Tag Archive for: health

How the Keto Diet and Intermittent Fasting Helped Me Lose 20 Pounds in 2 Months

,

Do you want to lose weight fast, keep it off, and not feel hungry along the way? If so, then the keto diet and intermittent fasting might be for you!

After babies number four (currently 3 years old) and five (currently 18 months), I had put on quite a bit of weight, and I wasn’t able to get it off no matter what I tried. I got a gym membership, then a home membership, and started working out regularly, but it didn’t help me to lose weight. (*I did get noticeably stronger and got rid of my back pain though.)

I tried eating less and made lots of big salads, but I just felt hungry all of the time. It seemed like the only way I could lose weight was to starve myself. Then I discovered keto.

In just 2 months, I have lost 20 pounds (which is 10 pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight), and I have gone from wearing maternity and size 16 pants to fitting into my size 8 shorts that I haven’t been able to wear since before I got pregnant for Julian (baby #4). (*To clarify, the before picture is actually me 30 pounds heavier. It took me a year and a half to lose the first 10 pounds and only 2 months to lose the last 20! Also, because I have more energy and I’ve been more active, I’m sure I’ve gained plenty of muscle along the way.)

I never thought that losing weight could be this easy…and fun! I’m not hungry because my body has adapted to burning my stored fat for fuel, I get to eat amazingly satisfying meals, and seeing the scale go down just about every day is a huge motivator!

My husband has recently joined me on this keto journey, and he lost 14 pounds in one month! My mom is joining me as well and lost 4 inches off her waist in just a few weeks. We both talk about how we don’t feel like we’re trapped in our fat suits anymore. 🙂 It seems as though everyone I know is messaging me and joining me on this keto journey, and so even though I’m still aspiring to reach my goal weight, I have learned A LOT and wanted to share some tips and tricks for anyone looking to get started on the keto diet.

What is the Keto Diet?

A keto diet (short for ketogenic diet) is basically a diet low in carbs and high in fat with a moderate amount of protein. When you stop eating carbs, your body depletes it’s glycogen stores and goes into a state of ketosis where your liver converts stored fat into ketones that your body (including your brain) can use as fuel.

There are macro calculators out there that can help you to make sure you are getting the right macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat) for your body type, but basically, you want to keep your carbs to less than 20 grams per day. Watch out that you don’t go on an all you can eat protein buffet either! When you eat too much protein, your body can convert it to glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis.

So basically, on the keto diet, you’re trying to eat as much fat as possible! This sounds great, but it can be a hard adjustment at first because you can have butter but no bread, cheese but no crackers, and eggs but no toast. Also, keep in mind that you want healthy fats (the more saturated the better) like coconut oil, butter, and ghee not the trans fats found in shortening and margarine or rancid vegetable oils that can lead to a fatty liver.

Getting Started

You can dive right into the keto diet, or you can enter it gradually. I have always struggled with hypoglycemia (where I get light headed, dizzy, and fatigued if my glycogen stores are depleted), so I gradually reduced my carbs over a period of several weeks.

Basically, I would go as long as I could without eating carbs, but if I started to get dizzy or lightheaded even after eating a fatty snack like a hard boiled egg or cheese stick, then I would eat an apple slice or one of my homemade sourdough muffins. After several weeks of doing this, I was eventually able to eliminate all carbs and cure myself from hypoglycemia.

I like how Mark Sisson describes how you can either be a sugar burner or fat adapted. If you’re fat adapted, then your body can easily switch to using stored fat for fuel, but if you’re a sugar burner, you’ll be hungry as soon as your carb heavy meal has been digested even if your body has extra stored fat that it could use as fuel. Being in a state of ketosis will help you to become fat adapted.

Another great resource is Dr. Berg. He has short informative videos on YouTube that can help you get started on the keto diet and answer all of your questions along the way. I like the way he explains how it’s insulin that’s making us fat. Insulin is needed to shuttle glucose into our cells and when insulin is present, the hormone sensitive lipase needed to break down stored fat for fuel is suppressed. So whenever insulin is present in our bloodstream (i.e. because we’ve consumed glucose), we cannot access our stored fat, and that is why we need to cut the carbs.

How to Know if You’re in Ketosis

You don’t have to be in ketosis to lose weight, but if you are you can lose weight very very quickly. There are also different stages of ketosis, so you could be in it a little bit, a moderate amount, or all the way.

You’ll know if you’re in ketosis if your weight starts to drop rapidly, but you could also purchase these strips to detect ketones in your urine. You may also detect a fruity smell in your breath (like overripe apples) due to the acetone which is a by-product when fatty acids are broken down for energy in the liver.

Another sign that you’re in ketosis is being crazy thirsty and having a dry pasty mouth. Especially at the beginning of a ketogenic diet, insulin levels drop, and the kidneys release their water stores. Once in ketosis, your insulin stores are not tapped into as often causing the body to release more fluids than it did before. Because of this, you’ll want to drink plenty of water, but I’m going to talk about that more in the section about avoiding the keto flu.

What to Avoid

The great thing about the ketogenic diet is that you don’t really need to add anything, you just need to take things away! Start by eliminating everything in your diet with sugar. Read labels and watch for hidden sugar in things like sauces and dressing. I didn’t realize how much sugar my kombucha had until I took it away and felt extremely hypoglycemic. Once I eliminated kombucha, my fat really started to melt away rapidly!

Natural sugars like honey and molasses need to be eliminated too. All grains including wheat and corn need to be eliminated. So no bread, no chips, no cookies, no tortilla wraps, no oats, and no cereal. Root vegetables like potatoes and carrots are high in carbohydrates and should be avoided as well. Check out what Dr. Berg has to say about vegetables here, but I eat vegetables low on the glycemic index liberally. The high fiber content of vegetables doesn’t cause your insulin levels to spike and you need the potassium and magnesium so you don’t get dehydrated.

Many fruits are high in carbs and need to be avoided, but avocados, olives, coconuts, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, and lemons are very low on the glycemic index and are okay to have in moderation.

Nuts are high in fat, but have carbohydrates in them too sadly. Macadamia nuts, pecans, and brazil nuts are at the lower end and you should really stay away from cashew and pistachio nuts, but I have decided not to mess around with nuts at all. Beans are another food that you might think would be good but are actually high in carbohydrates.

As far as alcohol goes, you want to avoid beer and sweet wine. Dry wine only has about 2-3 grams of carbohydrates so you could have a glass or two of that, but avoid sweet dessert wines. Spirits on their own have no carbohydrates, but watch that the mixer doesn’t have any sugar. We enjoy drinking spiked sodas like White Claw or Truly that have only 1-2 grams of carbohydrates and 100 calories per can. Dr. Berg explains how alcohol kills liver cells, can lead to a fatty liver, depletes b vitamins, dehydrates, and blocks fat burning for several days. So technically, you really shouldn’t drink while on the keto diet. I have so far and lost the weight, but if I hit a plateau, I will probably cut it out.

You’ll probably make some mistakes at first and that’s okay. I’m constantly googling “how many grams of carbohydrates in _____” and learning more every day.

What to Eat

Learning how to cook keto meals and making sure you plan ahead is very important on the keto diet. Every day, I go to Pinterest and pin keto meals that I would like to try. Some people like finding keto substitutes for their favorite meals and desserts, but I prefer to not remind myself of those things and just avoid them all together. I have found that by avoiding sugar and carbohydrates, I have completely gotten rid of my sweet tooth. Eating something sugary actually sounds gross to me now.

Trying to eat as much fat as you can seems enjoyable, but it’s hard to grasp how to make that happen at first. I basically think of meal planning as tons of vegetables, some protein (the fattier the better), and as much fat as possible. Good sources of fat are cheese, butter, coconut oil, heavy whipping cream, sour cream, olive oil, and so on.

I’ll talk more about grocery shopping and meal ideas in a minute, but first we need to talk about the most important part of this whole diet. The Diet Doctor has some great visual articles about what to eat and not to eat.

Intermittent Fasting

The beautiful thing about being in ketosis is that you can go longer without food because your body is using it’s own fat for fuel. To see rapid weight loss, I highly recommend eating only during a certain window of time. My husband and I stop eating at about 7 pm and then try to go as long as we can before eating the next day. At first, it was hard to skip breakfast and we would be starving by about 10 am. But now, we don’t even feel hungry until about noon.

At noon, we’ll break our fast with a good meal, have some snacks or our next meal about 4-6 hours later, and that’s it. So basically, we only eat two meals a day.

It feels kind of weird to not eat so much food, and sometimes I just honestly miss eating. But our grocery bill has gone down because we don’t need as much food and we have more time during the day for other things since we’re not preparing and eating food as often. I highly recommend watching Dr. Berg’s video about intermittent fasting. He explains how to gradually get into it over a period of time.

Eat When You’re Hungry

The important thing to remember is that you’re not starving yourself. You have to get really in tune with your hunger cues and eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. Don’t eat because the clock is telling you to eat. Don’t eat because someone left food on the table. Don’t eat because other people around you are eating. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full…it’s that simple. *When you have stored fat to use for fuel and you still feel starving in between meals or shortly after eating or when you keep eating and eating not noticing when you are full, that is because of leptin resistance and going on a keto diet will help to fix that. 

Fat is far more dense than carbohydrates, so you’ll need to eat far less by volume in order to feel full. And keep in mind that you are eating fat to train your body to burn fat for fuel. If you are doing the keto diet to lose weight, then you want your body to use your stored fat for fuel. So try to eat as little as possible and let your body burn that stored fat. Dr. Berg has a great video that explains how much fat you should be eating here.

One of the main things I have learned on this diet is how much I would snack all day even when I wasn’t hungry. Part of this is because I’m feeding five growing children and they seem to eat non stop all day. So I would have a bite of their pancakes, eat the rest of their eggs, a nibble here, and bite there, and I honestly had no idea how much I was even eating in a day.

Now, I just have a rule that I don’t snack. I’ll have a cup of coffee in the morning with heavy whipping cream (no carbs), drink a cup of Echinacea Immune Support tea, drink water with electrolytes, and then when I’m hungry, I’ll sit down and eat a really good satisfying meal.

Grocery Shopping and Meal Ideas

I’m not the type of person who plans weekly meals and then shops accordingly. I just make sure my fridge and freezer are stocked with plenty of really awesome nutrient dense foods. I try to buy grass fed, pastured, organic, raw, and local whenever I can, but I don’t stress about it if it’s not available or too expensive. I’m always trying to improve the quality of our food while keeping everything else in life in balance.

I like to make sure I always have ground beef, maybe a roast, chicken legs, thighs, breasts, a whole chicken, wild caught salmon, cod filets, pastured eggs, plenty of good fatty dairy like sharp shredded cheese, sour cream, heavy whipping cream, tons of fresh seasonal veggies like bell pepper, lettuce, celery, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and garlic. I also make sure I have plenty of butter, coconut oil, olive oil, mayonnaise, and avocado and use as much as I can whenever I can. For seasonings, I use tons of Real Salt (your body needs salt), garlic powder, onion powder, oregano powder, basil powder, cayenne powder, and Bragg liquid aminos.

First Meal of the Day (Breakfast)

Since my husband and I don’t eat until noon for our first meal, sometimes we prefer a breakfast type of food, and sometimes we feel more like a lunch or dinner option.

You could do bacon and eggs (with melted butter and cheese) every day for your first meal and be just fine, but I like mixing it up with some savory omelettes with fresh garlic and veggies or some egg muffins with fresh ground beef and fresh herbs and tomatoes from the garden.

Snacks

I pretty much always have a huge tray of fresh cut up veggies with some homemade ranch and hard boiled eggs with sharp cheddar cheese cubes ready to go at all times. If we leave the house, I’ll pack some of these up for my husband and I to snack on so we’re not tempted by fast food. Sometimes I don’t have time to make a meal and having these snacks around is a life saver.

Second Meal of the Day (Lunch/Dinner)

I really like making soup and it’s a wonderful meal to prepare ahead of time that can last all week. White chicken chili (with no beans and add extra vegetables like zucchini and bell pepper), broccoli and cheese soup, good old chicken soup with lots of chicken and veggies, and ground beef chili (no beans) are my favorites.

I try to do a lot of salads with lots of homemade dressing and have some chicken kebabs or grilled chicken cut up into cubes ready to go. Grilled chicken legs or thighs are good fatty sources of meat that taste incredible. Pair that with steamed broccoli or asparagus smothered with butter and salt and you’ve got a savory meal! Another great meal is to cook a roast with a tons of onions and then smother with sour cream and salt. Delicious!

BLT lettuce wraps with lots of mayo are really good, and I love making chicken stuffed with cheese and veggies too. One of my favorite meals is buffalo wings with tons of blue cheese dressing and celery.

Avoid the Keto Flu

During a ketogenic diet, your body will release more water and retain less because of the decrease of insulin. Along with losing the water, you’re losing the minerals found in water at a higher rate and so you can quickly become depleted of key minerals that your body needs to function properly. This is why it is very important to add electrolytes to your water and to eat plenty of vegetables. The most relevant electrolytes in this context are sodium, potassium, magnesium, chloride, and calcium. If you can afford it, these electrolytes provide everything you need to stay perfectly hydrated.

My husband and I like making a special water using these amazing water bottles with lots of ice. The water not only provides the electrolytes we need, but helps us to feel satisfied throughout the day. To make the water, add about a teaspoon of Real Salt (a great electrolyte), a tablespoon of freshly squeezed ginger (great electrolyte and boosts the immune system), 1/2 of a lemon or lime squeezed (for flavor and vitamin C), plus a dash of cayenne pepper (speeds up the metabolism). *Keep in mind that the lemon and ginger will add about 2-4 grams of carbs. I was drinking like 3 of these and when I started tracking my macros, I realized it was adding up to be too much. Apple cider vinegar has no carbs and amazing health benefits (like lowering blood sugar) and would work great as well if you can stand the taste!

To help your body more quickly transition into ketosis and avoid the keto flu, you can get some exogeneous ketones. This supplement is expensive, but my husband and I like having some on hand for when we have a cheat day and eat a bunch of pizza or something. Then the next day, we’ll put a scoop of this in our coffee and get right back into ketosis.

I would also like to mention that a really good probiotic is a very good idea to help repair your gut health. I love using Bio-Kult probiotics. If you are starting to feel under the weather, these vitamin C capsules are AMAZING. I also like to always have some Wellness Formula immunity boosters on hand to combat any illness.

In Conclusion

The keto diet is way more than just weight loss. The standard American diet is full of foods that cause inflammation and a whole slew of other health problems including diabetes and heart disease. Our ancestors did not rely on such sugary meals for sustenance and our bodies are designed to be more efficient when fat is the source of fuel, not sugar.

People have asked me if I’ll stop doing the keto diet once I’ve reached my goal weight, and I’m kind of on the fence. Sometimes, the willpower to resist pizza and chips is too great, and I have to tell myself that this is only temporary, but then other times I can’t see why I’d ever want to go back to the way things used to be. (*Two year update: I gradually slipped back into eating carbs and gained back almost all of the weight I lost. I recommitted to keto and lost all of the weight again. I do allow cheats sparingly…like once a week.)

The energy I have is actually kind of surprising to be honest! I used to take the kids to the park, sit on the bench, and watch them play. Now, I’m riding my bike with them everywhere, running laps around them at the park, throwing them up in the air, and never seeming to run out of energy. It feels like I have a work out routine built in to my every day way of life. (*On a side note: while picking up things off from the floor…which I do about a gazillion times a day, I squat instead of bending over, and now my legs are super strong!)

I am very thankful to have learned about the ketogenic diet, and I just want to share these amazing results with anyone who will listen because it not only changed my life…it made my life worth living, and I hope it can do the same for you.

/by

The Truth About Fats

, ,
truth about fats

Like many adolescent girls, I feel like my obsession with weight began with that awkward phase known as puberty. I began to equate being skinny with being hungry, and I began to notice things like “grams of fat” and “total calories” on packaged food. I knew without knowing that fat was bad, and so I avoided things like whole milk, butter, and mayonnaise. I remember reading somewhere that if you stopped putting mayonnaise on your sandwiches, you could lose something like two pounds every year!

I was able to remain thin quite easily (thanks to an efficient metabolism), but as I got older, and especially after having kids, my old strategies for keeping the weight off just weren’t working anymore. Then I discovered this crazy idea that fat is actually good for you. Say whaaaaaat??? And not just any fat, but the so-called “artery-clogging” saturated fat I’d ruthlessly avoided my whole life. On top of that,

I learned that the polyunsaturated fats I’d always heard labeled as “heart-healthy” can actually CAUSE heart disease and cancer.

“BOOM!” (That was the sound of my mind exploding.)

When I read Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions, it literally changed my life. I’ve never had one book so completely consume me and motivate me to change everything about the way I ate. In this blog, I hope to summarize what I have learned from Nourishing Traditions, in addition to Weston Price, Gary Taubes, and Fathead, and explain the real TRUTH about fats.

The reason why it seems like “common knowledge” that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad isn’t because they ARE bad, but rather because a man named Ancel Keys THOUGHT they were bad and so he made an assumption. It “made sense” to him that saturated fat and cholesterol led to heart disease and so he cherry picked six countries that matched his theory to be part of his Lipid Hypothesis and he left out the remaining sixteen countries that didn’t. He didn’t have any credible scientific proof to back up his hypothesis, but that didn’t stop him from becoming a leading member of the American Heart Association, landing on the cover of Time magazine in the 1970s, and becoming “the father of dietary wisdom”.

After Ancel Keys and his buddy Jeremiah Stamler were a part of the American Heart Association, the AHA (who originally opposed the Lipid Hypothesis and any ideas like it) flipped their stance and supported it, with the caveat that research was pending. Soon after, senator George McGovern published his Dietary Goals for the United States, which followed Keys’ recommended of a reduction of fats along with a drastic increase in carbohydrates.

So then the National Institute of Health decided that they’d better drum up some actual research to support the hypothesis everyone was already promoting, (Seems like a pretty biased way to conduct research if you ask me.) no compelling research emerged. In fact, the research they hoped would support their hypothesis actually showed quite the opposite. The Framingham Heart study states,

“we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active.” (JAMA Internal Medicine)

But it was already too late. The idea that saturated fat and cholesterol were bad was barreling down the American ideology track like a freight train…and gaining momentum too. In 1980, the USDA released their official Dietary Guidelines for Americans (which were VERY similar to George McGovern’s guidelines). These guidelines have since been republished every five years with very little changes. And that’s that. Now every government agency, every doctor, and every American wrongly assumes that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad. (For a more thorough description of this story, check out my blog post How We Were Duped Into Thinking Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Were Bad.)

The term “artery-clogging saturated fats” isn’t true. When the fat in artery clogs is studied, only about 26% is saturated and the rest is unsaturated, with more than half of that being polyunsaturated. Saturated fats have been wrongly demonized when the truth is that we really NEED them as they play many important roles in our body chemistry. 

  • Cell membranes must be comprised of at least 50% saturated fatty acids in order to maintain their stiffness. (Without stiff cell membranes, arteries become weak and flabby and THAT is when cholesterol comes to the rescue to repair the damage that has been done. This becomes the plaque that clogs arteries, increases blood pressure, and leads to heart disease.)
  • Unless 50% of the fats we consume come from saturated fat, we cannot properly absorb the calcium we need.
  • Saturated fatty acids are made up of short and medium chain fatty acids that are not stored as fat, but used as quick energy.
  • They protect the liver from toxins.
  • They enhance the immune system.
  • They protect us from harmful microorganisms in the digestive tract.
  • They have important antimicrobial properties.
  • They are needed to properly utilize fatty acids like omega-3s.
  • The fat around the heart muscle is highly saturated and draws upon that fat in times of stress.

Not only is saturated fat good for you, but cholesterol is too! Say whaaaaaat??? It’s true. This idea of “good cholesterol” and “bad cholesterol” is totally wrong. LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) is REPAIRING damaged arterial walls. In her book, Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon explains how,

blaming cholesterol for it’s correlation with clogged arteries is like blaming the police for their correlation with crime. (i.e. A high crime area will have an increased number of police officers just like clogged arteries will have an increased level of LDL cholesterol, but the high crime isn’t CAUSED by the police and the clogged arteries are not CAUSED by the cholesterol. Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean that one thing causes another.)

Arterial plaques themselves contain very little cholesterol. Cholesterol is needed for many functions in our body and the only people that benefit from the misconception that we should lower our cholesterol levels are the multibillion dollar drug corporations that create cholesterol lowering drugs called statins (like Lipitor) and the doctors who get kick backs called “research study” funds for every new patient they can con to take them.

  • Cholesterol is needed along with saturated fats to give cells their stiffness and stability. When a diet contains too much polyunsaturated fatty acids, the cell walls actually become flabby and cholesterol is used to make them strong again.
  • It is the precursor needed to make sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone.
  • It is a precursor to vital hormones called coriocosteroids which are needed to help us deal with stress and protects the body against heart disease and cancer.
  • It is a precursor to vitamin D, which is a fat-soluble vitamin needed for healthy bones and nervous system, proper growth, mineral metabolism, muscle tone, insulin production, reproduction, and immune system function.
  • Bile salts are made from cholesterol. Bile is vital for digestion and assimilation of dietary fats.
  • It helps to maintain the health of the intestinal wall. This is why low-cholesterol vegetarian diets can lead to leaky gut syndrome and other intestinal disorders.
  • It is an antioxidant that protects us from free radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer.
  • Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors, the “feel good” chemical, in the brain. When cholesterol levels are low, there are behavioral links to depression, suicidal tendencies, and violent and aggressive behavior.
  • Mother’s milk is especially rich in cholesterol (as well as saturated fat). Babies and children especially need cholesterol rich foods for optimal brain and nervous system development. Yet, the American Heart Association is now recommending a low-cholesterol, low-fat diet for children! Most commercial formulas are low in saturated fats and soy formulas are completely devoid of cholesterol. A recent study linked low-fat diets with failure to thrive in children.
  • Beware of damaged cholesterol! Just like fats, cholesterol can be damaged by exposure to heat and oxygen which can lead to to the arterial cells as well as a buildup of plaque in the arteries. Damaged cholesterol is found in powdered eggs, powdered milk, skim and low-fat milks (which has powdered milk added to it), and in meats or fats that have been heated to a high temperature.

History shows that when people stopped eating saturated fats and cholesterol (because they were tricked into thinking they were bad), they replaced them with polyunsaturated fats such as canola oil and trans fats such margarine. Modern diets include up to 30% polyunsaturated fats when the ideal should be about 4%. Excess consumption of polyunsaturated oils has been shown to contribute to a large number of diseases including cancer and heart disease, immune system dysfunction, damage to the liver, reproductive organs and lungs, digestive disorders, depressed learning ability, impaired growth, and weight gain. Polyunsaturated fats (WRONGLY marketed as “heart healthy”) and hydrogenated oils, known as trans fats (marketed as a “healthy alternative” to butter) should be avoided at all costs and are one of the TRUE causes of heart disease and cancer.

  • Polyunsaturated fats tend to become oxidized or rancid when exposed to heat, oxygen, and moisture from cooking and processing. Rancid oils contain free radicals that damage cell membranes and red blood cells. This leads to wrinkles, premature aging, tumors, and plaque buildup.
  • Polyunsaturates also contain a high amount of omega-6 linoleic acid and a low amount of omega-3 linoleic acid. This imbalance disrupts prostaglandins that leads to blood clots and inflammation, high blood pressure, irritation of the digestive tract, depressed immune function, sterility, cell proliferation, cancer, and weight gain.

After learning all of this, I initially felt a bit overwhelmed when I thought of all the things we were going to have to change about our eating habits. We didn’t change everything all at once. We simply picked one thing to research further and learn more about, and then we gradually implemented one change at a time. Looking back, we have done a lot to add foods rich in saturated fats and eliminate foods with polyunsaturated fats. Here are some of the things we have implemented so far.

  • We started by drinking raw milk. If there is only one thing you can do to help the health of your family, do this! We bought a cow share and consume six gallons of the freshest, creamiest, best tasting raw milk we’ve ever had every week.
  • We go through about ten pounds of non rBST (bovine growth hormone) butter a month.
  • We just purchased our first grass-fed half of a cow, which is about 160 pounds of the best ground beef, steak, roast we’ve ever had!
  • Every week we get three dozen pastured eggs with dark yellow yolks from the Amish farm where we get our milk.
  • We also recently got our fifty pounds of coconut oil that I will use for cooking, baking, and natural products.

Learning about our health has become like a full time job for me, and I am always learning something new or learning about something I had a preliminary knowledge about at a deeper level. It makes me feel so good to know that we are feeding ourselves with nutrient dense food that will heal us from the inside out. To know that as our children are growing, their bodies are being constructed with the best nutrients possible that will enable them to grow into adults free from the plagues that a poor diet will bring. We truly believe that food is our medicine, and every day we are taking steps to ensure that we are taking the best medicine we possibly can.

A few of my favorite studies:

  • In his book, Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes explains how in 1990, the National Institute of Health conducted a study that they hoped to answer whether low fat diets prevented heart disease or cancer. So they spent one billion dollars and had 20,000 women eat a low-fat diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and fiber. These women also cut their caloric intake by about 360 calories per day. After eight years, they lost an average of two pounds each and their waist circumference increased, meaning that the weight they lost was lean muscle.
  • In another study, Taubes explains how a two million dollar government funded study through Stanford University called the A to Z Weight Loss studied four diets. 1) Atkins Diet: Subjects had twenty grams of carbohydrates for the first three months and then fifty grams, with as much protein and fat as they wanted. 2) A Traditional Diet: Subjects had restricted calories, carbohydrates made up 55-60% of all calories, fat was less than 30% of the caloric intake, saturated fat was less than 10%, and regular exercise was encouraged. 3) The Ornish Diet: Fewer than 10% of all calories subjects ate came from fat, subjects also meditated and exercised. 4) The Zone Diet: Subjects consumed 30% of calories from protein, 40% of calories from carbohydrates, and 30% of calories from fat. After one year, the Atkins dieters lost the most weight (10 pounds), their triglycerides went way down, their blood pressure went down, and their HDL cholesterol went up (which is good).
  • In her book, Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon describes a multi-year British study in which several thousand men were asked to reduce their saturated fat and cholesterol in their diets, to stop smoking, and to increase consumption of unsaturated oils such as margarine and vegetable oil. After one year, the group that reduced their saturated fat had 100% more deaths, even though the group that did not still smoked!
  • In another study, Fallon describes a study comparing Yemen Jews who ate only fats from animal origin and no sugar to Yemenite Jews living in Israel who ate margarine, vegetable oil, and sugar equaling 25-30% of their carbohydrate intake. The Yemen Jews had little to no heart disease or diabetes, but the Yemenite Jews had very high incidences of both.
  • Sally Fallon also discusses the Masai African tribes that subsist largely on milk, blood, and beef. They are completely free from heart disease and have low cholesterol levels. When Ancel Keys heard about this study, he purposed that they inherited some sort of genes to help them become immune to such ailments. But as the Masai began eating a western diet, they got heart disease at the same rates as everyone else.

For more reading on this subject, check out the following articles.

Digestion and Absorption of Food Fats by Mary Enig, phD

Why the Current US Dietary Guidelines are Making Americans Fat by Mary Enig, phD

Skinny on Fats, by Mary Enig, phD and Sally Fallon

/by

Best Oils to Cook With

, ,

There is only cooking oil that can help you lose weight, have energy, and nourish your body at the cellular level. The rest will either make you gain weight, or worse, lead to array of ailments such as heart disease or cancer.

If you guessed coconut oil, you are correct! After reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, I feel confident in making coconut oil my go-to oil for everything. It does not have a distinguishable odor or taste and we try to cook as much as we can with it. I use it to make my own bread, and I plop generous dollops for cooking eggs, pancakes, stir fries, and even burgers! Not only can it be used for baking and frying, but it has many other uses as well. (I love using it to make my own toothpaste.)

50 lbs of Coconut Oil from Country Life Natural Foods

50 lbs of Coconut Oil from Country Life Natural Foods

Here are some of the wonderful attributes that make coconut oil so wonderful:

  • satfatpic

    Saturated Fatty Acid

    Coconut oil is made up of 92% saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids are structured so that all available carbon bonds are occupied by a hydrogen atom. This makes them highly stable and straight in shape, so that they are solid or semisolid at room temperature. As a result, they are less likely to go rancid when heated during cooking. If you keep coconut oil in its solid state (below 76 degrees) and out of direct sunlight, it can maintain a shelf life of two years.

  • Over two-thirds of the saturated fatty acids found in coconut oil are comprised of medium-chain fatty acids. When your body digests fat in the form of medium chain fatty acids it doesn’t need to be digested in the small intestine with bile acids and lipases like it does with longer-chain fatty acids, but can instead be shuttled directly to the liver and converted to quick energy. This is why coconut oil is great to use if you’re trying to lose weight. As long as you don’t eat it with any carbs it CANNOT be stored as fat! It is also a gentle way for people who aren’t used to eating fat to start incorporating it into their diets. 
  • The main medium-chain fatty acid in coconut oil is lauric acid, which is a proven antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal agent. It is converted in your body to a substance called monolaurin, which helps you defend against viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. Basically, it strengthens your immune system and protects you from a wide range of diseases. The only other places you can get lauric acid are in mother’s milk or in small amounts in butterfat.
  • Lauric acid is the most rapidly oxidized fatty acid. The amount of energy used by the body to oxidize it is greater than the energy it provides. Since coconut oil is comprised of 50% lauric acid, it has a “thermogenic effect” meaning that it raises your body temperature, which boosts your energy and metabolic rate. So if you were to just eat a big spoonful of coconut oil, you would actually lose more weight than eating nothing at all!
  • Palm oil is another good tropical oil, but it is only 50% saturated.
Throw Out That Crisco!

Throw Out That Crisco!

Now I can finally throw my Crisco away! I used to feel guilty about greasing my pans with my super expensive extra virgin organic coconut oil, but now that I have a fifty pound five gallon bucket at my disposal, I can use it liberally for EVERYTHING without feeling guilty and I can FINALLY throw away this Crisco that I’ve had sitting in my cupboard for more years than I’d care to admit.

In case you’re wondering, Crisco is just about the worst thing you could purposefully put in your body. It is made from hydrogenated oils (trans fats) that block your body from using important fatty acids and can lead to paralysis of the immune system, cancer, atherosclerosis, diabetes, obesity, low birth weight babies, birth defects, decreased visual acuity, sterility, difficulty in lactation, and problems with bones and tendons.

The process for making hydrogenated oil is enough to make me want to steer clear of it!

  • It begins with the cheapest vegetable oils possible (soy, canola, or corn) that are already rancid from their extraction process.
  • Then they are mixed with tiny metal particles usually in the form of nickel oxide. This nickel catalyst combined with a high temperature causes a chemical change called hydrogenation which changes the position of the hydrogen atom on the fatty acid chain from the slight bend of a double bond to a straightened molecule.
  • This trans formation is toxic to your body, but your body doesn’t recognize it as a toxin. It actually incorporates it into cell membranes and this wreaks havoc with cell metabolism.
  • After the nickel catalyst, soap-like emulsifiers and starch are squeezed into the mixture in order to give it a better consistency.
  • The oil is then steam-cleaned at a high temperature to remove its unpleasant odor and bleached, dyed, and pumped full of strong flavors to get rid of its unappetizing grey color and horrible taste. Now, doesn’t that sound yummy!