Dana Carpender posted this message from the Nutrition and Metabolism Society on her Hold The Toast site recently.  I’m delighted to see real scientists calling out the ADA for their nonsense.

As my mom found out, if your blood sugar is at or approaching diabetic levels, your doctor will probably send you to a nutritionist or dietician, who will probably tell you to eat lots of complex carbs and limit your fats.  It makes zero biological sense.

I’ll be in Chicago this week.  We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary by returning to the scene of the crime.  (Don’t tell the paleo fanatics, but this almost certainly means I’ll be indulging in a stuffed pizza from Giordano’s — still the best pizza I’ve ever had.)

I’ll check comments when I can and perhaps write a post if anything strikes my fancy, but mostly I plan to just enjoy the time off … and take my wife to the fancy seafood restaurant where, halfway through dinner on our second date, I knew I wanted to marry her someday.

I’m not exactly obsessed with checking my blood sugar, but I’ve certainly become more diligent about it since returning from the low-carb cruise.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Dr. William Davis gave an excellent presentation on why we should monitor blood-sugar levels.  Here’s a quote from one of his blog posts on the subject:

If you’re not a diabetic, why bother checking blood sugar? New studies have documented the increased likelihood of cardiovascular events with increased postprandial blood sugars well below the ranges regarded as diabetic. A blood sugar level of 140 mg/dl after a meal carries 30-60% increased (relative) risk for heart attack and other events. The increase in risk begins at even lower levels, perhaps 110 mg/dl or lower after eating.

We use a one-hour after eating blood sugar to gauge the effects of a meal. If, for instance, your dinner of baked chicken, asparagus brushed with olive oil, sauteed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, and a piece of Italian bread yields a one-hour blood sugar of 155 mg/dl, you know that something is wrong. (This is far more common than most people think.)

This makes perfect sense to me, for all kinds of reasons.  We know that high blood sugar damages organs and blood vessels, and yes, that includes the coronary arteries.  That’s why diabetics can lose limbs, suffer kidney failure, or go blind.  It’s why they have such a high rate of heart disease. We also know that glucose feeds cancer and accelerates the aging process by encouraging the formation of advanced glycation end-products, or AGEs. 

Dr. Uffe Ravsnkov, who believes heart disease begins with infections, pointed out in our interview that glucose competes with vitamin C and depresses the immune system.  Even if you don’t buy the hypothesis that infections cause heart disease, you don’t want your immune system depressed.  One source I checked online stated that when your blood sugar reaches 120 mg/dl, your body’s ability to swallow up viruses, bacteria and cancer cells is reduced by 75%.

How high is too high?  That depends on who you ask.  I’ve read articles that claim anytime your blood sugar is over 200 mg/dl, you’re being damaged — and by the way, it’s common for people to reach that level after a bowl of Cheerios.  Others put the number at 140.  Dr. Davis prefers to see post-meal blood-sugar levels below 125, and ideally closer to 100.

So after returning home from the cruise, I bought a blood-sugar meter to check my response to different meals.  There’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that most of the meals I now enjoy don’t have much of an impact.  I’ve checked my fasting blood sugar a few times in the morning, and it’s consistently in the 85-90 range.  A little lower might be better, but that’s where I’m at.  So with that as a baseline, here are the one-hour results after some meals:

• Chopped ham & three eggs scrambled in butter:  92
• Two burger patties with raw-milk cheese and sautéed onions, mustard, a dollop of mayonnaise:  101
• Homemade stew (beef, onions, carrots, red wine, beef bullion):  105
• Chicken and broccoli with pesto sauce:  109
• Protein shake with whey protein and heavy cream:  102
• Sausage with whipped cauliflower “fauxtatoes” (my low-carb version of bangers ‘n’ mash): 98

I was also pleased to learn that low-carb ice cream doesn’t produce much of a spike.  When I first switched to a low-carb diet, I consumed a bowl of Carb Smart ice cream or a couple of their ice cream bars at least a few nights per week.  Since then, I’ve lost much of my taste for desserts, so I rarely eat the stuff.  I’ve also read that sugar alcohols can produce a bit of a blood-sugar spike some people.

I don’t plan to become a regular ice-cream eater again, but as an experiment, I had a full cup of Carb Smart ice cream earlier today.  An hour later, my blood sugar stood at 112.  That’s not great, but it’s less than I would’ve predicted.  I’ve also found that iced tea sweetened with three packets of Truvia has virtually no effect on my blood sugar … the meter showed 93 mg/dl when I checked.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that I don’t seem to tolerate sugars and starches very well at all.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, on St. Patrick’s Day I added one small potato to my meal of corned beef, carrots and cabbage.  An hour later, the meter showed a blood-sugar level of 162 mg/dl.

I had an even bigger surprise a couple of days ago.  I was busy and didn’t feel like cooking, so I threw together a meal of Costco meatballs with a 1/2 cup of marinara sauce and a wee small serving of spaghetti left over from a meal my wife had served to my daughters and my niece.  (My niece doesn’t like most meats, but loves pasta.)  By “wee small,” I mean perhaps 1/2 cup of cooked spaghetti.  The meatballs also had a few carbs in them thanks to the bread crumbs.  Adding up the counts from the labels, I estimated that my meal included about 40 grams of carbohydrate.

The result:  an hour later my blood sugar stood at 174 mg/dl. Back when I thought meat and fat were bad, I used to live on pasta and potatoes.  No wonder I started showing signs of pre-diabetes and felt lousy so often.  I suppose if I hadn’t screwed up my metabolism with too much sugar as a kid and too much starch as a vegetarian adult, small servings of potatoes and pasta wouldn’t produce such dramatic spikes, but they do.  I just shouldn’t be eating them.

That’s why it’s important to test your own reactions to various foods:  we’re all different.  What’s right for you may not work for me, and vice versa. 

I saw an example of that last night.  My sister-in-law was in town to pick up her daughter.  Like my wife, my sister-in-law is naturally thin … if anything, she’d like to gain a few pounds.  She saw me testing my blood sugar, and it piqued her curiosity, especially since their naturally-thin father is a type 2 diabetic.  So an hour after dinner — which for her included chicken, a sweet potato, and a generous serving of pasta — I gave her the finger stick.  Her blood sugar was only 112 mg/dl.  Feed me the same dinner, and I’d probably be looking at something closer to 200.

So the bottom line for me:  no starchy foods.  And I’m perfectly happy living without them.

I finally finished Jimmy Moore’s newest book this week. I say “finally” because it’s 500 pages long and I made a Thanksgiving trip to Illinois in the middle of reading it. (I always take a book with me on trips home, but rarely get a chance to read more than a few pages.)

As you probably know already, Jimmy’s book is titled 21 LIFE LESSONS FROM LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOW-CARB. The easiest way to describe it is that it’s a lot like reading Jimmy’s blog (which you should, if you don’t already). The book is a mix of his personal experiences, correspondence with readers as well as the many authors and researchers he’s befriended, and (of course) summaries of scientific research on health and nutrition, all neatly packaged into 21 topics.

Since I only delved into the science of health and weight loss a few years ago, when I started researching Fat Head, I enjoyed those chapters the most — and I believe Jimmy did as well, since they make up the bulk of the book. In several chapters, he takes the usual warnings about low-carb, high-fat diets (”You’ll die from a heart attack! You’ll ruin your kidneys! You’ll turn stupid!”), sets them up like bowling pins, then knocks them down with my favorite bowling ball — facts. Yes, I enjoy hearing about his personal experiences — that’s partly why I read his blog — but it’s easy for the anti-fat hysterics to write those off as anecdotal evidence. It’s a bit tougher to dismiss controlled clinical research.

In fact, while reading the book I began to fully appreciate just how many studies Jimmy has read over the years, and how scientifically literate he is. (I wish more media reporters could be described that way.)  He not only quotes a lot of excellent research; he knows how to recognize and shred the bad research and bad reporting on research as well. One of the chapters, LESSON #19: You can’t always trust or believe the negative studies on low-carb, should be required reading for health reporters. For example, he mentions a study that was reported in the media as evidence that sweets are good for your mood. After picking apart those conclusions on his blog, he received this email:

I am writing in response to your blog concerning the press reports on our work on sugar and stress. I am the principal investigator on the project. I want to note that, as is often the case, the press reports missed the point of our study. Our work indicates that eating sweets may be a form of ’self-medication’ against stress; we feel that this is a physiologically maladaptive response to stress that is a likely contributor to our current ‘obesity epidemic’… In no way do we advocate carbs, sweets, etc. as a therapy for stress. I hope this clarifies the issue you raised.

I guess you’re doing something right when the principal investigator on a study feels compelled to reply.

Another chapter, however, recounts an episode in which Jimmy freely admits to being fooled: the Kimkins affair. As you may recall “Kimkins” was a woman who claimed she’d achieved astounding weight loss with her own modification of the Atkins diet — which she would teach others to follow for a membership fee. Believing her story and her before and after pictures, Jimmy helped introduce Kimkins to the world. Several major media outlets — with far more investigative resources at their disposal — bought her story as well. Later, she was revealed to be a fraud. The “after” picture was of a Russian model; the real Kimkins was an obese woman.

Other chapters describe the hate mail and love mail Jimmy has received since putting himself and his work out there for public consumption. Believe me, I relate. If you want to receive some serious hate mail, try telling the world Morgan Spurlock is a fraud whose math doesn’t add up. But of course, the letters of gratitude more than make up for the potshots. Jimmy has received more “thank you for changing my life” emails than he can count. The first time I received one of those — from a woman who was able to give up some nasty prescription drugs after Fat Head inspired her to drop her grain-based, lowfat diet — I knew the effort was worth it.

The most personal chapter is the last, LESSON #21: The early death of a brother or loved one may not be prevented. As you probably know, Jimmy’s brother Kevin died of heart disease at age 41, after years of being sick and morbidly obese, despite Jimmy’s efforts to encourage him to change his diet. What you may not know is that Jimmy and Kevin had a terrible childhood. Their mother and father were married and divorced three times each. Jimmy was dumped on his father at age 14, during what he thought was a visit. Over the next few years, he was often beaten and told he was worthless.

I didn’t know any of this either, until Jimmy and Christine spent a weekend with us a couple of months ago. Jimmy told me the stories as we watched a football game. I was stunned … not because I’m unaware awful parents exist, but because being around Jimmy, seeing him laugh and play and interact with kids, you’d never suspect his own childhood was traumatic. He’s an affable, caring, optimistic guy.

He’s also a guy who has educated and inspired thousands of people with his daily blog posts, his YouTube series, and his podcasts. I hope they all order a copy of his book … partly to enjoy reading it, and partly to say thanks for all the effort.

NOTE:  I’m heading back up to Illinois this week for a standup gig.  I’ll be performing in front of family, friends of family, high-school classmates, and even a few people who knew me in sixth grade.  I’ll check comments, but I won’t have time for another post this week.

Okay, so maybe you’ve tried to get your loved ones to read Good Calories, Bad Calories, only to watch them experience brain-lock the first time they see the words lipoprotein lipase. 

Hey, it happens.  I was a pretty good student, but I was out of school for many years before I could read a chemical name without experiencing unsettling classroom flashbacks — in my case, visions of a stern nun who responded to questions such as “Could you please explain that again?” by shaking her head and staring at the ceiling as if to plead, “Dear Lord, why are you punishing me by enrolling dolts in my class?”

Gary Taubes is working on a more consumer-friendly version of his ground-breaking treatise, which I’m looking forward to reading.  But in the meantime, there are some good books out there that offer scientifically sound advice for losing weight and improving your health, minus the heavy-duty science. 

I read one this week.  Actually, I read it in an afternoon, which is what makes the book worthwhile: it’s a nice little summary of what works and what doesn’t.  If your Aunt Martha isn’t willing to read this one, it’s time to just give up.

The book is titled S.P.E.E.D., which is an acronym for Sleep, Psychology, Exercise, Environment and Diet.  I’m pretty sure the particular arrangement of the chapters was done on purpose … I mean, they could’ve called it D.E.E.P.S., or P.E.E.D.S., or P.E.D.E.S., but S.P.E.E.D. is easier to remember and more eye-grabbing.  And as the authors point out, each chapter stands alone.  You could read them in reverse order without losing any comprehension.

The book was written by Jeff Thiboutot and Matt Schoeneberger, personal trainers who between them hold several degrees in fields like nutrition, psychology and exercise science.  (See their web site here.)  Normally, when I see Bachelor of Science in Nutrition after an author’s name, I start to worry … here comes the brain-dead parroting about the evils of saturated fat and all that.  I’m pleased to say, however, that these two have actually done their research.  Pretty much everything they state in the book is followed by a string of citations from scientific journals — so if you do enjoy jumping head-first into the science, you can look it up.

And if you don’t, you can still learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to losing weight.  Here are some highlights:

• A lack of sufficient sleep screws up your blood sugar, promotes insulin resistance, and increases your appetite.  (As someone who deals with occasional bouts of insomnia, I can attest to the appetite problem.)
• Achieving any goal, including weight loss, requires defining a vision and a specific action plan, then sticking to the plan.  The plan should focus on what you can do, not on pre-defined results.  (There’s some good advice in this chapter on avoiding negative mental patterns that undermine your success.)
• Exercise alone rarely produces any meaningful weight loss — but the right kind of exercise combined with the right diet does work, and exercise is important for your overall health, fitness and mood.
• A whole-food diet with a minimum of sugar and starch is best for supporting both health and weight loss.  Yes, you’ll need to create a calorie deficit to lose weight, but keeping insulin in check by restricting carbohydrates makes the process much easier.

The scientific evidence presented in each chapter is neatly summarized, straightforward, and easy to digest.  You’re not going to learn intricate details about biochemistry or metabolic pathways from this book — but again, that’s the point.  (Remember Aunt Martha.)  You can think of it as a case of “We did the heavy lifting, so you don’t have to.”

And it’s clear that Thiboutot and Schoeneberger know how to separate the good science from the bad.  One of my favorite sections of the book is actually an appendix that gives an overview of the Scientific Method and explains the differences among various levels of scientific evidence — or what the authors call The Great, The Good, The Bad and The Absolutely Worthless. 

Much of the nutrition reporting that appears the media is based on studies (and I use the term loosely) that fall into the last two categories.  More than a few health and nutrition reporters need to read this book … or at least be smacked over the head with it. 

But don’t smack Aunt Martha.  Just put the book in her hands and hope she reads it.

Interesting results this week.  I stuck to the diet (no demonstration of the causes of fatty liver disease this time) except during Saturday night’s cast party, when I took a few slices of cheese from the food table.  Pretty much everything else was carb-heavy except the shrimp cocktail, and I thought it might annoy the other guests if I loaded my plate with most of the shrimp.

This morning my waist around the belly-button was 37.5 inches, which is down a full inch from last week.  I’ve also had to cinch my belt another notch tighter.  But when I stepped on the scale at the gym, I was still at 200.  A full inch gone, no movement on the scale.  I’m still making good progress in my workouts — nearing the bottom of the stack on a couple more machines — which probably has something to do with it.

So in four weeks, I’ve lost 3.5 inches around the belly and five pounds.

Yesterday I completed my third week of the 6-Week Cure For The Middle-Aged Middle — the first all-meat (nearly) week.  This morning I weighed 200 lbs. on the gym scale, and my waist measured 38.5 inches around the biggest area.  I started at 205 lbs., 41 inches.

That’s only one pound lost in the previous week, but there are some likely explanations:

• I’m lifting an extra 20 or 30 pounds on several weight machines since starting the diet, which means I’ve probably added some muscle.
• I was already on a low-carb diet, so an all-meat (nearly) diet isn’t a dramatic change.
• I cheated on the diet.

Friday was my wife’s birthday, but I maintained good discipline at the restaurant where we celebrated.  I had a 10-oz. prime rib, a small Caesar salad without croutons, creamed spinach, and one glass of red wine.  The wine was my second serving of alcohol for the week, which means it was also supposed to be my last.

But on Saturday, I met my best friend of nearly 40 years (egads, I’m old!) at a local pub.  As often happens when lifelong chums get together to enjoy themselves, the conversation soon turned to the causes of fatty liver disease.  I’m a big believer in the power of visual aids, so I had the waitress bring a succession of Yuengling beers and deep-fried snacks to our table in order to emphasize my points.

After finishing off my third pint of Yuengling and some mozzarella sticks, I tapped my empty glass and said, “You see?  This is how people put fat in their livers.  Bad idea.”  My friend agreed and likewise finished off his third pint to demonstrate his comprehension of the science.

The waitress doubted that either of us actually has a fatty liver, but as far as I could tell, she has very little medical training.  Also, I think she was angling for a sizable tip.

When I got home from the pub, I confirmed that beer and other carbohydrates make you hungry by consuming a big bowl of almonds and cashews without feeling particularly full.  So my three weeks on the cure haven’t exactly been three weeks on the cure.

Anyway, I’ll happily take the one-pound loss for the week.  Back to the meat.