The Debate About Exercise in the Low Carb Community

First of all, how cute is this picture of Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories, my nutritional bible), poking himself in the forehead?  Go back to that picture and read the article in Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Blog.  We in the low and zero carb community have a debate going on about the role of exercise in weight loss because of what Gary writes in his book. 

I personally side with Gary because of my own experience.  I gained all of my weight while teaching 3 Turbo Kick and 3 yoga classes a week.  When I started Atkins then zero carb, I was to tired that teaching was excrutiating and I had to stop the little bit of weight training I had been doing along with all the teaching.  Once I became keto-adapted I wanted to exercise.  When I was fat and before adaption I would ask myself, do I want to exercise?  The answer was usually NO!  In fact, I didn’t want to get off the couch.  I was not lazy, My cells just didn’t have access to my fatty acid fuel because of insulin resistance.  When I started Atkins, I didn’t have fuel access because my body had not adapted to using ketones as fuel and was wanting glucose instead.

Now, even after teaching a Turbo Kick class, I can ask myself, “Do I still want to walk my dogs?”, or, “Do I want to do some Yoga?”, or, “Do I want to clean my house?” and I usually say, YES!

Baby-Led Weaning

Here’s a post from Matt Metzgar’s blog about breastfeeding: http://www.mattmetzgar.com/matt_metzgar/2008/09/baby-led-weaning.html  It references this article in The Guardian about UNICEF’s leading child care export saying that pureed baby food is “unnatural and unneccessary”. 

Gill Rapley, deputy director of Unicef’s Baby Friendly Initiative and a health visitor for 25 years, said spoon-feeding pureed food to children can cause health problems later in life

She blames the multimillion-pound baby food industry for persuading parents that they need to give their babies pureed food. ‘Sound scientific research and government advice now agree there is no longer any window of a baby’s development in which they need something more than milk and less than solids,’ Rapley said.

I’m interested in this because one of the reasons I am eating zero carb is because I think this is the way humans evolved to eat.  Humans also evolved to breastfeed their children and breastfed both my children for 2 years each.  They were not self-weaned, I stopped breastfeeding because I couldn’t stand it anymore! My kids rarely drank from a bottle and didn’t eat alot of commercially prepared baby food.  I tried to follow the principles of The Continuum Concept which make tremendous sense to me.

I’ve wondered if I would have had an easier time while pregnant and breastfeeding if I had at least been eating lowcarb.  When I got pregnant the first time I was 26 and eating low fat, high carb more or less, was a normal weight and hypoglycemic.  I had morning sickness up until about 6 mos. and my hypoglycemia got worse.  When I got pregnant the second time at 34, I had been eating The Zone diet for 2 years already.  That diet helped my hypoglycemia a bit and got me to a lower weight.  Once I got pregnant, however, The Zone became completely useless to me because I got so sick and so hypoglycemic.  The only thing I could get down were things like peanut butter and cheese, and sugary carbs.  I think if I stuck with the high fat, mod protein of the peanut butter and cheese it would have helped with the hypoglycemia which would of helped with the morning sickness.  I had morning sickness throughout the entire pregnancy then post-partum depression after in the form of panic disorder.  I wonder if I had my insulin under control if I could have prevented the postpartum depression?  What do you think?

Also, while breastfeeding, I went back on The Zone diet but did not lose any pregnancy weight until I stopped breastfeeding.  I also did not start menstruating again until after I stopped breastfeeding both times.  And, sex was not pleasurable until menstruation started back up.  I blame the lack of fat in my diet.

“The Bear”, an Internet Enigma

Owsley “The Bear” Stanley has been zero carb for 50 years.  He introduced himself on one of the low carb forums last year and caused a huge sensation.  He was rudely attacked by moderators (or so I heard) and forum members for his views and has since sworn off any more discussion on any forums.  Here is the link for the concise Bear minus all the bickering.  I still have to read all of it.

Look him up in Wikipedia and check out his incredible past.  He was a professional dancer and worked for The Grateful Dead.  He also made very high quality LSD in San Francisco that supposedly fueled the flower-powered, hippie days in the sixties.

So, What Does MeatYogi Eat?

I refuse to keep track or measure what I eat and only eat when I am hungry which is 3 times a day. 

Here you go:

73/27 ground beef, ribeye steak, new york strip, sirloin, a little bacon, about 3 eggs/week, raw cheese sporadically, 1 cup coffee with splash of heavy whipping cream, salad occassionaly, dessert rarely.

Supplements: Fish oil, magnesium, calcium, D3, sometimes potassium, and 1/2 oz 85% dark chocolate!

I mostly cook my meat in the Nuwave oven, collect the fat at the bottom of the pan and dip my meat in the fat.  If the meat is lean, I put butter or bacon drippings on top.

I will eat chicken thighs but I’m just sick of eating chicken so not very often.  Pork seems too lean for me.

Finally, Lost Some Weight!

One small thing I haven’t yet mentioned in this blog – I have not lost weight in 8 months.  Yea, I’m promoting an all meat diet for weight loss and health and I did not loose any weight on it – until now!

I’ve lost 4 lbs. and gone down 1 dress size in the last 2 weeks.  I can only guess why it took me so long to start loosing.  My body had to do some healing first, maybe I had adrenal fatigue and it took me this long to get my hyperinsulemia under control to finally give my adrenals a rest -I just don’t know.

I am finding it very dificult to find the time to post to this blog.  I think I’ll cut back on my forum reading.  I’m just going to read The Livin La Vida Low Carb Discussion and drop The Active Low Carber Forums.

Next post will be about what I eat and the results of my latest lipid tests.

A Short History of MeatYogi’s Weight Loss Journey

I actually don’t have anything against carbs EXCEPT for wheat and sugar.  I think that observations of hunter-gatherer (HG) all conclude they don’t eat wheat and sugar but a wide range from no to little carbs (Inuit, Masai) to lots of carbs (Kitavans).  (BTW, I’m too lazy to reference studies with links right now, I’m sure once I get the hang of blogging this blog will be link-reference crazy).

I stopped eating wheat 2 years ago after finally realizing that wheat was causing my IBS symptoms.  Since childhood I have always had a very distended, bloated belly and was even diagnosed as having a wheat allergy when I was 5 or 6.  But, my family is Italian and I guess “wheat allergy” was just so incomprehensable to my mom because nothing changed in my diet.  In 1993, I was diagnosed with cancer and went on 5 months of chemo.  During this time, I was a haphazard vegan following The McDougall Program.  IBS symptoms began at this time but I thought it was the chemo. 

I also had hypoglycemic  problems since childhood but was never diagnosed.

By 2006, my IBS was bad enough for me to research it online where I found out about wheat/gluten intolerance so out went wheat and I felt a little better.

In early 2007, I was still having some IBS problems (but not as bad as before eliminating wheat) when I gained enough weight to go up 2 pant sizes, from a 6 to a 10.  I don’t have a scale so I can’t tell you how much I weighed.  By this time, I had been eating in The Zone since 1996 and doing great except for the occassional hypoglycemic episodes and occassional deserts.  Now, I am a group fitness instructor and having a fitness instructor getting fat before their student’s eyes is not good for business.

In July 2007, I went on a diet advertised for bodybuilders (I can’t remember the name, “somethingphysique.com”?).  High carb (mostly brown rice), really low fat (10-20%), calorie cycling.  I lost weight but couldn’t leave the house because of extreme gassyness and bloating!  Plus I was always either starving and hypoglycemic or overfull.  I was not allowed to eat according to my hunder.

I stopped eating the rice and stuck to chicken breast and veggies.  I gained all the weight back and still had IBS and felt like crap.

Then I read “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and I was reborn as a low-carber.

Read Atkins “72″ and went on induction – for 6 months.  The weight didn’t budge. I was more fatigued than ever.  I added a few starchy carbs (potatoes, rice) and got bad acid reflux so out they went. During this time, I was (and still do) frequenting Jimmy Moore’s Livin’La Vida Low Carb Blog  and his discussion forum.  One of the moderators, Charles Washington leads the most popular topic on the forum, The Zero Carb Meat/water discussion.  Charles knowledge of science and his experience with zero carb convinced me that was the way to go.  Read that discussion for all the details.

I am very hyperinsulemic.  Probably since childhood considering my history of hypoglycemia.  All carbohydrates exacerbate this for me.

Welcome to MeatYogi’s Zero Carb Blog!

Finally!  After years of procrastination and excuses (I don’t have the time), the MeatYogi’s blog begins.

Who is this MeatYogi and why the funky and kinda gross name?  I’m Deanna Young, female, born 1964, married, two children.  I teach Turbo Kick Kickboxing and Yoga.  I live in Canyon Lake, CA.  And…I eat meat and nothin’ else.

I am dedicating this blog to low and zero carb way of life.  I want to encourage respectful comments and discussion.  However, sometimes embarrasing personal stuff will pop up because I have a big mouth and I always feel better after talking about my problems.  I also have “foot-in-mouth” disease, if you know what I mean.

Hopefully, I’ll have time to write about all kinds of scientific stuff about zero carb and I read other low carb blogs and will be cross posting like crazy.

I hope somebody reads this…

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