The essentials

There are essential fatty acids. There are essential amino acids (from proteins). But there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. None. Why not? Because they aren't essential to living. Dr. Michael Eades explains this really well, even if others don't understand his points. We don't have to get what glycogen we need from carbohydrates; our bodies can make them from the protein we eat via gluconeogenesis. Further, we don't have to worry too much about how much we eat if we're eating minimal carbs; our bodies do a really good job of regulating our weight as long as we're not overfeeding on carbs.

I have been eating very low carb (maybe 50g per day, none from processed foods) for about 18 months. I have never felt better. I have a check-up in a couple of weeks and I can't wait to get my blood test results back. I'll definitely share them when the time comes.

Easing the hand stress on deadlifts

I got my Lynx Performance Grips yesterday in the mail — just in time for my heavy deadlifting this morning. I still have the big exposed piece of flesh on my hand that I wrote about previously from my last heavy deadlifting session (and that was the impetus for their purchase along with the recommendation by Eric Cressey).

My impressions of this product? Good stuff. I have lifting gloves but I have found that they make it more difficult for me to hold onto the bar so I have tended not to use them much with heavy lifting. With these grips I immediately noticed the decrease in strain on the skin of my hands. No surprise since these are not much more than a couple millimeter-thick piece of rubber placed in between my hands and the rough texture of the bar. I'm guessing this will lead to a decrease in the level of callouses that I currently have. The question in my mind was how much these would affect my ability to hold the bar. It appears that, overall, they didn't increase or decrease my ability to hold the weight. Given the increase in comfort and the decreased odds of ripping the skin off my hands, I will continue to use these grips when deadlifting heavy weights.

Go ahead and eat the ice cream

I saw a commercial this morning for Kellogg's Special K Chocolatey Delight cereal. It was pointing it out as a "healthy alternative" to chocolate ice cream. (I'll use Breyer's Chocolate Ice cream as my specific point of comparison in this post.) Let's look at the facts.

	Cereal	Ice cream
Serving size	3/4 cup	1/2 cup
Calories	160	140
Protein	2g	2g
Fat	2g	7g
Carbs (net)	24g	16g

Now let's look at the first few ingredients of each:

Cereal

rice, whole grain wheat, sugar, chocolatey chunks (sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa, soy lecithin, artificial flavor, milk), high fructose corn syrup, salt, malt extract...

Ice cream

milk, cream, sugar, cocoa, whey, natural tara gum, natural flavor

So, what do we have here? They're both about the same calories, though the cereal (with milk, since that's how people eat it, and since that's how it's shown in the commercial) is marginally higher. Protein is a wash, and insignificant at that. Fat is higher in the ice cream, but that's fine for me. Carbohydrates are significantly higher in the cereal and, since it's lower in fat, these carbs will hit the blood stream quickly and be converted to fat quite rapidly by the body. This is especially true in the scene depicted in the commercial where the lady is apparently eating the cereal as a late-night substitute for the ice cream.

Now consider the ingredient list. For cereal, it can basically be translated as this: sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar (plus some trans fat), cocoa, sugar, salt, sugar... Amazing. Now for the ice cream: sugar, fat, sugar, cocoa, sugar, gum, flavorings. Neither of these is particularly impressive, though the cereal is much more clearly a manufactured food that isn't handled well by our bodies.

To be clear, I'm not selling this ice cream as a health food. Far from it. But, if given a choice between the two, I would definitely eat the ice cream instead of the cereal because I believe it would have less of a negative effect on my body (and would also be more filling because of the additional fat it contains). So, if the ice cream is calling your name from the freezer, and if you're tempted to substitute the cereal — forget it! Go ahead and eat the ice cream!

Living away from the city

One of the joys of lifting in Saline is that we're out in the boonies. Saline is a town of about 7500 located about 5 miles southwest of Ann Arbor. Surrounding Saline is nothing but farmland. We live in the northwest corner of Saline on a cul de sac. On either end of it is woods which back up to fields. I leave my house about 5:45am or so; of course, it's still dark. This is a great time to observe the sky and wild life. This morning, while the wet snow was falling, I passed a doe and two fawns in the yard of a house at the entrance to our cul de sac. The two fawns were playing with each other while the doe was watching my car.

It was a nice way to start the week.

Benefits of a deep tissue massage

I got a massage yesterday for the first time in almost a year. Oh, did it hurt. But in a good way. I have another one scheduled for next week.

I am extremely tight all over. I have mobility issues in my ankles, hips, shoulders, neck, and wrists. (Yeah, that's all.) In a 2 hour session, my massage therapist only addressed my shoulders, upper chest, and neck. By the time she left I could almost look directly to the right or left without turning my whole body. Yes, I know most people can do that, but I'm not most people. I could also almost lift my arms directly over my head. (Yes, I know...) I'm hoping that by the time she has broken me down in a month or two that I'll be able to do a squat and hold a loaded barbell over my head. I can't do that now because my hips and shoulders pitch the weight too far forward for me to hold the weight. We'll see.

I used to make fun of people who got this type of massage. It's no walk in the park, let me tell you. I usually have a pretty bad headache by the time she leaves and generally feel crappy all over (like I did last night). So I went to bed at 8:30 and slept until my usual 5am wake-up (yes, that is 8.5 hours of sleep!) and woke up feeling like a million bucks. My goal is to be more diligent with the foam rolling and stretching after I lift this next month. We'll see if we can get my body moving with a bit more freedom.

Vegetarians love their meat scares, don't they?

In a letter to the editor of the Ann Arbor News on April 1, 2009 entitled Meat-laden diet proves unhealthy, Albert Everett latches on to the recent National Cancer Institute study about the dangers of red meat. He made so many poorly reasoned points that I couldn't help but respond. Here's the letter that I sent to the News:

Mr. Albert ("Meat-laden diet proves unhealthy", April 1, 2009) makes the unfortunate mistake of confusing correlation with causality. Just because open umbrellas are seen when it is raining does not mean that the umbrellas caused the rain. The observational studies that he cites cannot be used to prove causality though it is very good at generating hypotheses that might be tested at a later date. That is, these studies raise questions that are possibly worthy of future investigation, but they should not influence our decision making. In this case, I don't believe that confirmatory studies will ever be found because so many other studies have found exactly the opposite (that is, saturated fat providing health benefits). Remember that humans lived for 99% of our history primarily as a hunter and meat eater; we couldn't have changed the direction of our evolution so quickly since the dawn of agriculture. You may make the choice not to eat meat, but that doesn't mean that it is the healthy choice.

Further, in the recent Archives of Internal Medicine report, the subjects did not differ just in the amount of red meat they ate. The subjects that ate more red meat also ate more junk food, smoked more, drank more, didn't exercise, etc. And so they were less healthy. I don't see any reason that meat should be implicated any more or less than any of the other factors. In fact, who knows if meat had any effect at all. From this study we can't know anything at all about the effects of meat. Maybe it was the bun with the meat and the colas they drank. Who knows?

Two other studies were recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition related to this discussion. Neither was reported in print or by TV. One was a meta-analysis of 13 other studies; it found no evidence of a relationship between animal fats or animal proteins and colorectal cancer. The second study showed that vegetarians don't live any longer than non-vegetarians; further, it showed that vegetarians also have a higher incidence of some cancers (and lower incidence of heart disease). Yes, the first was a summary of observational studies while the second was an observational study so the same caveats apply here as I described above; they are hypothesis generating and possibly worthy of further study. However, studies such as these, which go against the media's predisposition against meat, are rarely ever reported. My recommendation is that readers don't rely on the media for their nutritional information. Go online and do research for yourself.

Millions of people worldwide, including myself, eat large amounts of meat, eggs, cheese, and nuts while limiting the amount of carbohydrates from sugar, grains and fruits because we believe this is the healthiest way to live. I, right along with Mr. Everett, worry about the health of our population, though I am worried that they will continue to follow the misinformation propagated by the media.

I don't know how much good it will do, but I feel better.

Dieting "facts" I've had to unlearn

Last night I was reflecting with my wife on all of the nutrition and dieting "facts" that I have had to unlearn in the last two years while I have dived head first into this area. Basically everything but "green vegetables are good for you." Let's see what I can come up with:

1. Losing weight is as simple as "calories in - calories out".
2. Exercise is a necessary key component of weight loss.
3. Red meat is bad for you.
4. Saturated fat is bad for you.
5. Eating fat worsens all of the cholesterol measurements.
6. High cholesterol is a necessary precursor, and perfect indicator, for a future heart attack.
7. Low cholesterol is a nearly fool-proof protection against a future heart attack.
8. Canola oil is good for you.
9. Lard and butter are bad for you.
10. Margarine is a great substitute for butter.
11. Lots of fruit is good for you.
12. Fruit juice is good for you.
13. You need to worry about getting enough Vitamin C through fruits.
14. The RDA for Vitamin D is enough for those of us living in Michigan.
15. Fat is something that needs to be limited.
16. Protein is something that needs to be limited.
17. You need a majority of your calories to be carbohydrates.
18. Whole wheat grains (in bread and pasta) are good for you.
19. We need lots of fiber in our diet.
20. Drink lots of water on a regular schedule, even if you're not thirsty.

This is a truly amazing list. (I'm sure there are more but this is what I could come up with off the top of my head.) No wonder I get bitter when I reflect back on all of this. I was a "smart, health-conscious consumer" who paid close attention to nutrition and diet news and look what I learned: I learned how to kill myself with my daily food choices.