Long time, no post. Here's what I've been up to.

I haven't written anything here in a long time.

One thing I have been up to is I recently started Maffetone fitness training. You can read about the Maffetone method on his website. Here are some links on his site that I recommend:

• Overtraining (PDF) - I felt I was suffering some of the earlier symptoms of overtraining. So far following his methods, I am actually getting more exercise each day but feeling less overtrained.
• Mediterranean Diet - I continue to eat a low carbohydrate, natural foods diet. I like his description of the Mediterranean Diet. My low carb diet is quite similar.
• Why do I follow a low carb diet? - This page offers a test to determine if a low carb diet is beneficial to you. I did not do this, but instead just dove into the paleo diet. But the result for me was the same. I feel better with less than 100 grams of carbs a day, and I feel best, extremely vibrant, energetic, happy and alive on less than 60 grams of carbs a day, even as little as 20 grams of carbs.
• Low heart-rate training - The part of the Maffetone Method I actually do
• Aerobic exercise - What it is and how it works

I continue to try to work my low carb, natural foods diet around The Man, who is adamantly opposed to it. He actually told me the other day that he is the exact opposite of me and that's why he can't eat the same foods as me. I thought about that, and he is correct. He is the opposite of me:

• I feel young, he feels old
• I am healthy, he is unhealthy
• My chronic aches and pains are gone, he takes pills and applies ice packs every single day for chronic pain
• I am happy and cheerful, he is depressive, moody and irritable
• My mind feels clear and focused, he complains of brain fog
• My health improves more and more, he has a cardiologist now
• I usually sleep well, he cannot sleep without psychiatric medications and even then he says he can't sleep
• My digestive system works great, he claims he has not had a normal bowel movement for as long as he can remember (it sounds like IBS to me)
• My skin looks pretty good and I feel healthy, he complains every day of chest pain or back pain or digestive problems or upset stomach

I am no longer going to try to convince him to eat the healthy foods I prefer. A grass-fed lamb chop is completely wasted money if I serve it to him. He honestly believes he can attain better health through a diet rich in refined and processed foods. The above are the results he has achieved vs the results I have achieved. More details of my own results:

• Lost 30lbs
• Uncontrollable hunger gone
• Sugar cravings gone
• Blood pressure went from 110/80 to 104/65
• Chronic pain in my feet (from hiking PCT) is gone
• Depression gone
• Personality issues greatly improved (I'm not flying off the rails for no reason anymore)
• Skin looks better (I've actually gotten compliments, it never was that bad, but it's better)
• Posture improved
• Physical strength improved
• Greater endurance
• I have an appreciation for organ meats and off-cuts. It's kinda fun.
• I can cook

Beef heart jerky is yummy!

Recently I made beef jerky from beef heart. Wow, is it good! It's the best jerky I've ever had. I marinate it in red wine vinegar with cayenne pepper, cumin, salt and pepper. I dehydrate it in my crappy Ronco dehydrator that works great despite being the most low-budge, low-tech dehydrator you can buy. Jerky isn't cooked. The heart is raw when I place it on the dehydrator racks. Mmm mmm good!

Here's the recipe:
marinate 3lbs heart as slices in:
- 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon cumin
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 teaspoons black pepper for at least twelve hours
Then dehydrate!

Recently, on recommendation from a random man I was talking to at Whole Foods, I went to Santa Cruz Market. Santa Cruz Market has been there as long as I can remember. I remember it from way back as a little girl. They still have the G & H Blue Chip Stamps sign on the side of the store. Do you remember blue chip stamps? That was a looong time ago. You got stamps with every purchase to put into a book. Once you had enough stamps, you could order something from a catalog. The more stamps the better the thing you could order.

Santa Cruz Market is now an ethnic grocery. Many of the items are in Spanish or bilingual, including the meats. I asked the butcher if they had heart. He didn't know what that was so I pointed to my own heart. Oh yeah, we have that! He sold me "Corazon de res" for $2.59 a pound. I pay $8 a pound when I buy the grass fed stuff on the Internet. I can't even find it anywhere else.

They had all kinds of meat there. Pork belly, pork liver, even goat. They probably had beef brains, but I didn't see any. I think Santa Cruz has become my meat market now. I know grassfed is better for you, but I can get organ meat and specialty meat. Grassfed meat is only available as chuck roast, ribeye and NY strips and ground, which I imagine is just the chuck, ribeye and NY steaks they couldn't sell, and it's minimum $7 a pound and up to $25 a pound. You have to buy CAFO meat if you want organs and any thing else.

I'm tiny and I've completed the PCT

Look how tiny I am.


This is me on top of Mt. Baden-Powell. I hiked 89 miles on the PCT Memorial Day weekend. Within those 89 miles were 20 miles I hadn't hiked before. With those 20 miles complete, I have officially walked every step of the trail.

My personal food pyramid

I modified a paleo food pyramid to reflect what I actually eat. I suppose the sweet potatoes are missing from the picture. I actually don't eat that much of nuts or fruit, either, but you get the idea. It really works to eat this way. I feel great, I've lost weight, my mental outlook is amazing, inflammation and pain left over from hiking the PCT is gone. I don't think I have ever felt as healthy as I do now. The key to it is the bottom layer of the pyramid. It's actually the most important.

Possible weight loss

Week 5 and week 7 (image is wrong)
Could it be possible that I've lost weight?

It's barely perceptible, but I think I've lost some weight in the last 2 weeks. I don't weigh myself so it is hard to be sure. The picture should say week 5, not 4.

On Wednesday, I ate breakfast but no lunch or dinner. I went to the jam session that evening. At the jam, we were told the story, by her husband, of the death of the lady in whose house we jam. The story was haunting and bittersweet. Many of us were in tears. I was certainly crying. It was sort of a magical night. I could not eat dinner after that. I woke up in the middle of the night still crying.

On Thursday, I ate breakfast and dinner.

On Friday, I was not hungry so I ate no breakfast. I ate dinner early and had some hors d'oeuvres at the new REI that opened later in the evening.

Basically I fasted for 24 hours over Wednesday night and about 22 hours over Thursday night. I think this helped for the small amount of weight loss. It was not very hard to go without eating those two times. I think I will try this again next Wednesday if I'm not hungry that day, or on some other day if The Man isn't going to be home for dinner. Apparently this kind of fasting actually improves health in many ways. I won't do it unless I'm not hungry. I hate starving myself.

$70 bucks and a new plan

$70 of food again. There's swiss chard, black kale, portabello mushrooms, two cartons of pastured eggs, a whole bunch of grass-fed beef, sausage, bacon, bleu cheese, coffee and a bunch of Trader Joe's products for The Man.

I got all this meat, eggs, veggies and junk food from the IV Food Coop and Trader Joe's. My new plan is to eat the meat and veggies I like and serve The Man the Trader Joe's junk food he likes. More meat for me and way cheaper overall, not to mention WAY cheaper than the farmer's market. Since we take turns cooking, this food ought to last possibly 1.5 - 2 weeks. There's still some left of the other $70 I purchased last time, too.

As far as this low carb diet thing is going, well, 6 weeks and no weight loss seems pretty unfair. So now I'm trying to eat only once a day when possible to see if that helps. It's nice to be able to go 24 hours without eating and not feel like I'm going to die. It's 12:30pm right now and the last time I ate anything (besides coffee this morning) was around 6:30 last night when I went to the opening of the new REI in Santa Barbara. They had hors d'oeuvre. I had some chicken skewers. I feel fine right now.

If I eat once a day, even if only a couple times a week, that will save a lot of money, too.


I think I'll go for a hike right now.

Seventy Bucks

This is $70 worth of food from the Farmer's Market. Eggs were $5 a dozen. Butter was $10 a pound! The cheapest meat was somewhere around $6 or $7 a pound. Be grateful you don't live in Santa Barbara. They charge more for everything here. It's like when you go to India and you pay tourist prices. When you live in Santa Barbara you pay rich people's prices.

Update

I guess what happened to me on Saturday was some kind of dehydration and electrolyte thing. I've since been taking potassium, magnesium and iodine supplements plus even eating salt poured into my hand. Along with lots of extra water, I'm starting to feel pretty good now. I was able to power-walk at lunch today without any weakness. I think I felt at about 95% of normal functioning. Normal being pre-low carb. Maybe I will do okay on my backpack trip later this month and my Ultimate hike in December.

I've never experienced anything like that before. I've become hyponatremic and dehydrated lots of times while hiking. It kind of comes with the territory when you live and hike in So Cal. But nothing like what happened on Saturday, the way it creeped up on me little by little during the week before, then blasted me on Saturday and took until Thursday to feel better.

I finally got a pair of Altra Lone Peak trail running shoes. I've been waiting a long time for them to design, build and sell these things. Sadly, they're actually too narrow for me. But they fit better than most running shoes so I didn't send them back. We'll see if I can hike in them or not this weekend. They were great on my power-walk today. A nice combination of minimalism and non-minimalism.

I think it's working

I think it is working. I think I am starting to lose some weight. Not only that, but suddenly I am starting to feel really strong. Like something vital is waking up inside of me. At the same time, I'm feeling so much more calm than I used to. Even if I don't lose any weight, it's obvious that this is much healthier.

My frozen shoulder is gone, too. Like instantly gone. I believe it left in the first week of this diet but it was just suddenly gone and I didn't notice. It only bothered me when I tried to reach behind my back or do similar kinds of motions. I can now scratch my back again. A friend of mine has frozen shoulder, too. I keep thinking I should tell her to try eating differently, but she's this tiny little lady who can barely eat anything at all, so she probably wouldn't try it.

I've started keeping a photo journal of my food. Many people do not believe us older women when we say it is hard to lose weight this way. The 20-30-something men all talk about how the pounds just melt off, 10 pounds a week or sometimes even more, and all assume we women are cheating on the diet or not doing something right. Even some of these doctors think so. They just don't understand. I will post photos eventually so I have something to point them to so they can see I'm not lying.

I guess I'm just not keto-adapted yet

I think I have figured out my problem from reading around the internet. I'm just not keto-adapted yet.

In order to burn your own body fat your body has to know how to burn fat for energy. My body is clearly struggling with this because I don't have quite as much energy doing physically active things and my pee smells like acetone. This is supposedly because of the excess ketones being eliminated.

The ketones are made from breaking down fat. If your body is efficient in using them, it doesn't eliminate them in your pee as much. So clearly I'm not efficient in this yet. And if your body is breaking down fat that is eaten you're not burning your own body fat, so you do have to have a calorie deficit in order to have your body burn up its own fat. Otherwise, it has no need to. So like anything, it's a balance of calories eaten vs calories used. Okay, so I will keep on keeping on. Hopefully I'll find a balance between starving and burning body fat. I do feel a little better almost every day.

Meanwhile, I went to the farmers market today and bought a bunch of veggies, eggs and meat. I got chicken thighs and legs with the skin on and some grass-fed beef. The eggs were supposedly pastured. We'll see when I break them open. So far even the organic and humane grocery store eggs have weak shells and pallid yolks. I think I spent about $65 in 10 minutes! The Man says he doesn't want to eat so much meat and is getting mad at me. I am not sure what to do. Maybe the chicken will make him less mad.

No weight loss on a low carb diet for me

I think I'm probably the only person in the world who doesn't lose any weight on a low carb diet. I lost a little the first week, but none since then. I don't have a scale. I'm going by how my clothes fit. They fit no differently. My stomach is still bloated and big. I'll probably be the first person who has to do a starvation low carb diet. And honestly, if it's that much trouble, what is the point? I'd rather eat way more veggies than all this meat. I'm going to keep trying, but if I can eat all the chocolate I want and stay this weight, I'd rather do that than eat bacon.

Symptoms I'm feeling on this diet

Here are the symptoms I'm experiencing on this low carb/high fat diet.

• Urine smells like acetone sometimes
• My stomach is getting flatter and my clothes are getting looser. I think I look the same though.
• I feel a little weak and out of breath sometimes
• Less hunger. A miraculous lifting of that old hiker hunger that wouldn't go away.

Last night's dinner was salmon poached in grapefruit juice and wine (didn't know what else to do with the grapefruit on the counter). After removing the fish, I reduced the juice until there was very little left, then added cream and egg yolks. It became a quite delicious sauce. I served the fish with delicata squash and swiss chard. I was going to also have rice or a sweet potato but it seemed like too much. Also our bird flew into the tree and we ended up eating this meal as leftovers after The Man finally got the bird down.

Feeling lost without my antagonist, my hunger

Sorry to keep posting on this. I'm sure it is the most boring topic.

Fifth day in a row. Basically a bowl of cream with some nuts for breakfast. No hunger all day. No lunch. No desire for lunch.

I was sitting outside in the afternoon sun waiting for a class to start. I have felt so strange these past few days. I suddenly realized why.

All my life my mind has been preoccupied with food because I'm always hungry. I think about what I'm going to eat next, where I'm going to find food if I go somewhere and get hungry, I pre-eat just in case I go somewhere without access to food. I also worry about food I've eaten. Did I eat too much? Will I get enough exercise to avoid getting fat? Suddenly I have no hunger. Suddenly I have nothing to think about.

I feel like an addict who has nothing to be addicted to anymore. It's shameful to admit, but I kind of feel lost.

Maybe The Man will come on board?

The Man asked me if I have lost weight. 6 weeks of running and tapering down to a low carb diet, I should have lost some. I don't have a scale. My clothes fit slightly looser lately and I don't see the love handles like I did, so it's obviously working. I told him it's miraculous how I'm not hungry during the day if I eat creamy food for breakfast. And I'm not hungry after last night's dinner so I will bring my breakfast to work and eat it later. He was a little grossed out when I told him I ate a half a can of coconut milk for breakfast a few days ago. He thinks it'll kill me. I sent him a link to a NY Times article. This one was called What if it has all been a big fat lie? He worries a lot about his cholesterol. He has arthritis all of a sudden. His back hurts all the time. He's not as thin as he once was. He takes a ton of supplements to try to ward off disease. Drinks tart cherry juice every day. He doesn't take well to proselytizing (who does) so we'll see if I can find help for him.

So far the low carb high fat thing is working

I ate the same high-fat breakfast as yesterday and found myself once again not hungry at lunch time.

I made hamburger patties for dinner but instead of making hamburger sandwiches from them, I sauteed mushrooms, onions and sweet potatoes in the grease and added a little wine and cream. It was delicious. I didn't even want to eat the entire pile of potatoes.

I didn't run today at lunch. Instead I walked to the food coop in Isla Vista because I saw online they have grass-fed beef. It was in the frozen aisle. Apparently there's a meat market in town that also has it. I will see if they have it unfrozen.

Hunger vanished today

I'm usually fairly hungry most of the time, especially since hiking the PCT. My main strategy to deal with hunger is to identify healthy low-calorie foods and then try to fill up my stomach with as much of it as I can so that I can go a long time without eating. This strategy doesn't actually work though. Of course, eating very little doesn't actually work, either. So that's been the closest I've been able to come to success so far.

Today for breakfast I had some creme fraiche, which is sort of a cultured cream. I mixed it 1/2 and 1/2 with my homemade yogurt. I put a few nuts on top. I have no idea the calories, but with about 1/4 cup of cream, it had to be a lot. Thing is, I didn't eat lunch. I wasn't hungry. I wasn't hungry the whole rest of the day. I even exercised during my whole lunch break.

I'm usually starved by lunch and I exercise in a starved state and then eat my lunch in a ravenous state. This was quite a change. It's odd to feel so calm about it.

I'm hungry now, though. We'll see what dinner has in store. Will I make dinner? Will The Man? Who knows.

Yummy dinner tonight

I made a really good dinner tonight. I cooked ahi tuna steaks in coconut oil. After the steaks were cooked I added a spoonful of crushed pineapple and a little packet of ginger spice I found in the fridge (we were out of fresh ginger) and some cream to the pan to create a sauce. On the side I served plantain fried in coconut oil. Our "salad" was a half avocado and a few cherry tomatoes with olive oil and vinegar. The Man was very enthusiastic about this dinner. I thought it came out pretty darn good. It's all part of my plan to convert us to eating an Archevore diet.

Can a high fat diet fix my lingering hiker hunger?

I have been running on my lunch breaks at work during the week. It's been good exercise. I think I may have lost a little weight. At least it seems like the luv handles are less unsightly. I usually run down to the lagoon, make two laps around the "island" then complete the loop around the lagoon. The other run I do is out to Patterson Ave. on the bike path. I take the dirt path next to the bike path. A few times now I've taken off my shoes and run barefoot because a large portion of the dirt path is really soft dirt that feels wonderful under your feet. A few times I've run barefoot on the beach, too, but the tar and the tide really puts a damper on the beach running.

The running has made me very hungry. I want to lose weight but when the hunger starts up it's like I'm on the PCT again and I feel very desperate. That hunger and the desperate feeling that comes with it was one thing I really did not like about the PCT.

I came across a video from a Swedish doctor advocating a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. He says it cures his patients of obesity and diabetes. He eats it himself. The dinners he eats didn't look really all that outlandish. I did a low carb diet one and lost a lot of weight. But I did it as a vegetarian, basically eating mountains of stir-fried veggies for breakfast and lunch and salad bar at Carl's Jr. for dinner. The Swedish doctor said eating his way would calm your hunger. I decided I would try it. Calming my hunger has been the biggest re-entry challenge after my PCT hikes.

I have not been perfect on eating this way, but today I noticed that the thought of eating one more high fat meal was quite unappealing. Yet I wasn't hungry anyway so it didn't matter. Hopefully this will work for me.