I was recently reminded of why I am writing what I am blogging about in this space….
First, let me preface what I’m about to share with learning that my mom had just been discharged from the hospital with a transient ischemic attack, aka TIA (mild stroke). And, after reading many of the posts on this blog, many experts here believe that stroke, among many other conditions and maladies are directly related to insulin resistance causing inflammation from the carbs we eat specific to each condition – in this case, her stroke.
Email to my mom upon her arrival home:
Yeah, no worries about the phone call being dropped as I was going on and on :-) Sorry.
Meanwhile, I just want you to keep in mind to not go big. In other words, take baby steps if you're going to make any changes in your diet.
Remember, the changes I made were gradual and over time from Oct. 2016! But with that said the first thing I eliminated, and you know this because you saw me do it, was to eliminate bread. I realize bread is a staple in most homes for virtually every meal but that's where I started. The next thing was that I eliminated any drinks that had any form of sweetener in them including juices and desserts of course.
(I also began to build a library of really great low carb cookbooks from which I could make virtually any food we loved with all kinds of substitutes to recreate the things we really liked. But with that said, that was in the beginning and it worked for a while until our weight stalled, and that's when we went to mostly keto/carnivore last summer.)
Weeks later, I excluded all omega-6 oils such as canola, soybean, sunflower, safflower, corn, grape seed, walnut, sesame, and all packaged foods such as cookies, crackers, desserts, margarine, microwave popcorn, and potato chips (my absolute favorite addiction), as well as pasta and rice.
You may ask, "but what do you do when you go out to eat?"
First of all, and this is really important to know and understand, is that all restaurants cook with pro-inflammatory omega-6 oils. Why? It's cheaper, and they have a long shelf life, but equally important the food industry has convinced them and you that these oils are healthier for you than the real fats found from animals. I don't know if you recall, but when McDonald's first opened their stores they cooked their French fries in beef tallow!
Second, we don't go out to eat very often, but when we do, we mostly order steak with a side of broccoli with a ramekin of real melted butter on the side. And if we're eating breakfast out, we will ask that our eggs be cooked in butter. Believe it or not, most restaurants are actually happy to accommodate our requests.
Just know that these omega-6 oils are pro-inflammatory which causes the arteries to send out cholesterol to repair the damage caused by the oxidation of these oils leading to inflammation. When cholesterol is sent out by the body to repair the damaged blood vessel walls the cholesterol acts as a Band-Aid, covering the injury (also caused by sugar crystals in the blood scraping the endothelial lining of the arteries) and builds up on the vessel wall. The cholesterol begins to create this "band aid" buildup caused by the pro-inflammatory omega-6 oils (and sugar) and as the damage and inflammation continues to build, the cholesterol “band aid” thickens and begins to narrow the blood vessel bringing on the beginning of arteriosclerosis. Sad to say, cholesterol in the diet (found largely in saturated animal fats and foods) has been wrongly accused of being the culprit behind heart disease but it is really the omega-6 pro-inflammatory fats & sugar that are behind our health problems (Shanahan, 2016 & Teicholz, 2014).
And like I said, although we are mostly carnivore, we cook with beef tallow, bacon fat, butter, ghee, and add fats to our food such as butter, avocado &/or olive oil, as well as eat full-fat cream, sour cream & cheese, avocados, olives and nuts, and will occasionally include above-ground green veg, and maybe a salad. We eat till we are full and satiated and do not count calories at all.
FYI, you are not going to recognize Richard as the effects have been dramatic with him! That's also because he includes a 24-hour fast every day!
Finally, I want to add that we have had remarkable results with our blood lipid panels to back up this way of eating. Believe it or not, both our triglyceride numbers are below 70, which is the number one indicator of a pending heart event (besides lipid ratios between HDL & triglycerides, and VLDL & total cholesterol). It wasn't always that way, as his doctor at one time wanted to put him on Crestor, a statin. But through diet he proved her wrong by eating this way. To say she was stunned would be an understatement as there is no drug that can make changes like these
One more thing:
To add to what I wrote regarding fuel for the body, this video explains metabolically and hormonally what happens every time you eat carbohydrates... And remember all carbohydrates are digested as sugar to be stored for fuel later in the body.
Teicholz, N. (2014). The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese belong in a Healthy Diet. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Shanahan, C. (2017). Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food. New York: Flatiron Books.
