My Summer Phucket List

My summer bucket list is really a Phucket list.

• Walk the dog in the backyard twice a day.  Phucket, I’ll just let him out the door.
• Go to bed by 10pm.  Phucket, I’ll just read R.F. Kuang fantasy novels past midnight.
• Avoid after-supper treats.   Phucket, I’ll eat all the ice cream, cookies and chocolate I want.

Isn’t the trifecta of a healthy lifestyle to get a good night’s sleep, exercise and eat healthy foods in moderation?  If so, then my Phucket list is more like a death wish.

I blame all this on the lack of impulse control brought about by the Effexor I started taking in September.  It’s time for another visit to the doctor.

What’s the worst side effect you've experienced?

M&M -- Mindful & Mad

When I eat M&Ms or other colorful candies, I like to eat all one color first. This introduces some mindfulness to the process and slows me down; otherwise I’d be shoveling a palm-load of candy every minute or so.

But the real reason I "eat-by-color" is for the aesthetic pleasure of it. A bag of regular M&Ms has too many colors, which creates some discordance. So I eat any colors that clash with the season first.

For example, this being Spring, I start with the Autumn colors Orange and Brown, which totally do not belong in Spring. This leaves Yellow, Blue, Green, Red.  This set of colors could represent Sun, Sky, Grass, Poppies.

But then I might continue with either Red and Yellow, which would leave Blue and Green for Earth Day. Or I might eat the Blue and Red next, which would leave Yellow and Green (the colors of one of the schools I attended). Or, I’d eat the Red and Green next, which would leave Blue and Yellow to show support for Ukraine.

In Autumn, I’d do the reverse, eating Blue and Green first, to leave the Autumn colors of Orange, Brown, Yellow, Red. I might also eliminate Red if I can’t stop myself.

In Winter, all but Red and Green would be eaten first. (In fact, you can buy them this way in November and December.)

Valentines Day, Easter, Flag Day and Independence Day all are difficult holidays to celebrate this way with the regular M&Ms because of the lack of White candies. But Mars puts out sets of Red, White and Pink in January and February, or Pastels in March, or Red, White and Blue in June to appease.

Do you do this? Do you have another food consumption quirk?

Cat Cravings

I was preparing my usual low-fuss breakfast this morning -- almond butter on spelt toast, which I then top with blueberries.  After the toast popped up, I placed it on the kitchen table on a plate.  Then I turned to prepare some tea.

Soon I heard "lap lap lap lap lap..."  I turned to look at the noise.  The cat was licking my toast.

I'll repeat that.  The Cat.  Was Licking.  My Toast.

My toast!  Not My Bacon, or My Breakfast Sausage, or my Egg-Crust-Pizza.  He was licking my toast, with his cat saliva tongue, which had just licked his own fur and whatever was clinging to it.

"No, please stop," I said gently.  Gently, because I know about food addiction.  I know he's not thinking, "Let's piss the human off by licking his toast."  He's thinking, "I really, really, Really, REALLY need to lick that."  (Perhaps the moist warmth exuded by the toast reminded him of a freshly decapitated mouse carcass.)

Gently, also, because he's a big cat -- 22 pounds -- and a formidable opponent.  I lose my balance whenever he rubs against my legs.  One time, hissing and spitting, he took a swipe at the dog's nose and missed.  He raked my kneecap instead.  I'm sure he shape-shifted briefly into a bobcat, too.

So I fended him off while I spread on the almond butter.  I guessed that the almond butter would mask whatever was attracting him to the toast.  Sure enough, he lost interest and strode away.


Wheat gluten is added to some cat food in order to provide taurine, an essential amino acid.  Could our cat food be deficient in taurine?  I always buy food that has added taurine and no wheat gluten, But maybe the pet food manufacturer is cutting back on the formula.


Do your pets occasionally show unusual preferences for human food?  What are they?

Notes from The Science of Skinny

The following notes / quotes are from The Science of Skinny:Start Understanding Your Body's Chemistry--And Stop Dieting Forever, by Dee McCaffrey

...two excitotoxnis -- monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartame (found in Equal) -- [are] two causative factors in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and other neurodegenerative diseases. - page 21

All four generations of the cats fed raw meat and raw milk remained healthy throughout their normal life span. The groups of cats receiving either cooked meat or processed milk developed diseases and illnesses earlier in their life span with each succeeding generation, to the point where they were no longer able to reproduce their species. The cats eating only raw food were disease free and healthy, generation after generation after generation. - page 30

One Harvard scientist has proposed that the health benefits of at least one phytonutrient, epicatechin, is so important that it should be classified as a new vitamin.  Norman Hollenberg, a professor of medicine At Harvard Medical School, has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama.  He found that the risk of stroke, heart failure, cancer, and diabetes is reduced to less than 10 percent in the Kuna, where the people drink up to forty cups of natural cocoa a week.  Actual cocoa contains high levels of epicatechin. - page 41

A manufacturer is only required to list trans fats if the food contains 0.5 gram (half a gram) or more per serving.  Therefore, if a serving contains 0.4 grams, it does not have to be listed on the nutrition fact panel.  This misleads the unsuspecting consumer into thinking that the product does not contain trans fats.  The tricky food industry even boasts claims on the front of the packaging of "0 grams trans fat," but if you read the ingredients and still see "hydrogenated oil" listed, the product is not trans fat free. - page 129

The most alarming effect of MSG is its link to obesity.  Scientists have observed that animals fed glutamic acid  become grotesquely obese. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so in laboratories scientists feed MSG to them to induce obesity and pre-diabetes. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats to become obese; the researchers even have a title for the race of fat rodents they create: MSG-Treated Rats.

The real scary thing about MSG is that it can be hidden in nearly 40 other food additives.  When food chemists make their concoctions to enhance flavors and textures, MSG is one of the ingredients they use to make new compounds.  If an additive contains less than 79 percent that MSG, the FDA does not require food manufacturers to list it as an ingredient... - page 137 - 138  Follow linked paragraphs to find a list of additives that contain plenty of MSG.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth, video presentation by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology.  It explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.

Follow this link to find a list of the "Dirty Dozen," the most contaminated conventionally grown produce, and the "Clean 15" with the least amount of pesticide residue. Select page 162.

Here is a link to the list of top ingredients to avoid: - page 154

Find organic food online at www.tropicaltraditions.com featuring many of the foods recommended by the Science of Skinny author.

Sources of raw milk: www.realmilk.com. More information on raw milk: www.raw-milk-facts.com.

The best protein powders: whey protein concentrate, hemp protein powder, brown rice protein powder. - page 216 - 217

Bee pollen has worked wonders for many of my clients with sugar withdrawal.  It also allows you to think more clearly and feel more positive and focused, and improves the quality of your sleep.  You can purchase  bee pollen granules at natural food markets.  I recommend taking 1 teaspoon of bee pollen, placed under the tongue, and allowing it to dissolve. - page 219

A recipe for homemade sunshine burgers can be found on page 370.

Links to more resources:
Processed Free America (website featuring the Science of Skinny author)
Weston A. Price Foundation
Dr. Mercola's Optimal Wellness newsletter
Environmental Working Group

My own comment is that while the author encourages her readers to eat organic, unprocessed whole foods to reduce the amount of sugar in the diet, she does not acknowledge that many of today's foods have been selected over hundreds of years for their sweetness.  So even today's raw foods really do contain more sugar than the foods our ancestors ate.

NaTYLoCaToWoDa 2012

Today is National Take Your Leftover Candy to Work Day, hence the acronym NaTYLoCaToWoDa.  I figured since my first NaBloPoMo post featured the NaBloPoMo acronym, why not follow up with another?

Anyway, this is a difficult day for dieters of many persuasions: diabetics; vegans; lo-carbers; those with allergies; those seeking to lose weight.  We might follow our diets only by keeping forbidden foods out of our homes.  But then we succumb to our cravings in the work place.

Here's my plea.  If you need to unload edible crud, please just throw it in the garbage.

Amazing Quotes From "Zoobiquity"

Some animal intestines perform an amazing trick. They expand and contract like accordions. This may not sound all that impressive, but its effect on weight can be profound. It allows the body to absorb varying quantities of calories from the same food, depending on the task at hand.

The mechanism is simple: a ribbon of muscle running the length of the intestine allows it contract and expand. When guts are clenched, they’re shorter, tighter and smaller. When relaxed, they’re elongated.

When intestines are in the longer, stretched-out mode, they expose more surface area to the food passing over them. This allows the cells to extract more nutrients and, therefore, energy. When the intestines shrink back to their shortened state, some of the food passes by essentially unused.

Could a similar accordion-like lengthening and shortening in human intestines underlie some unexplained weight gain in our species? ...there are intriguing clues. Our intestines are also lined with smooth muscle. And we know from autopsies that human intestines are some 50 percent longer after death, when smooth muscle control is no longer exerted. Perhaps, during life, dynamic muscle activity allows the human intestine to vary its calorie-absorbing length in response to medications, hormones, and even stress -- factors frequently pointed to when weight inexplicably increases even when a patient isn’t eating more. Many common drugs cause undesired weight gain through unclear mechanisms. It’s intriguing to consider whether smooth muscle effects of these drugs contribute to ... intestinal stretch leading to greater calorie absorption and weight gain.

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Psychiatrists studying eating disorders note that bulimic binge eaters rarely overconsume protein or leafy greens.  ...they focus their eating sprees -- sometimes with obsessive intensity -- on sugars and simple carbohydrates.

In the Yale study [of grasshoppers exposed to predatory spiders], the insects’ food choices were driven by external factors beyond their control, in other words, the ecology of fear.  In the presence of a predatory threat, they chose foods that would accelerate a lifesaving escape.  These animals provide an underexplored possible context for a human binge eater’s food choices.  They suggest an evolutionary origin.  A stressed person’s decision to forgo the chicken breast and vegetables in his lunch box and consume candy bars instead can seem pointless, weak and even self-destructive.  But knowing that some nonhuman animals prefer high-sugar foods when they’re fearful could help a human stress eater better understand his own candy binge.  While he knows it’s unhealthy for his waistline, blood sugar, and molars, the impossible-to-resist impulse may spring from a hardwired response to threats that for eons has saved animals’ lives.

Veganism -- A Sanctioned Eating Disorder

As the father of a teenage girl, I try to be informed and stay alert to signs of an eating disorder, especially now that our daughter has become Vegan.  She used to love bacon, lamb, London Broil and liver pate not too long ago.  And goat cheese.

Then the "fish incident" raised a red flag that something was wrong.  She started to negotiate ever smaller portions of fish, her least-favorite animal-based food.  Just before formally announcing her vegan diet, she'd typically feed half to the cats and dog and re-arrange the rest.  Her last plate of fish -- the fish incident -- caused a genuine fit of crying about the pain of the fish.

That's when I blocked peta.org from the computer.

But it wasn't until my daughter described the ever dwindling diet of her school friend KG that it occurred to me that veganism is used to disguise an eating disorder.

KG was a vegan before our daughter; she probably convinced our daughter to convert to this way of eating.  Recently, she announced her new way of even healthier eating: vegan, low-fat, without grains and legumes.  It sounded as though the girl decided to adopt the Paleo diet and yet remain vegan.

The idea that veganism is an eating disorder is certainly not new.  Do an Internet search and find many discussions on the topic.  Here's a link to get you started..  Veganism can be one of many manifestations of Orthorexia, an eating disorder where the individual refuses to eat foods perceived to be unhealthy.

I am somewhat comforted that our daughter follows the vegan lifestyle, not just the diet.  She will not buy any products made from animals or that were tested on animals.  For example, she refused to use a set of paints and paint brushes that I bought her before she went vegan.  Instead she talked my wife into buying a second "vegan" set.  It drives me crazy, but I'm still comforted to know that this compulsion is not focused solely on diet.