194 lb this morning. I can likely blame Sunday night's cocktails. I'd love to believe that I added a pound of muscle and just didn't lose any fat, but such self-delusion is better suited to the well-paid buffoons at the top of the Executive branch. I had been down to somewhere around 192 on Saturday, and I think I got overconfident enough to think that a few drinks wouldn't hurt me.

It is always best to keep in mind the great wisdom of the Solo:

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 11:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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193 lb this morning, and my waist is now 37".  I'm eating about 1.75 lb of meat per day, mostly beef, and I'm only drinking water and tea.  My exercise is minimal but steady: pull ups and dips 1 day a week, and 30-45 minutes of cardio two other days, widely spaced.  I'm behind on my goal for this month, but I'm losing steadily at this point, so I'm hoping to be caught up by February or March.

Sunday, I was treated to a meal out at a nice Japanese restaurant, so I had some divergence for the salad and miso soup I was given.  Unfortunately, the ribeye was served covered in a sweet sauce I really could have done without.  I'm starting to really appreciate the subtle flavors of beef, and all I could taste was something that made me think of candy.  It's entirely possible that there was relatively little sugar in the sauce, but in eliminating it from my regular diet, I've likely become overly sensitive to it.  In any event, it doesn't appear to have slowed my weight loss.  I'm going to try and make it through the next week with stricter adherence and see how that goes.  I'm also going to have to be more careful at restaurants.  "Just bring me the meat.  Cook it -- a little -- put on a plate, do nothing else, and bring it to me."

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 10:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've been keeping VLC (Very Low Carb) or ZC (Zero Carb) pretty well, but I'm still drinking a fair amount of coffee (1-3 cups a day) and I've been adding heavy cream on some days.  Cream has very small amounts of carbohydrate, even without it the taste is sweet enough that it may still be provoking a rise in my insulin level, similarly to a diet soda.

Also, the "experts" are all over the place on caffeine.  Some studies say it raises blood sugar and thus insulin, others say it raises blood sugar but blocks insulin, and still others say it does neither but does make cells more responsive to insulin.  Since nearly all of evolutionary history occurred in the absence of coffee -- indeed, in the absence of hot beverages in general -- I'm going to play it safe and just quit it as well.

I'm unsure about whether to keep drinking tea.  I have tons of tea laying around, and I mostly drink it iced, and it's basically just water with leaf residue in it, no fire necessary, so I may hang onto it for now and see how I feel going forward.

And yes, this means my diet has now narrowed to meat, water, tea, and the occasional piece of broccoli I'm offered at a restaurant.  I'll let you know if scurvy actually sets in, or the Eskimos are really onto something.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 03:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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195 lb this morning, so no.  That puts me about 5 lb behind the pace I was hoping to set.  Given Christmas 1, 2, and 3, though, 5 lb behind at this point isn't too bad.  I've also still got 5 more months to catch up.  Waist size is unchanged at 38".

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 10:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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198 lb this morning. On a hunch, I've been keeping to a more-or-less zero carbohydrate diet for the past couple of weeks. I'm eating about 1.5 to 2 lb of meat a day, and pretty much nothing else, and the weight loss is steady. Anyone who remembers my Meat Week experiment, which dismally failed on day 5, might wonder how I'm managing this time around. I'm actually doing much better. I'm not craving sweets or breads, no headaches or nausea, I actually feel excellent. The difference this time might simply be that I took my time getting down to this level of carbohydrate intake, getting past the withdrawal from bread and milk opioids well before I went fully carnivorous*.  The idea that I can lose weight while eating 2 lb of beef every day sounds ludicrous, but it's working.  I'm also not sure if cutting back seriously on intake would improve matters, but I'll experiment a bit this week.

Why experiment?  Well, 2 lb of beef a day is somewhat expensive, minimally $4.50 a day if all I eat is ground chuck, $8-10 a day if I have my preferred steak for dinner (I basically don't eat lunch any more, I'm not hungry enough to bother).  Further, if I can lose faster by eating 1 or 1.5 lb a day, while simultaneously saving some cash, I probably should.  I'm concerned I may simply end up hungry a lot of the time, and part of what's made this so easy is that I haven't felt deprived at all.  If I keep losing 2 lb/week, that's probably fine.  Slightly less than I'd hoped to average, but I'll take it if it stays effortless.

*Side note, so long as I'm eating this way, I'm technically a hypercarnivore, which sounds cool enough to inspire a t-shirt.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 11:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Can be found here, courtesy of the US FedGov. If you've paid US taxes, you paid to make it, may as well use it.

H/T to Freeman Hunt.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 02:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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200 lb this morning.  Both halves of my extended family celebrated Christmas over the Jan 2-3 weekend, so there were a number of indulgences -- baked by beloved family members, I might add -- from which I just couldn't completely abstain.  Fortunately, it looks like going to zero carbohydrates in the days since has corrected any damage.  Yeah, zero.  Just meat and some heavy whipping cream in my coffee for this Monday and Tuesday.

I didn't weigh myself at all in the week between, but my belt notch fluctuated up and then back down.  I don't know if I'm back on track soon enough to hit 190 by Jan 21, but since I have no more holiday celebrations to contend with, it's at least possible.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 11:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I finished this book

at the start of December, and it deserves any hype you may have heard about it (you probably haven't, but you should have). Taubes provides an incredibly detailed exploration of the history of nutritional science, starting in the early part of the 20th century. Ultimately, it ends up being a very well-researched critique of US Government-backed nutritional policies and health recommendations, starting with weight management and proceeding to exercise and a strong takedown of the lipid hypothesis for heart disease. While this isn't a diet book at all, it's not hard to follow Taubes' research to the logical conclusions that Ancel Keys and his cohort of advisers to the senate panel led by George McGovern either missed or deliberately obfuscated.  Study after study of diets with varying macro-nutrient distributions consistently found that diets lowest in carbohydrate produced the most consistent results in lowering the the weights of obese and overweight patients, further that such diets could serve as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, did not result in increases of arterial plaque, and may even prevent cancer and alzheimer's.

Reading the book, I was repeatedly struck by the parallels to CAGW.  We had a tight-knit group of scientists relying strongly on theory and very little on research data, all citing each other, and deliberately locking out and denying funding to competing theories.  It's uncanny.

I definitely recommend the book, even if some chapters are a bit of slog.  Taubes' writing is pretty consistently engaging even when discussing some rather dry elements of the relevant science, and the content is amazing.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 02:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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202 lb this morning, so it looks like Christmas indulgence set me back a week and cost me a week's progress, meaning to hit 10 more lb for month 3 I'd need to lose 12 lb by January 21.  That may be unrealistic as it's 3 lb per week, and I've been averaging about 2 lb per week.  On the other hand, my waist is down to 38", a 2" loss since this same time in November.  I'm having a lot less trouble staying consistent lately (other than Christmas), but I've got 3 more holiday get-togethers to contend with between now and next Wednesday.  I'm not sure I'd bet on me making my interim monthly goal right now.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 10:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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200 lb this morning, so I'm keeping up with my planned 10 lb/month, but only just.  I had dipped to 199 during the week between, but I had a couple of slightly-higher-carb days that seem to have pushed me back up a bit, along with some seriously low-activity days.  Cold temps provoke the latter for me, I get an instinctive urge to hunker down inside and wait it out.  I'll have to fight that urge after Christmas.

Also, in case I don't post again before then, Merry Christmas to all, Happy Christmas to the UK, Ireland, and Australia, and Joyeux Noel to France.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 11:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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203 lb this morning, something of a shock since I was 201 yesterday, didn't eat any more than usual in between.  I may have eaten less than usual.  What I did not do was get a good night's sleep.  I stayed up far too late and got barely 5 hours.  Whatever the reason, I'm slightly up today.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 08:25 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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202 lb this morning, weigh-in for week 7. I managed to break the plateau at 205, but it wasn't without some trickery. I did a modified fat fast on 3 of the 7 days since my last weigh-in, meaning 800 calories of 90% fat, spread into 4 snack-sized meals between 8am and 4pm, followed by a normal low-carbohydrate dinner.  I am yet to try a full-on fat fast, which would mean going to 1000 calories at 90% fat and removing the dinner.  I'm saving that for a more difficult plateau sure to come later on.

Sadly, I've also become fairly certain that aspartame is a no-no for me, which isn't a huge shock, but it's disappointing.  It's not uncommon for an insulin response to accompany a sugarless sweetener, even if no actual carbohydrates are eaten.  Supposedly, saccharine doesn't do this to most people, but it's still saccharine.  No thanks.  I'm not sure I want to bother seriously experimenting with sucralose/Splenda.  I might try stevia extract, but it seems easier to just avoid sweet things altogether, since they mess with my palate and cause me to crave starches.

In any event, this puts me down 18 lb in 7 weeks.  If I can lose another 2 lb by next weigh-in, I'll be slightly ahead of my goal of 10 lb per month, since 2 months proper will be Dec 21.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 11:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I very much like the thesis in this article from April, but I'm not optimistic. A fracturing of the modern special interest state seems very likely to lead to balkanization, and whatever emerged from that would be much less than America is today for decades to come.  That's a bad thing.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 10:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Anyone that still buys into this crap is belligerently uninformed. Can we put that money and effort toward real pollution now, like mercury in groundwater, plastic in the ocean, or whateverthehell is feminizing male fish and amphibians?

H/T to Don Surber

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 04:30 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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205 lb again today.  I have been stuck at this weight before, and it might well be that this is a rigid plateau for me.  Since it's persisted for 3 weeks now, I suspect that's the case.  To keep pace with my goal, I basically have to break the plateau and lose 5 lb in the next two weeks.  This will not be easy.

It's also possible that I've just done this too many times now (lost weight and then regained it), and my metabolism has become particularly resistant to changes in weight (up or down; I've never managed to go above 220 either, no matter how bad my diet has been, and I usually stop at 205 on the way down and get frustrated).  The only cure for that is patience and consistency.

There are some other tricks I might employ, but I'm waiting to be sure those are absolutely necessary before using them to break the plateau.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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205 lb again this morning.  This is 5 weeks in, and I'm down 15 since I started, so I'm at least averaging 3lb/week as I'd hoped.  I just have to stay consistent and take the dribs and drabs as they come.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 08:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So I saw this story over on ++undead, and I read it, and I see how the mom gave her son some pot brownies to see if it would help him come out of his autistic shell a bit.  Know what my take-away was after reading this?

NO FAIR, I WANT A BROWNIE!

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 08:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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205 lb this morning, down 15 lb from my starting weight, with 65 lb to go.

My waist measured in at... 40".  That's what I get for estimating rather than measuring back on day 1.  I couldn't find the tape that day, and I'm pretty sure this was my version of "rock bottom", so I haphazardly guessed that my waist was 2" larger around than my pants said it was.  Apparently a 38" pair of Wranglers is very, very generous, because my waist is visibly smaller than it was, and my pants are quite loose, to the point of being unwearable without a belt.  I'll just have to go forward with waist measurements from this point, since guessing at my original size would be just that: a guess.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 09:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Still 209 this morning.  Eating a little too much still, exercising too little, yada yada, SSDD.

It's tough to know something is basically life-or-death and treat it like life-or-death when it lacks all the traditional cues of life-or-death (like, say, an angered mother bear or an advancing line of mongol horsemen with bows drawn).

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 09:35 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Thank a vet today.  If you are a veteran, thank you for your service.

Also if you are a veteran, free lunch at Applebee's!  The house sirloin is pretty good, at least at the one on Washtenaw in AA.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 09:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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