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.