10K PR and How I Hate Cold Weather
Also, stop eating seed oils!
I hope y’all had a Happy Thanksgiving!
If I wanted cold weather, I’d have stayed in Western North Carolina. It’s freezing here in Texas, a chilly 40 degrees this morning! Weather really is relative.
Yesterday I ran a 10K and did a personal best. The course had some crazy hills, and I came in over 10 minutes(!) better than the time I ran the 10K a few weeks ago with my crazy hills at my house. I almost couldn’t believe it!
It was also bitterly cold (for a Texan), the windchill was 36! My lungs were a little tired (ached a little when breathing deeply) yesterday evening, but far better than they would have been before I started all this. I had asthma as a child, and bronchitis more times than I can count, and was even hospitalized with pneumonia once, so usually my lungs don’t handle cold air well at all. I can tell that there has been a great improvement. Today, they are back to normal.
My foot had bothered me since we went to Enchanted Rock which I wrote about in my last post, it was really bad on Monday, but it did not bother me yesterday, and it’s not bothering me today. Yay!
Breakfast this morning:
Uncured bacon
Owen’s natural sausage
I stuffed my face this morning with Owen’s natural sausage. That stuff is the bomb.
Thanksgiving meal was I believe the best we’ve ever had - New York Strip Steak. No prep, quick cooking, easy cleanup, no fuss, no muss.
I hate turkey. It’s dry and only tastes good if you can dip it in mashed potatoes and gravy. Really, that’s the only reason anyone eats it, I think.
We are to the point where we don’t go off our way of eating for any reason. Not for holidays or birthdays or anything else. If we want something special, it’s usually an expensive steak.
The problem with going back onto eating carbs when you are metabolically deranged is that the consumption of the carbs is usually accompanied by the consumption of seed oils because you go out to a restaurant, and other chemicals that aren’t good for you. I had this dream last night where I was telling everyone I know to stop eating seed oils. It came true! I’m telling all y’all - STOP EATING SEED OILS!
Why? Here’s why:
Linoleic Acid: A Narrative Review of the Effects of Increased Intake in the Standard American Diet and Associations with Chronic Disease
“While there are other problematic components in the standard American diet, the half-life of LA [Linoleic Acid] is approximately two years, which means the damage can be far more persistent than other dietary factors, and the impact of reducing excessive LA intake takes time…
This means that it takes approximately six years to replace 95% of the LA in the body with healthy fats—making this a primary reason to maintain low LA intake.”
It takes six years(!) for the seed oils to degrade from your cells. You cannot metabolize Linoleic Acid. Your body can’t get rid of it until it degrades into components that your body can get rid of. The seed oils are probably the primary driving culprit of the obesity and diabetes epidemic in the United States.
The problem is, once you have broken your glucose metabolism by the over-consumption of these toxic fake man-made crap products and whatever else in the modern food supply is driving this trend (it might be not just the seed oils), you don’t recover immediately by stopping eating these things and your system doesn’t magically fix itself. In time, I suppose that it’s possible that your glucose metabolism might recover, but we’re talking years. And it may never recover. N=1.
I last had seed oils in July of 2023 - hey we were Keto for a decade, and sometimes I liked to cheat and get Chick-fil-a fries LOL. That means that I will be down to trace amounts of them sometime in 2029. Isn’t that crazy? And now that I understand all this - I don’t want to cheat any more.
So, we aren’t going off this way of eating, not for any holiday or party. It’s only been about 7 months since I’ve been on it strictly. April 2024 was when I finally kicked the Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Coke habit, and it was a terrible habit. I used to consume an entire case of Diet Coke almost every day. Every. Day.
Heaven knows what the artificial sweeteners are doing to everyone. I know plenty of people who are into Keto and have no qualms about consuming the fake sweeteners like Splenda because they supposedly have no effect on blood glucose. Never mind what else they are affecting - AND they ARE having an effect on something, because when I gave them up, I had so much more energy than I’d ever had before. I also lost more weight. I suspect they probably mess with insulin levels, and that’s hard to test as I don’t think they don’t make insulin monitors. The only way to check insulin is to get your blood drawn, and all that is, is a snapshot, and more than likely while fasting.
Currently the only artificial sweetener I am consuming is the last ingredient in LMNT, stevia extract. Also of course there was the brouhaha over maltodextrin, which was below the limit to have to legally disclose because it was part of the “natural flavors”. The LMNT doesn’t appear to be bothering me, I consume at most one packet a day, so I will continue to consume it for now. Everything else I consume is typically fresh and uncured meat.
Remember though kids, N=1. Some people say LMNT negatively affects them. If it bothers you, STOP IT!
But don’t let the little things derail you. Remember that perfect is the enemy of good. If you need your Diet Coke to get through the day, but you slowly get off all the other crap, then do it! Don’t expect perfection at once or maybe even ever.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
For many people, I believe that part of the problem of sticking to a carnivore diet is peer pressure. Especially if you don’t have food allergies or intolerances. What does everyone do nowadays? They go out to eat. Back in the day, people would have get-togethers, and they would cook a big meal. I know my great-grandmother was famous for the meals that she would put on. I was told that it was enough food to feed the 22nd Infantry.
Then there’s all the junk food they try to ply you with at work. At my job they have food all the time - all of it is full of seed oils and high in carbs.
Most people actually don’t even know how to cook any more. I love my neighbor, we go for walks together and have a good time, but she was reticent to make her own dip - she wanted to buy the dip the H.E.B. had already prepared. It’s not hard! It’s brisket, cheese and pico. But it’s part of the modern brainwashing where the “authorities” tell you that you just don’t have time to cook, and you need to have someone else do the cooking for you. Bollocks.
If you want to change your life, you can. You just have to decide you want to.
I´ve been on board with Paleo for a long time now, at least theoretically. (My actual diet isn´t anywhere as strict.) And as someone with autoimmune issues carnivore might be just the thing for me, but oh boy is it hard to break free from the "eat your vegetables" programming. My mom and brother both tend towards a loose sort of veganism. They´d be horrified if I became carnivore. Maybe someday I´ll try it.