Do you ever wonder if your body has an immediate effect after eating a fast food meal? This news clip shows a visual effect of increased triglycerides and shows how much harder your heart has to work to pump blood. Go watch this 2 min news clip and come back to share your thoughts.

In this news video about fast food and its affect on triglycerides they demonize saturated fat. But we know that from this study and many low carb dieters that triglyceride levels go down when restricting carbohydrates.

Here Dr. Briffa writes about a group of McMaster University researchers in Ontario who reviewed all the scientific nutritional evidence linking to heart disease. They found saturated fats to not be on that list.

Some dietary factors were associated with an increased risk of heart disease. These were:

A higher intake of trans-fatty acids
A higher intake of foods of high glycaemic index or high glycaemic load

Please note the absence of saturated fat in this list. In other words, this review shows the totality of the evidence does not support a link between saturated fat and heart disease. By the way, higher intakes of meat and eggs were not associated with an increased risk of heart disease either. And neither was total fat consumption.

Most fast food is detrimental to your health because of rancid vegetable fats like canola, corn and soy. These oils are the omega 6 oils that are highly unstable.

One reason the polyunsaturates cause so many health problems is that they tend to become oxidized or rancid when subjected to heat, oxygen and moisture as in cooking and processing. Rancid oils are characterized by free radicals-that is, single atoms or clusters with an unpaired electron in an outer orbit. These compounds are extremely reactive chemically. They have been characterized as “marauders” in the body for they attack cell membranes and red blood cells and cause damage in DNA/RNA strands, thus triggering mutations in tissue, blood vessels and skin. Free radical damage to the skin causes wrinkles and premature aging; free radical damage to the tissues and organs sets the stage for tumors; free radical damage in the blood vessels initiates the buildup of plaque. Source: The Skinny on Fats By Mary Enig PhD and Sally Fallon

Trans fats have also been used in the fast food industries because they are cheap and make food taste good as well as increasing the shelf life of vegetable oils. Although some cities have banned the use of trans fats for frying deep fried food, restaurants may still serve margarine instead of real butter. Trans fats can also be hidden in pastries, peanut butter, pizza dough and cookies. So unless you are reading labels on your fast food, you can’t be certain that you are eating a trans fat free meal. Trans fats can have a negative effect on heart disease, cancer, diabetes, immunity, reproduction and lactation, and obesity. Source: Mary Enig PhD  Dangers of Trans Fats.

Some healthy choices for restaurant food:

• is baked fish with lemon and herbs
• bunless burgers (check for fillers)
• grilled steaks
• baked chicken
• vegetable stir fry’s minus rice cooked in butter

There must be more healthy options but I can’t think of anything else.

My question for you:

What are your healthy restaurant food options?

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly The Kitchen Kop

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In an attempt to get my children to eat (and like) liver I have been experimenting different ways to make it. I think I have come close. Although this recipe was not a hit with the kids at dinner time last night, it has great potential. I enjoyed and loved it very much and would not mind eating liver like this weekly. My children do not enjoy the texture of fried onions so I gave it to them without them.The onions contribute a lot of  the flavour. Next time I will add the fried onions into the food processor while making the liver mix.

I tried to make liver meatballs but had to much liquid and they went flat, turning into patties. This is a Low Carb Recipe using almonds instead of white flour or bread crumbs.

Yummy Liver Patties

1 lb of organic liver (I used pork)

1 organic pastured egg

1 cup of almonds (preferably soaked overnight and oven dried)

1/2 cup of milk

2 cloves of garlic

3/4 tsp cumin

1 large onion

Salt and Pepper to taste

Butter for frying

Chop onion and fry in butter until golden brown. Place liver, egg, almonds, milk, garlic, cumin in a food processor and blend mixture until smooth. Spoon out liver mixture into the frying pan and cook for a few minutes until golden brown. Flip the patties and cook for a few minutes. Top the patties with onions, salt and pepper.

My question to you:

What else could you add to make these kid friendly? I was also thinking about adding a can of tomato paste.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly The Kitchen Kop.

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Constipation is a big problem for a lot of people. Especially those that are transitioning to a low carb, low fiber diet. Did you know that this transition to low fiber is actually very beneficial to your colon health?

Of course constipation is not good, but using fiber to relieve this constipation can be very damaging. Fiber may actually be the cause of your constipation.

Konstantin Monastyrsky, the author of the Fiber Menace  describes how all our belief systems about the virtues of fiber have been all lies.

1. Fiber does not prevent colon cancer
2. Fiber does not prevent breast cancer
3. Fiber does not lower cholesterol
4. Fiber does not reduce the risk of heart disease
5. Fiber does not regulate blood sugar
6. Fiber does not reduce the risk of diabetes
7. Fiber does not decrease appetite
8. Fiber does not help with weight loss
9. Fiber does not keep the colon clean
10. Fiber does not help stop diarrhea
11. Fiber does not ease constipation

Watch these videos as Konstantin Monastyrsky explains the fiber misconceptions with scientific studies.

I have found 2 effective ways of regulating bowels without the use of fiber.

Lacto-fermented foods and coconut oil.

The lacto-fermented foods provide my gut with beneficial probiotics and enzymes required for food digestion as well as nutrient assimilation. The coconut oil stimulates bile production.

Dietary fat stimulates the release of bile from the gallbladder, which, in turn, stimulates the gastrocolic reflex. This in turn stimulates peristaltic mass movement, which, in turn, stimulates defecation. Source.

For healthy bowel function I try to eat lacto-fermented foods with every meal and take 2 tablespoons of coconut oil daily.

Share your thoughts!

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In today’s culture of the low fat movement, the idea of slathering, eating and cooking with saturated fats is disgusting to most. To lose fat we need to eat light, light and even lighter. Popular weight loss shows demonize meats and saturated fats and forbid egg yolks and encourage anything lean.  So what else are we to think?

Low Fat Dogma!

If we eat light – we will be light, have a lighter carbon footprint, love our animals, and have clearer minds to see and know our inner spiritual selves and god.

What this is is an ideology. It is all perception.

When it is portrait on television as healthy, the government reinforcing it in food guides, doctors and nutritionist telling their patients, magazines touting it as the greatest way of losing weight and product manufactures jumping on the “lean” bandwagon it is no surprise that everyone would try to adopt this way of living.

It is easy to vilify the meat and fat as artery clogging.

Eating “light” saves the animals. Eating meat “murders” animals (I do own a t-shirt that reads “meat is murder”).

Heavy, greasy saturated fat is bad. Light vegetable polyunsaturated oils are good.

We know that studies have shown the opposite –  that saturated fats are good and vegetable fats (polyunsaturated fats) are bad. Meat does not cause heart disease.

We have evidence all around us. Obesity is epidemic. Never in history has obesity been so prevalent. Obesity has created new industries – new drugs and supplements, weight loss clinics, food products, food addiction centers etc. Do you think that spouting the truth, that eating saturated fat will decrease appetite and help folks lose weight is going to happen? No. There is too much money now in the weight loss industry and in the drug industries.

Just remember how persecuted Dr. Atkins was. Nobody wanted to hear his science. The perception of eating bacon and eggs as being healthy was laughed at.

How do you change this “low fat” and “eating light” perception? You can start by enjoying your saturated fats and not feeling guilty by doing so. If you have vegetarian ethics (and even if you don’t!), I recommend that you find a good organic farmer that loves their animals. You can find out how the animals are handled, what they are fed, if they get to hang out in the pasture fields and eat good healthy bugs.

Don’t forget that it is carbohydrates in all forms that increase insulin and get stored as fat (fruit, grains, breads, beans, lentils and sugars etc). To get the fat loss benefits of saturated fats, carbohydrates should be restricted.

When you eat meat and saturated fats you can

• be as spiritual as a vegetarian
• love your animals
• you can have a low carbon footprint by selecting food from local organic farms
• you can feel “light” by breaking your food addictions, feel satisfied after eating meals and stop carbohydrate cravings
• you can feel great and have lots of energy and a “clear mind” (brain fog is a symptom of candida  yeast which thrives on carbohydrates and sugars)

You can enjoy your bacon and eggs (yolks and all), lose weight and be healthier for it!

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There are lots of people that just can’t give up bread. I know that I was one of those people once upon a time. I still am this way when I am trying to feed my kids lunches and run out of our Ezekiel sprouted grain bread that they eat. Slowly my children are getting used having healthy bread alternatives. As much as I don’t like it (but they do!), they come over to my plate and sneak my food.

This is a list of *healthy* Low Carb bread alternatives. I also share with you my very favorite comfort food that has replaced bread and sandwiches.

I love bread like most people but I have found that grains feed candida yeast. Slow cooking bone broths contain gelatin which heals and strengthen the gut wall. Gelatin also helps with the digestion of food in the gut because it is a “hydrophilic colloid” which means it attracts and holds liquids. They absorb the gastric secretions and reduces irritation.
“Low Carb Breads” are franken foods and should not be consumed. I wrote a blog post about the dangers of these low carb foods and why you would want to avoid them.

Stick with REAL FOOD for optimal health.

To your health and wellness,

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So it has seemed that in the last week that I have gotten some flak for posting this series. I will address some concerns. Like I have reiterated in my previous blog posts about the veggie diet is that this series is inspired by health problems I have seen in my own daughter and the same problems I see in other vegetarian children. These children have no choice in being vegetarian even though it is their health that is at stake.

The Low Carb Fibre issue

The Low Carb diet is not deficient in fibre. Actually fibre reduces net carb counts and you can get plenty of fibre from ground flax seeds, coconut, nuts, seeds and vegetables.

Saturated Fats And Cholesterol

The comments that I received about saturated fats and cholesterol were that they are not healthy, that the low carb movement is a fad and “plain out of style”. All of this is false. Saturated fats are very healthy and cholesterol may actually be an anti-oxidant.

As for the low carb diet being a fad, Gary Taubes writes in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories that the Low Carb diets can be traced all the way to the 1800’s and they are still around to this day in many different forms:

The Mercola Diet, Susan Sommers diet, The Paleo Diet, The South Beach Diet, Protein Power Diet, Dr. Atkins Diet, The Leptin Diet, Dr. Richard Bernstein Diabetes Solution, Dr. Al Sears the Author of “The Doctor’s Heart Cure” and many more… All of these except the Susan Sommers diet have medical doctors who stand behind them. I believe Susan Sommers referred to nutritionists and dieticians to help her outline the principles of Sommercising.

So if you still think that these diets are “fads” let me refer to this study that was performed for 12 months (which is one of the longest and largest studies performed) and found that the Atkins Diet was the healthiest.

The results of the study:

At the end of a year, the 77 women assigned to the Atkins group had lost an average of 10.4 pounds. Those assigned to LEARN lost 5.7 pounds, the Ornish followers lost 4.8 pounds and women on the Zone lost 3.5 pounds, on average. In all four groups, however, some participants lost up to 30 pounds.

After 12 months, women following the Atkins diet, relative to at least one of the other groups, had larger decreases in body mass index, triglycerides and blood pressure; their high-density lipoprotein, the good kind of cholesterol, increased more than the women on the other diets.

The Atkin’s Diet is a High Fat, medium protein, low carb

The Ornish Diet is a Low Fat, vegetarian diet, high carb

This study is comparing the Low Carb Atkins diet and the High Carb Vegetarian diet together. And as you can see it is the Atkins diet that turned out to be healthier. This study was published in the March 7, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Saturated Fats are traditional fats and have been used since the times of Jacob, Issac and Moses.

In previous generations we have never had so much heart disease. But now we have introduced a lot of vegetable oils into our diets and guess what?? Heart disease has skyrocketed! Why? Because saturated fats are stable fats, they don’t oxidize and vegetable fats are easily oxidized.

Polyunsaturated vegetable fats are one of the greatest contributors of heart disease. Not only that but they also greatly contribute to increased cancer, immune system dysfunction, damage to the liver, reproductive organs and lungs, digestive disorders, depressed learning ability, impaired growth and weight gain. Source: Nourishing Traditions, Pg 10

I did call this article Low Carb Diet Vs. The Vegetarian Diet so I will give you another example…

Many people would say that Dr. Atkins died from eating a low carb diet which caused heart disease. But actually he died because he slipped and fell on some ice and hit his head.

There is even an online copy of his death certificate which states his death as a “blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma.”

As many people have vilified Dr. Atkins as having heart failure, I do have to mention the death of Jay Dinshah who was the founder of the American Vegan Society in 1960. He was born to a vegetarian family and had become vegan. His parents had congenital heart problems and he died of a heart attack at the age of 66.

It makes me question if these heart problems in the family could have been caused by oxidized polyunsaturated vegetable fats???

There is a lot of disagreement and just pure lies about what is healthy and what is not healthy. It is your choice what you feed your family. But our children need the best nutrition to thrive.

My daughter was not thriving on a vegetarian/vegan diet. We were able to heal her cavities, uncontrollable crying, and failure to thrive by following the dietary principles founded by Weston A. Price and written in Nourishing Traditions.

To your health and wellness,

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The media, doctors and health experts all agree on 2 things that we are supposed to adhere too to be healthy and fit. Those two things are to eat less and exercise more. But it is extremely hard to eat less when you have uncontrollable cravings and food obsessions. Are we to forget and ignore what our bodies are trying to tell us when we can’t stop eating?

A few months ago my husband and I went out to eat at a restaurant in the city. I had a hard time finding food on the menu because they mainly served pastas, pizzas and sandwiches. There was only one Low Carb option and that was the Salmon Plate for a whopping $16-17. It was a salmon steak served with a small amount of veggies and a ridiculously small salad. But the salmon was a good size. It did fill the plate up and it did look like it would fill me up too.

The problem was that after leaving the restaurant I should have been quite full but instead I was still hungry. The salmon, even though it was big in size was baked with only lemon juice. There was hardly any noticeable fat on it. Fat (especially healthy saturated fat from healthy animals) helps quench those hunger pangs. It was a tasty meal, but it really lacked substance.

When I got home, I had to eat again. There is nothing more frustrating than being hungry after a meal you paid $17 for!

Now lets look at a different scenario…

If you check out my May 8th Low Carb and Anti-Candida menus blog, you will notice that at 4:30 pm I had a high fat snack, at 6:30 pm I had a homemade Caesar Salad with organic bacon. I made my own high fat salad dressing and then I added my bacon drippings on my salad. And that was all I ate for the rest of the evening and I felt like I ate a very satisfying dinner. If I had a low fat salad, I would need to eat a full meal with it!

Now my 2pm lunch on that day was rather low fat because my beef stew was made with Organic Grass fed Beef (grass fed beef is naturally low fat) and I did not add butter to it like I did with my dinner the night before. So I ended up needing a high fat snack in mid-afternoon.

So if you feel like you still have food cravings while on a low carb diet then add some more fat to your meals.

I get dismayed when the “health professionals” demonize fat and then talk about portion control. Are we supposed to ignore our bodily signals and live feeling deprived and hungry? And what about getting more exercise? Well exercise stimulates appetite! So with the “eat less, eat low fat and exercise more” philosophy you are setting yourself up for failure.

To watch your portions and eat smaller meals, add more fat to them. You will not be left hungry.

With love,

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Today I wanted to update you on my Candida Healing.

It has been ten months that I have been following the High Fat Low Carb Diet. It all started because of systemic Candida Yeast Infection that I have suffered with for 16 years. I never knew what it was in my early teens and college days. So with my ignorance I ate a high sugar, grain and alcohol diet for many years. I did eventually realize what was causing the huge discomfort and irritation and it was Candida Yeast.

I could not give up eating fruits and grains. I just could not imagine that natural foods could be harming my health. But they did. I was miserable for many years because of this thought.

Ten months ago I was suffering from yet another yeast infection and I had finally had enough. Diet was one of the only ways to get rid of this stubborn yeast. I had read online that the Atkins diet was a solution for Candida. I was yet again horrified that I would have to give up my beloved fruits.

Anyways… For the most part I eat low carb with a few slip ups here and there. The slip ups usually last a day. During more emotional times and New Year’s holiday it lasted several days. I eat very clean. I don’t keep a lot of junk food in the house, but my kids eat fruit and my husband likes his white bread. The sweetener for my kid’s food is honey. So that is the extent of my bad eating. There are no chocolate bars, cakes or candy in my house.

My last slip up (last week) I noticed when I had some honey on Ezekiel Sprouted Bread that I did not get a yeast infection. I normally get a reaction within hours of eating sweet food. That day I had bananas, sweet grapes, honey on Sprouted Ezekiel Bread (3 pieces) and very little reaction. The next day I ate similar food and very little reaction. The day after was my dad’s birthday and I had some alcohol. It was the alcohol that finally triggered the yeast and it was the third day of eating sweet things!

After 10 months of Low Carb dieting, I can finally have a small amount of naturally sweet foods without worrying about yeast. Even though I love eating the Low Carb Way, it is a relief to know that I am on the road to healing after suffering from yeast for half my life.

My Candida Treatment is…

• Eating No Grains
• Eating No Fruit (except lemon juice, or half a grapefruit occasionally about once a week)
• Eating No Berries (some Candida diets allow this but in my personal experience these feed the yeast)
• I eat probiotic foods such as yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, natural pickles (Bubbies)
• I eat two heaping teaspoons of coconut oil every day
• I still eat dairy products (some Candida diets don’t allow this)
• I take Cod Liver Oil every day (fall and winter months) and get 45 minutes of sunshine everyday for Vitamin D. Vitamin D is essential for immune health.
• All my meat that I eat is local and organic. Conventional meats have undesirable medicines and antibiotic residuals.

That’s it! I do not take any Probiotic powders anymore. I prefer to get my nutrition from foods.

To your health and wellness,

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A new study has been released by the Archives of Internal Medicine that shows a correlation between eating high amounts of red meat and early death. In this study white meat has been shown to have the opposite effect and has shown a decreased risk of premature death.

I eat low carb diet for health and fatloss. Red meat is a big part of my diet and I do feed it to my family. So this study was interesting to me.

Since reading the book Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes I have seen these kinds of studies in a different light. Basically there are a lot of published papers (and wasted money) that are nothing but junk science and this study could just be classified under that category.

What they did with this study is take 545,000 people ages 50-71 and followed them for ten years. The participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire and estimate from memory the amount of red meat, white meat and processed meat that they ate. It is really hard to acquire reliable information from older people who may or may not have memory slip-ups.

The death rate increase (from cancer and heart disease) for those that ate the most red meat: 31% for men and 36% for women. That may sound alarming.

This study has the Canadian Cancer Society all excited about the findings and will start asking people to reduce their red meat intake.

But wait a minute here…

Is it really the red meat that is the cause of increased death or can it be some other factors that are the cause of the increased death?

Smoking was the largest confounder of the association between meat intake and mortality. Physical activity and education were also important covariates, but not to the same degree as smoking.

During 10 years of follow-up, there were 47 976 male deaths and 23 276 female deaths. In general, those in the highest quintile of red meat intake tended to consume a slightly lower amount of white meat but a higher amount of processed meat compared with those in the lowest quintile. Subjects who consumed more red meat tended to be married, more likely of non-Hispanic white ethnicity, more likely a current smoker, have a higher body mass index, and have a higher daily intake of energy, total fat, and saturated fat, and they tended to have lower education and physical activity levels and lower fruit, vegetable, fiber, and vitamin supplement intakes.

The scientist noted that the people who ate the most red meat also had other unhealthy habits such as smoking, excess weight, higher caloric intake, lack of exercise and lower vitamin and antioxidant intake through supplements and diet. They also had a higher intake of processed meats. Processed meats are junk food and contain sodium nitrites which are carcinogenic. And it isn’t a far stretch if these participants ate processed meats and lower levels of fresh produce that the other foods in their diets would be highly processed refined grain products. Their fiber was low and that means they had low intake of whole grains. The other issue is the overweight which means the participants had some sort of insulin problems. Insulin problems can lead to some sort of chronic illness and therefore death.

So is it really the high red meat in the diet that causes early death? NO. It is the other unhealthy habits that are the real killer. They did not mention alcohol intake here and that can also play a major role in disease and death.

Yet the researchers and media are focused on the spreading the word of junk science.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

To your health and wellness,

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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I do it and I hate it! Emotional eating is a way I comfort myself. But at the end of the day the situation that caused me to eat junk food has not gone away and I am stuck with the physical discomfort and guilt.

How do I stop this? It is not an issue of self esteem, but rather of handling stress. I am lucky that I live far away from a grocery/convenience store and am not able to raid it at my leisure and when the mood strikes me.

Low Carb eating does help tremendously with the amount of junk food binging I have done in the last ten months, but life is life and stressful situations come up and at the end of the day when I am left alone I am still able to empty my cupboards.

What is the cause of this? I know in my head that what I am doing is emotional eating. I know that I will feel horrible and I do it anyways.

I am the only one in my family that eats Low Carb. I do all the groceries. But there are foods that my husband would not go without so I buy them. I don’t buy crackers for the kids anymore – they are my favourite junk food and I could eat a whole box in one sitting. There is a minimal amount of junk food in my house.

When I do have an emotional eating episode I try to eat foods with lots of fat. With pretzels I would dip them in butter, crackers I would dip in butter, I will eat white bread with lots of butter and cheese. (I think I see a pattern here… white flour and butter???) This in no way is great food combination if you are Somersizing but at least I don’t end up eating the whole night and I get full very quickly.

Emotional eating occurs in me when I have feelings like “I just don’t care, I am going to do it anyways” even though it hurts me. It is not related to boredom. I used to eat like that when I was a teenager and early twenties before I had kids. Now I just don’t have time to get bored.

I eat when I feel like crap! Eating junk food is immediate gratification for that. I savour every moment of it. This normally happens in the evening and I go to bed feeling yucky but I feel better in the morning.

Is there a cure for feeling crappy? I don’t think so. But there are things I can do to make the situation better. Unstoppable Fat Loss is great for some instant motivation and can get me put me on track when I have lost my way.

There is no easy way to stay strong. It has to be constantly refreshed in our minds. There are folks that meditate daily, do yoga, practice affirmations and visualizations. These are done on a regular basis to stay on track.

It has to be worked on and does not magically happen.

There are no easy answers for emotional eating.

To your health and wellness,

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