Falling off the wagon...

One cookie. That's all it took. It wasn't even one of my favourite ones even, made with liberal amounts of sugar and egg whites and cocos. On my defense, I must say that I had PMS and that I was kind of socially forced to eat the one cookie. My boss remembered I suffer from lactose intolerance and went the pains to get cookies I could eat (apart from cake for other people). It is difficult then to say: "sorry, no, I am on diet". And people always tell you "one cookie is not so bad, take only one". Lies. It was very bad. I left ketosis, but even worse, it awoke the PMS cookie monster and this meant I went on a spree of eating chocolate, cookies, and other crap, with my insulin going mad. The weirdest thing is that you know you will feel much better not eating all that crap, but on the very moment, on the short term satisfaction, this is overrode and you want yet another sweet thing. And it spiralling is what makes it so dangerous: I started to feel really bad because of the one cookie, and this prompted a craving for more sweets that made me crave even more, etc. Afterwards came the very decadent trip to Barcelona, and it did not help to improve things. All in all I lost about a month of dieting, meaning, 2 kg went up. Doesn't sound so bad for normal folks, but if you are heavily overweight or obese, any extra kilo does damage. Right now I started the diet anew and I am where I left for the "one cookie trip". Let's see if I can keep on and not get tempted or coerced to eat any more cookies :)

A little article that I found interesting...

Just copy-pasted the article below. The original is here.

The No. 1 Skill for Weight Management

By Yoni Freedhoff

April 3, 2013 

Yoni Freedhoff

What do you think it is?
I'll start by telling you what it's not. It's not willpower, determination or motivation. It's not avoiding carbs or sugar or fats. And it's not cooking, hitting the gym or sticking to your plan.
No, the most important skill in weight management is learning how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back on with it. Whether it's the predictable—holidays, birthdays, anniversaries or vacations—or the unpredictable—illness, death, marital discord or injury—life has a bad habit of getting in the way of our best intentions. And mark my words, you're going to fall down.
[See How to Handle Extreme Stress.]
So how do you maximize your chances of picking yourself back up? Unfortunately there's no app for that. Instead you're going to have to rely on these two simple strategies:
• First, you need to respect reality. The fact is, life happens. If you don't respect the fact that as a species we have comforted and celebrated with food since time immemorial, then the inevitable guilt, shame and frustration you're going to feel when you exercise your right as a human being to use food for purposes other than fuel may well lead you to throw in the towel.
[See A Shame-Free Food Lifestyle.]
Instead of being frustrated that your weight management or healthy living strategies are affected by reality, try to remember that your best efforts vary. The best you can do over the week of Passover or Easter is undoubtedly less healthful than the best you can do the week after. If your goal is your best, you'll never fall into the trap of repeatedly letting yourself down.
• Second, you need to like the life you're living while you're losing. This truism is perhaps the one most regularly forgotten by newly minted dieters. Ultimately, if you don't like the life you're living while you're losing, even if you lose a great deal, you're eventually going to head back toward the life you led before you lost weight.
[See Best Weight-Loss Diets.]
Putting this in the perspective of reality, when life does up and offer you a reason to stray from your plan, it's going to be that much harder to get back into it if your plan was one you didn't enjoy in the first place. The more weight you'd like to permanently lose, the more of your life you'll need to permanently change. And because "permanent" is an awfully long time, truly the easiest way to evaluate the approach you've chosen for weight management or healthy living is to ask yourself: "Can I happily keep living this way?" If the answer's no, you need to find a new approach.
Put another way, the most important skill in weight management isn't a synonym of suffering, it's one of embracing imperfection, of rolling with life's pleasant and unpleasant punches; it smacks of reality, not reality TV.
[See When Science Met The Biggest Loser.]
The healthiest life that you can happily enjoy sometimes isn't going to be that healthy. Accepting that is weight management's most important skill.

Cada dia mas gordos...

Un articulo publicado en el diario El Pais de Espana.
http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/03/14/actualidad/1363266248_862274.html

Are *** allowed in the LCHF diet?

The questions are many...
Can I eat peas in the LCHF diet?
Can I eat beets?
Can I eat carrots?
......

Whenever I have a doubt I check Fineli, a fabulous site that tells me how many carbs (average, of course) each food has. For example, peas have 9.4% carbs (per weight), beetroot 6.9% ,carrots have 5.6%, tomato 3.5%, and boiled potatoes without skin have 15.5% carbs.
To decide if to eat or not a particular food type, you have to decide where do you draw the line. At 5%? At 3%? I think this requires trial and error for each person, for we are not all equal.
I draw the line at 5%, otherwise the choice of food is really limited. I bought myself a pack of ketostix and monitor the ketone amount of my body if I eat something I believe would get me out of ketosis and adjust 'dosage' accordingly. Also I suppose it depends on the carb content of the meal as a whole (you may add like 1 potato to the whole food and perhaps is fine), and interplays of the foods on each other. What I refuse to do is to monitor hysterically each food I consume. I just have a vague idea of what is not good for me and keep to that. For example I don't put potatoes in the food, or carrots, just because it is easy to go overboard.
The thing this diet has taught me is to listen to my body more. Do I feel well? Do I crave something? Why can that be?

LCHF weeks 7 and 8

It has been a while since I posted last. How's been going? Ok-ish I guess.
I bought myself some ketostix, so now I can monitor what happens with my ketosis. I often drink during the weekends and I could now monitor that those excesses bring some diminishing amount of ketones in my body. Therefore the slow change on my weight. I am now at 72 kg... The same I was before I ate the cookies and fell off the diet wagon. The thing I learned was that once you fall out of the diet, all the usual carb cravings come back. So you have to re-adapt once more to the diet like you just started it. Tough price to pay for one infraction, but at the same time, this diet is easy to follow (never hungry!) and something is gotta give, I guess. Going out for dinner is truly an art, as many places cannot conceive you don't want fries or potatoes (aren't they the same?), but I just have to bite the bitter pill and pay more (ordering an extra salad, for example). Tapas is the best option for me, as they usually have nuts, olives and some meaty things that I can consume. I feel leaner though, and a bit trimmed, and my ego has taken this with cherish relief. I would love to have my BMI below obese for the summer, just that would make me very happy. My contentment with myself shows: people say I look sunnier than before... even though I often have this sad/sensitive/raw feeling in me.  I don't understand it and I think it is a by-product of the burning of the fat on my body. Fat cells store the toxins of the body, and depressive people are full of toxins, so it makes sense that if you are full of toxins you feel prone to sensitivity, sadness, anger.

LCHF diet week 6: La carne es débil

This last week I had a bout of rebelliousness: on Tuesday I could not resist anymore and ate a lot of chocolate cookies. Unwisely I had bought those cookies before starting the diet, simply because I could (they are difficult-to-get lactose free German cookies). So they have been sitting on a box on plain sight for a whole month, and somehow I had this huge craving for cookies and went for it. The problem is that I would not get happy with one or two cookies, I just cannot resist to eat till I am buzzing with the sugar rush, and two-thirds of the package has disappeared.
What was interesting was the effect it had on me: on the day I felt really stuffed (no dinner) but in the unpleasant way when you eat way too much. I remember feeling like that all the time before the LCHF diet. I also felt guilty, as I knew I would stop ketosis for a while.
On the following day I felt literally sick. I had stomach cramps, sluggishness, diarrhea. I felt bloated and sick for a couple of days. But the most interesting was the tiredness I felt. I came home exhausted (as I used to), I went to the couch, I didn't move for the rest of the evening (like I used to). I also started feeling depressed, numb. This regression got my weight to increase accordingly, I accumulated water and stopped the fat-burning process, so my weight went to 73.5 kg.
Fortunately I went back to the LCHF diet and all this horrible symptoms disappeared in a few days. But the lesson is learned: any sugar (at this point) and I pay dearly. It does make it easier to resist the cookies.

Colds, flu, running nose

After I started this diet I have been ill with colds more than usual. I was wondering why (and if it is healthy at all to follow this diet) until I found the following paragraph in the site of a fellow low carb diet follower:

Around this time, I caught the flu, and developed a really serious case of chest congestion. I hadn't been that sick in a long time, and it scared me into figuring out why. My thought was "wait a second, I eat really well, why am I so sick?"
So I did some research, and found out Vitamin D was essential for respiratory health, so I had my vitamin D levels checked. My levels were super low - a measly 27. Normal is between 50-100. Not surprising since I live in Wyoming, where we have Winter 10 months out of the year, but not good.
Having read how beneficial it is for so many body systems, I started a program to get my vitamin D levels up. I started taking 5000 IU a day and then checked it again several months later. It was better, but still only at 31. So I upped my daily intake to 10,000 IU. I felt even better at this point. Last time I had it checked, my vitamin D level was at 76, and I rarely get colds any more. So, one more puzzle piece fell into place. 

I started taking more vitamin D and walks in the sun now, and I feel better and less asthmatic. I did not have my vitamin D checked. I don't think the doctor would help me with this anyways...

Pre diabetes symptoms - scary!

I surf a lot on the web about low carb diets, ketogenic diets, etc. The reason is clear: I need the positive reinforcement (besides the need for information) for continuing a diet that is very often tough, as I love sweets and cookies and chocolate and all those delicious treats. Those treats are my comfort food and it is really hard to be deprived of them. Yesterday was a classic example: I had a dinner with my boyfriend's company and the restaurant had no alternatives for my dessert. And the raspberry sorbet was too tempting. I ate it. I just could not resist, specially with all the wine I drank... So there you have it. I will pay dearly for my sorbet: it takes at least 4 days to go back to normal ketosis, and this means I will have 6-7 days of water retention and inflammation. It will probably show in the weight chart.

But this is not what I intended to discuss in this post. The scary part of the pre-diabetes symptoms is that I looked at them and could immediately recognize my complaints. Even scarier: I raised those complaints to my doctor and she did not do anything. Nobody stopped to check if my insulin levels where normal. I suppose if you do that it is too expensive for the dutch health system, but it is my health we are talking about!
I put the symptoms list below, noting that I took it from the blog Healthy Eating Politics.

1. Heartburn, especially during sleep; a diagnosis of GERD – Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease.
2. Digestive issues. You get frequent stomach aches, and are constantly dealing with gas pain, bloating and stool issues, cycling between diarrhea and constipation.
3. Headaches and a sore throat that comes and goes.
4. Breathing issues, especially at night; you may have been diagnosed with sleep apnea.
5. Dizzy spells, and a feeling of being lightheaded sometimes, especially after having sweets. (This indicates reactive hypoglycemia.)
6. Unexplained weight gain. Your eating habits haven't changed, but suddenly you've put on 10 pounds. In addition, you are having difficulty losing it, even when you exercise and eat less.
7. Blurred vision that seems to be worsening, and trouble seeing at night.
8. A constant feeling of being tired. No matter how much you sleep, or exercise to gain strength, you feel fatigued.
9. Frequent bouts of depression for no reason. You’ll be fine, and then you feel sad all of a sudden, without any cause.
10. Constant joint aches, and muscle and joint stiffness when you wake up in the morning. You may even have been diagnosed with some form of arthritis.
11. Your feet burn and your toes feel numb when you stand for long periods of time.
12. Swollen ankles, and a general feeling of puffiness or water retention, especially if you sit for long periods of time.
13. If you don’t eat, you get really grumpy. You may also feel nauseous and shaky.
14. Waking up in middle of the night with your heart pounding. Often you also feel nauseated or cold. It happens more often if you've been eating high sugar meals. This again indicates hypoglycemia or low blood sugar.
15. Constant hunger, no matter how much you eat. You often think, "How can I be hungry? I just ate!"
16. Frequent yeast infections, and cuts or bruises you get don’t seem to heal quickly.
17. After every meal, you really crave something sweet, even if you are already feeling full.
18. You have elevated blood pressure and blood tests indicate you have high triglyceride levels, and low HDL cholesterol levels.
19. The dentist tells you that have gingivitis, even though you brush and floss every day. You often wake up with a nasty taste in your mouth, even though you brush before bed.
20. A groggy, sleepy feeling after meals, even when you have plenty of rest. You may have been embarrassed because you fell asleep at your desk at work, or during a meeting. 

How many of these symptoms did I have? (note the past tense): 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17 and 20. I had a "yes" for 15 of these symptoms. You only need 4 or 5 "yes" to suspect you are becoming a diabetic.
Right now, after starting with the LCHF diet I can say that the symptoms have almost all disappeared (except one or two). But it came from me, the doctor did nothing to help me. It is infuriating. The worse part is that I told the doctor that my parents are diabetic and I had more danger for such a problem. I was ignored.

LCHF diet week 5

I am satisfied. The weight is still going down and I feel better and better everyday. Apart from losing weight, my mood has improved greatly and I feel that I am more energetic and lively. It also has improved my work life: it is much easier to focus than before, and I am not distracted by being hungry. This week the weight went down to 72 kg...
I decided to take up walking as an activity to help the weight loss and feel healthier. I take now a brisk 30 min walk everyday at lunchtime, and it is really nice because I get to be out and enjoy the weak winter sun. It is low impact exercise, but I do get warmed after the walk, and I feel already it helps my circulation. I decided to do this walk in the moment of the day I am the least productive, after lunch, because I feel sleepy from eating and it is tough to start working again. It had been almost impossible to arrange a schedule to exercise before, it is so difficult with a long traveling time from work to home. I put some fast beat songs in my mp3 player and walk in the sunshine every midday. It feels wonderful actually. I recommend it!

Low carb diets and cancer

Amazing story about ketogenic diets beating cancer.

The theory side of the LCHF diet

The idea is to give a hint of why the diet works. I am no doctor, therefore this post is sort of a concoction of things I've read, wikipedia articles and plain speculation.
There is a very extensive and interesting article on wikipedia on low carb diets. A extract of what is written there:
^"The body of research underpinning low-carbohydrate diets has grown significantly in the decades of the 1990s and 2000s.Most of this research centers on the relationship between carbohydrate intake and blood sugar levels (i.e. blood glucose), as well as some related hormone levels. Some evidence suggests blood sugar levels in the human body should be maintained in a fairly narrow range to maintain good health. The two primary hormones that regulate blood sugar levels are insulin, which lowers blood sugar levels, and glucagon, which raises blood sugar levels. These are both produced in the pancreas: insulin from beta cells and glucagon from alpha cells.
In western diets (and many others), most meals are sufficiently high in nutritive carbohydrates to evoke insulin secretion. The primary control for this insulin secretion is glucose in the blood stream, typically from digested carbohydrate. Insulin also controls ketosis; in the non-ketotic state, the human body stores dietary fat in fat cells (i.e., adipose tissue) and preferentially uses glucose as cellular fuel. Diets low in nutritive carbohydrates introduce less glucose into the blood stream and thus evoke less insulin secretion, which leads to longer and more frequent episodes of ketosis. Some research suggests that this causes body fat to be eliminated from the body, although this theory remains controversial, insofar as it refers to excretion of lipids (i.e., fat and oil) and not to fat metabolism during ketosis."

So, the main idea it to reduce the amount of insulin secretion (that is the low carb part). This will induce a state of ketosis, where instead of using glucose, the body will use ketones to get its energy. The higher fat intake is necessary to have enough energy from the food and to ban the hunger from the diet. The body feels sufficiently nourished and does not lower the metabolic rate to accommodate for lower energy intake (i.e. starvation mode). Then you become an efficient "fat burning machine". I really recommend to read the wikipedia article on low fat diets. It outlines well the ongoing scientific debate about nutrition.
Another interesting wiki-article is about insulin release. These diets eventually aim for lowering the insulin release from the body. So it is most natural to want to know the insulin response to food. What is surprising from the article is the sometimes disproportionate insulin release to the carb content of some food, for example beef. But I think it would be very hard to know the insulin release of combined foods, like a soup. It anyways gives a good indication.

The insistence on the ban of trans fats is hardly surprising (what it is surprising is that they still manufacture it to give it to people) as those fats are really bad for health. The insistence on eating saturated fats is controversial.

The practical side of the LCHF diet

The theory is simple enough: no "man-made, unnatural" products are allowed. This means no trans fats (margarine is one of them) as they are really bad for your health. This has implications: no fast food (fries are fried in these trans fats), no foodstuff where these fats are used, this means you have to read the labels and find out if there are any trans fats used to make the product. Most products that you know if made at home should be in the fridge but are outside in the shop have either loads of salt, sugar or trans fats.
Which fats are allowed then? Natural saturated fat, like the ones present in butter and cream, animal fat (found in meat), and all the "good fats", olive oil, avocado, etc.
Also this ban involves "fake sugar", so all the artificial sweeteners are also prohibited. No diet coke, sorry.
So, what is the "carb" that you set to "low": sugary and starchy foods. Sugar is completely banned and the starchy foods, depending on the amounts of carbohydrates and the level to which the person desires, are also banned.
So, how do you "put into practice" the LCHF diet? I will talk about this diet to go down on weight only, not as a permanent lifestyle choice.
There are several steps to follow.

1. Clean your fridge and pantry: remove all sweet things like cookies, spreads, jams, marmalade and fruits (yes, fruits). Remove also all starchy things like rice, pasta, cous-cous, quinoa, bulgur, breakfast cereals, polenta, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, legumes, paprika (this will depend on how strict you want to be). If you are super strict, then things like ketchup are not allowed (contains sugar), or soy sauce (also contains sugar or starch). Check up things like sausages, mayonnaise or sugo, they should not have carbs but very often they do. Be wary of all the sauces and things you use that are already made (pesto, salad dressings, sauces, etc). There are gray zones, and depending how strict you want to be, if you allow them in your diet or not. Lentils are rich in carbs but also rich in protein. Same with quinoa. Paprika can have a lot of carbs per 100 gr (10%), but it also comes with loads of fiber, so treat with care but allow it in the diet. What I did myself (because I don't want to throw anything away) is to put all those non-perishable foods in a box, for when the diet is over.
2. Shop often, because the food will be fresher. What can you eat? Eggs, meats, fish, nuts, cheese (full fat versions of it) and vegetables. The biggest problem is to have something to eat the meats with (you cannot have salad all the time!). The Internet is full of suggestions to fake the missing pure, rice, pasta. Chef William (link on the left) is an inspiration for me. The mashed cauliflower recipe is just delicious.
3. Add fat to the food to make it filling and satisfying. This was the hardest for me. After years of listening to the "fat is bad" advice, I had become a fat-phobic. You need to add fat to the diet, otherwise you end up eating way too much proteins, and a protein-rich diet is not good for your health. So you have to get used to make sauces to go together with your meat (gravy, cream and cheese is one of my favourites). Salad made with avocados are a good idea. Add fat until you are satisfied and not hungry.
4. With care and aware of your own response to it, a very moderate amount of (dry, not sweet) wine and berries is allowed. I respond well to wine, but if I eat a handful of berries, I get crazy for more sugar. I cannot eat (at least for now) anything remotely sweet. 
5. Treat fruit like you would candy. Not very often. I cannot eat any fruits now myself (and therefore I am taking a vitamin supplement) but I am hoping my insulin levels will go to normal and later be able to enjoy an orange without going out of ketosis.
6. Most important: eat only when hungry. Tweak your fat intake to end up hungry at the right moments (here in The Netherlands people are rather strict with times for the lunch pause). And never go hungry. It is counterproductive, as then the body goes into starvation mode and then you cannot lose weight. The whole idea is that you are happy and satisfied, but forcing the body to process protein and fat mostly, and going into ketosis.

I follow this diet without looking for the carb content of every thing. I would get crazy like that. I also don't want to get quotas to fill on each type of nutrient (there are apps for knowing how many carbs, protein and fat you eat per meal). I have a busy life as it is. I have banned all starchy foods (grains, potatoes, carrots, legumes) but I eat paprika without worry. I take it easy with the fat, I just cannot drink "bullet coffee" (coffee with butter), I find it gross. And also take it easy with nuts. That's it. It is actually a quite simple diet, as you don't count portions, calories or anything else. And it works.
After 4 weeks, I have gone down 7 kilos already (a lot of water though) and my boyfriend has gone down 4 kg (no water there, guys are lucky on weight issues). I think of those kilos we lost, 2 kg each is probably the real weight loss. The rest is the water retention part caused by the sugary things we used to eat.

LCHF diet week 4

Today I weighted myself and the scale showed the needle (it is old fashioned indeed) slightly below 73 kg. The rate I was hoping for, 1/2 kilo per week, has slowed down. I did have some influence to it though: last couple of weekends I really overdid it with the wine. I drank waaay too much wine (like a whole liter) in the course of the evening. And as I have been learning recently, the body metabolizes ethanol in pretty much the same way as fructose. This means you get these fatty liver problems that sound so nasty. The weirdest thing about the wine was that it didn't feel (at the moment) like a lot. So it seems this diet helps me to not get so tipsy and so hangover the next day. My boyfriend did not have the same luck though.

I suppose it is time to admit it: I will have to "help" the weight reduction with some exercise. Actually more than my weight it is my size and my health I am most concerned. The thing is, until very recently, I felt so heavy and sluggish that I couldn't exercise. And the moment I started moving, I got joint pain right away. I am hoping it is not the case now. And I was hoping I could delay this exercise issue till it was warmer and nicer outside. To go to the gym and feel like an idiot surrounded with other idiots moving like lunatics at some musical tune is really not appealing. But even less appealing is to hook myself on a machine to pull weights and grunt and sweat. It is so stupid! I have never been able to play or enjoy group sports, as my asthma really is an impediment. I need some aerobic type of exercise, or I get an asthma attack right away. Perhaps swimming?

The books about LCHF: Hjärnkoll på vikten

Disclaimer: I read this book a long time ago, so there may be loads of things I just don't remember from it. It is not a good review from that perspective.
My journey to a LCHF lifestyle began a few years ago, actually. I went to visit my friend Nina once more and she had a book lying around her place. I started to read the book and got immediately hooked. The book is in Swedish, and its name is Hjärnkoll på vikten (a loose translation is "brain control of the weight"). What I loved of this book were two things: it was written by doctors (no health gurus) and every claim was supported by a reference to a publication in peer reviewed medical journals. In other words: science. I believe and understand science.
The book had a few novel ideas that struck me: the first one was that saturated fat is not that bad for you. The usual dietary advice is that saturated fat is a very bad type of fat, promoting cholesterol and therefore atherosclerosis and therefore heart problems. Well, the authors claimed in the book that the most recent research indicated that saturated fat was neither good not bad for you, and some studies suggested that it could be even beneficial. I was astonished. My thought was: "but surely the other claim had to have a scientific basis as well?". Well, the saturated fat story is far from finished and wikipedia actually shows the ongoing debate with snippets from different articles. This story is not over, but most importantly, not as a closed case as I came to believe earlier. The authors from the book go even further: they claimed that unsaturated fat was excellent when raw, but when cooking it, even at kitchen temperatures, you would start the process of hydrogenation of the oils, and therefore creating the evil trans fats in your own food. The natural consequence is that you should use saturated fat (butter) for cooking, because this fat cannot change its composition when heating it up. I didn't know what to make of such claims, as it was the total opposite of what I had been told all my life.
The other claim is that the brain loves sugar and it becomes addicted to it. Well, that wasn't so surprising. Years ago I had tried to quit putting sugar in my coffee (I took ridiculous amounts of it) and it took me several weeks of slowly reducing the amount to quit it. It was impossible to quit cold turkey. I knew then that sugar had an addictive quality to it, and that probably I was a sugar junkie.
Other idea the book gives is to work with the brain's reward system to go down on weight, not against it. It goes on to show that the usual "eat less, exercise more" dietary advice is actually going against the machinery of the body and that's why it is so hard to follow that advice and to maintain it.
The authors don't give dietary advice per se, but they praise the GI type of diets. This is the reason I bought myself two more books about GI diet and Patrick Holdford GL diet. I will review these in another post.

I recently re-read this book so below I discuss more "recent" memories.

The book starts with a discussion that sort of supports the paleo movement of eating: our body and brain evolved millions of years to adapt to a particular lifestyle (paleo) and agriculture and extensive farming made food available that otherwise would have been really scarce. The consequence is that our bodies are really "old" in a new environment, so all our instincts guide us to wrong habits when it comes to food.
Then it follows to explain that the main function of the body is to keep the brain working, and therefore, because the brain eats glucose, the brain loves sugar. Since early childhood we associate sweet taste and sugar with food to be eaten. We are programmed to be sugar junkies. It is actually the brain that makes you eat so much short chain carbs.
It claims that the way our body metabolises sugar makes you hungry for more very quickly after eating: that's why you can have a whole 1/2 liter cola and still be hungry afterwards. The reason for this is the central role insulin has on the control of blood sugar and feelings of satisfaction and hunger. When sugar is released in the blood stream (apparently is even earlier, when sweet taste is perceived by the mouth), a hormonal chain reaction triggers the release of insulin. This insulin reduces the amount of blood sugar. The release of ghrelin, the hormone responsible for the  feeling of hunger, responds to the negative gradient of the blood sugar. This means that if you eat something really sweet and rich in short carbohydrates, the amount of blood sugar will go very high, to be later whipped out by insulin, and therefore have a substantial drop. This will trigger the feeling of hunger once more, and hunger for something that increases your blood sugar once more, therefore, more sweets.
The book continues with the fat apology that was what I remembered most: don't be so stingy with fat, avoid trans fats, eat more fish fats and meat fats of cows that are freely eating on the grass.
Afterwards the book focuses on what to do if you want to go down on weight. It tells you to listen to your body, to pay attention when and how you eat. In particular if you eat sweets of white breads (they call this hyper-foods): that afterwards you start your roller coaster of blood sugar and that like this is impossible to keep out from foods that make you fat. The policy they advise is that once you pay attention to your body, you can avoid the foods that make you go into the roller coaster to begin with. This is individual-based and there are no general recipes for anyone. Me, for example, is cookies. I cannot keep out, once I had one, I must have the whole package!
It continues to explain that traditional weight-loss strategies of eating too few calories go against the machinery of the body: that if your body feels undernourished, it will go into starvation mode and you will not spend any energy on anything. You will feel tired and sluggish, and cold, because the body will save energy on heating up the body. As most of our energy goes on heat, this is really counterproductive if you want to go down on weight. They argue the contrary: eat till you are satisfied (not full) and eat enough fats to keep you satisfied for longer. Don't eat hyper-foods (sugar, white breads, pizza, pancakes, quick pasta) and focus your carb intake in carbs with low GI index. Then the kilos will disappear, they claim. Afterwards they enter into the apology of exercising, and how good it is for the body's functions to move.That exercising should be incorporated into the daily routine, and preferably should be mild and every day of the week.
Then the authors analyze the social effects of obesity. That it is sort of "contagious" as it takes place into whole families. That children copy what they see, not what they are told, therefore good practises start at home and with the parents. It end with an analysis of the situation in the US and how it is correlated with Sweden.
It is a great book and was an eye opener for me.

LCHF week 3

The third week I actually went a little up on weight, I weighted 74 kg. But I had my period, so I don't know if I just was bloated because of it, and when the period goes away I will discover that I went down anyways.
I made a nice discovery then: usually the week preceding my period I had the worst cravings for sweets. It would be always in this week when I would indulge. Not anymore. I had no cravings at all!
Also I would get terribly moody and angry. I am quite sentimental now, but not angry. My boyfriend is welcoming the difference :)
This week I developed a routine. What is tough with lifestyle changes is that all the usual rituals around food are gone. I used to have oat porridge for breakfast. Made without sugar, just water, milk and oats, till it became thick. I made one big pan and then put the mix in small Tupperware containers to heat up later. From the perspective of the calories it wasn't too bad and it kept me going. But from the perspective of carbs, it was a lot. What to eat now then? Now I have 2 boiled eggs. Sounds little but actually eggs are quite filling.
One of the biggest drawbacks of this diet is that you cannot deviate from it. It is really not advisable. One night we invited some friends for dinner. We had the usual LCHF fare: a piece of red beef with mashed broccoli with cream and cheese and a salad of tomatoes and avocados. For dessert we had raspberries with (unsweetened) cream. Delicious.
But the following day I was craving sweets again. I suppose it depends on your metabolism, and how sugar-addicted you are how much it affects you. For me it is very strong. A tiny bit of a sugar-ish thing and I am pinning for more. 
I am so happy on this diet that it got me thinking. I am following this diet to go down on weight, but the diet is not sustainable. To spend life never going to restaurants, never eating at friend's houses, it is just not possible! My plan when I reach my desired weight is to go in and out of it. Follow the diet a few days in a row and then eat some carbs. It will be difficult I think. But what this diet proved to me is that sugar is strictly off-limits. I am a sugar junkie.

Second week on the LCHF diet

The second week became easier. As I said, the first week I still did not add enough fat to the food to actually feel satiated for long. The first 2 days I was hungry. I had exchanged the carbs for protein. That is not good, too much protein is not good for you.  But I read the recommendations on Andreas Eenfeldt site again and it says: "don't be afraid of fat".
The thing is, since I started to pay attention to nutrition, the insistence is on reducing the amount of fat. Eat "good fats" but in moderation. But, what is moderation when it comes to fat? Half a cup? A tablespoon? A teaspoon? As a result, I had become fat-phobic.
Well, I gave it a try. I cannot eat cheese with butter (some people do that), or make myself "bullet coffee", a mixture of butter and coffee to get going in the morning. To my fat-phobic self that just sounds gross. But I added a little cream to a simple courgette and bullion soup, and all of a sudden, I could have 2 small plates of soup and be satiated! The best discovery is the mashed cauliflower with cream and cheese. Fantastic and very filling.
I searched the Internet for recipes and I found Chef William's movies. He is a cheeky swede living in Zurich, making funny videos about cooking LCHF style. He is an inspiration.
 What came extra with this diet, something I could not have foreseen is the state of well being I got. I feel more energetic, more rested (I sleep better). I can concentrate much better at work and I don't have those terrible headaches when finishing the working day. My skin looks amazing. My nails look amazing. My hair too. But most importantly, I don't feel sick anymore. I haven't had a single "spontaneous sickness" since I started this diet. I feel fantastic! And there are no more cravings for sweets. I feel less hungry. When I come home I am happy, energetic, inspired to cook.
 Last but not least: I weighted myself and I went down another 1.5 kg (I guess there was some remaining water after all) and I was at 73.5 kg.

Obesity feelings

This short diet journey has me swirling in emotions. Any type of sentimentality around me and the tears come down. I have still to figure out why.
But this is not what I set to write in this post. What I would like to discuss is the feelings on being overweight, obese, and all that it entails.
In some sort of unconscious bizarre protection, I have never seen myself as obese. If I looked at myself on the mirror I would notice some bulge, but somehow I never saw the extent of my obesity. I just can guess that my unconscious was protecting me from it. And because I was a rather slim person all my life, (except the past 4-5 years) in my head I still felt like that.
This said, I could not escape reality. Any picture of me and I would cringe. I was wider than tall. My butt ballooned, my hips, my belly, my boobs... I became some sort of parody of an overweight Latina. I hated it. I felt so ugly, so undesirable, so repulsive. I still feel that way. I am still heavily overweight, although hopefully on the path to recovery.
One of the most dreadful things was to go shopping (an activity I dislike per se). It was glaringly obvious then how much bigger I had become. When I arrived to The Netherlands I was a nice size 34. I am now between 42 and 44. At my height, with so many curves and wobbles, to go shopping is panic-inducing. And because I was constantly gaining weight, I would always take a size to end up having to change it for the next bigger one.
Another thing is the whole stereotype you feel on you. "You are fat, therefore you must be stuffing yourself in chocolate cake" (not true). "You are fat, therefore you are a glutton and a sloth". "You don't exercise enough". Let me tell you, I love walking, biking, moving around. I get a big smile on my face when I do those things. But when you are so overweight, your body kind of cannot take it anymore. If I went for a walk during the weekend, I got very painful joints as a result. If walking hurts, you don't want to do it anymore. And indeed you end up like a couch potato. But to me, I became a couch potato because I was so fat.
Other stereotype is that because you are fat, you must be a person with no self control, no will. But I managed to get done a lot of things in my life on pure willpower. To carry through a PhD, for example, requires dedication, persistence, patience, long-term sight and yes, loads of willpower. I don't think there is anything wrong with my willpower, my self-control. That said, if I try one cookie, I must have them all. But I believe everybody has a weakness on the food department. I can be chocolate, bread, ice-cream, chips, but most people cannot stop themselves with some indulgence food of some sort. My solution to it is never try to delude myself on thinking "I'll just eat one". I know what will happen. I just don't try just the one, that's it. Don't touch them. Isn't that self control?
What is scary of the stereotypes is the underlying presumption: you must be fat because you chose it so. Not true.
I begged my doctors to try to find out what had changed in my body for me to become so fat. They told me it was the aging process. That the metabolism had slowed down and that there was nothing I could do about it. Do you have any idea how discouraging that is? "The only solution", they said, "is to eat smaller portions and move more". Well, that requires monstrous amounts of willpower. To be hungry trying to perform harder, that is really tough. And I had tried it and tried it to no avail for a long time.

First week on the LCHF diet

So I searched the Internet for the LCHF diet. I found the site of Andreas Eenfeldt. I read the dietary guidelines: cut the carbs (no sugar, no fake sugar, no pasta, bread, rice, potatoes). No starch. Eat meats in moderate amounts (no huge steaks), eat veggies like cauliflower and broccoli, salad, tomatoes, etc. Eat eggs. Add fat to food to make it "filling". What fat? Butter, cream, animal fat and the usual: olive oil, avocado, etc. Don't touch margarine. I decided to give it a try. It became "my new year's resolution".
The first advice is to clean the pantry. I took all the grains, pasta and bread out. The pantry became virtually empty. I was amazed at the amount of sugar and carbs we ate on a regular basis.
The first days were tough. I had sugar withdrawal symptoms. I spent the whole day thinking of chocolate, cookies, ice-cream. I curbed it eating nuts and chewing sugar-free chewing gum. Not the best, but I was desperate. On the third day I became very ill. Nothing related to the diet, it was a cold I had caught before. I decided to keep on going. I harassed my poor boyfriend (that is joining me on the diet, sweet guy) to make some food for me. We were still fat-phobic and a stir-fry of veggies is actually not very filling. I had huge pieces of salmon. I had fever also, and was sweating a lot. I was constantly thirsty. I went to the toilet a lot.
After 10 days on the diet, and a week being ill, I finally was healthy again. I weighted myself. I could not believe my eyes when the scale showed that I had gone 5 (yes, five!) kilos down. Mostly water I grant you, but it is a LOT OF WEIGHT. I started crying. I weighted myself many times, I just could not believe it. I was on 75 kg then.
That weekend I went to a party. People commented on my weight loss. I looked slimmer. I was radiantly happy. Also proved that it was not my imagination...
I don't know what made it so staggering. I have many theories. I suppose the truth is in between. I think I had a huge inflammation, getting bloated beyond belief when I started. And being ill "helped" as the body had to spend a lot of energy getting well again. And the water loss was probably even stronger, as I was sweating so much.
I am avidly reading all I can find about sugar and carbs (I bought a book by Dr. R. Ludwig that looks promising). Also I want to know why the carbs where making me so bloated.
Wish me luck.

Lactose intolerance, weight gain, and the dietary advice I got from the dietist

I figured out I had lactose intolerance. But I wanted to get a doctor confirmation of my suspicions, and also I needed the doctor's opinion because I kept on being sick once in a while without knowing why. I had removed lactose from my diet, I barely ate out, but kept on being sick on a regular basis.
The doctor sent me to a specialist. The specialist sent me to be tested. It was positive. In spite of my insistence that I already was following a lactose-free diet, the specialist sent me to get a dietist advice.
The dietist looked at a food journal I kept for her (all this took forever, I had enough time to record my diet for 2 weeks before visiting the dietist) and literally told me: "I have almost nothing to tell you". According to her I ate a balanced diet. If anything, I ate too little fat (following the usual dietary advice I had become fat-phobic) and too much fiber (?!). I was to cut down the fiber a little, eat more fat, and take a vitamin and mineral supplement. On the fact that I still was getting sick once in a while, and on me being overweight, she told me: "you could be suffering from chronic stress". The solutions: cut down the portions, exercise more. In other words: "you are a glutton and a sloth".
I wasn't very convinced. Cutting down portions meant I was hungry a lot of the time. My portions did not look like a lot to me.
"Exercise more" sounds easier that it is: you need to find the time, the energy to put hours to it. Even "take a walk of 30 minutes every day" is tough. When? At work, when such a thing is frowned upon? After work, when it is dark and cold, and I was hungry? Go to the gym after work, exhausted and hungry after a whole day? Before going to work? The closest gym does not have classes until 10 in the morning, and this means to go to work very late (more frowns). It just didn't work. I tried for a while.
What it did work was  that I was thinking outside the box a little more. It was clear I was headed to desease if I didn't do a lifestyle intervention. Could I have chronic stress? It felt off. I am a nervous person, but also I exteriorise my feelings easily. I don't bottle up. But I didn't write it off as "nonsense". And I was on the hunt for a diet that worked.

Lactose intolerance, weight gain and the LCHF diet

 I am lactose intolerant and I live in The Netherlands. It is tough.
The Netherlands produces milk and cheese in overabundance. For some reason this abundance results in dairy products creeping on everything. Bread has milk powder. Sausages have lactose. Ham, pate, already spiced meats, margarine to spread, tapenade, hummus.... All typical cafeteria products are contaminated by some form of milk product. I have to bring my own lunch to work every day.
Before I discovered that I had lactose intolerance life was hell. I had bouts of "spontaneous sickness" and diarrhea.  And my weight piled up at top speed.
Well, I recently went to a specialist (after fighting for a while to get a lactose intolerance test) and told him this. That my weight gain had accelerated after I got lactose intolerance. He dismissed my claim. He told me that there was no connection between weight gain and lactose intolerance (something short of telling me "nonsense").
My claim is not isolated. The Patrick Holford GL diet book is full of these. I am sure a lot of lactose intolerant people suffer from being overweight.
I still claim that it is true though. I have my own theories, as the doctors are not very helpful. What happens when you have lactose intolerance? You get bloated, get a lot of gas, diarrhea. But most importantly, your intestine becomes irritated, inflamed. Your digestive system is not working at its best, and then the nutrient absorption gets reduced. Following from this, one might expect weight loss, not weight gain. This is the usual conclusion and medical reasoning. I guess it happens to some people. But this picture is incomplete: this picture assumes that the body would do nothing! What happens when you underfeed? Your body enters what is called "starvation mode". And what happens in this mode? Your body tries to keep the energy at all costs (the body heat expenditure goes down like 20-30%), the pancreas releases more insulin than necessary for the carbohydrate intake (you become insulin resistant on the long term). Insulin cleans up the sugar in the blood (you crave sugary foods then) and also prevents your fat storage from being burned. This promotes weight gain and very little (if any) weight loss. You slowly gain weight, even if you are very careful with the calories you ingest. Even worse, the feeling of this starvation mode is just terrible: your whole body resists to move, to spend energy. You feel tired all the time, have no energy, and due to the over-insulin you are hungry all the time for sweets. We get a couch-potato recipe.
If you consume inflaming foods (sugar), even if they are not lactose, this condition (the irritated digestive system) persist and worsens. So you have an irritated, inflamed digestive system due to sugar. What the body does when this happens is that it pumps up your insulin levels and all this sugar goes to the fat storage right away and you very soon are hungry for more sugar.  This turns in a vicious circle and you gain weight. Even if you have the will to resist eating the cookies or chocolate, eating pasta for a normal meal would be enough to promote weight gain.
When I felt bad due to an irritated digestive system, I took coca-cola. Why? It felt good and I had this idea that it was good for your digestion (as a child I was given coca-cola for digestive trouble). The sugar in coca-cola irritated me further and fuelled the insulin vicious circle. I had no clue that I was damaging myself.
What does this have to do with the LCHF diet? I actually don't know so much of the reversibility of this process. But what I can tell is that on the short term effects of it. Eliminating carbs from the diet removed sugar and all those starchy foods. The very short time effect was removal of one of the irritating things to the digestive system. But also it reduced greatly the amounts of insulin released. Great amounts of insulin in the body are connected with loads of problems eventually leading to metabolic syndrome. So, keeping the insulin under check promotes not only weight loss but also an overall well-being. The fat part also plays a role too: the fat carries some vitamins (among them, the vitamin D) and also those famous omega-3 fatty acids. When I started the diet I had the most bizarre craving to eat salmon (I know, my body has expensive taste). Apparently, salmon has omega-3 in its fat, even the crappy supermarket salmon we get here. Omega-3 has an anti-inflammatory effect. Now I take omega-3 pills every day....
So, indeed I blame my lactose intolerance for my weight gain and overall state of unbalance.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Last year, in December,  I went to visit my friend Nina in Stockholm. I had a great time over there, in spite of being rather ill a few days. I could not pinpoint what was making me ill, but I blamed it on the lactose intolerance I suffer, and of course in the copious amounts of wine and drinks we consumed.
I had been already fat when I went there, and probably the trip, where I indulged myself a lot, made me even fatter. How much, I actually don't know. I had been so fat lately that I just couldn't face it anymore and stopped weighting myself. I had given up.
And when I say fat, I mean very fat. I am very short, 1.52 m (4 ft 11.8 in), and when I eventually collected the courage to weight myself, I was weighting a staggering 80 kg (176.4 lbs). By any standards, I had passed the "overweight" label into "obese". I am blessed with good health (so, far, touch wood and all that), and my metabolic markers were ok-ish (cholesterol was slightly high, but nothing outside the healthy window). I had begged the doctor to make such tests after getting so fat so fast. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I live in The Netherlands. Country of tulips, windmills and clogs. And also a country where the food is just terrible. At least for somebody like me. In spite of this, the dutchies are in a vast majority not very fat, and their "old people" live to enjoy their retirement period very much indeed (although this pretty picture is changing). I arrived to The Netherlands with a healthy weight (50 kg). And in 6 years I gained more than half of my initial body weight. The reason? The dutch diet.
The dutch diet consist on eating loads of bread and a little bowl of soup for lunch, then having a dinner consisting on meat, potatoes and some vegetable (like green beans). They are moderated at lunch, but I come from another culture, so eating 2 meager slices of bread and some soup is really too little for me. I was hungry on only those, so I was eating between 4-6 slices of bread, and a little treat for "dessert": a yogurt full of chocolate chips. My dinners would be very often bread again, as I was too exhausted to make proper food.
The dutch diet seems to work well for them, as I said. But for me it was a disaster. After only a few months, I had gained 2 kg. Those "innocent" few extra grams transformed into 5 kg, then 7, then 10. I started to become worried. To make things worse, I was getting periods of sickness (feeling bloated, gas, constipation followed by diarrhea) that I could not understand. I started dieting, and of course, exercising. The diet, was the "traditional diet advise": count your calories, eat fruit, remain wary of fat. I aimed to consume 1500 calories a day. I was constantly hungry (and angry). But I perhaps went down 1 - 2 kg, or remained stable. I just couldn't count my calories forever (and it didn't seem to work), and when in the middle of a PhD, exercising was a struggle, as I was putting many, many hours at the job. It didn't work.
By the end of 2 years in The Netherlands, I was oscillating between 10 and 12 kg overweight. And because the diet didn't seem to work I got discouraged (after all being hungry for nothing is just infuriating) so I abandoned myself to hedonic pleasures in the form of cookies, chocolate, etc. Big mistake. I gained another 5 kg, and was 17 kg overweight. Soon those became 20 kg. I went in the search for another solution. I had heard of the GI index, and the GI diets. I went to the bookstore and bought myself 2 books: one of GI index and diet, and another of Patrick Holford GL diet. They seemed to make sense. I followed the GL diet for a few months and went down 4 kg. Successful, but after that my weight was stuck there and the plateau did not move a millimeter. The GL diet was complicated, where I had to weight each food to get the right amounts of carbs and proteins. It was very difficult and often I was hungry. The holidays came, I took a few excesses, and the kilos came back.
By then I had worked out what was making me sick. I had lactose intolerance. I worked it out myself, because the dutch health system is one of the worse I've ever seen: the doctors tell you to go home and do nothing for you. They don't ask more questions to try to figure out what is making you sick. I suppose they are overwhelmed with the amounts of patients they have, but it is indeed a poor excuse.
After 20 kg, and so little success with the dieting, the kilos just piled up. They kept on creeping on me, and for all my efforts I was rewarded with a plateau of weight, almost never with losing weight. I kept on trying to keep calories at bay and exercise, but to no avail.
When I hit 27 kg overweight I just couldn't exercise anymore. What I mean is that I could not do any more aerobic classes, or run. I could just barely walk, and all my joints were in pain. I felt bloated, sluggish, tired all the time. When you feel like this you reach for comfort foods, sweet treats, I became a couch potato. Then I would feel guilty. I hated to see myself in pictures. I gained so many dress sizes that I was constantly shopping for more, and the shopping trips were a nightmare, I was so unhappy with my size. My waist size became larger than my leg size. I felt ashamed and ugly. I was the typical obese cliche.
Well, coming back to my Stockholm trip. Among many conversations (most of them silly), my friend told me about this "fat diet" that everyone was following. My friend was also trying to lose weight, but the comment came about that all the people she knew were talking about diets and that depressed her. I had no clue what was she talking about. Then she said: "this diet, called LCHF, for 'Low Carb High Fat'. My sister followed it with some success, and a friend of mine went down 6 kg in just one month following a strict version of it.". My eyes lighted up. I had not been able to go down 1 kg in a long time. I went home and looked on the Internet, googled "low carb high fat diet". The rest is history.