Retrospective #96: The Pregnant Bachelor’s Diet

Do you have a big, hard, high beer belly? Or have been told that you are “Pre-diabetic” or have “high cholesterol” or “elevated blood pressure”? And do you need to take a pill or a cocktail of pills for these conditions”? If yes, then this diet will work for you. By the way, when your doctor says you are “Pre-diabetic,” he is just following a misguided protocol that has become the “Standard of Practice” today. You are, essentially, already a Type 2.

What he should be telling you is that you are (i.e., have already become), to a lesser or greater (probably greater) degree, carbohydrate intolerant. That means that, through a progressive worsening over many years, you have developed Insulin Resistance. Your cells no longer quickly “take up” the circulating glucose from all the processed carbs that you have been eating on the ill-advised, medically-prescribed low-fat, thus high-carbohydrate, diet. As a consequence, you now have either impaired fasting glucose (IFG) or worse, impaired glucose tolerance (IGT).

Although your doctor is not likely to test for it, you also probably have high circulating insulin, which means you will have difficulty losing weight even on a “starvation” diet. Because of a high circulating level of insulin in your blood, you will be hungry all the time and likely will quickly gain back any weight you do manage to lose.

In addition, as you ate the diet you were told to eat, you probably will have also acquired elevated triglycerides, low HDL, “high (total and LDL) cholesterol,” and hypertension (high blood pressure). And omental adiposity or “truncal obesity” (the beer belly or “pregnant” look in middle-aged and older males) All these things are actually part of a common condition known as Metabolic Syndrome. I’ll bet your doctor has never told you that either.

In order to lose weight, you need to eliminate most of the carbs from your diet, especially the processed carbs. This will drop your insulin levels. When insulin levels drop enough, your body gets the message, through hormonal signaling, that your body fat is needed for energy, and it will burn its own fat reserves for fuel.

All carbs eventually digest into simple sugars (glucose, etc), and so, as long as glucose is available to burn, insulin will block those fat reserves from breaking down and being used. When insulin levels drop, you burn your fat. It’s a beautifully regulated system that maintains energy balance, so long as we allow it to work as designed.

But if we eat too many carbs to avoid those terrible saturated fats and dietary cholesterol, as we’ve all been told to do, then, for many of us who are pre-disposed and susceptible to this metabolic disregulation, the system breaks down. We get fat, “Pre-diabetic,” and develop high blood pressure and a disregulated lipid (cholesterol) profile.

Pre-diabetic is in quotes because the medical establishment is hopelessly behind in recognizing Type 2 diabetes. It is only in the last decade that it has recommended the routine use of the A1c test to obtain an estimated measure of your 24/7 blood sugar over about 3 months. And they set the standard for diagnosis at 6.5% for Type 2 diabetes, and 5.7% % for Pre-diabetes, but they set the goal for treatment to an A1c of 7.0%. Apparently, they don’t think they (or you) can do better than that – following their low-fat, high-carb eating plan.

Ralph DeFronzo, M.D., winner of the Banting Award and keynote speaker at the American Diabetes Association 2008 meeting in San Francisco, said, “In summary, individuals with IGT [impaired glucose tolerance] are maximally or near-maximally insulin resistant, they have lost 80% of their β-cell function. By both pathophysiological and clinical standpoints, these pre-diabetic individuals with IGT should be considered to have Type 2 diabetes.”

The Pregnant Bachelor Diet, for Pre-Diabetics or full-blown Type 2s, is simple:

·         Breakfast: 2 fried eggs, 2 strips of bacon and a cup of coffee with full cream and a non-nutritive sweetener.

·         Lunch: just protein and fat. NOT a salad. I like kippered herring, or sardines, or roast beef or ham slices.

·         Supper: a portion of protein and a serving of low-carb vegetables, tossed in butter or roasted in olive oil.

The point is: To get your doctor off your back, improve all your risk factors for heart disease, stroke, etc., and lose your Pregnant Bachelor’s Beer Belly, eat Very Low Carb. But don’t tell him how you did it. He’ll have a heart attack!

Retrospective #95: My Doctor Died Last Week – An Appreciation

My doctor died last week. [This is a 2013 Retrospective.] The cause was bad medical advice. An internist and cardiologist educated and trained in the traditional ways of medicine, he was taught to treat symptoms: High cholesterol? Prescribe a statin. It will lower LDL cholesterol and get the Total Cholesterol within the ACC/AHA guidelines. Unfortunately, it did not lower his risk for all-cause mortality. My doctor died of…intransigence.

I remember my doctor as someone who cared about me. When I first came to see him in 1991 (on my 50^th birthday!), I was morbidly obese and I had already been a diagnosed Type 2 diabetic for five years. My doctor first focused on improving my blood sugar control. He prescribed higher doses of the sulphonylurea (Micronase) I was on and then, when it became available in the U.S., added Metformin. When I was “maxed out” on both of those, he started me on Avandia. None of these drugs seemed to work, though. My diabetes got progressively worse. But then, it was expected to. The medical establishment still describes Type 2 diabetes as a “progressive disease.”

My doctor also really wanted me to lose weight. I remember when his Registered Dietician counseled me to eat a “balanced” diet, cut down on calories, and exercise for half-an-hour at least three times a week. She even gave me suggested meal plans and ideas for snacks when I couldn’t get to the next meal without a little “energy boost.” None of this worked for me either. They tried, though. He probably wrote in my chart that I was “non-compliant.”

Then, luckily for me, one day in late August 2002, when I walked into his office, he saw me and said, “Have I got a diet for you!” Turns out in early July he had read Gary Taubes’ New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story, “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie.” He tried the diet himself and lost 17 pounds! So, he suggested I try it too. It was a Very Low Carb program in which you eat just 20 grams of carbs a day. I did it for nine months and lost 60 pounds.

The very first day on this new diet, though, I got a “hypo,” a low blood sugar. I called the doctor and that week he progressively took me off all the medications I was on until I was just taking minimum doses of the SU (Micronase) and Metformin. A few years later, when I switched to the Bernstein Diet (designed for diabetics), I lost 110 pounds more and discontinued the Micronase (the SU). I still take the Metformin.

My doctor saved my life, but couldn’t do it for himself. After he showed me (and him) it could be done, he went back to a “balanced diet” and regained the weight he had lost and then some. When I continued to see him three times a year for many more years, he would always ask me, “How’d you do it?” I would answer, “I stopped eating carbs!” He would look at me and smile wryly, perhaps wistfully. I wondered if he was thinking, “How does he do it?

I wanted to say, “It’s easy, doc, once you get keto-adapted.” “You’re not hungry when you let your body feed on its own fat”. But he couldn’t do it. As a traditionally trained cardiologist, how could he eat a diet that is 75% fat, 20% protein and 5% carbs. He couldn’t eat all the saturated fat and cholesterol and add salt to his food too!

Of course, he ordered a lipid panel for me every time I saw him (and an EKG, which was always “normal”), and echo cardiograms and carotid tests once a year. He saw that on my Very Low Carb diet my HDL doubled and my triglycerides dropped by two-thirds. He saw that my A1cs and my C-Reactive Protein (inflammation) tests were stellar. But, despite the evidence of my much-improved health on the diet he recommended to me more than 10 years before, he was unable to bring himself to do it again. What more evidence did he need? Well, maybe he just couldn’t accept that his entire clinical practice had been “a big fat lie.” I mean, really, how could he do that?

Virtually the entire Western world is now vested in the “lipid hypothesis.” The USDA and HHS and Agribusiness and Big Pharma are all, metaphorically speaking, “in bed with each other” along with the big manufacturers of processed industrial foods. Can this ship ever be turned around? Will it ever be? It is so frustrating. Anyway, I am grateful to my doctor for saving my life, even if he couldn’t save his own.

Retrospective #94: “Eating Clean”

The phrase “eating clean” came to my attention in early 2013 when a Singapore-based social media blogger named “Carey” posted a link to one of my columns and, all of a sudden, I had hundreds of page views from Singapore. Carey is a leader of the hugely popular Lifestyle > Eat-Drink-Man-Woman Forum on the HardwareZone.com site.

Carey started the “[Fan Club] LCHF Lifestyle” with about 75 LCHF resources, mostly links to low-carb, Paleo, and Primal sites in the US.  I was delighted that two of my columns were included in his FAQ section: #51 “Dietary Cholesterol” and #25 “Understanding Your Lipid Profile.” It was on his site that I first saw the phrase “eating clean.”

While never succinctly defined, “eating clean” appears to be the manifesto of all those Singaporeans who subscribe to a LCHF Lifestyle. I like it because it is a positive concept. There is no cultural stigma as there would be if they were to consider eating a diet that is high in saturated fat and cholesterol. Never mind that the diet that most of us eat is almost all highly processed foods that have been damaged in manufacturing or preparation. Never mind that our diet, that is very high carb, high sugar, high grains, high fructose, high vegetable oils, that is making us sick!

The concept of “eating clean” is to rid ourselves of all those toxins that are part of the originally Standard American Diet (SAD), then Western, now Eastern diet. “Eating clean” occupies the high ground. It is about eating well – eating good, healthy whole foods without any snarky attributions to cave men or divisive associations with social causes, like saving the planet, that divide the population according to their political or other world views.

“Eating Clean” is also about personal liberty. We are all free to choose what and how we eat.  It is thus liberating and therefore uplifting. “Eating clean” is appealing because it is undefined. It is inclusive and has mainstream potential. That also means that it is open to interpretation, but that is okay with me so long as there is strong leadership and good guidance. In Singapore, “Carey” provides that. He is very patient but quick to respond to and correct his skeptics, often ending an edgy reply with “…hahah.” He has earned the affectionate sobriquet “uncle.”

I miss Kurt Harris, MD, creator of the Archevore Diet, a now defunct web site. See Retrospectives #18 and #19. Some of the things I liked about his site are these quotes: “I have had a lifelong interest in science and medicine as culture, and believe all claims to scientific authority should be subject to thoughtful skepticism.” “An Archevore is someone who eats based on essential principles, and also someone who hungers for essential principles. Take your pick.” “After hearing Gary Taubes on the radio, I had an epiphany and ever since I've been exploring the field of nutrition through the lenses of medicine and evolutionary biology. It is becoming clear now that many of the diseases afflicting humanity are not a natural part of the aging process, but may be side effects of technological and cultural changes in the way we eat and live that have occurred since the dawn of agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago, and especially in the past few hundred years.”“These changes seem to center largely on the sequential introduction of what I call Neolithic agents of disease - wheat, excess fructose and excess linoleic acid.”

Harris pretty well sums up the new paradigm for me. I have now appended Dr. Harris’s Neolithic Agents of Disease (NADs) to my own LCHF Lifestyle: a manifesto for the West – the Yin to the Singaporean “LCHF Lifestyle” Yang.

Most of “Carey’s” followers are ethnic Chinese, and most are young women. The young men seem to me to be as much interested in building muscle and meeting young women, as in losing fat. The Eat-Drink-Man-Woman Forum is part of a social network like our Facebook, and the “[Fan Club] LCHF Lifestyle” is a popular venue. Whether the social connection is a sub-text or a pretext doesn’t matter to me. It is another positive aspect of the LCHF Lifestyle -- “Eating clean” nexus. I think it’s “brilliant,” as the Brits say. And it clearly is working. Perhaps [writing in 2013] an entrepreneur who reads this blog will see an opportunity to do this here (in the West): a LCHF forum on Facebook.

Well, in the six years since I wrote this, LCHF has certainly blossomed on the internet and on Facebook groups in particular. Apparently, many people imagined in 2013 how popular this Way of Eating would become, in all its manifestations. The most popular, Andreas Eenfeldt’s dietdoctor.com, gets 350,000 page-views a day. WOW!

Retrospective #93: Is the Washington Post Biased?

This is not about political bias. It’s about Joe Yonan, who in 2013 (when I originally wrote #93) was the Washington Post’s food editor. In 2013 he had just “come out” with the announcement that he had become a vegetarian. How can he not be biased? And, I wondered, how long can he survive? Well, he’s still there, so I guess he read a trend!

National Public Radio also aired a piece on this on Weekend Edition on March 9, 2013, and in the text version asked this same question in a more provocative way, “Career Suicide or Lifesaver.” Once again, “proof of the pudding….”

The NPR piece points out that in 2013 the New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman was about to publish, “VB6,” subtitle “Eat Vegan before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health…for Good.” Is this then just a case of “copycat journalism”? Or is it a case of the #2 national print outlet trying to get the jump on the Old Grey Lady?

On the flip side, I take some encouragement from other developments, not least of which was my wife coming home recently to tell me excitedly about NPR’s weekend radio show, “The People’s Pharmacy,” hosted by Joe and Terry Graedon. They quoted Walter Willett, MD, PhD, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University’s School of Public Health “, saying “It’s Not About the Fat.” Willett, lead researcher on the hugely important Nurses’ Health Study, said on Harvard’s World Health News, “We have found virtually no relationship between the percentage of calories from fat and any important health outcomes.” He has also said that dietary fat is NOT a major determinant of body fat and plays virtually NO role in obesity. Is anybody listening to this man? For all his faults (and he has many), he is arguably the world’s most respected epidemiological nutritionist?

That same week the Graedons announced they would interview Jonny Bowden, PhD, and Stephen Sinatra, MD, about their 2012 book “The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won’t Prevent Heart Disease – And the Statin-Free Plan That Will.” Bowden also released in 2013 his new edition of “Living Low Carb.” Subtitle: “Controlled Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss.” I had recently read both and recommend them, respectively, to people who aren’t yet convinced of the saturated fat—cholesterol scam and those who want to learn about low-carb nutrition and low-carb diet options.

I understand, I think, “the hook” that vegetarianism and even veganism has for some people. “The hook” works when people realize that they are getting “sick” – a little overweight, elevated blood pressure, high cholesterol. They know that they need to do something about it, but they don’t want to do anything too radical or reject everything they have been told by their doctors. And their doctors can’t disavow everything they’ve been taught and have told their patients for 50 years. So instead, patients try a change that has lots of “feel good” benefits – help the planet, the environment (less bovine flatulence), the economy, and global health—by cutting consumption of meat and animal products. Taking this moral high ground is how Bittman’s publisher hopes to sell his book.

What their doctors don’t tell patients is that they are starting to get “sick” on the Standard American Diet, ironically abbreviated SAD, that they have been recommending to their patients for 50 years. And they don’t get it yet that eating a LOW-FAT diet, that is VERY high in carbohydrates, including processed foods like wheat flour, fructose in fruit, and Omega 6 vegetable oils, is what is making them sick. This is the unhealthy diet that our government(s) and “quasi-public,” public health establishments, and the entire “medical establishment” (associations like the AHA, that sound like they are independent, but were long ago co-opted by Big Ag and Big Pharma, espouse. If you doubt that, check out AHA’s funding sources and the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Board members. They’re riddled with corruption and revolving door appointees. And their influence on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is rife.

Personally, I would rather make a decision about what to eat based on my own personal health. Alright, call me selfish, but remember, Darwin: “Natural selection” and “Survival of the fittest.” Science rules for me in this matter, and I’m going by what’s been shown to be best for my own health. Besides, it’s hard for me to accept that bovine flatulence is responsible for 51% of the greenhouse gasses on the planet, rising ocean levels and global warming.

Type 2 Nutrition #486: Too depressing not to write about.

I have been haunted for the last few days by the memory of a luncheon my wife and I recently had at the home of friends. There were six of us, and we were told not to bring any food; the hostess would prepare everything. I knew her husband has been a long-term, non-obese type 2, but I wasn’t comfortable leaving the menu entirely up to her, so I decided at the last minute to make a new keto recipe I had seen the day before.

My sausage and cheese meatball appetizer is made with ground-up pork rinds instead of the usual bread filler. I used hot Italian (ground pork) sausage, grated Pecorino Romano cheese, and Epic BBQ pork rinds. I made and tasted them the night before and thought they were a bit dry, so I made a garlic aioli to serve with them.

The hostess reheated and graciously served my meatballs before lunch (with other zero-carb offerings), and it’s a good thing I ate more than my share. Lunch was what appeared to be instant rice and a chicken casserole covered in breadcrumbs. The side was fruit jello. Rolls and butter completed the offerings. Dessert was a (very good) store-bought cheesecake (brought by the other couple)! I had a little chicken casserole and dessert.

In table conversation the other male guest asked to know the time. It seems his doctor had called him the day before and said she wanted to see him as soon as possible. He had a 2:30 pm appointment. He said he didn’t know what the rush was all about. I asked him if he was diabetic. He nodded yes. “That makes 3 of us,” I said.

This nice man is in his early eighties and looks 9 months pregnant. He carries his “baby” high. He’s a poster boy for visceral adiposity. Both of these guys carry their fat inside. The difference is our host husband looks only 6 months pregnant…and he doesn’t have a “command” appointment to see his doctor that day!

Here’s the depressing part. The poster boy’s wife is a retired Registered Nurse. And our hostess spent her work life as an administrator in a retirement “village.” These women, and their hubbies, should know better than to eat the very foods that essentially caused their type 2 diabetes and now make it worse: carbohydrates!

But these conscientious couples are apparently unconscious of the dietary causes of type 2 diabetes and the dietary strategies for preventing progression. If you pay attention to what you eat, type 2 diabetes does not have to be “progressive.” Instead, they pay attention to what their doctors tell them. That’s a big mistake.

Doctors treat the symptoms of disease. When they diagnose a symptom, docs prescribe a medicine to treat it. Anti-diabetic meds help control high blood sugar by lowering it. Some meds force the pancreas to make more insulin to overcome Insulin Resistance. When the pancreas eventually fails from overuse, docs prescribe injected insulin, making the Insulin Resistance worse. These therapies only treat a symptom of type 2 diabetes. That is the current Standard of Medical Care. The doctor is just doing what he has been taught and paid to do. She would probably be censured by her medical association and Medicare if she did not treat the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes as she does. Note: she is not paid to treat, or understand, the cause of Type 2 diabetes.

Most folks rely on their doctor’s guidance.  Both the former nurse and her husband told us how wonderful the doctor is and how well she treats him. But she is only treating the symptom of this one disease, and type 2 diabetes is just one of a galaxy of diseases with the same symptoms: visceral adiposity, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia (characterized by high triglycerides and low HDL-C), type 2 diabetes, and a host of others.

In addition, people who have these disorders – symptoms, really, of Metabolic Syndrome – have double the susceptibility to heart disease (CVD and CAD), stroke, fatty liver disease, many types of cancer, and even macular degeneration. They are all the “diseases of modern civilization,” of vegetable oils and processed carbs and added sugars—in the words of Weston A. Price, all the “displacing foods of modern commerce.”

It’s so depressing. That is why I had to write about our recent luncheon experience. I had to get it off my chest. 

Retrospective #92: Why We Eat

Why do we eat?  The simple answer is: We eat because we’re hungry, but this begs the follow-up question, “Why are we hungry?” It also requires a few footnotes for the exceptions. For example, there are many occasions when we eat when we are not hungry, and other occasions when we overeat. We’ll examine the way we have come to eat the way we do: by habit, tradition and culture. Separately, I will answer the question, “Why are we hungry?”

Eating, according to Stephan Guyenet “Ancestral Nutrition and Health,” can be divided into homeostatic and non-homeostatic categories. Homeostatic eating is for hunger only, Guyenet explains, whereas non-homeostatic is all other eating, including eating for pleasure, emotion/stress, social, and ‘mealtime’ eating. I think most of us can readily relate to most of these non-homeostatic categories, if not all of them.

What characterizes these non-homeostatic categories, by definition, is that none of them is driven by hunger. If this sounds like I am repeating myself, I am. I want this point to sink in. Non-homeostatic eating is unnecessary eating.

Eating for pleasure is an indulgence, a pure luxury. Eating to relieve stress is an emotional outlet – a diversion, but it is not driven by hunger. It’s a way to allay anxiety in the way that smoking was and drinking is in such situations.

Social eating, as in hor d’oeuvres at cocktails or before a dinner party, is a custom of hosting and accepting the hospitality of a host. And eating three meals a day – breakfast, lunch and dinner – at prescribed times, regardless of whether or not we are hungry, is a vestigial tradition from a time when most of us lived a life of heavier exertions. Today, eating a “healthy breakfast” is also the result of marketing by cereal and fruit juice manufacturers.

Many cultures today still eat a very light breakfast, have their main meal (dinner) at mid-day, and a light supper at the end of the workday. In any case, even in these cases, eating “regular” meals at fixed times are examples of non-homeostatic eating. If you eat when you’re not hungry. I want you to stop and think about that for a moment.

So, I have now framed the question, and we can return to what we can do to understand, “Why are we hungry?” Unless we’re carb addicted sugar-burners who need a “sugar fix” every few hours when our blood sugar crashes, what impels us to eat? What makes us eat more than is required for leanness. Eating is a choice we make, and as such it is entirely within our control. We should be able to eat or not eat, as we decide. But, sadly, we know that that is frequently not the case today. Are we then unknowingly living on a glucose-fueled metabolism? Not glucose and fat? And are we living on glucose-for-fuel-only because we are eating a LOW-FAT (high-carbohydrate) DIET?

Then, with only homeostatic eating “on the plate” (LOL), we turn to the mechanism that regulates long-term energy balance and body-fat mass? The answer divides the world of eaters into two cohorts: those with normal fat metabolism and those who have developed a disregulated fat metabolism. Suffice it to say that almost everyone who is overweight or obese, or has the symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome, falls into the “disregulated” group.

For both groups the regulator of long-term energy balance is insulin. Those who fall into the disregulated group have become Insulin Resistant. Their cells that are supposed to open receptors to allow them to take up glucose have become resistant to insulin, so the pancreas makes more, and insulin levels rise in the blood. This higher level of insulin in the blood blocks access to our body’s natural fat stores for energy. So instead, they crave the only alternate sources of energy, DIETARY carbohydrates and fat. The result: WE ARE HUNGRY AND WE EAT.

So, what is the solution? How can anyone who is overweight or obese, and especially those who have Metabolic Syndrome or are pre-diabetic or are diagnosed Type 2s, get access to their own body fat stores for use as energy when the body is in need of it for “long-term energy balance”? Answer: Eat a Very Low Carb diet. Eat a diet that is high fat, (mostly saturated and monounsaturated), moderate protein, and VERY low carb. When you eat VERY Low Carb, your blood insulin levels drop and, for needed energy, your body’s fat stores break down and enter the bloodstream. Eating this way long-term guarantees “long-term energy balance” and homeostasis.

Retrospective #91: Very-Low-Carb Breakfasts (and a No-Carb Lunch)

Chances are you will reject these meal suggestions out-of-hand. Especially lunch. That’s okay. All I can do is “put it out there.” It’s your choice to accept it or not, right? But I gotta tell you: what I did, and what I am suggesting you do, really works. It worked for me, and I think it would work for you too. But you have to try it to find out.

If you eat as described here, as/when you adjust to it, here’s what will work for you: 1) You will not be hungry, either before or between meals – at breakfast, lunch or dinner; 2) you will lose weight, typically 1 to 2 pounds a week, depending on how much you have to lose; 3) you will lose abdominal weight – the central obesity that is so bad for your cardiovascular health; 4) you will “feel healthy,” have lots of energy, and an elevated mood; and 5) as you lose a lot of weight, any weight-related hypertension will improve; and 6) your lipid panel will greatly improve, specifically HDL will increase (mine doubled) and triglycerides will decrease (mine by two-thirds).

Do all these things seem like worthwhile and beneficial outcomes? If you’re not sure, ask your doctor – not about how you intend to achieve them, but about the outcomes 1 through 6 above. Collectively, when these outcomes are “out of whack,” they comprise what is known today as the Metabolic Syndrome (see Retrospective #9, for the parameters). It is a direct outcome of the Westernized diet that we have been eating for the last sixty years, also known as the Standard American Diet (SAD) that is still recommended by government and public health officials. It is also, SADLY, still advocated by most health associations and practicing physicians.

The breakfast I am suggesting you try is designed to provide healthy protein and fat, with minimum carbohydrates. I will provide a few examples. You can vary them, or eat the same one every day as I do, except on Sunday. On Sunday I make a brunch of veal or lamb kidneys with mushrooms and onions, cooked in coconut oil and Marsala. Each of these can be preceded or accompanied by coffee or tea, with heavy cream and stevia powder sweetener.

·         Two eggs (any way – I eat them fried in bacon fat) with two strips of bacon. Nothing else, except coffee/tea.

·         Three eggs, scrambled, with a little full cream and some shredded mozzarella cooked in. Good and gooey!

·         Three eggs, scrambled, with some smoked salmon “tidbits” mixed in. Great protein and Omega 3s!

·         Three eggs, scrambled, with bacalao (shredded dried salt cod), onions and sliced black olives. Yummy!

At present, we are eating the 2-egg breakfast, but occasionally we eat one of the three egg variations. They may appeal to you for several reasons: 1) they omit the bacon, since many people want to avoid “processed meat”; 2) the egg preparations are all delicious and full of flavors; 3) three egg yolks a day, for the choline content, is the recommendation of the Jaminets in “Perfect Health Diet”; 4) salmon and cod are both cold-water fishes with good Omega 3s, and cream and cheese and olives are all healthy fats. You can also add fresh or dried herbs if you like.

Do not be tempted to add bread of any kind, or any whole fruit or any fruit juice, or any “natural” sweetener (i.e., honey), or any cereal, hot or cold, or any milk (just full cream). You don’t need it, and this program WON’T WORK if you don’t follow it. So, don’t be a baby about it. Suck it up and just do it. Just try it for a while.

Then, when you have tried it for a while, and you realize how good you feel while eating this way, and how you are not hungry and you are losing weight, you might want to try “my no-carb lunch.” Okay, hold your nose. Here it is:

·         1 can of Brisling sardines in Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO), or water (avoid any packed in soy bean oil).

When I originally wrote this in 2013, I ate a can of sardines 6 days a week, 5 to 6 hours after breakfast. I was not hungry, but I wanted my body to stay in ketosis from the food I ate and the fat it burned, not from the breakdown of muscle. So, I ate protein (with fat) three times a day at regular 5 to 6-hour intervals, then fasted for 12 to 14 hours to give my body a chance to burn body fat while I fasted and slept 7 hours. That’s what those calories you ate and stored on your body years ago are there for! And so long as you eat this way, you will be rid of them forever.