Lactose intolerance?

by | Jan 28, 2013 | Fat Loss | 0 comments

Another comment I made over at fattoskinny forum about a post on lactose intolerance

 

maidmarians’ post:

I love cheese and it’s hard to resist, but dairy sort of wreaks havoc on my body…bloating and all.  There are soy and almond cheeses, are those carby?  I stay away from soy pretty much too.  What is a good substitute for dairy on FTS?

 

My comment:

Hi maidmarian,

Oh yes I’m a confirmed cheese lover as well and once upon a time I also had a problem with dairy but I found out the problem that I had with dairy was not so much the dairy itself but that it was pasteurized dairy products.

Since having switched entirely to raw dairy as in raw or untreated milk, home made yogurts made from the same milk and nonpasteurized cheeses, that problem was greatly reduced. In addition, I also sorted out my stomach bacteria by taking a good a quality probiotics and also topping out on stomach enzymes again by taking enzymes for the stomach. Neither of those are expensive and once you’ve repopulated your digestive system with those bacteria and enzymes that it needs, you shouldn’t find you have anymore problems. In addition, eating natural live fresh yogurt amongst other healthy probiotic food will help increase the population of those beneficial bacteria and at the same time discourage unhealthy bacteria from living in your intestinal system.

As a footnote to that, raw milk does contain all the enzymes we need to digest it. It’s really only the pasteurization and processing procedures that kill those off making it hard to digest for some people. One thing I have noticed from myself is that providing I continue to eat a reasonable proportion of raw dairy foods with all the enzymes in them, the occasional portion of tasty though pasteurized cheese doesn’t affect me anymore simply because my digestive tract now contains adequate quantities of the enzymes needed to assimilate lactose, galactose and of course calcium which is one of the reasons why we drink milk in the first place.

So the bottom line is I would suggest you at least try firstly putting your stomach bacteria and enzyme population in order and then once that is done switch to  raw milk products for a while just to see how you get on.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Lard

by | Jan 23, 2013 | Fat Loss | 0 comments

Below is a copy of the post at Jimmy Moore about lard that I have commented on

 

ajcf1995 said:

Where do you get healthy lard? All the lard I ever find at the store is made from ‘hydrogenated’ lard and lard. I really want to avoid foods with the word ‘hydrogenated’ anywhere on the container.

 

I replied:

Hi ajcf1995,

Lard definitely makes the best pastry. In fact I can’t think of many things that can be cooked in oil that don’t taste better when cooked in lard.

Anyway to answer your question, if you’ve got 10 lbs of pig fat trimmings that’s without bits of meat on them, otherwise it will go brown, you should get around about 5 or so pounds of lard at the end of the process.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Fibre and fat % for still being in fat burning mode..??

by | Jan 22, 2013 | Fat Loss, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Below is a copy of the post over at forum.lowcarber.org that I have commented on about fiber

 

aramaya said:

I was wondering how it works, if i increased My fibre intake i feel it would naturally decrease my fat and protein intake,so example if i ate breakfast of a flax mix with coconut and almond milk,then ate protein,fats and some veg fibres for dinner then possibley flax bread with butter as a snack,would this alter how my body was burning the fat,would it slow weight loss down???as the % will be different..what do you think?

 

My response:

Hi aramaya,

I have very little fiber in my diet and have no problems whatsoever with my digestive system. At the same time I am careful to make sure that I eat the type of foods that looks after my stomach bacteria and is helpful for my digestive enzymes as well. 

As amelia-b points out, we really don’t need as much fiber as many people think we do. In fact there’s been a lot of work over the last few years that has shown that fiber can be quite detrimental to the health of our digestive system simply because the fiber that we eat contained in the vegetables that we consume is largely undigestible and passes through the digestive tract virtually intact and at the same time it provides a very convenient breathing ground for harmful bacteria to multiply in our stomachs during its transit.

If you would like more information about that, visit the blog of Dr. Natasha. She has a wealth of information about how our stomachs really work but more importantly, has a whole list of problems that can be treated through adopting an even more radical low carb diet where the vegetables are more or less cut out completely.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Why can’t I get back on the wagon?

by | Jan 21, 2013 | Books, Fat Loss, Stalls and Plateaux, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Here is another post at forum.lowcarber.org where I have replied to regarding weight loss

 

MishaBelle said:

:: sigh::: I am so frustrated. I’ve been trying for two weeks to get back on the wagon and I just can’t seem to get it together. I’m a veteran low-carber. I’ve lost 30 lbs… twice. I know what to do, but I’m not getting that immediate feedback (e.g., the initial woosh), so I get frustrated, tweak something, or worse, cave and eat something I shouldn’t and I’m back in the same place.

Background: just turned 50, menopausal (no TOM since July) and while my weight hadn’t changed, gravity played a mean trick and everything kinda “fell” and I hate hate hate my shape more than ever.

Help. Seriously… help.

 

My reply:

Hi MishaBelle,

You actually need something bigger than the woosh to help you reach your goal and the thing I think you’ll find most effective is to actually have a good set of reasons why you want to get slim and fit again in the first place. I say again, because you’ve already lost 30 lbs twice as you say, so you know this diet can work for you. It’s more of a question of taking away all the things that sabotage your efforts and reinforcing all the things that will helps you succeed. Simply put, if you can find a powerful enough reason why then it doesn’t matter what life, the lack of feedback or hormones throw at you, you’ll have what you need to carry you through to the place you want to be.

Now whilst hormones may be partly responsible for allowing gravity to have its way, I would also ask you what else has changed over that same time period. Has your routine changed? Have you changed jobs? Have you for any for any other reason become less active? The reason I suggest you look at that is simple, in as much as everything that we are physically is held in place by our muscle structure and if there’s been a change in routine that has caused you to be less active or not to move in the same ways that you did before, the muscles that held everything in place will no longer be there and gravity will inevitably work its work in ways that we don’t really wanted to, so that’s just something to look at.

The other thing to consider is like many of us, you’re a veteran low carber and the problem with us veterans is that we tend to rely on our own understanding of things instead of relying or rather following what the books tell us we should be doing. As you say you get frustrated and tweak something, perhaps it might be simpler just to go back and follow your original successful plan to the latter without tweaking anything as that way you’ll have a firm base to work from and you’ll be going through something that is proven to have worked for so many people.

I noticed that you mention that you snack in the evening because you don’t want to fall asleep. There is no law against going to bed early and that maybe just what your body is asking you to do so rather than fighting it why not give in to it for a week or so  to see how much of a difference it will make. I would also second samissa and Kirsteen’s suggestions of going back to the books and certainly do, really do have a good look through Jimmy Moore’s information (I’ve got a lot of respect for that man).

The thing I want to leave you with the most is if you got a good enough, a powerful enough reason why you want to get fit and healthy again and that you can clearly articulate, first to yourself and anyone else who’s interested what that is, you’ll find just the simplicity of having that will give you the strength you need to carry you through to get the body you want.

Hope that helps,

Mark

ME and low carb, high fat

by | Jan 15, 2013 | Carbs, Fat Loss, How Your Body Works, Low carb diet | 0 comments

Here is a copy of the  post I have commented on over at forums.about.com about chronic fatigue syndrome

 

Olive24 Posted:

Hello, I have been on the low carb high fat diet for two months now. I have ME and was hoping the diet would help the condition. I read that you are supposed to have more energy . My symptoms have improved alot but i still have the fatigue.

Does anyone have any experience with having ME and going low carb? I would be grateful to hear your experiences, if you recovered or about any improvements in health, thankyou.

 

My Comment:

Hi Olive24,

ME can also be called CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) but it’s also known as CFIDS or Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome that showed quite a wide spread problem.  There are upwards of about a million people in North America who suffer from it, but probably more that that one now. There is quite a lot of research gone on for this which may be of interest to you. One of the conclusions that many of these researches have come to is that there is quite a connection to diet as a cause, or a certainly an aggravator of CFS. One of those is a yeast sensitivity that can also be a linked to wheat sensitivity as well as sensitivity to milk. There are a number of things you can do to help with CFS. You’ve already discovered one of the biggest things and that’s “start eating a proper diet” but it doesn’t actually end there as far as diet goes. There were some excellent studies done back in 2007 and again in 2010 which you can get the abstract for on PubMed. Basically they showed there is definitely a link between acute infection of the gastrointestinal tract that can lead to a manifestation at the time or even years later of chronic fatigue syndrome.

From my own experience  of having a number of, I used the term digestive problems, I found that one of the things that totally alleviated a lot of the problems I had and as a side effect gave me more energy, was sorting out, firstly, my stomach bacteria, which I did through the use of probiotics. Then also sorting out my intestinal enzymes which I did very simply by using enzyme supplements. The advantage of doing that, of course, is that it more or less resets your digestive tract and helps it to work at full efficiency, firstly by building up the level of good bacteria in your stomach and the level of enzymes in the rest of your digestive tract. At the same time, because of the good bacteria will then outnumber the bad bacteria; the bad bacterial will get pushed out.

Going back to the reports I mentioned earlier, as I have said, they are quite worthy and technical; fortunately, Dr. Mercola has produced a much more readable article.

So if you are looking for ways to improve not just your energy levels but your health in general, firstly, do consider, neatly taking probiotics and again I would encourage you to use good quality ones not just the generic types you can find in the drugstore and enzymes, again, quality is the name of the game there. They are a little bit expensive but think of the benefits you’re going to get from them and do please, take time to read those articles from Dr. Mercola and the reports on PubMed.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Why 20 grams of sugar daily?

by | Jan 14, 2013 | Fat Loss | 0 comments

This is a copy of the post over at fattoskinny.net about sugar where I have commented on

Siltz:

Is 20 grams of sugar/day the generally accepted amount where ketosis begins or is most efficient?  Does the amount of sugar/day needed to lose weight vary per person?

Me:

I can only back up what Doug is saying as I had a very similar experience to him. My carb limit for weight loss was, when I first started, exactly around 20 grams per day. You’ve probably already heard this before but it’s worth saying again, is that, carbs can enter our diet in the most insidious of ways and as a general rule of thumb, I think you can assume that the more processed the food is, the higher will be its carbohydrate content, usually in the form of added sugars and fillers in order to make the processed food taste okay which is obviously a clear call to eat as naturally as possible. If you know where your food is coming form and you can verify that the sources or producers of that food do little or low processing then on the haul, you don’t have too much of a problem meeting that all important 20 grams of carbohydrates a day. Simply, the more we educate ourselves on what’s good to eat and what’s not good to eat, the greater our level of success will be.

Hope that helps,

Mark