Diet – Page 2 – Auxiliary Memory

My LDL Drop to 92 on a Plant Based Diet

By James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Back in May when visiting my doctor for my quarterly cholesterol checkup and she was writing out another prescription to fight my cholesterol, I asked her if there wasn’t a way to lower cholesterol without drugs. She told me to lose weight. She’s told me that for years and I never have. But I was sick of trying new drugs. It’s taken me years to learn I can only handle 10mg of a statin, but no more, without getting side-effects.

I drove home seriously thinking about how to fight cholesterol. I got on Amazon and ordered the book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., and I also discovered that night on Netflix, Forks Over Knives, a documentary that featured Dr. Esselstyn.

I followed this plant based diet for three months and it worked. My August check-up showed I had dropped from 232 pounds to 211. My overall cholesterol went from 187 to 152, my LDL from 130 to 92, but sadly my good cholesterol dropped from 40 to 38.

The plant base diet is hard, but not that hard. No animal products of any kind, and no oils, not even olive oil, which everyone believes is good for your heart. I did cheat a little bit though. I ate peanut butter. I found if I could have one peanut butter sandwich a day I didn’t crave all my other favorite foods. I eat healthy cereal and almond milk for breakfast, and then a lot of salads, veggies, fruits, soups, and especially various rice and bean dishes. The worst thing about the diet was the gas, but over time my gut got better at processing so much roughage.

Now that I know this diet works I’m going to stick to it. Getting below 100 with my LDL amazed my doctor. She was so happy for me, and I don’t want to let her down. This is the first time in decades I’ve been below 230 pounds. I began 2015 at 242, and struggled for five months to lose 10 pounds. Then went on the plant based diet and lost 20 more in three months. The speed of losing weight has tapered off, but I’m going to struggle to lose more.

Another documentary, The Widowmaker, which I recently found on Netflix, also inspires me to keep on the plant based diet. That show claims heart disease is preventable. Forks Over Knives claims a plant based diet is the key to stopping heart disease. I guess I’m one statistic proving it works.

JWH

Designing My Own Restaurant Style Menu for Healthy Eating

The other day I wrote, “Simplifying an Overloaded Life” which has inspired me to work on a single goal developing a healthy diet. This morning, in the predawn darkness of being neither awake or asleep, a good idea came to me. I imagined creating a menu, like the kind we use in restaurants, that would have all the healthy foods and dishes I could eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, listed in an attractive way, that will remind me of what I might want to eat, or should eat. If it’s not on the menu, then I don’t eat it.

[click on photo for larger image]

I even imagined using Microsoft Publisher to lay out this menu with attractive lettering and appetizing photos, printing it on card stock, and even having it laminated. I pictured myself pulling out this menu whenever I got hungry so it would remind me just what I could eat, knowing that if I ordered from this Healthy Living Home Menu, I’d be eating just what I need to feel better and lose weight.

Of course, in the light of day, this appears to be quite an ambitious project. What if my menu offers twelve different dishes for breakfast, lunch and supper? That’s learning how to cook 36 meals. Damn, that sounds like a lot. 28 has always been my favorite number, so let’s go with eight items for breakfast, and ten for lunch and supper. Even that sounds too ambitious.

Of course I know myself. I cook one thing and eat on it three days, and freeze any leftovers. I tend to eat the same breakfast every day. Right now I live off of about six different meals I know how to prepare, but what I need to do is eat more variety of vegetables and fruits, so I need to expand that repertoire of items on my menu.

I’ve decided that December is the month I’ll totally focus on learning to eat healthy as my one and only goal. Here’s what I plan to do:

Gather all my diet/health/cook books into one place for study (see photo).
Read and compare these books for their best recommendations.
Write down the best advice and tips I read in Evernote.
Learn how to shop for the best foods I should eat – how to tell when fruits and vegetables are in season, at their best to buy, etc.
Learn how to store food for optimal quality – fruits, veggies, spices, condiments, dairy, eggs, nuts, etc.
Learn how to chop and cook food properly.
Select 20-30 recipes to master and start learning to cook them – save them in Evernote.
Create and print my menu of approved foods.
When at home, only eat from that menu.
Research menus at local restaurants for their most healthy meals and make a list of approved away from home menu items.
Make a list of all foods and ingredients I want eat and know about, and why they are good for me, and if they have any curative powers.

One problem I’ve always had when I’m at the store, especially a healthy one like Whole Foods or Fresh Market, is seeing all the fruits and vegetables and not knowing how to select and prepare most of them. Recently I’ve been adventurous and started buying avocados after some training with my friend Janis. I’m still never sure how to pick out a good one, but I’ve learn how to cut them open, even though I make a mess, but all I do is put a few slices on my salad and then I have half an avocado that I don’t know what do with. I really need to get to know fruits and vegetables.

I also need to learn how to use spices. I can cook by a recipe, but crudely. What I like to do is think of a selection of tasty veggies and make a stir fry or soup, but I’m never sure how to season my concoctions. So in studying my cookbook, I need to select a range of recipes that will educate myself about spices.

I assume my menu will be a good place to save all the recipes I want to master, so it might end up like a small book.

My ultimate goal is to simplify my life. I want to get past thinking about what I should eat. I want to get past thinking about how to live healthy. I want to learn what’s in my diet/health/cook books and then give them away. I want to stop worrying about what I should eat. I want to stop worrying about eating an unhealthy diet.

I want to start the new year without having to make any resolutions about dieting.

JWH – 12/4/13

Is Dieting a Test of Free Will?

Ever since I read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker I’ve been obsessed with the concept of free will. I’ve read enough books on brain studies in recent years to doubt the existence of free will. Now I’m not saying we’re all robots, but I question whether or not we’re making decisions on our own, as if we were independent souls sitting in our heads driving our bodies around, and making impartial decisions based on weighing all the evidence and facts.

I remember a freshman philosophy course I took in 1969 and my professor challenging us to come up with an example of free will. That class inspired many arguments between me and my friends. Free will is a philosophical concept that few people think about in normal life – mostly because it feels like we do make our own decisions so why even ask about free will.

When Neo makes his choice between the red and blue pill in the film The Matrix, is that an act of free will? If he’s the One, wouldn’t that make him born to take the red pill?

Everyone assumes they have free will and they are acting on their own volition, but the older I get the more I assume that’s just an illusion. So I’ve been wondering if I can come up with a test for free will. I think I’ve found one with dieting. Our bodies and hunger represent the power of nature and the hardwired programming of genes. The need to diet comes from our environment, where we constantly learn that fat is sexual unattractive, unhealthy, and like Pavlov’s dog, we’re constantly conditioned that being fat is bad. Without that nurturing my nature would run wild.

If we have free will we should be able to evaluate all the outside data and decide to diet and lose weight because of its own philosophical merits. Then why do so many people have trouble dieting? Is it because our bodies, genes and physiological wiring program us to eat and free will can’t overcome that?

I started a diet today and at this very moment my body is already nagging at me to eat something fun. “What a puss,” my mind tells my body. I say no, it says yes. If I can keep saying no, is that proof of free will?

Now there are two factors here: free will and will power. Scientists are throwing water on the concept of will power too. And what’s the difference between free will and will power? Deciding to diet might be an act of free will, but failing to diet might be a lack of will power. And if I succeed in losing weight is it really because I have free will, or has outside stimuli overcame my genetic programming and reprogrammed my eating habits? Where is the me in all of this activity?

Or is it a case of “I diet, therefore I am.” (I wish I knew the Latin equivalent to cogito ergo sum that includes the word diet.) Is thought good enough to prove the existence of free will? Without thought I’d just eat anything I wanted and never think to lose weight. However, all those thoughts about losing weight come from the outside world. If I really had free will, wouldn’t it have been my idea to lose weight?

But who comes up with original ideas???!!! Einstein and the theory of relativity comes immediately to mind. Imagining the concept of space-time had to be an act of free will. Do we discount the billions of years of cosmological and biological evolution that produced Einstein as not part of the equation, or is Einstein’s discovery of space-time really the universe’s act of free will? Einstein couldn’t have made his discovery without a long history of other scientists and thinkers.

When I choose to diet, is it my decision, or society’s? Like Neil Armstrong’s “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Can we ever separate our will from the world’s? The urge to eat is genetic. How much I want to eat is probably genetic too. Choosing to eat between steak and veggie burgers would seem like a free will choice, but is it? If I had never read about vegetarianism would I ever considered the choice?

That’s the weird thing about asking ourselves if we have free will. Genetics might be our hardwiring, but the environment seems to be doing all the software programming, so where is there room for free will? Would that be self programming? Even if I could write my own personality programming, wouldn’t the “free will” writing the programming been created by outside programming or genetics?

If I really had free wouldn’t even the urge to eat be my choice? Is thwarting the urge to eat free will, even thought he idea didn’t originate with me? Is free will the ability to choose among the various outside impulses we get from society? Society tells me not to eat, but advertising on TV is doing a major brainwashing job to get me to eat. Every time I see a Sonic commercial I want one of their shakes.

Dieting is a test of will power and maybe even an example of free will. It’s a shame I always flunk it.

JWH – 12/15/12

The Tyranny of Hormones

Why are tits so much more dazzling than anything else in reality? I mean women’s tits. And how do molecules in our brain make us think human breasts are the epitome of beauty, while convincing us that all other mammalian glands are gross? Why aren’t guys mesmerized by cow udders? Those hormones are some pretty amazing chemicals.

Thursday, a young women leaned over right in front of me to get something out of her backpack and a large vista of hanging breasts bulged in front of my eyes. Evidently my heart is strong, because I didn’t have a heart attack. As an old man of sixty, I am quite grateful for such unexpected revelations of evenly tanned globes of fatty flesh, but I have to wonder why my hormones are still active. What’s the point?

My age, physical appearance and lack of wealth preclude any success with young women, or even women of my own age, and even though my hormones are more than willing, my equipment is unreliable at best, and my little swimmers are old and tired and probably couldn’t make it all the way to the egg anyway. I’m sure my DNA can’t replicate like it once did.

Why won’t my reproductive hormones leave me alone? I’ve been looking down women’s dresses for 60 years, why hasn’t it gotten old?

If my appetite hormones didn’t insist that weighing 235 pounds was so wonderful, maybe the tools of my sexual hormones would work better and I could at least attract sixty-year-old women. But what’s the point? I have no need of children, so why do my hormones keep insisting I reproduce?

Why do our hormones torment us so? They make us moody and angry, or depressed and lethargic, or jumpy and nervous. I suppose there might have been a time in my life when all my hormones worked in harmony, but that was long ago. It’s just so pathetic to be old, bald and fat and having my hormones constantly whispering to my mind that I should go make some babies. Even my sperm are laughing at that.

Why can’t I have reasonable hormones. Why can’t I have sensible old man hormones instead of dirty old man chemistry?

And if I’m not having sex fantasies, I’ll be fantasizing about chocolate chip cookies. Isn’t that bizarre? It’s like being possessed by demons.

Think of all the hormones it would be wonderful to have? I want to be horny to write great novels. Now that would be a useful urge for an old man. It doesn’t require a lot of energy or sarcastic rejecting females.

My body is breaking down and I seriously need to lose some weight. Yet, my inner chemistry insists on staying fat. Where’s the biological logic in that?

Wouldn’t it be great if we were born with little knobs that allowed us to adjust our hormone levels. I got two useless nipples. Imagine if they had been dials for sex and hunger hormone levels. Our whole culture has indoctrinated us to think sex is the most wonderful experience in all of nature. But if we could turn off that urge would we think it so wonderful? If we could turn down the sex dial to zero would we be miserable, or would we think, “Wow, peace of mind is better than a piece of ass.”

And how anorexic would we all be if we could dial down our hunger hormones?

Or if we could dial down the sex, would we all settle for being happy and fat?

JWH – 9/8/12

The Soul Torture of Dieting

I need to lose weight for health reasons. I have arthritis in my back that makes it hard to stand or walk for long. I’ve bought Z-coil shoes that have shock absorbing springs in the heels that help tremendously. They make me look silly wearing them, but those bouncy shoes proves that my weight is related to my degenerative back disease. Even with the incentive of pain, for the life of me I can’t make myself lose weight!

Dieting is torture. Craving fun food is hormonal tyranny. Drug addicts argue over which drug is the most addictive, well I say the junk that’s the most addictive is junk food. I can force myself to go months without eating my favorite desserts, but then bam, something snaps, and my will power breaks. Dieting is the absolute test of mind over matter, and carbs beats the crap out of my gray matter every time.

Just because my mind lives inside this body doesn’t mean its cozy relationship affords any influence. Actually, I think it proves that the mind doesn’t just occupy the our skulls, but the whole hormonal system. Insulin affects my thinking just as much as any mind altering drug.

A carton of Ben & Jerry’s can bring me such happiness, energy and creative stimulation that it’s torture to resist. But I have resisted! I haven’t had any B&J’s for months, but the desire for it never goes away. But it doesn’t have to be anything as fabulous as ice cream for my hormones to torture me, sometimes I just crave an ordinary peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Just losing eight or ten pounds seems to trigger something that makes me lose all mental control and resolve.

I used to come home from work and stoke up on M&Ms, Coca-Cola, pies, cake, cookies and candy. All those calories would jazzercise my neural activities so I felt like doing after being burned out from work. When I diet I want to come home and veg out. In the last ten years I’ve discovered that a nap after work will rejuvenate me like my surgery loves, but it doesn’t do away with the craving.

Why isn’t eating simple and logical? Shouldn’t it be a Mr. Spock like decision. These foods will make me healthy, those foods are poison. Okay, I’ll take the poison. What sane person thinks that way?

Now scientists are telling us sugar is toxic. That’s probably perfect true, but I’ve been developing a tolerance to sugar my whole life, and I can take on some high levels of that poison.

There is something incredibly unfair that desserts are evil. We seldom get what we dream, but a carton of Ben & Jerry’s is something dreamy that’s easy to obtain. Of course, now that my teeth are going, well just one, but another is feeling poorly, I feel I should have listened to those warnings against sugar all those years ago. It’s like that old joke of Woody Allen, where his mother tells him that masturbation will make him go blind and he asks if he can do it until he needs glasses.

I’m afraid I’ll be needing choppers and still wanting to eat sweets. Or they’ll be cutting off my feet while I eat M&Ms. Why is it so hard to say no? On the news tonight they reported that there’s an epidemic of skin cancer among young women because they love tanning bed tans. Will that news stop them? What a silly question to ask.

Why aren’t we smarter? Or to ask it another way, why do our urges trump our brains, because we do know the answers, and we even believe what we’re told, but we still do the things bad for us like lemmings heading for the edge of the abyss. I suppose it’s the same thing with global warming – we can’t give up fossil fuels any easier than sugar or cigarettes. We’re like one cell animals heading directly to the stimulus we love the most. Becoming big brain beings didn’t overcome those basic instincts. What good is a neo-cortex when it can’t control the mammalian and reptilian parts of our brains?

Have they ever considered lobotomies for the lower brain functions? Or would being healthy and logical like Mr. Spock feel like being a zombie?

JWH – 4/2/12