Diet Research – End Game and Conclusions

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We spent a long time in lockdown with much less activity than in previous years; we tried a low-fat diet, a vegetarian diet with no real success. We did diet research, which included major plans and famous concepts. Now it’s late May 2020, and no ideal plan but to eat light and do 30 minutes of gym daily.

Diet Research – End Game

Why end game? Because mostly everything we found is based on the vegetarian diet, which is not 100% vegan as we could eat a little meat, fish, and eggs, other diet research showed a concept I learned in elementary school:

• Eat less fat
• Eat more veggies
• Eat less meat
• Eat more grain-based dishes
• Eat more fruits
• Exercise
• etc…

NOTHING NEW!

Lots of great recommendations but nothing different, nothing out of the box but mentoring to keep going and on track.

Until… My lovely wife sent me a tweet from a doctor who is on Keto. We didn’t look at this one as it’s “eat more fat to burn fat.” It sounds to us like “spend money to save money.” – not what we learned.

I’m not a big Twitter user, so, in my diet research, I was surprised by the number of tweets about Keto – that was almost a year ago. Today, it’s an even larger number 🙂 Time to look into it 🙂

I contacted the doctor who sent me access to several articles about Keto and Paleo- I promised not to share them as his dissertation is not published, but I can talk about it.

IT HIT ME LIKE A TON OF BRICKS

Diet Research to be done, Keto and Paleo

Keto is short for Ketogenic, which is a brand-new concept. Well, it was new around 400 BC as Physicians of ancient Greece treated diseases, including epilepsy, by altering their patients’ diet, which also included intermittent fasting.

It’s only in the 20s that Rollin Turner Woodyatt reviewed the research on diet and diabetes. He reported that ketones were produced by the liver in otherwise healthy people when they were starved or if they consumed a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.

High levels of Ketone help considerably in preventing seizures in epileptic children. This also has side effects like improved alertness, behavior, and sleep.

Interesting, but what about weight loss when you consume fewer carbs and much more fat? 

That is something I researched a lot before moving forward with it.

Another ton of bricks

Where does our body take energy from? first Carbs, then protein and fat, right? But if there are not enough carbs, it uses more fat… we will go through this in another post.

Remembering my Grand Parents who were farmers raising cows for dairy and meat, pigs, chickens, a few cereal fields, and a nice sized vegetable garden (100% organic)

My GrandPa passed quietly at 99 years old, my GrandMa, a year younger, passed at 98 years old, a few months after my GrandPa.

These two people were NEVER sick, they met the doctor almost daily as he was a customer, buying milk, eggs, and veggies 🙂 never because of an ailment.

I remember my Mom was always anxious about their diet:

Grand Parents’ eating habits

• Breakfast 5:30am
  • 6 eggs in winter, 4 in Summer
  • a thin slice of bread heavily covered with rendered lard – called saindoux
  • A large bowl of homemade cottage cheese
  • Very strong coffee, no sugar but lots of heavy cream – my GrandMa’s motto was “a good coffee has the spoon standing”
  • 2 shots of homemade alcohol, 1 in summer (only for GrandPa)
• Lunch
  • In Winter, pork or beef stew – the kind with gigantic eyes of fat floating
  • In Summer, grilled pork belly, not slices of bacon, the real 1/4″ thick type
  • A bowl of cottage cheese
  • No bread
  • a Few boiled or panned veggies in winter, fresh veggies in summers
  • More very strong coffee, no sugar, lots of heavy cream
• Diner – about the same style as lunch, including the coffee

Veggies were always in season and grown in the garden. Meaning no fancy green leafy lettuces in winter. Meats weren’t the best cuts, those were sold to the butcher. Guess what they used to cook? Not butter, that was sold, pork lard, completely free to them and develops more flavor.

Do you think my Grand Parents were on Keto? I think so! The best part or worse, after those awful eating habits, they were not overweight at all, as my Dad always said, not an ounce of fat, they were hardworking a lot too. 

Both passed in peace. My GrandPa (99) didn’t wake up from a nap, a Monday morning, my GrandMa (98) didn’t wake up.

At 72, my GrandMa slipped on the ice and broke her right tibia and was very badly bruised – as she was in major pain, the hospital put her in a coma and said, at her age… let her go, but my GrandPa fought for over 2 weeks and won… she would have surgery with plates, screws with the chance of making it below 10% and the insurance would not cover the expense – GrandPa didn’t care about the money, do it.

The pre-operation x-rays stunt the surgeon… her bone was healing on its own… at 72, in a coma? It’s impossible, but she was strong, and after 3 months in plaster and a wheelchair driving my GrandPa crazy, she was good to go and 26 years of a happy life in front of her.

According to the doctors, she healed like a 30-year-old and it is very possible her regimen helped a lot – strong bones, strong heart, strong mind.

My Mom’s parents were not rich people, just above poverty. No eating fancy lean meat, fancy bread or pricey veggies. Lots of cheap fatty meat, eggs, veggies and fruits they grew, and bread they made very far from the celebrated food pyramid. Yet as, my other Grand Parents, they were very healthy, never sick.

My GrandPa was a coal miner after a “coup de grisou” or firedamp explosion. He lost a lung, and the other one was not at 100%. He passed at 68. My GrandMa was so damaged by the passing that the family put her in an assisted living facility – her and my GrandPa’s pensions covered the cost.  

The facility used a top-notch food pyramid, healthy eating, exercise, and keeping residents busy. Grandma was happier – TERRIFIC, my mom said. A few months later, Grandma started getting colds, the flu, arthritis, and several common ailments she never had before, and was putting weight on. She passed from a heart attack at 71.

On the other hand, back in the 70s in Europe, they had an extensive eat healthy campaign with the famous food pyramid coming from huge diet research – the pyramid below is the 2021 version. The 1970 was quite similar.

This healthy eating is the complete opposite of what my Grand Parents ate. My parents adopted it immediately after their wedding and seriously stuck to it all their lives. My Dad had heart surgery in his late 40s, arteries were blocked by fat, my Mom had serious osteoporosis issues, and she got cancer. Both passed very young compared to their parents, my Mom at 63, and my Dad at 68.

To be honest, if I eat what my Grand Parents were eating… my doctor would send me straight to the looney toon house 🙂

If you are interested in the food pyramid, I recommend this book from Speedy Publishing: Food Pyramid And Nutrition Guide (Speedy Study Guide) $9 on Amazon or $2.99 on Kindle.

Continue reading about our journey to weight loss

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