good oil from Jenny Ruhl.

My takeaway message was one I've grasped just at a time when I was becoming confused about what  I was eating... and why. While it may be de riguer to say I'm eating  a low carbohydrate diet -- how low should I go? And if I increase my fat intake: by how much fat? If the diet is working and doing me good, how will I know?

Ruhl is keen to argue that what's good for one person may indeed be different for another and that even non-diabetics can utilize glucose monitoring devices if they want to engineer the best result. But for diabetics the commandment, as always, is direct: test, test, test. 

Glucose monitoring widgets are the new empowering  democracy.

Perhaps you are thinking that what the world doesn't really need is another diet book? Perhaps. But the nutrition debate is shifting as the official paradigm of these last 40 years  collapses in  an array of bad health consequences. But when it comes to us -- we individuals -- whatever is the congealed nutritional social milieu that formed us, we still are up against the challenge of not only dieting but engineering a means to do that  that will stay with us for life. And that's not an easy call. 

Most dieters don't succeed long term. Even persisting for a year is a big ask of our bodies.  Despite the fact that any one diet may work -- is eating it the way you want to spend the rest of your life?

Another complication is that, as Ruhl argues, your potential hypothetical weight loss is going to be contained within 10-20% (very usually much less) of your starting/original weight. So do your sums before you start setting goals and recognise that it may take a long time to even par down that far. 

Tragedy may be easy but weight loss, like the comedy it is, is hard.

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LCHF : registering the gains

I've been LCHFing for maybe about 6 weeks now.

You perhaps wonder: what's LCHFing?

Ans: LCHF refers to a  Low Carbohydrate High Fat diet, of which I have commented on before.

Watch my lips: low carb with high fat. If you aren't eating carbohydrates in normative quantities you have to eat something else. And your options are either protein or fats.

Simple, right? Either/or.

I had been eating low carbs anyway (for  two years) but I went lower still and made up my nutritional needs by being free with the fats: cooking oils, salad dressings, creamed sauces, cheese, eggs,  fat in meats and fish. I fatted up my food while also trimming back on the vegetable matter I ate.

That was the knack, the dietary shift -- and being considerate over what fat  you eat.

Rather than eat vegetable matter casually -- albeit low carb vegetable matter --  I parred back to a few low carb selected items each day that I valued and enjoyed. The irony is that by doing this I celebrated the veg more as it was  more  pristine on the plate than it had been in the past.

I reduced my dependence on meat protein by cooking up meat stocks rather than stews.

I'm still tweaking....but it was easy. It was like eating French...Cuisine française -- but then LCHF is a Swedish concoction.

But hey, preliminary results are great.

1. In 6 weeks of eating so I have lost  1.5 kgm- 2kgm of weight and reduced my waist measurement by 3 or 4 cm.
2. My blood glucose readings( I have Diabetes II ) have fallen from an average of 6 mmol to 5.4 mmol. (That's moving within the range of normal.)

It's too early to register changes in blood pressure or cholesterol but the blood glucose  changes in such a short time  are a fantastic response.

Such that the result surprises me.

While I have been consolidating my exercise regime   I have never found that any type of exercise I do to impact on body weight (although my HIIT habits should undermine my insulin resistance which can then lead to falls in blood glucose).

Another variable is that I have parred back my alcohol consumption by half, by spritzing the wine I drink with mineral water. The problem with alcohol (like frank sugars) is that the body prefers to store and convert it to fat  before it gets around to any other stuff  digested. So alcohol consumption can undermine weight lost regardless of a drink's carbohydrate content.

My problem is that I use alcohol -- red wine -- as an analgesia, a very pleasant analgesia, for muscular pain and stiffness. (I have hadFibromyalgia for 27 years).

[And no -- I'll never giving up  my red wine habit as wine works like nothing else.]

So if this trend continues that leaves me with an outstanding challenge of reducing my blood pressure -- a diabetic's standard side effect and a family habituation.

While further weight loss and sundries hopefully should register on the sphygmomanometer I'm hoping that  my indulgence in more consciously cardio  exercise activities -- running and urban soul line dancing -- will also roll back my numbers. 

You want to bring down your blood pressure pro tem? Go for a run. Works every time.

So all up, I'm smugly pleased with myself.

I am on a winner.

• Where I started from : 2 years ago

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Feed me fat : LCHF

I do my homework. Have done for years. A hobby of mine is cooking and  'diet' which I approach as 'cuisine.'

So I read up:that's homework.

I've read a lot on the subject of what we have traditionally put in our mouths and what we maybe shouldn't.

And there is no consensus. What we do know that the standard nutritional paradigm sucks and is making us sicker with epidemics of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

I know, I'm a victim.

My father died from consequences of all three on a 407 bus en route to the Pokies. He was 70 years of age.

That's my morbid thought for the day.

While I know I have done great things with my old bod especially over the past two and half years I know if I want to have a shot at longevity I need to do more.

So when the 'great things' petered out a bit I was getting frustrated. I was feeling better -- much better than I had been -- as there were times when I thought I was fit to expire sooner rather than later. But I was stuck on a plateau and despite the effort I was putting into lifestyle changes I wasn't advancing into the good observations.

I still was overweight and had hypertension...and, despite my much lower blood sugars, I still had Diabetes (thanks to the dead hand of my da).

I was sentenced.

But as they say (here's my new favorite quote):

 Perseverance can overcome anything except constipation.

I  hit the books -- so to speak -- but nowadays one starts research by  Googling.

The thing about Diabetes  is that it is a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism. And contrary to official wisdom a logical response to that would seem to be to reduce your carbohydrate intake as carbs are poisonous to diabetics.

That's a no brainer, surely?

But not among the Diabetic industry higher ups.

So in eating low carb I had to go feral.

I followed an approach advocated by Steve Parker --  the low carbohydrate Mediterranean diet .

Essentially the Parker principles are low carb/low animal fats.

But it soon enough occurred to me that -- especially when you study the diet consumed on the glorified island of Mediterranean  longevity, Crete -- that the Cretans eat a massive amount of 'fat' in the form of olive oil. On average just over 25 kilograms per person per year.

Unless you want to subscribe to the view that olive oil is a wonder food, I kind of also believe that  the Cretans would not be throwing away their animal fats either. They'd eat plenty of fish, with home being an island, but anything else on legs would be eaten to the bone.

So it struck me that if I was eating low carb I should/could also be eating high fat.

The problem is, of course, that   indulging in the consumption of  animal fat is such a taboo that it isn't an easy one to transcend.

So for a good part of a year I allowed myself to be heavy with the olive oil...instead. Low carb with an elevated lean meat and fish consumption.

Still homeworking,esp on the web, I  discovered the Paleo community of adherents  -- born again hunter gatherers -- who  subscribe to a lifestyle of obsession and proscription. But the more I studied the Paleos the more I begrudgingly came around to their POV.

And I was thinking: should I join them?  Low carbers that they were...cousins twice removed.

But the thing that stood out for me was that the Paleos advocate eating all of the dead animal -- they are as keen on  offal as they are on animal fats and eggs. They also were rehabilitating lard.

To summarize my journey the main stations were:

• low carbohydrate
• low carbohydrate Mediterranean
• Paleo

By this time I thought that I had reached an impasse and my one  option  was to concentrate on improving my exercising regime (by focusing on HIIT) in order to both reduce weight and drive down my blood sugar. Assuming that would work, that is.

I thought I had run out of dietary track.

Then I discovered LCHF -- 'The Swedish Diet'

Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) är en relativt ny svensk form av kolhydratfattig och ketogen diet med lågt intag av kolhydrater (Low Carb) och högt intag av fett (High Fat). Den påstås av anhängarna fungera som metod för kontroll av blodsocker och för viktminskning. Vissa menar att dieten har visat sig ha goda resultat speciellt för typ-2-diabetiker där också viktminskning observerats efter ett ökat fettintag.[1][2][3][4][5]  [Yes I know it's in Swedish. LCHF isn't much anglicised yet]

The Low Carb High Fat Diet is a bit blunt in selling its wares but at least for diabetics I recognize  its sweet logic.

So I got myself a copy of a LCHF primer  for diabetics  -- Diabetes. No Thanks!  by  the Swedish writer Lars-Erik Litsfeldt. (You can get it from sources other than Amazon/Kindle).

I paid $9 for it, downloaded it and read it in a sitting.

I'm won over. The arguments do jell for me  and I'm beginning my LCHF journey.

The change required is not massive. All I have to do is:

1. Eat fewer carbohydrates  each day.
2. Eat more fat each day instead.

Cream is OK. Bacon is kosher. Use butter freely....

So I reckon that I'll be the guinea pig. The fat eating guinea pig.

I begin the dietary approach knowing what my blood sugar and blood pressure readings are. I know my weight and I am monitored enough by my physician that all other relevant work  ups will be logged again within the next few months.

So I have a base line to work from. I'll be monitoring my response carefully by taking daily readings of my BP, blood glucose and weight. 

If the counterpoint is going to be that by eating all that animal fat I'm going to increase my cholesterol   level and other nasties ( an assertion that is incidentally hotly contested) I reply that my core problem is  carbohydrate metabolism, not fat metabolism and I'm willing to explore the seeming trade off.  

Underlaying my approach is the POV that you cannot trust the consensual dietary wisdom because it is killing us and must be wrong headed. See the work of Gary Taubes on this. 

TAUBES:Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.

And I'm not as crackpot as I may seem. The science is out there.(Although the jury has still not returned a verdict).

Hopefully over the next few months, I  prove a point one way or another....

As an aside-- Dr Annika Dahlqvist, a cause celebre in Sweden in regard to LCHF, says: "I myself have eaten LCHF since late fall 2004. I went down to normal weight and was cured of my fibromyalgia, irritable bowel (enteritis) and chronic fatigue syndrome, including sleep disturbance."

This POV may be exciting but troublesome  -- as it underscores the fact that LCHF is internet driven, personality promoted and still very anecdotal. So that disclaimer needs to be considered  despite the number of adherents in Sweden. Like any 'fad' diet LCHF is not 'peer reviewed' and endorsed by a large number of nutritionist and doctors .

---

Getting greasy

After being engaged with, but stand offish from,  the online Paleo community I'm beginning to wilt and concede to the relentless arguments advanced by the  gaggle of dietary adherents and gurus. 

The  main source of my reticence is to shield myself from dietary obsessions. Why sign on for a fetish about food  and embrace eating like some born again religious nutter.

But then I did change my approach to what I put in my mouth and good things followed. 

I  eat what is called a low carbohydrate diet. That's been my rule of thumb and taste bud for over two years. Eating low carb is also the best way to keep my blood sugar down and technically my  Diabetes II  is  'controlled' within a range that damages me less. 

The conundrum of eating low carb is that if you reduce your carbohydrate intake what do you eat instead?

Low carb diets are often referred to as high protein diets -- and that seems a logical summation.  But the  diet's properties  is complicated by the  fact that low carb diets can instead, or as well, be high fat. In fact in Sweden the term LCHF is used: Low Carbohydrate High Fat diet.

I don't need to tell you how that comes across: to lose weight and/or be healthy the advice is that  you eat more fat.

Essentially this is where Paleo -- the Paleolithic Diet -- comes in as Paleo cuisine is not afraid of fats, or offal . Its core proscriptions are primarily grains and legumes.

Leaving aside the question of the anthropology  of what was consumed in the Paleolithic era and the many dietary regimes of  contemporary hunter gatherers,  the 'Paleo lifestyle' with its mix of  'exercise' and food is being  backed up by a lot of very recent scientific research.  

So Paleo is enticing...and I've used myself as a guinea pig to hesitantly explore it.

At this juncture I'm happy to pursue  the following principles:

• Low carb is good:  I suspect that I'm eating on average 50-90 grams of carbohydrates a day. I'm not hungry and my blood sugar readings are very decent. While I had lost weight, it has now plateaued. 
• It's possible to live without grains. Yep: no bread or rice or corn and you can still live well. I also pass on potatoes and other carb dense foods.

At the moment I've been upping my protein intake -- by eating more meat and eggs -- and reducing my carbohydrates further to see what happens. But I'm wondering whether a better approach -- albeit a more radical one -- is to eat more fat instead (ie: rather than simply eat 'more meat'). Soon after I began this journey I adopted a low carb Mediterranean diet and drowned myself in olive oil  as my primary fat source while eating limited quantities of lean meats.  My current variation is to go on a sort of bacon binge and not blink when the fatty juices hit the pan...but maybe there's another way?

When you eat like this you feel like a naughty boy: 'Fat. Fat Give me fat!'

There is an opinion being advanced that to be truly successful low carb diets need to be high fat and the rationale is based  on how fat and carbohydrates are metabolised by the body. 

Fortunately I am under excellent medical care and my supervisory package includes a dietitian. On my current course of experimentation I am at odds  with the dietitian  (as she won't endorse animal fats as kosher tucker) but while my path results come in better each time -- assuming the the trend continues -- what she doesn't know  won't be hurting me. 

The irony is that I feel better eating more meat than I have been -- and eating even less carbohydrate.  Will I feel as good substituting that 'meat' with more fat? 

The other questions is: why would I do this ?  I mean, why bother?

I think the key to this is that I want to lose more weight -- in fact I need to lose more weight if I am to reduce both my blood sugars and my blood pressure further. There is simply no way around that imperative. While I've never ever fitted within those obscene BMI parameters, because of all the exercising I've been doing I'm carrying much more muscle and less fat than or yore. I'm also fit in a remarkable way for my age.

But the weight has to go.All I have to do is lose it...  and I'm ready to sit for the before and after shots.

So that's why I bother.

Because of what I've been doing I have in fact turned my health around. Despite the many brutal relapses of Fibromyalgia day in and day out (and of late it as been hard living in my skin), these other conditions and symptoms that were bearing down on me are being held in check.

Fats come in different shapes and sizes and it isn't about just eating around the lean.

Cream, eggs, butter, nuts, avocados, fish, olive oil... are all a rich source of fat.

Give me some.

Want more info?Low carbing on the web is almost obsessional, but if you want straight up info without hype or religiosity you could do no better than touch base with the Swedish physician, Andreas Eenfeldt who is very generous, detailed and scientific with the resources he offers on his site. LCHF for Beginners is a great place to start.

---

What I eat and don't -- in the light of what I should be eating(or should I?).

Ah food!

Luv the stuff!

I love growing it, shopping for it, cooking it, sharing it...and digesting the victuals thereafter.

Every day is an exciting option of combinations of taste and texture with any number of  dishes to explore: so few days on earth/so many recipes.

As we have noted here in the past I have had to tweak my diet for a few very good reasons (compared to playing  faddish food ideology). As the drill unfolded  I shifted from Low Glycemic foods to Low Carbohydrate eating...and now I don't eat grains at all, no potatoes except sweet potatoes once per week, definitely no legumes, no sugar and little dairy except yogurt within a sort of Mediterranean regimen. It's a sort of "Meat, vegetable and tubers " diet.

En route I lost 10 kgm and rolled way back my blood glucose levels to almost diabetic free parameters. I'm now exploring various exercise approaches to see if I can pull these figures down even further.

My blood pressure has fallen but I still have more work to do in that regard.

While I feel I have exhausted my dietary options I've been reading around the topic of the Paleo Diet. Thats' not all I've studied as I have notched up a lot of nutrition science literature -- but 'paleo' is my latest focus.

I nonethless abhore the Paleo scene as it it panders to Narcissim and fuels itself on relentless fundamentalist hype. It can be  quintessential Yuppiedom.

The paleolithic diet (abbreviated paleo diet or paleodiet), also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a modern nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various hominid species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic era—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. (ref)

But if you are diabetic you have to consider the paleo promise because it rules that dense carbohydrates , like all the grains and the legumes, can be problematical. (They are.)

So in my researches I came upon this interview with Mat Lalonde which makes so much good sense about Paleo or whatever...

So rather than being held hostage to schemata Lalonde recommends that a diet of meat, vegetables, and tubers is a good baseline diet and from there, people should tweak.

Simple. Right?

Watch the whole video...well worth your time.

Similarly, in regard to Paleo's eulogies toward a seemingly ever so healthy bush tucker past, Jenny Ruhl reminds us  that Saying Something Over And Over Doesn't Make It True.

That said, I think the Paleos do try to pull a package together that often relies on the latest science -- and thats' not just about what you put in your mouth. A major debate rages  primarily because the dietary guidelines we have been prevailed upon to follow these last 40 -50 years have been an unmitigated disaster.

That's the troof: just consider how fat we are; how much we suffer from diabetes and blood pressure...

Something is terribly wrong with what we eat inasmuch as so many of these health problems are dietary in origin.Why we eat what  we do has a lot to do with corporate interests -- with capitalism. We are consuming an extreme form of an habituation that set in some time back but which has been fostered and manipulated to create a sort of  chronic addiction: to sugars and dense carbohydrates, to refined vegetable oils and  to fast food. 

Even when we think we are eating healthy -- and looking after our best interests and those for whom we prepare food -- maybe we aint.

Take, for example, this brutal critique by Denise Minger:

This is one of those “gotta bust me some myths no matter where they come from” blog posts. And by that, I mean I’m about to challenge a story that’s been so well-circulated among paleo, low carb, and real-food communities that most of us have filed it away in a little brain-folder called “Things We Never Have to Question Because They’re So Ridiculously True.”
I’m talking about the late, great Ancel Keys, and his equally late (but maybe not as great) role in the history of heart disease research.

So I say: why not explore options at the radical edge of the nutrition debate? (And make up your own mind.)

Just don't starve or poison yourself or fall victim to  crackery and faddishness...

HIIT for weight loss and diabetes: less 5 and less 1.

I'm doing the diary thing to monitor my current renovated exercise program based on HIIT using the Tabata method -- 20 seconds on (of intense exercise) / 10 seconds off / eight times over / every two days.

And it hurts.

In my mix of intentions -- see previous post : HIIT for Fibromyalgia  where I consider a key prospect -- I want to set some clear aims to address my Diabetes II and my weight.

The two are linked by dint of pathology. Associated with these conditions are issues of elevated blood pressure  and threatened kidney function.

• Weight Loss: My weight loss plateaued months ago regardless seemingly of what I put in my mouth and how much exercise I did. I eat low carb and exercise ++ but  while I was enjoying an average loss of 750 grams to one kilogram  per month under this regime, it suddenly stopped registering on my physique. So now that I'm doing this HIIT thing I want to lose another 5 kgm and therein can die a happy man. That will take me to around 88-90 kgm. I very much doubt that I can do better or hope for more weight loss aside from a sentence to Changi or  Buchenwald.
• MMOL: This isn't a major issue because I control my diabetes rather well I think. But since the condition is so insidious and always life shortening -- who am I  to say no to better health? With the HIIT there are two advantages that I seek to harvest. The first is the weight loss and the impact that will have on my blood sugars -- measured in mmol . The second advantage is that resistance training I use as part of my Tabata sessions should improve my insulin sensitivity and blood glucose control. Proven fact.  So I'm hoping to shave off the best part of one mmol as a result. And one mmol given that I live between 5.4 and 6.8 on average (while on meds) would be fantastic. 

So that's the game plan 5 plus 1 -- or rather less 5 and less 1.

Don't put that in your mouth...

I have been studying up on diet. I know it is a trendy obsession for the civilised among us but what you may put in your mouth may matter to what happens thereafter.

As you may know I've gone very low carbohydrate to combat the impact of Diabetes II . It works. Eating fewer and fewer carbs ensures you can control your blood sugars and look forward to a half normal life despite your in house hormonal inadequacies. You lose weight too.

It's seeming win win.

But in life -- as in physiology -- nothing is that easy.

Both my da and my ma suffered from gout so the high uric acid thing -- Hyperuricemia -- is something I seem to have inherited. I know that 27 years ago I had elevated uric acid levels but my first attack of gout only kicked in (my foot)-- ouch! -- 10 years ago on my birthday!

It ain't fun with gout about.

But first some background:

Recent surveys suggest that nearly 6 percent of all American men in their fifties suffer from gout, and over ten percent in their seventies. The proportion of women afflicted is considerably less at younger ages but still rises over 3 percent by age 60. Moreover, the prevalence of gout seems to have doubled over the last quarter century, coincident (perhaps not coincidentally) with the reported increase in obesity, and it may have increased five- or even six-fold since the 1950s, although a large portion of that increase may be due to the aging of the population.... The actual evidence, however, has always been less-than-compelling: Just as low cholesterol diets have only a trivial effect on serum cholesterol levels, for instance, and low-salt diets have a clinically insignificant effect on blood pressure, low-purine diets have a negligible effect on uric acid levels. A nearly vegetarian diet, for instance, is likely to drop serum uric acid levels by 10 to 15% percent compared to a typical American diet, but that’s rarely sufficient to return high uric acid levels to normality, and there is little evidence that such diets reliably reduce the incidence of gouty attacks in those afflicted. Thus, purine-free diets are no longer prescribed for the treatment of gout, as the gout specialist Irving Fox noted in 1984, “because of their ineffectiveness” and their “minor influence” on uric acid levels.Moreover, the incident of gout in vegetarians, or mostly vegetarians, has always been significant and “much higher than is generally assumed.” (One mid-century estimate, for instance, put the incidence of gout in India among “largely vegetarians and teetotalers” at 7%.) Finally, there’s the repeated observation that eating more protein increases the excretion of uric acid from the kidney and, by doing so, decreases the level of uric acid in the blood. This implies that the meat-gout hypothesis is at best debatable; the high protein content of meats should be beneficial, even if the purines are not. --Garry Taubes

The problem is that since I have altered my diet I am suffering from more attacks of gout than I deserve. What I thought was joint injury was probably gouty arthritis.

With gout attacks you can  also suffer fevers, chills, and extreme lethargy.Then there's the joint pain...and James Gillrays' cartoon (above left) is spot on about that.

My problem is that in the small print for the diet I pursue is a warning that you may get gout.

Voila! I get gout. But the complication is that there is a melange of complications that package Gout and Diabetes and Hypertension together so that if you have one you are on a short list for the other.

The tragedy is that if you address one illness you make more room for the other to happen.

There's no justice. It's a cruel world.

But hey! Persons with gout  are significantly less likely to develop Parkinson's disease. 

So I'm going to hold my course and hope for the best.

I started on Allopurinol and perhaps should have begun that drug years ago...but the conundrum of Hyperuricemia will still bear down upon me. Are  my recent gout attacks simply because I eat fewer grains; or because I shocked the system with a sudden diet change (my GP says that's a standard response)?

Bugger if I know.

The medical literature is very confusing but it is pretty much indicated that aside from familial tendency, lifestyle may rule the onset of gout -- even a  'good' lifestyle.

But...then what's so special about what you put in your mouth?

European physicians in World War I, for instance, reported a reduced incidence of gout in countries undergoing food shortages. In primitive populations eating traditional diets, gout was virtually unknown or at least went virtually unreported (with the conspicuous exception of Albert Schweitzer who says he saw it with surprising frequency.) The earliest documented cases reported in Asia and Africa were in the late 1940s. And even in the 1960s, hospital records from Kenya and Uganda suggested an incidence of gout lower than one in a thousand among the native Africans. Nonetheless, by the late 1970s, uric acid levels in Africa were increasing with westernization and urbanization, while the incidence of both hyperuricemia and gout among South Pacific islanders was reportedly sky-rocketing. By 1975, the New Zealand rheumatologist B.S. Rose, a colleague of Ian Prior’s, was describing the native populations of the South Pacific as “one large gouty family.” -- --Garry Taubes 

So I have to wonder what I am doing wrong...compared to what I 'traditionally ate'...

Notes

• Meat Consumption: DOWN. I'm eating smaller portions less often but while I had steered away from preserved meats I'm eating more of those than I did before. My beef consumption is very small relative to other meats like chicken.
• Fish Consumption: UP . I'm eating more fish when I can afford it and taking high dose omega fish oils.
• Grain  Intake: CEASED I no longer eat grains nor potatoes, corm, legumes or bread, cakes and biscuits. That means that rice is off the menu too.
• Egg Consumption: UP Not by much, as I hardly ate eggs previously.
• Vegetable Consumption: UP MASSIVELY. I eat salad greens almost daily and a huge range of seasonally available/cheap vegetables aside from potatoes.
• Fruit Consumption: UP. I consciously  eat certain fruits ( berries especially) on a daily basis. I don't east most other fruits (but I eat pawpaw and rockmelon).
• Nuts: UP. I eat a lot of nuts, mainly almonds and peanuts (which are technically legumes).
• Olives and Olive Oil: UP MASSIVELY. I have consciously increased my consumption,  and my cooking with , olive oil. I glug glug much more.  I now eat table olives almost on a daily basis. Olive oil is my largest fat source. 
• Dairy Products: UP. I have consciously increased (Greek) yogurt and cheese consumption while beginning to use  cream.
• Alcohol consumption: THE SAME. Average intake of around  400 ml per day of red wine more or less....
• Protein Intake: UP ( I suspect). Despite the smaller portions and the meat free days, I'm probably consuming more protein on a day to day basis because of the dairy and egg increase. But then the proportion of protein has to be considered relative to  the collapse in carbohydrate consumption. As pie charts go the colours are changing shape.
• Carbohydrate Intake: WAY WAY DOWN.
• Conclusion...? Maybe I can reduce my meat consumption more to see if I can wing it. .

Paradoxical Eating: Very low carb eating

It may seem a celebrity's fad but low carbohydrate eating makes a lot of diabetic sense.

If the problem with what you put in your mouth is the consequences of  certain food groups, then why put them in your mouth?

Simple.

I had reduced my carbohydrate intake a year ago to something around -- give or take -- 100-130 grams per day ,

The weight fell away and my blood sugars began to stabilize.

I had rationed my consumption of bread or rice to one 'serve' per day and eschewed potatoes, legumes, pasta and most fruits.

When my weight loss plateaued recently I thought I needed to lift my culinary game  and get back to my low carb roots. So I've cut back even further on the carbs.

No flour. No bread ( one slice of bread  maybe 15 grams). No rice (Basmati: 35 grams/serve). In fact, no grains at all.

My carb intake must now be around 30-50 grams/day.

I can be done...and it can be fun.

Instead I eat a lot of vegetables. I need to ensure I get my daily serve of something fruity -- usually berries or melons or avocado or paw paw.

The usual complication with low carb lifestyling is that you can easily default to  eating more meat, chicken and fish as low carb is often synced with high protein diets. You also eat more fat. But that's a boon. Fat in way of some dairy products -- yogurt, cheese and cream -- becomes kosher and olive oil is elevated to a major food group. Nuts are eaten  by the handful.

You cook differently too as you learn to exploit different ingredients in pursuit of gastronomy.

Where would I be, I suggest,  without pumpkin or cauliflower?

Of course you become out of step with the rest of the planet aside from indigenous hunter gatherers.  Their staff of life, ain't yours. 

Paleolithic diets  -- "Stone Age diets" -- on the other hand  are very low carb.

You also pursue a dietary regime that -- ironically -- isn't as sustainable as one based on grains given present agricultural methods  if the ready convenience of consuming grains is replaced with a higher meat or fish intake.

This leads into the whole question of diets per se as both an environmentally sustainable and personally healthy attribute. As much as we now know, I follow a low carb Mediterranean diet  which means that I haven't automatically  upped  my meat consumption and joined the Paleo Yuppies.

I also get to drink red wine as  vino becomes a bona fide health resource. Ah!: it's so OK to drink plonk.

Recent study:"Within this diet, nuts, vegetables and alcohol intake had the biggest impact on lower mortality rates."

It's all about becoming Cretan via the stomach:

The Cretan diet (Greek: κρητική διατροφή) is the traditional diet of the Mediterranean island of Crete, a typical case of the so-called "Mediterranean diet".The core of this diet consists of food derived from natural sources, whereas food of animal origin was more peripheral in nature. In general, people consumed seasonal products, available in the wider local area, which underwent minimal processing or none at all...Fresh and dried fruits, pulses, endemic wild herbs and aromatic plants, and rough cereals, whose cultivation was favored by the regional climate, were consumed in great amounts and constituted the base of the Cretan diet during that period. Dairy products were consumed on a daily basis in low to moderate quantities. Poultry and fish were consumed on a weekly basis in moderate quantities, whereas red meat was consumed only a few times a month. All animals were free-range, as industrialized animal husbandry was absent at the time: hens were fed local grain and were left to forage, pigs were fed leftovers, and cattle were exclusively grass-fed. The main supply of fat was effectuated by olive oil, which was used not only in salads but also in cooking, unlike the northern European countries which primarily used animal fat. Another essential feature of the Cretan diet was the moderate use of alcohol, mainly red wine which accompanied meals. Finally, the most common dessert was fresh fruits, while traditional pastry based on honey had been consumed a few times a week.

Becoming Cretan is still, for me, an aspiration. But you get the gist of the quest, right?

Mortality rates after observation of 15 years

Per 1000	Coronary	Cancer	All causes
Finland	972	613	2169
USA	773	384	1575
Holland	636	781	1825
Italy	462	622	1874
Yougoslavia	242	394	1712
Corfu(Greece)	202	338	1317
Japan	136	623	1766
Crete	38	317	855

Coronary Mortality rate and general mortality (per 100000)

	Study of seven countries  (10 years)		International Health Organization (1987)
	Coronary	All causes	Coronary	All causes
Finland	466	1390	386	1210
USA	424	961	263	1061
Holland	317	1134	224	1016
Italy	200	1092	148	1066
Yougoslavia	145	1021	137	1302
Corfu(Greece)	149	847	123	932
Japan	61	1200	53	837
Crete	9	627	7	564