Put myself on a real diet for 3 weeks — new thing for me as I have never done any kind of diet before.
Idea is to have a calorie deficit from 500 to 700 calories compared to what I normally eat — each day.
So I’m on the 11th day and there has been absolutely no change in my weight, despite having serious overall calorie reduction. Strange.
Perhaps the weight loss will appear suddenly and sharply, as in, say, losing 2 pounds from one day to the next. The body has its own mind.
Most nutritionists recommend that people over 60 increase the amount of protein in their diet, as the older have less ability to metabolize protein, so the same amount of protein means less is actually absorbed by the digestion of the body. As a consequence, to get adequate amounts those who are over 60 have to increase the amount of protein in their diet to actually utilize the same amount that their bodies metabolized when they were younger.
The only question is how much should be the increase? On the high end is the recommendation that those over 60 should have 1 gram of protein for each pound of weight. So someone over 60 at 150 pounds would need 150 grams of protein in their diet. This seems a bit excessive to me, but there is no way of knowing what the right amount for the increase should be.
But the risk, if you are not getting enough protein when older than 60, is that poor absorption would reduce this amount still further, and therefore possibly lead to serious muscle loss — muscle loss being a cardinal issue for people over 60.
The Keto diet does allow one to lose weight and to deal with Type 2 Diabetes, largely through the benefits of ketosis, but this diet has serious consequences relative to heart disease due to the high levels of saturated fat and so higher levels of cholesterol. And the amount of fat in the blood vessels gets to dangerous levels.
The other risk factor with Keto is that a diet with heavy meat consumption — they know — stimulates a growth hormone that is better left unstimulated in fully grown adults. The reason is that this hormone when stimulated, unfortunately, facilitates tumor growth. So one must keep in mind the equation animal protein equals higher growth hormone equals potential tumor growth.
So you will lose weight and deal with your diabetes with Keto, but you risk both heart disease and cancer.
But why even go down this hazardous road? You can instead get all the benefits from ketosis with intermittent fasting, but on a plant-based, whole-foods diet, you have no heart disease risk. And guess what, plant protein doesn’t stimulate the growth hormone, so no associated cancer risk either.
Therefore, relative to both heart disease and cancer, the latter diet with intermittent fasting is the healthier choice, not Keto madness.
Recipe for roasting baby potatoes in the oven:
Wash the potatoes with tap water.
Dry them on a cutting board.
In a large bowl, pour in liquid aminos (for some salt), balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and dollops of mustard.
Add almond flour to the mixture.
Cut the baby potatoes in half and place them in the bowl.
Tumble them around so that they are all saturated.
Sprinkle on garlic powder.
Sprinkle heavy doses of Dash Garlic and Herbs.
Place baby potatoes flat side down on parchment paper using a pizza pan.
While the baby potatoes are still wet, sprinkle on generous amounts of sesame seeds.
Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees.
Place potatoes in the oven and cook for 45 minutes – or until the skins are crispy (from the almond flour).
Eat the baby potatoes the way they are or with smears of Gotham Greens Vegan Pesto.
Note: there is significant nutrition in the skin of a potato, particularly iron, so that eating mashed potatoes where the skin is tossed out significantly reduces the potato’s nutritional value, as in approximately cutting it in half.
Potatoes are a rich source of fiber, iron, vitamin C, and B-6. Given their fiber content (which fiber passes through you but also feeds and promotes healthy gut bacteria) and low-fat content (so a volume of baby potatoes has comparatively few calories but makes you feel satiated), they are an excellent complex carbohydrate for losing weight.
The best food for weight loss has high fiber, high protein, and low fat. The fiber is good for weight loss because it passes through you undigested, but makes you feel satiated. The protein is good for weight loss because protein compounds tend to be much more complex than carbohydrate or fat compounds, and so the body has to spend more calories breaking down their more complex compounds. The low-fat aspect is the obvious one — fat has 9 calories per gram versus only 4 calories per gram for carbohydrates or protein, so foods that are low in fat tend also to be lower in calories.
Given these 3 characteristics of the best food for weight loss, what is the very best food for losing weight: BEANS. Beans are high fiber, high protein, and low fat. They are also the one food common to all 5 of the so-called Blue Zones.
Every meal I make looks identical. On top is a thick layer of leaf greens diced finely and sprinkled with real lemon juice. So what you see is this mound of green. Every dish the same. Because, from a nutritional point of view, those leafy greens are the all stars. They are in a different league than anything else. You do yourself a disservice not to include them in every meal…and in some quantity.
Like your life depended on it — because it does.
I consider the smoothie I make in a large Vita-Mix that lasts up to 3 days one of my most nutritious meals. That smoothie and a huge salad that also lasts days are the basic infrastructure of my overall diet, as they are both done virtually every week.
The ingredients that go into this smoothie have been added incrementally over the years so that now making one is quite a complex operation where I have to keep many things in store and ready to add. The same is true of the salad, but with the salad there is much more variability, as I like to eat at least a slightly different version each time. Here using different dressings helps that variability.
I think most people should do the same, that is, develop a complex and super nutritious smoothie as well as a complex and super nutritious salad, and make these two staples the mainstay of your diet.
Start using Cronometer.com to document your every meal and you will find out what your deficiencies are.
If you were using Cronometer and really understood what your nutritional profile looked like, chances are pretty good that it would turn up an iodine deficiency. I’ve been using Kelp as a way to address this issue. Do you know if you have an iodine deficiency, and if you do, what you would use to correct it?
Henry's Views 