Ketones, brain starvation and Brain Insulin

All trips and medical visits over so can settle in back at home.

Expected to put on some weight and eating was out of control some afternoons. More on that later.

However overall am pleased that my weight did not go sky high to the point where I would yet again give up!

Have been continuing with my research into my problem. That uncontrollable need to consume glucose in any form in the afternoons.

Found some help in the on line carb smart emagazine. It is from Dana Carpendar and I would recommend you get a subscription.

In there they advertised a book about Alzeheimer's by Dr Newport. She has been doing research on brain chemistry as her husband is suffering from early onset of the disease.

What she found was that they have discovered that the brain makes insulin. So it is not just the pancreas that makes insulin.

Her hypothesis is that in Alzheimer's the brain stops making insulin and the cells of the brain start starving and dying as they cannot receive the glucose they need to stay functional.

She found that her husband improved tremendously with replacing most oils and fats in his diet with coconut oil.

I then transposed this into the obese body. What if the brain is starving but the body is obese?

If the brain cant get the glucose it needs to function it is going to make you eat regardless of what your body looks like and how much extra fat you have available.

If I can get my brain to run on ketones in the afternoon then maybe I wont get the cravings and binging that have caused me to be obese.

Started this yesterday. Have started making bullet proof coffee using coconut cream and coconut oil instead of butter.

Hoping to buy some MCT oil over the next week or so.

Yesterday afternoon I definitely noticed a difference in my brain. Usually I feel lethagic in the afternoon and really dont want to start or finish anything. Yesterday I completed the wage program.

Early days yet but if I can keep my brain happy and content and also lose weight it would be so wonderful.

I did get on the scale this morning for the first time in 6 weeks. Thought if I dont know what I weigh now how can I know this is working?

Other things I am monitoring.

Whether I can slide my rings off my fingers easily.

Whether my new jeans fit.

Whether my muffin top stays away.

Whether hips and waist measurements reduce.

Whether cravings and binging stop.

Hopefully that way I wont get fixated on the scale as I usually do.

Finger Nails, obesity and Essential Fatty Acids

None of my nails have broken, split or torn in the last 2 months. I started on evening primrose 3 months ago and take enough to give me 360mg GLA per day. So that works out at 2 borage oil or 4 evening primrose ( 1000mg).

All my life I have wanted 2 things. To be able to control my weight without starving and to have pretty nails that I could paint and file and that would grow beyond the ends of my fingers.

Looks like I am well on the way to achieving both those goals.Years ago I took a picture out of a magazine showing a hand bag ( louis Vutton!) with a picture of a hand holding the bag with beautiful nails. Not particularly long pointy ones. Just a nice curve to the shape and they were painted red. I now have the same nails.

I keep waiting for this to stop working. For the cravings and binging to come back and my nails to go back to their usual soft flaky tearing selves.

Would be interesting to know if any other obese people have problems with their finger nails. I think Ann Gittleman in her Eat Fat lose weigh said that people who are deficient in GLA will not have strong nails and will not have smooth hair.

I have got enough supplements to last me till the end of this year and will be ordering more then. Reading Inflammation Nation. Not got to the end yet but he also believes part of the problem facing us is a lack of EFA in the modern diet.

I believe first comes the EFA deficiency, that causes cravings for sugar and starch, that causes excess insulin which causes inflammation resulting in obesity.

Sort out the EFA deficiency and the rest will fall into place.

Buy the book Obesity, A Deficiency Disease? on Amazon for your kindle, ebook download.

Dieting with Avocados

Found some very nice avocados in the market yesterday. They are the nice creamy butter ones. Bought 10 as we had a party yesterday evening.

Planned a light lunch so had half an avo with half a tin of tuna in oil. Was not tempted by any of the sugar and sweet treats on offer in the evening.

Had more avo plus cream sauce with steak and farmers sausage for supper.

Drinks were decaf coffee and water.

Just because the food is there I dont have to eat it! I am sure that need to eat and uncontrollable picking at food while preparing food is caused not by low blood sugar but by the body's need to find the essential fatty acids it is missing. If you give it those EFA then suddenly your eating is under control and not something that you need will power to control. You eat meals and then naturally stop after one portion. No deprivation or agonising for hours over whether to eat something or not.

10 bars of chocolate in the fridge! My brain not even thinking about them. Not on my menu any more!

So nice to have the freedom to eat nice food without guilt.

Check out

Obesity, A Deficiency Disease?

Available for download to your kindle from Amazon.

40lbs

Thrilled this morning to find I am at  81.8kg which means I have lost 40lbs since my heaviest.

I have still no idea how my body works! Total mystery. Yesterday I had a nice piece of steak for lunch and then instead of my usual fish had some of the cooked chicken livers for supper.

Was reading the other day about the curlecue graph of weight loss. Thats where you lose weight and then it comes back on for a few days and then you drop lower than the last lowest weight and then up again. That seems to be what my body does. So I will expect that number to go up again tomorrow for no good reason but hopefully it will drop again later in the week.

Have been ordering some little books on evening primrose. The one I got last week said it has been documented that weak and splitting nails improve within 1 month of starting on evening primrose. A Dr went so far as to say that he would say that a deficiency in omega 6 fatty acids, GLA, can cause weak and flaky nails. I have not had a finger nail tear or flake in 2 months now. Getting to the point where I will have to file them!

What I find interesting is that reading the results of adding evening primrose to the diet are all good but very little has been documented on using a low carb diet plus evening primrose. Plenty of low fat plus essential fatty acids, but there I think the effect of the high insulin, due to the high carb of the diet, would negate any effects shown by the adding of EFA.

Like Dana Carpendar in her book 'How I gave up my low fat diet and lost 40lbs" I have done no exercise to lose this 40lbs. I have not been going to the gym, or getting the dance DVD's out.

My body has been more active purely because I have felt better. I am up and doing stuff. Not sitting in my chair watching TV all day!

I have been working out how long it takes me to lose 1kg. This last one took 14 days. The one before took 21 days. I found that for me it is better to take my EPO in the morning and not take my omega 3 fish oil at the same time but take it in the evenings. When I was taking the 2 together that was when it took me 21 days to lose a kg.

Every day on my previous diets could have been failure day. The afternoon I would lose control and eat myself into a stupour. With evening primrose that fear has left me. I have found the cure for me.

At 2kg a month I should have a normal body by Christmas! I will also have a normal eating pattern and a normal appetite and normal size clothes!

Childhood Obesity

I have been reading some books on obesity in childhood. Children who have BMI's over over 30 before they start school. Babies of 6 months being continually hungry and so being fed formula and solids, their weight is then far too much for their age and size.

As far as I know I was a normal size baby. Photos of me aged 3 or 4 show a normal sized toddler, but by the time I got to school age at 5 I was already tubby. I loved my food and would also be ready for seconds. I did not seem to have a stop button when it came to food. We always had starch with our protein, meat and potatoes, rice and chicken etc. And we always had a pudding probably with custard.

I struggled with my weight and trying to fit into normal size clothes all my school years. I did not want to be fat but could not cope with alternative which as far as I could see was to be hungry all the time! Various diets were tried but they all ended in a binge and failure.

From what I have learnt about myself now, 50 years later, is that my body does not make enough gamma linolenic acid from any linolic acid ( sunflower, soya corn oils) that I consume. As most of my diet has been fat free for the last 50 yrs this is not surprising. After my early experiences in dieting the one food I never added back into my diet was fat and oils, until now.

Because I was short on GLA my body was not able to make the good prostaglandins PG1 and any omega 6's that were consumed went to make the PG'2 which are the inflammatory ones. I did  not have much fish oil either so PG'3 were also in pretty short supply. So the only EFA I was ingesting were the ones designed to make my obesity and inflammation problem worse.

I also had cravings for sugar and starch ( notably bread) in the afternoons which I believe were a direct result of the shortage of GLA. As soon as I started adding Evening Primrose and Borage oil to my diet the cravings and binge sessions stopped. From the very first day!

So my recommendations for the obesity epidemic is that all pregnant women should take EPO during their pregnancy so that the unborn child received the EFA he/she requires. While the mother is nursing she should also continue the EPO. This will also help with any weight gain due to the pregnancy.

Babies fed on formula are supplied with EFA in the baby milk. If a baby seems to be continually hungry then I have read that it is possible to pierce open a capsule of EPO and then rub the oil onto the thighs and arms of the baby where it will be absorbed. Please read up about this and check with a doctor first before you do this. Once the child is eating solids it is easy to add EPO to food and to try and cut out as many sources of sugar and starch and trans fat and empty oils as possible.

Children should never be put on a fat free diet. They should be given full fat milk and not skim milk. Water should be given instead of soda. No child should be given fruit juice unless with a meal and then it should be diluted with water. Butter is better and olive oil is good. Breakfast should be protein with fat. Boxed cereals should be banished from the breakfast table.

The last 40 years have been an experiment in how not to advise a population to be healthy. We can all see the results. Good fat and oils do not cause heart disease and do not cause obesity. In fact they do the opposite. They protect the heart by reducing inflammation and if the body gets the EFA it needs, the appetite reduces to normal and weight loss is possible. Calories have very little to do with it!

Evening Primrose stops cravings and binging

Have been rereading my books to see if anyone has written about the effect of EPO on cravings and weight loss. Ann Louise Gittleman wrote a book in 1999 called Eat Fat Lose weight. How the right fats can make you thin for life.

She definitely was on the right track there but I think put more emphasis on the fish oils ( omega 3) compared to the seed oils Omega 6 and GLA. I have found that I get a better result when I take my EFA separately  So EPO in the morning and at lunch time and the fish oils in the evening.

What I did find was the diet she recommended at the end of the book had too much glucose for me. She was advising drinking orange juice with breakfast and or fruit plus a low carb bread. Her lunches and dinner recommendations are fine.

I am much happier having a protein breakfast with fat and that sets me up for the day. I rarely feel hungry and have no trouble sleeping at night.

I am staying away from fruit completely, I may see if I can have one piece of fruit as part of a meal once I have lost the weight I need to. If I find myself binging on fruit then I will have to stop eating it again.

Looking forward to getting to the 40lb loss mark and under 80kg. First should take me about 2 weeks and the second about a month or two.

Finger Nails and Obesity

All my life I have wanted pretty nails. Not particularly long talons but nails that would grow beyond the ends of my fingers and that I could file into a nice shape.

Never happened, unless I paid or bought false ones that stuck on my nails and turned the nail underneath into soft tissue paper!

As regular readers here will know I started taking Evening Primrose and Borage oil supplements just before Christmas last year. I now take 2500gms to give me 350mg GLA each day. I take this with Vit E but I only take my fish oils Omega 3's in the evenings as I believe the GLA and Omega 3's compete for the enzymes needed to process these fatty acids.

The books say it takes 6 to 7 months for a finger nail to grow from the nail bed to the end of the finger so I was not expecting to see any finger nail growth till towards the middle of the year. But surprise surprise it is only 3 months and already I have nails that are so much stronger and more flexible and dont flake and tear and they are just beyond the end of my fingers now. Today they have red nail polish on them! They dont look like my nails!

I have been deficient in essential fatty acids all my life. I dont know if I have not been consuming the mother fatty acids needed to make these, or if my body does not make the enzymes in enough quantity to process the Omega 6's in my diet. I dont use a lot of grain/bean oils so it could be 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.

What I do know is when I take the EPO and Borage oil, on its own, my appetite is completely normal. I no longer get cravings in the afternoon and evenings. I no longer binge. I can eat my supper and then stop eating and dont even think about food for hours at a time.

I never want to be so out of control around food again. It was not hunger it was a deficiency.

Buy the book

Obesity, A deficiency Disease? available now from Amazon for your kindle.

Essential Fatty Acids in Children's Diets

Here is an email I have just written to my Daughters and daughter in law.

EFA have been forgotten in children's diets because of the anti fat anti obesity drive.

I believe the 2 things are linked. The anti fat drive has caused the obesity!

'I am doing more research on essential fatty acids. These are essential
fats that our body is not able to make and must come from food every
day.

Unfortunately the modern diet does not contain foods with good sources of EFA.

These would be grass fed milk, meat and butter.
Omega 3 enriched eggs
Tinned fish in their own oil ( not soya or veg oil)
Fresh oily fish

When I was a child I was given cod liver oil every day ( I hated the
fishy taste!) it was provided free for all children on the NHS in UK.
Dad was also given cod liver oil and malt every day.

I have now bought cod liver oil and malt from Link and Dawns kids are
starting to get accustomed to taking it!

Many of the formula milks available are also short on EFA. The
importance of these fats was not understood and soya oil or corn oil
were added to formula milk instead of the saturated fats ( coconut and
palm) that used to be added.

Can you supplement all the children with sources of EFA?

Give them cod liver oil and malt.

Use butter ( kerrygold) instead of margarine.

Get full fat cheese and milk and not low fat anything!

Try and give them fish once in a while!

Cut back on the use of vegetable oils, soya sunflower etc and increase
extra virgin oil oil use.

good fats and oil are very satisfying so children should be less
hungry between meals!

This is what I studied at college but we never looked at the
importance of fat! Rather it was the less fat you eat the better!'

Fat Fast Dana Carpendar

Just downloaded Dana's new book. It is available on Kindle only within USA so I had to get the PDF version.

Have printed out the introduction which is the first 27 pages, With recipes it is 96 pages so will only print out those ones I need.

Basically it is a short sharp shock to the metabolism to break a stall. Five snacks a day ( you cant really call them meals) high in fat and low in protein and veg.

I have not tried it yet as I am still happy with my weight loss. The GLA and fish oil capsules are still doing the job for me. Stops me snacking and binging in the afternoons and evenings.

Also download

Obesity, A Deficiency Disease?

Onto your kindle.

Michelle

Obesity is fixable

Finally got the book out there. Now available for Kindle

Obesity A Deficiency Disease if you are in UK

Obesity A Deficiency Disease if you are in USA.

What the book says is that cravings and binging are not caused by normal hunger. They are caused by a deficiency. The deficiency is fatty acids, the ones needed to make the hormones. 

The body is not a very precise machine and instead of sending messages craving specific fats Gamma Linolenic Acid it send a message craving for sugar ( the body does try to make GLA from sugar!). 

If you take GLA as a supplement ( Evening primrose or starflower  (borage oil) then the cravings just stop. They no longer happen and you no longer binge on sugar in the afternoons and evenings.

Buy the book to find out more.

Michelle

Obesity, A Deficiency Disease?

Now available to download to your kindle!

Link is here

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Obesity-A-Deficiency-Disease-ebook/dp/B00BE7RI9O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360641919&sr=8-1

This is the book description

What if the calorie theory is wrong? What if your metabolism is making and keeping you fat? What if it is possible to change your metabolism by what you eat and what you don’t eat? What if eating low fat, high carb, low calorie foods makes the deficiency worse? What if you could finally understand why you binge and learn how to stop binging tomorrow? What if your body is unable to make one vital fatty acid and drives you to eat carbs to compensate? The GLA diet plan (Gamma linolenic Acid) teaches you about your body. You will learn how to work with it, to get your eating under control and finally slowly lose the excess pounds. This eating plan is for people with a BMI of 28 and above who have yoyo dieted for years. This is a medium fat, medium protein, low carb diet with vital supplements. You must get enough essential fatty acids in your diet every day or you will struggle, as you have with other diets. Eat healthy nourishing meals, 3 times a day, and watch the numbers on the scale decrease. Then keep that weight off, for ever!

I have finally got into the 29BMI range. I have not had cravings, binging or nibble need for nearly 2 months.

The low carb diet is only half the answer. The other half is the EFA that the modern diet is missing.

Try this if you are a yoyo dieter.

Up to Amazon now

Uploaded the book about 2 days ago so waiting on Amazon. If they say eating plan does not meet the Government guidelines of 6 to 11 portions of starchy carbs per day they will be absolutely right!

Checked back on last years weight loss graph. I was this weight about June 2012. Got another 0.9kg to go to get under that 30BMI again and then another 0.5kg to get to last years lowest weight. Then it is free wheeling downhill to under 70kg.

Six big plastic containers arrived via Amazon yesterday. 2 of cod liver oil and 4 of omega 3 fish oils so I should not run out any time soon.

I am taking omega 3 and omega 6 for life now as I never want to be so out of control around food again. Got a trip to UK planned for Sept so aiming for 70kg by then which would be great.

Obesity A Deficiency Disease?

That is the working title for my kindle book. Hope to get it ready to be downloaded within the next 4 weeks or so. Only thing that worries me is the cover as I am not very artistic and have not got photoshop and cant afford $'s to get someone to do it for me!

My eating is no longer punctuated by these eating jags ( binges) when I find I am eating everything in sight in the afternoons.

Since just before Christmas when I started this I have lost 5kg or 12lbs. My eating is under perfect control. I can forget about food in the afternoons and get on with projects until it is time for my next meal. I no longer snack at all. Not even low carb snacks. I dont need them. I dont find myself eating a couple of hours after a meal and I no longer feel the need to finish everything off!

Why has no one been looking scientifically at the process of binging to try and understand what is really going on and what the body really wants when you are driven to consume vast quantities of sugar and carbs in the afternoon? I know I am not alone with this battle, there are millions of you out there!

New Year New Diet

Dieting book is almost ready to be published. Just got to do some editing and tweaking.

Is amazing how the binging has just stopped. From day one on this I have had 3 nice meals each day with no snacks and no desire to binge. After 50 years of feeling out of control around food that is a first for me.

Lost 2" off my hips and 1" off my top half so its all good. Finding I have so many more productive hours in the day. Hours when I can start new projects and complete them. Something I found impossible in the afternoons before.

Obesity is a deficiency disease.