Related posts:

1. From moderate-carb to low-carb
2. The Healthy Hobbit plan
3. Carbohydrates & depression 1

Yesterday I picked up my third box of produce from Glacier Valley Farm CSA.  When I got home & unpacked them, I decided to array them on my stove (best lighting) for a little photoshoot.  Above, you can see displayed:

From Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm, VanderWeele Farm:

• 10 carrots
• 10 red potatoes
• 5 yellow onions
• 1 celery root

From Outside (all certified organic):

• 2 Bosc pears
• kiwi
• celery
• lacinato kale
• green chard
• fennel

And also:

• a really big squash.  I don’t know whether it came from Alaska or from the Lower 48.

The squash, of course, goes to my friend Sylvia, because she still likes squash & still don’t.  Some of this other stuff — hmmmm…. what am I gonna do with celery root or a full fennel plant, having never cooked either before?  Lucky for me that this week’s issue of the newsletter that Glacier Valley Farm CSA sends out with its boxes, Glacier Grist #59, has some suggestions: I’ll use the celery root & some of the chard, kale, carrots, onions , & potato to make the seasonal soup (probably adding some bison or grassfed beef); & the quinoa salad with apples, pears, fennel, and walnuts suggests a great use for some of the fennel as well as the pear.  But tonight I’ll make my own adaptation of an oven potatoes with fennel recipe I found online.

I didn’t order a box for two weeks from now because first I need to play catch-up & use all the stuff I’ve got now.  In particular, I’m finding it hard to use the potatoes very quickly.  I love potatoes, but I have to be cautious about eating too much of them because they’re a starchy vegetable &, being insulin resistant, I need to moderate my carb intake.  But aren’t these potatoes beautiful?

Living in Alaska, it’s hard to be a complete locavore — that is, someone who eats only food that is grown or produced locally. Even this produce box is only partially local. But I’m glad to be able to be at least a partial locavore. I’m reducing my carbon footprint because trucking stuff in from the Valley costs a lot less fuel than shipping it up from the Lower 48; I’m supporting Alaska famers; & wow — such great food! Just $35 for the box.

Time to go cook.

Related posts:

1. A box of produce, & homemade sauerkraut
2. Local farmers, local food
3. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-12: Faux Palin, Prop 8, DADT, & fresh produce

Lucy Cuddy Hall on the UAA campus, one of a number of Glacier Valley Farm CSA's dropoff locations in Anchorage

Yesterday I picked up my second order of produce from Glacier Valley Farm CSA. CSA, again, stands for community supported agriculture; I wrote a long post about it when I picked up my first produce order a couple of weeks ago.  I didn’t take as many photos of it this time, but up there you can see it was a pretty good sampling of fresh yummy produce.

This week’s goodies included:

From Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm, VanderWeele Farm:

• Alaska-grown onions
• Alaskan-grown potatoes, a whole bunch of ‘em
• A big pile of Alaska-grown carrots, which are the best kind of carrots I’ve ever eaten.

This week 13 boxes were delivered by Glacier Valley Farm CSA to the Lucy Cuddy Hall pickup point.

From Outside (all certified organic)

• 3 Fancy Fuji apples
• 3 large navel oranges
• 2 bunches of Rainbow chard. I think one of these was supposed to be romaine lettuce, but that’s okay, I like chard well enough I won’t have problems eating it all.
• sunchokes. I don’t have a clue what to do with these, but I’m sure Google will have an answer.
• broccoli

And also:

• a really big squash.  I don’t know whether it came from Alaska or from the Lower 48.

I’ve never liked squash, so I took mine over to my friend Sylvia, who really loves it.  I like everything else.  Had one of those oranges in my lunch today.

GVFCSA includes stuff from the Lower 48 during the wintertime because, hey, it’s winter in Alaska so a lot of that stuff is out of season up here.  The Alaska-grown stuff they include in their produce boxes in the wintertime are storage veggies.  Thus, GVFCSA can claim to be the only year-round CSA in Alaska.  But there are some other really good CSAs in the Anchorage/Mat-Su area, too, including Arctic Organics, which is the oldest CSA in Alaska & serves about 150 families with its CSA program; and Spring Creek Farm, which belongs to Alaska Pacific University & began a CSA program in 2007.  They also have an Environmental Learning Center.  Like Glacier Valley Farm, these two farms are located in the Palmer area of the Mat-Su Valley.

If you live in another part of Alaska, you might be able to find another CSA through the Community Supported Agriculture page on the Last Frontier Locavores website (though I don’t know how up-to-date it is).  There’s a lot of them in the Fairbanks area! Also check out the website of the Alaska Community Agriculture Association. This is an organization of small Alaska farms which grow food crops for direct sale to the public, whose members are — per their mission statement — “committed to promoting, supporting, and working towards sustainable and regional local food systems. We want to encourage agricultural practices that benefit our environment, our communities, and our customers.” They’ve got a good page of links to CSAs, farmers’ markets, & other community agriculture resources.

My first order of produce from Glacier Valley Farm CSA included a humongous Alaska-grown cabbage.  Somehow I didn’t get a photo of it when it was still whole, but take my word for it: it was big & beautiful.

I used it last week to make sauerkraut.  I also had some red cabbage that I’d bought at the Natural Pantry, my usual grocery store.

Making sauerkraut is easy, but it can take awhile. Took a long time to chop all that cabbage up, mixed in a bit of salt & caraway seed, then kinda pound it down to bring out the brine. (For lack of anything better, I used my metal Kaladi Brothers car cup: worked great.)

Here’s my sauerkraut the night I made it.

There’s no water added other than about four or five tablespoons of lactic-acid rich “water” from some fruit kimchi my ex-partner Ptery (then named Rozz) made three years ago, that’s still in the fridge (& still good!). All the rest of the fluid is simply the brine from the cabbage itself, which I guess the salt helps to draw out. That kimchi fluid had the stuff to begin the process of fermentation that makes cabbage, salt, & good guy bacteria into really tasty sauerkraut.

I took a bunch of other pictures of the sauerkraut that night because macros of it made some really nice abstract sauerkraut art.

Here’s the same batch of sauerkraut two days later. See all those bubbles? Fermenting nicely.

Fermentation had also caused the cabbage to rise up in the jar (an Italian-made jar with a lid that provides a hermetic seal).

You might also notice how much more purple the lower region of the sauerkraut is than the upper region. That’s because when I first cut up the cabbage, I didn’t think all of it would fit, so I kept about a third of the light green Alaska-grown cabbage out. Then looked like it’d fit after all, so I put in the rest of the light cabbage.

I first tried out some of my cabbage last Friday while I was watching “Caprica” (hence my Daily Tweets post that day, “Caprica w/ sauerkraut”). That was about three days after it was made, & it was pretty good! But sauerkraut is even better after you’ve let it age a bit. Here’s what it looked like tonight, when I had a small bowlful with my dinner. See how the dark purple pigments from the “red” cabbage have mixed all up to make my sauerkraut pink?

Yummy good. And good for you too. Sauerkraut has tons of Vitamin C, & the fermentation process means there’s also lots of good guy bacteria to keep your internal flora all nice & happy.

Please enjoy my Sauerkraut Slide Show:

Related posts:

1. Partial locavore
2. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-27: Community supported agriculture
3. Local farmers, local food

In the wake of my mother’s death in late 2005 from complications of diabetes, I completely overhauled my diet in early 2006. My growing consciousness food extended not only to what kind of food I was eating, but also how food is produced and marketed — & interestingly enough, turns out that there’s a lot of overlap between crap food that leads to chronic lifestyle diseases like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc. & crap ways of producing foods — for example, the megaindustrialization of food production that has led to the Standard American Diet (SAD indeed) & the preponderance of vending machines, fast foods, & the carbs in a box that fill out our grocery store shelves.

To my mind, the industrialization of the food system is not only just as antidemocratic as the rest of the corporate way of doing things, but is unhealthy to boot. So thank goodness for the farms of the Mat-Su Valley, whose in recent years have been bringing fresh, Alaska-grown produce into Anchorage grocery stores and farmer’s markets. What’s more, now there’s a Mat-Su based community supported agriculture program that weekly (except the first week of each month) delivers boxes of fresh Mat-Su produce to Anchorage subscribers (as well as subscribers in Eagle River, the Mat-Su, Girdwood, & Homer).

I learned about Glacier Valley Farm CSA a couple of weeks ago, & immediately made my first order. Yesterday I went to pick it up.

What’s community supported agriculture?  Glacier Valley Farm CSA’s website explains it very well:

A Community Supported Agriculture program is a community of people who pledge support to a farm operation so that the community feels a sense of ownership of and responsibility for the farm. The growers and consumers support each other and share the risks and benefits of food production. Subscribers to the CSA program pledge some amount in advance to cover some of the anticipated costs of the farm’s operation. In return, they receive shares in the farm’s bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from connecting with the land and participating directly in food production. Members also share in the risks of farming, including poor harvests due to unfavorable weather or pests. By selling directly to community members rather than selling their produce wholesale, the growers receive better prices for their crops and gain financial security, because they have a guaranteed market for their vegetables.

Glacier Valley Farm CSA is operated by Arthur Keyes of Glacier Valley Farm in Palmer — who also started the South Anchorage Farmer’s Market in 2006 with his father-in-law Ben VanderWeele — and Alison Arians, a farmer’s market customer who now runs the CSA’s website (as well as the South Anchorage Farmer’s Market website) and writes the CSA’s weekly newsletter.  She’s also has a blog, Alison’s Lunch, about cooking & eating local food, & is the author of the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Cookbook, which one can buy at the CSA website.  Or, I learned last Saturday, from my favorite writing venue, Side Street Espresso, which gets its bread — good stuff! — from the Rise & Shine Bakery owned by Alison & her husband Dan.  GVFCSA fills its boxes with produce not only from Glacier Valley Farm, but also from other Mat-Su farms including VanderWeele Farms, Three Bears Farm, Stockwell Farms, Bush’s Bunches, Lewis Family Farm, and (next summer) Kenley’s Alaskan Vegetables.  During the winter, when the Mat-Su is under snow, local Alaska produce is mainly of storage vegetables like potatoes, beets, carrots, & cabbage, with greens & other fresh veggies & fruits shipped up from organic producers in the Lower 48.

I was very glad when I checked the CSA’s website to learn that one of its pick-up locations was Lucy Cuddy Hall on the UAA campus — just across campus from where I work.  So a couple of weeks ago I placed my first order, & yesterday walked across campus to pick it up.

As I arrived, three other women were had just finished transferring their produce from boxes to their own bags:

Here’s what my box looked like when I opened it:

The lettuce &  arugula were hiding some of the other goodies in the box, so I lifted them out of the way to get another photo:

I transferred the whole works to my pack, using a plastic bag as an inner liner.

Glacier Valley Farm CSA resuses the boxes, so before I left Cuddy Hall I did as as people before me had done — broke down my box to make it easier for the CSA to pick them up.  There were still a number of boxes that hadn’t yet been picked up.  I counted a total of 13 boxes, both broken down & still full.  It’s possible that some people had taken the full boxes, to be returned later — but basically looks like about 13 people in the UAA community (faculty/staff/students) or who live/work in the university area are getting fine quality produce through community supported agriculture.  Glacier Valley Farm CSA has another 18 or so  pick-up locations for its produce in Anchorage, Eagle River, Girdwood, the Mat-Su, & the Kenai (in Homer).

I take the bus to & from work, so it was important to me that my boxload of produce be something I could carry. No problem! — though I got quite a bit sweatier humping it on my back across campus to my office (since I still had another hour at hour at work).  Not so bad going home — the cold outside more than took care of the heat I generated from carrying it.  Good exercise, I reckon.  Once I got home with it, I put my pack on the scale & found I’d carried 25.2 pounds — of which probably about 22 pounds was the produce.

Here’s what was in my box:

From Glacier Valley Farm and VanderWeele Farm in the Mat-Su:

• 5 onions
• 10 potatoes
• 1 large head of cabbage
• 3 beets

From the Lower 48 (all certified organic):

• 3  Pink Lady apples
• 3 Cara Cara oranges
• 3 kiwi fruit
• 1 large head of  green butter lettuce
• 1 big bunch of  arugula
• 1 bunch of watermelon radishes
• 4 garnet yams
• 1 box of grape tomatoes

Not bad for $35 — & all of it of very high quality.   Here’s some of it after I unpacked it at home onto my kitchen counter.

Here’s a closer look at the radishes.  Big, plump, & gorgeous.  Not only that, but attached to them are those great radish greens.  It’s incredible to me that I used to just throw away radish green.  It wasn’t until three or four years ago that it occurred to me that, hey, might they not be edible too?  Well, of course they are! They can be used just like any other greens in salads, soups, etc.  It’s a good idea, though, to separate them early from the radishes themselves — they’ll keep a bit longer that way, but will get slimy & yucky pretty quickly if you store them with the radishes still attached.  (I also use carrot greens — not in salads, as their kind of ropy for that; but they go well in soups, as the heat makes them more tender.)

A closer look at the onions.  These were grown right here in Alaska.  Onions are a staple in my diet, so I’m very happy to have these.

The little plastic produce box of grape tomatoes from a organic farm in California were a nice surprise — they were an addition to what Glacier Valley told us would be in this order.

Here’s a couple of the Alaska-grown beets.

I’ve never been a big beet fan, but they’re so damn good for you (see what the World’s Healthiest Foods website has to say about them — which is a powerful motivator for me to learn to like them more), & I don’t actually hate them… so darned it I’m going to let them go to waste.  I decided to include some grated beet in a salad.

Here’s the salad I made last night, making use of several items from my order: butter lettuce & arugula, radishes, grated beet, the entirety of a small onion, & a few of the grape tomatoes.  I made enough for dinner last night & lunch today.  For last night’s salad I added in some canned tuna & a small handful of mixed nuts & seeds (sunflower & pumpkin seeds, almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts).  Today’s lunch has the mixed nuts & seeds, but the protein addition today was salmon.

Last night’s dessert: a kiwi fruit.  Mmmmm was it good — I didn’t realize I liked kiwi fruit so much!  Isn’t it nice they’re good for me too? — Issue #56 of the Glacier Grist (Glacier Valley Farm CSA’s weekly newsletter) informs me that kiwis “contain about as much potassium as bananas, and also contain 1.5 times the Daily Reference Intake for Vitamin C. It is also rich in Vitamins A and E. “

And then I couldn’t help myself, & also had one of the Pink Lady apples. Dessert for lunch today is one of the oranges.

What will I do with the rest of my order?  Well, I’ll want to use the lettuce & arugula pretty fast, so they don’t go bad before I eat ‘em — so more salad for the next couple of days.  I took two yams, two potatoes, & one of the beets over to my friend Sylvia last night, since she has a limited income & doesn’t often have opportunity to get good produce. The other two beets will go into salads, soups, whatever… I usually have to mix them with other stuff because I find them too sweet on their own.  (Kiwi fruit are sweet — why do I have no problem with them on their own?  Beats me.) I have to figure out how I’ll use the potatoes and yams — since overhauling my diet in early 2006, which included learning all about the glycemic index, I’ve tended to avoid starchy vegetables. But it shouldn’t be a big deal to just space out my consumption of them.  The head of cabbage — which for some reason I didn’t get a picture of — I think I’ll make into a jar of homemade sauerkraut.

Glacier Valley Farm CSA delivers every week except the first week of the month, which works out fine for me because it’ll probably take a couple of weeks for me to eat all this stuff anyway (along with the produce I still had in my fridge from my last trip to Natural Pantry).  But I only have to order anyway when I want to.  Since I (mostly) live alone, a box every other week will probably suit me pretty well.

I’ll be making another order tonight, which will be delivered February 10. Per GVFCSA, that order should include:

• From Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm & VanderWeele Farm: Alaskan red or yellow onions – Farmer’s Choice | Alaskan Red or Yukon potatoes-Farmer’s Choice | Alaskan Spaghetti squash or from Outside certified organic butternut | Alaskan carrots |
• From Outside: certified organic Fancy Fuji apples | certified organic large navel oranges | certified organic kumquats | certified organic romaine lettuce | certified organic Rainbow chard | certified organic sunchokes | certified organic broccoli | certified organic Butternut squash or Alaskan Spaghetti squash-Farmer’s Choice

Yum. Mat-Su carrots are the best.  I’m not as thrilled about the squash — I’ve never liked squash — but Sylvia likes it, so it’s all good.

Already, having eaten just two meals from my first produce box, I feel that same sense of fulfillment that I  get from farmer’s market food in the summertime.  It’s partly because Alaska-grown food is so good. As Arthur Keyes writes:

Alaskan agriculture is the pinnacle of quality and cleanliness. Alaskan carrots have three times the sugar content of the carrots that are being shipped up here, and you can taste the difference! Alaska’s water is pure and our soils are clean. We lack the vast majority of pests that our southern neighbors deal with on a regular basis.

But it’s also that it feels good to support local business & local farmers — contributing to their success, just as their food is contributing to mine.  It feels altogether different from buying & eating some kind of boxed food-like product manufactured by some megacorporation, or even getting from buying produce from Carrs or Fred Meyer or even the Natural Pantry, where I don’t have any real sense of connection with the people who grew it.  When you buy & eat local, you really are forming a connection and a sort of gift exchange with other people in your community, which is good for our health politically, economically, & spiritually too.

And I’ve gotta say that after last summer’s import of people from Wasilla to testify against equal rights in Anchorage, it’s awfully nice to enjoy & celebrate the real goodness & bounty that is native to the Mat-Su.

Thank you, farmers of Mat-Su.  You rock!

Related posts:

1. Partial locavore
2. A box of produce, & homemade sauerkraut
3. The Daily Tweets, 2010-02-24: Local produce is better than government by corporation

This one’s a quickie, just to say that I’m back on the fat loss track again.

Between February 18, 2008 & last August whensoever, I lost about 40 lbs.  (If you want exact: 41, but you should know that weight fluctuates naturally a lot within a day.)  But I was also low-carbing during much of that time, so some of that would’ve been water weight, which got added back again when I started eating more carbs again (thus restoring my glycogen stores, thus also the water that always attaches to glycogen).  I’m estimating then that over the winter I gained back in the area of 5 lbs. of fat, the rest water weight, for a net weight loss since last year of about 30 lbs.

As always, a better measure of fat loss than weight is girth.  Last year I had to buy new trousers because the old ones were too loose.  I also tightened my belt to the last notch.  Over the winter, I had to loosen my belt again.

But as of a few days ago, having gone to a somewhat loose version of a PSMF (protein-sparing modified fast) diet — “loose” in that I’m not being anal about making sure that my protein sources are the absolute leanest possible — I’m now back to the last notch of my belt.  Next steps, shortly into the future: a new belt, & maybe even some new trousers again.

As of this morning, weighed in at 177.0. (February 18, 2008: I was at about 210.0).

Guess today’s one of my “free meals” days though — doing a retirement lunch for one of my faculty members at Don Jose’s.  So sorry, I’m gonna have me one of them wonderful three-enchilada plates.  And a margarita.  Yum.

Related posts:

1. Weight loss chart 18 Feb – 12 Aug 2008
2. Rapid weight loss & the gall bladder
3. Down from Everest

Here it is all in one pretty little chart: my weight loss since February 18 this year (41 pounds scale weight to date). The color swatches mark off the diet regimes I was following during each period. Lotsa jaggies during the TKD & PSMF periods: that’s due to water weight fluctuations from carbs consumed during free meals. But an obvious & very pleasing downward trend.

TKD stands for Targeted Ketogenic Diet — a low-carb diet in which carbs are consumed around workouts. PSMF stands for Protein Sparing Modified Fast — a very low-carb, low-calorie diet designed for maximum loss of bodyfat while preserving (sparing) the body’s protein stores (i.e., muscle). The PSMF regime I follow is from Lyle McDonald’s The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook.

The span of time marked “TKD (Start Walking)” marks when I was following a TKD during the last couple of weeks of meeting the major goals of my workplace Start Walking program — because no way could I have sustained the levels of exercise I was doing on a PSMF!

Oh yeah… & the period of “smooth loss” at the beginning was because I wasn’t weight myself daily then — I started doing that on Apr. 7 after I got a decent scale. (Also didn’t weigh daily during the vacation because I was traveling.) Otherwise, weights were taken daily, so that fluctuations are much more apparent.

Related posts:

1. On the fat loss track again
2. Down from Everest
3. Adequate protein — & a protein-sparing crash diet

I dunnit. As of last night — with, as my grand finalé, a half-marathon row (actually three meters more than that 21,097 meters that make up a half-marathon) — I came to a total step equivalent of 1,710,673, thereby completing my virtual ascent & descent of Mt. Everest.

I’m knackered.

But also just a teensy bit proud of myself. Back in May, as a result of going on the protein-sparing modified fast (PSMF), I slowed down quite a bit as I became acclimated to a very low-carb diet — a style of diet that doesn’t support high intensity exercise. Then I went on a 12-day vacation to Seattle & Eugene, which for various reasons didn’t accommodate itself to a lot of exercise. (Sitting in a plane, train, car, or visiting relatives… etc.). Then, when I returned to Anchorage, I was pretty slow to get myself up & going again. When I finally updated my steps, on June 17, whoa — I found I’d fallen way behind. There’s my little competitive urges coming to the fore: why, I was nearly 233,000 steps behind my coworker Amy! So I started catching up. Since June 18, just three weeks ago, I’ve clocked in over 700,000 steps. (Or their equivalent.) (Don’t worry: I increased my calorie/carb intake too.)

And I’m glad to say Amy finished too, coming third in under the wire for UAA (eighth overall), with me dashing in just after her.

What next? Well, Start Walking 2008 still has 84 days to go, through September 30. So I’ll keep on walking (& rowing, dancing, lifting weights). But not quite at the pace I’ve been keeping the past three weeks (over 50,000 steps/day three of the past four days alone!). I need some recovery. And because fat loss & health are still top priorities for me, I’m ratcheting back to the PSMF-level eating as of today (low calorie, low carb).

I’ll also be populating this blog with more posts, including some written post-date, to kinda fill in the gaps since my last posts in May (based on stuff I’ve written in discussion lists, etc.). That’s probably more for my own sense of chronology than anything, since I don’t know if anyone even reads this blog, really, besides me. I haven’t been writing blogs mainly for two reasons: (1) I’ve been exercising so much I haven’t had a lot of time or energy to spare for the blog; & (2) I’ve been so busy shoveling new info into myself, in a process a teacher I had used to call “front-end loading,” about diet/nutrition, but writing about it in an intelligent way takes a more organized process, again requireing more time/energy than I’ve had to spare. So I figure that postdated posts will fill in gaps with things I’ve actually already written on the fly in discussion groups, & hopefully with new posts I can begin to integrate the info I’ve been learning, which has changed my thinking a lot about the stuff this blog is intended to be about.

I’ll also be cheering other Start Walking participants on. You can do it!

Meanwhile, congratulations to Amy! And congratulations to me!

Related posts:

1. Weight loss chart 18 Feb – 12 Aug 2008
2. Stamina
3. Start Walking 2008

When I decided to embark on it, I’d forgotten all about the relationship between rapid weight loss & gall bladder issues — in spite of having had some rather nasty gall bladder attacks 10 years ago after fairly rapid weight loss (due to loss of appetite from grief & stress about a personal situation). One of those attacks even resulted in my being taken to the emergency room, mostly because one of my coworkers thought it might be a heart attack. An ultrasound the following day found I had no gallstones (possibly I passed one) but my gall bladder was larger than usual.

In any case, I did a bit of research at the time, & opted against a gall bladder removal, for which I’m glad. But my doctor told me to eat “low fat” which seems to be the standard medical advice. Now I think that rather the opposite is true — that low-fat diets (at least the extreme ones) are at least part of what sets one up for gall bladder attacks. Turns out that one of the fundamental issues with gall bladder health is eating enough dietary fat so that your gall bladder empties.

The short version of what I’ve just researched in the last couple days: if you’re going on a rapid weight loss diet or will be undergoing gastric bypass surgery or some other bariatric surgery which will have the same effect, make sure that you are eating at least 10 grams of healthy dietary fats a day to reduce your risk of gall stones.

Now here’s the long version:

Turns out that there is a really really high percentage of gastric bypass patients who get gallstones or sludge in the gall bladder (which can also lead to gall bladder attacks). See, for example:

• Shiffman, et al. Gallstone formation after rapid weight loss: a prospective study in patients undergoing gastric bypass surgery for treatment of morbid obesity. Am J Gastroenterol. 1991 Aug;86(8):1000-5.

• Al-Jiffry, et al. Changes in gallbladder motility and gallstone formation following laparoscopic gastric banding for morbid obesity. Can J Gastroenterol. 2003 Mar;17(3):169-74.

From a little research, it seems one of the biggest contributor to gall bladder issues is low fat diets which prevent gall bladder emptying. In a blog post called “Oh the gall of it”, Mary Eades (wife of & coauthor with Michael Eades of the low-carb diet Protein Power), criticizing the laughable notice that low-fat diets prevent gall bladder disease, explains:

What makes the gall bladder empty? As any basic human physiology text will you, it’s fat entering the first portion of the small intestine. When saturated, monounsaturated, or even polyunsaturated fat reaches this area, its entry triggers the release of cholecystokinin (CCK) which is the hormone that causes the gall bladder to squeeze and squirt bile into the intestine to emulsify the fat.

This is what the gall bladder is supposed to do, for crying out loud; it’s its raison d’etre.

Basically, if you eat hardly any dietary fats, your gall bladder sits around doing nothing, & gets sludgy from bile that never gets do to its job & just sits there getting blechy. Inactive gall bladders are also more likely to form gallstones. Then, if you do eat a meal high in dietary fat, boom! gall bladder attack. All the g.b. attacks I had in 1998 were immediately after eating a high fat meal (Wendy’s burgers in one case, a crapload of M&Ms in another), after having lost a lot of weight during my aforementioned Official Grief & Dumbfoundedness Weight Loss Diet. The medical advice I got at the time was to eat a very low fat diet. Thank gods I learned differently later down the road.

Since the PSMF diet I’m following includes 10 grams daily of omega 3 fatty acids distributed among the meals throughout the day, as well as whatever amounts of fat come packaged with the protein foods I’m eating, I should be okay. Some of the studies at PubMed indicate the low calorie diets that include fat are successful at preventing gall bladder problems; but low fat (say, less than 10 g/day) dieters are much more likely to develop gallstones.

Another strike against ultra low-fat dieting.

Some of the studies showing this:

• Festi D, et al. Gallbladder motility and gallstone formation in obese patients following very low calorie diets. Use it (fat) to lose it (well). Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1998 Jun;22(6):592-600.

  In the obese during rapid weight loss from a very low calorie diet, a relatively high fat intake could prevent gallstone formation, probably by maintaining an adequate gallbladder emptying, which could counterbalance lithogenic mechanisms acting during weight loss.

  In this case, “relatively high fat intake” involved daily 12 grams of dietary fat (108 calories) on a 577 calorie diet during the first three months of the diet. By comparison, the people on the low-fat diet were eating 3 grams of fat (27 calories) on a 535.2 calorie diet for the first three months. Both groups had higher calorie diets for the second three months. 54.5% of the low fat dieters developed (nonsymptomatic) gallstones; none of the higher fat dieters did.

• Festi, et al. Review: low caloric intake and gall-bladder motor function. Ailment Pharmacol Ther 2000: 14 (Suppl. 2): 51—53.

  A threshold quantity of fat (10 g) has been documented to obtain efficient gall-bladder emptying…. Adequate fat content of the VLCD [very low calorie diet] may prevent gallstone formation, maintaining adequate motility and may be more economic and physiologically acceptable than administration of an pharmacalogical agent.

  This appears to be based on the same study as the prior document.

• Gebhard, et al. The role of gallbladder emptying in gallstone formation during diet-induced rapid weight loss. Hepatology. 1996 Sep;24(3):544-8.

  The findings suggest that gallstone risk during rapid weight loss may be reduced by maintenance of gallbladder emptying with a small amount of dietary fat. Ultimately, weight loss reduced bile cholesterol saturation and improved highdensity lipoprotein (HDL) levels.

  But it’s not foolproof. This study showed lower levels of gallstone formation for people on 30 g/day of fat than for 16 g/day of fat on liquid 900 cal/day diets, but a few people on each diet developed gallstones over 13 weeks on the diet.

• Vezina, et al. “Similarity in gallstone formation from 900 kcal/day diets containing 16 g vs 30 g of daily fat: evidence that fat restriction is not the main culprit of cholelithiasis during rapid weight reduction.” Dig Dis Sci. 1998 Mar;43(3):554-61.
  r />Substantial fat for rapid weight-reducing diets resulted in gallstone formation. Since experiments have shown that our higher fat diet, containing 10 g fat per meal, results in maximal gallbladder emptying, cholelithiasis from rapid weight loss may not be solely attributable to gallbladder stasis.

  So something else was also going on. Might it have to do also with pre-diet nutrition? I.e., maybe those who formed gallstones had low-fat diets prior to this diet… just speculating here. Mary Eades ties gall bladder disease squarely to insulin resistance, so maybe it has something to do with that.

Related posts:

1. Weight loss chart 18 Feb – 12 Aug 2008
2. On the fat loss track again
3. Adequate protein — & a protein-sparing crash diet

[F]lavor and nutritional value are not mutually exclusive. I prefer to think of them as absolutely reconcilable. And by using the principles of “gourmet nutrition” you can create meals that both taste great and are healthy, too.

To this end, a “gourmet nutrition” meal must conform to the following: ….

[criterion #7]
It must offer you carbs only if you “deserve” them.

You’ve probably read all about high carb vs. low carb dieting. In my opinion, this high vs. low carb debate is a little misunderstood. As the body handles carbs best when it’s in an exercised state, the best carb strategy is this: eat carbs only if you’ve earned them.

Have you exercised? If so, you’ve earned a higher carb meal. Have you exercised a lot? If so, you’ve earned even more carbs. However, keep this in mind; if you haven’t exercised, your carb intake should probably be lower. Therefore “gourmet nutrition” means having two categories of meals — higher carb meals (for when you’ve earned them) and lower carb meals (for when you haven’t).

— from “When Gourmet Meets Nutrition, Part 1″
at Precision Nutrition forums

This especially makes sense when you are insulin sensitive and/or diabetic, & is completely reconcilable with the way of eating prescribed by Richard Bernstein in Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution, which by its nature is very low carb.

It also accords with Lyle McDonald’s info about targeted ketogenic diets (TKD) for low-carbers who are involved in cardio & strength-training exercise: with TKD, you consume a modicum of carbs around exercise, but only around exercise, so that adaptations to ketosis are retained.

And of course people who are eating higher carb, non-ketogenic diets will be well-served by this advice too.

Related posts:

1. Carbohydrates & depression 1
2. From moderate-carb to low-carb
3. The Healthy Hobbit plan

First, he’s convinced me that “dieting by percentages” — that is, figuring out my nutrition based on macronutrient percentages — doesn’t really make a whole lotta sense (see “Dieting by Percentages, part 2″). Mainly because if I’m going only by the percentages of carbs, fats, & protein I’m eating, I can really screw up on how much protein I should really be eating. Too little protein is bad, too much protein is bad too. Basically, what I need (or anybody else needs) is adequate protein. I don’t think I was probably getting quite enough before I started doing any meal tracking; but I’ve also got to be careful that I’m not getting too much. So my protein intake should be defined more by my overall activity level than by its percentage of my diet — it should for the most part be a constant. Which is why the real changes are between low-carb/high-carb & hence also between high-fat/low-fat (or moderate levels of each). Since I’m going low-carb, that by definition means that I’m going to be eating, percentagewise, a “high-fat diet” (healthy fats, of course). Okay, now, doesn’t that go against the long-lived “fat is evil” propaganda that’s been going around the past three or so decades? And a fat lot of good its done for us too. (Literally. The dominance of the “low fat” mantra has correlated quite closely to the rise of the obesity epidemic that we hear so much about these days.)

Second, & more radically, McDonald has convinced me that it is possible to do crash dieting in a safe, healthy way. The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook: A Scientific Approach to Crash Dieting. I’ve already have this book in hand (or rather, computer), since it was available for purchase via electronic download at McDonald’s website. With all the reading about nutrition I’ve done over the past couple of years — this stuff makes sense. Basically, this diet is his version of a protein-sparing modified fast (PSMF) — a low calorie “crash” diet which avoids muscle wasting by providing those calories that are eaten mostly in the form of dietary protein, with the addition of essential fatty acids (omega 3s) & nonstarchy carbs. How exactly to do it depends on one’s body fat percentage — obese people with high body fat percentages (which I qualify as) can afford to use this diet for a longer period of time than people of middling body fat percentages or people who are fairly lean (e.g., bodybuilders on a pre-contest diet). (This accords with stuff that Tom Venuto has said: that people with high body fat percentages can afford much higher calorie deficits than people who are leaner, though Venuto overall would not recommend a PSMF diet.) McDonald’s got built in free meals, refeeds, & two to three-week diet breaks in order to prevent metabolic slowdown & boredom.

I think what I’m coming to is an understanding that:

(1) Yes, my overall changes in how I eat — which started with my dietary overhaul two years ago after my mother’s death — must by necessity be a permanent, lifestyles changes in how I eat. No way will I will ever go back to the vending machine diet I was on before). But —

(2) There is also a certain science to “dieting” that I can make use of — techniques, like this protein-sparing modified fasting “crash” diet, that of course are not sustainable over the long haul, that by their nature must be limited in duration & scope, but which can nonetheless be extremely helpful for the shorter term.

So, yeah. I’m gonna give a try to this over the next two or three weeks. Actually, someone with my body fat % can, according to McDonald, go for as long as 10 or 12 weeks on this diet before a two-week break from it (including two “free” meals per week during the diet itself), but I think it’s better to try it out for a shorter time first, especially since I’ll be traveling down to Seattle & Eugene for ten days at the end of the month & will need more flexibility about what I’m eating then.

One of the effects this will have on workouts is that because the PSMF diet is by its nature ketogenic, it cannot sustain too much cardio & definitely not high intensity intervals — because there won’t be enough glucose in my system to turbocharge my muscles for those kinds of workouts. So, Turbulence Training is on hold for the moment. What I can do is moderate straight cardio, & I can do traditional strength workouts.

So that’s basically the plan through about May 21 or 22. I fly down to Seattle on the evening of May 23, so on the 22nd or 23rd I’ll start increasing my caloric intake to more “maintenance” levels, chiefly by adding more healthy fats into my diet but also probably some low glycemic carbs.

I’m not actually fully on the PSMF diet yet, but approaching it — eating very few carbs, & lower amounts of fats. I do want to make use of the apples I’ve got at home so they don’t go bad. But after they’re eaten… well, we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve considered this pretty carefully, & will be watching myself carefully too to see how it goes. Please believe me that I will up my intake if anything seems to be going wrong. I expect by the nature of ketogenic diets that my energy levels will go down a bit as I transition from burning glucose to burning ketones, & also that I’ll initially have some hunger; but hunger pangs are reported to disappear in the absence of carbs, & my energy should improve after a few days too (except not to the point of sustaining high intensity workouts, which require the turbocharging provided by glucose).

Related posts:

1. Why You May Need To Eat More Protein by Dr. John M Berardi, CSCS
2. Weight loss chart 18 Feb – 12 Aug 2008
3. More on low-carb