Carb Up Quotes

Who is your famous crush? If a super-hot Hollywood actor who also happened to be a great person wanted to take you home—and the lights stayed on during the deed—what would you do? I mean, not in theory. Honestly, what would you do?” Claire looked at me for a long moment then asked, “Would I get a heads up a few months ahead of time? So I could eat low carb and start working out?” “No.” “Then, honestly, I’d run the other way.

Around the lunch table everyone seems to have given something up---dairy, meat, gluten, sugar, carbs. Only in a land of plenty could people voluntarily go without so much.

Eating carbs in the morning will set you up for an energy spike and crash along with food cravings throughout the entire day. If you decide to test this for yourself, it will be blindingly obvious. Try having just Bulletproof Coffee instead of your usual breakfast and see how long it takes you to want food. For most people, it turns off the desire for food for at least 5 to 6 hours.

First, there was Francie. If our group had a mascot, someone to glue themselves in feathers and lead our team in three cheers for motherhood, it was her. Miss Eager-to-Be-Liked, to not screw anything up, so plump with hope and rich Southern carbs.

To deal or avoid Keto Flu, you must ensure these levels of electrolytes: 400 mg (RDA) of Magnesium (increase if you exercise). Sources: artichoke, dark chocolate, nuts, spinach, fish, supplements. 2000 mg of Potassium (Daily Estimated Minimum), plus another 1000 mg a day specifically for a Keto diet. Sources: salmon, dark leafy greens, mushrooms, avocado, nuts, supplements. You need extra sources of Sodium on a Keto diet (about 3000-5000 mg preferably from food sources). Sources: bouillon, broth, bacon. Once you give up most carbs, make sure you include foods like avocados (potassium), nuts (magnesium), bone broth or sauerkraut (sodium) in your diet

ZERO BELLY VINAIGRETTE There’s developing research to suggest vinegar can aid weight loss by keeping our blood sugar steady. One study among pre-diabetics found the addition of 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to a high-carb meal reduced the subsequent rise in blood sugar by 34 percent. Shake up this recipe in a mason jar and you’ll have delicious, additive-free dressing for the week! Yield: 1 cup, about 16 servings ⅓ cup raw apple cider vinegar ⅔ cup extra-virgin olive oil 1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard 1½ teaspoons honey ¼ teaspoon salt

Hey, Jerry, you got a minute?” He grunts. “What’s up, buttercup?” “So, it’s looking like we might end up with double the people we planned for the fundraiser,” she says. “We should probably talk pancake logistics again.” “Shit,” he swears, “that’s gonna be at least thirty gallons of batter.” “I know. But we don’t have to make a pancake for every guest—I mean, there have gotta be people who are gluten-free, or low carb, or whatever—” “So, let’s say twenty gallons of batter, then. That’s still a lot, and I don’t even know how we’d transport that many pancakes.

A SPOONFUL OF KINDNESS When Tommy, my son, was three years old, my wife, Lilly, and I took him for his annual checkup and the pediatrician asked us what his eating habits were like. “Well,” we confessed, “he’s going through this phase of only liking chicken fingers and carbs, so we’ve kind of given up trying to get him to eat vegetables for now. It’s become too much of a struggle every night.” The pediatrician nodded and smiled, and then said, “Well, you can’t really force him to eat the veggies, guys, but your job is to make sure they’re on his plate. He can’t eat them if they’re not even on his plate.” I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. I think about it with teaching. My students can’t learn what I don’t teach them. Kindness. Empathy. Compassion. It’s not part of the curriculum, I know, but I still have to keep dishing it out onto their plates every day. Maybe they’ll eat it; maybe they won’t. Either way, my job is to keep on serving it to them. Hopefully, a little mouthful of kindness today may make them hungry for a bigger taste of it tomorrow. —Mr. Browne

I would have swallowed,” she says in a slightly piqued tone. “I know, Goldie.” I sigh. I pull off my own T-shirt and regretfully wipe off the come. “But I don’t know what the carb content of my stuff is, and I didn’t want to fuck up your glucose measurements.

The Tree of Life was an ancient symbol of interconnection, fertility, and eternal life—precisely because of this legendary tree’s fruit. Fruit is part of our essence, a basic element of who we are. We cannot survive without fruit on this planet. It outweighs the nutrition of any other food. Yet the current “health” movement toward low-carb diets has put fruit on the endangered species list, with the goal of making it extinct. Is this denial? Ignorance? Foolishness? We’re not talking about uneducated people who are driving the trend. We’re talking about smart, highly intelligent professionals with advanced degrees in medicine and nutrition. If they’re advising patients to shun fruit, it must be because of their training, the misinformation out there, or their own selective interests. Have you heard of book burning? If the anti-sugar war keeps up its momentum, fruit trees will be next to go up in flames.

Feeling Faint Issue: I’m happy losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet, but I’m always tired, get light headed when I stand up, and if I exercise for more than 10 minutes I feel like I’m going to pass out. Response: Congratulations on your weight loss success, and with just a small adjustment to your diet, you can say goodbye to your weakness and fatigue. The solution is salt…a bit more salt to be specific. This may sound like we’re crazy when many experts argue that we should all eat less salt, however these are the same experts who tell us that eating lots of carbohydrates and sugar is OK. But what they don’t tell you is that your body functions very differently when you are keto-adapted. When you restrict carbs for a week or two, your kidneys switch from retaining salt to rapidly excreting it, along with a fair amount of stored water. This salt and water loss explains why many people experience rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks on a low carbohydrate diet. Ridding your body of this excess salt and water is a good thing, but only up to a point. After that, if you don’t replace some of the ongoing sodium excretion, the associated water loss can compromise your circulation The end result is lightheadedness when you stand up quickly or fatigue if you exercise enough to get ‘warmed up’. Other common side effects of carbohydrate restriction that go away with a pinch of added salt include headache and constipation; and over the long term it also helps the body maintain its muscles. The best solution is to include 1 or 2 cups of bouillon or broth in your daily schedule. This adds only 1-2 grams of sodium to your daily intake, and your ketoadapted metabolism insures that you pass it right on through within a matter of hours (allaying any fears you might have of salt buildup in your system). This rapid clearance also means that on days that you exercise, take one dose of broth or bouillon within the hour before you start.

Sunday night is my personal weekly Halloween. I walk along slowly and drag my fingertips along the bars of chocolate. Goddamn, you sexy little squares. Dark, milk, white, I do not discriminate. I eat it all. Those fluorescent sour candies that only obnoxious little boys like. I suck candy apples clean. If an envelope seal is sweet, I’ll lick it twice. Growing up, I was that kid who would easily get lured into a van with the promise of a lollipop. Sometimes, I let the retail seduction last for twenty minutes, ignoring Marco and feeling up the merchandise, but I’m so tired of male voices. “Five bags of marshmallows,” Marco says in a resigned tone. “Wine. And a can of cat food.” “Cat food is low carb.” He makes no move to scan anything, so I scan each item myself and unroll a few notes from my tips. “Your job involves selling things. Sell them. Change, please.” “I just don’t know why you do this to yourself.” Marco looks at the register with a moral dilemma in his eyes. “Every week you come and do this.” He hesitates and looks over his shoulder where his sugar book sits under a layer of dust. He knows not to try to slip it into my bag with my purchases. “I don’t know why you care, dude. Just serve me. I don’t need your help.” He’s not entirely wrong about my being an addict. I would lick a line of icing sugar off this counter right now if no one were around. I would walk into a cane plantation and bite right in... “Give me my change or I swear to God …” I squeeze my eyes shut and try to tamp down my temper. “Just treat me like any other customer.” He gives me a few coins’ change and bags my sweet, spongy drugs.

Not to mention my grandparents’ generation grew up in the Depression and World War II and didn’t have the ability to teach what they did not know. Self-care, self-love, and nurturing yourself were all considered hogwash. Just eat a balanced diet of a bottle of wine a night, a protein, a carb, and a vegetable, push your feelings down, and get on with it.

Years of poor eating habits will catch up to you,

Never give up on yourself, and you’ll continue to thrive.

Spirits have cravings--they're only human (well, some of them are)--but the amazing thing about these cravings is that they are SLIMMING POSITIVE! That's right, spirits don't crave sugary foods, or fat, or chocolate, or deep-fried carbs. They crave HEALTHY food like raw liver and bugs and those tiny dried-up foods you find in old attics and the better-stocked graveyards.

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass. She says she doesn’t deprive herself, but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork. In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate. I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it. I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so. Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional. As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast. She wanes while my father waxes. His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit." It was the same with his parents; as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, rotund stomach and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking making space for the entrance of men into their lives not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I have been taught accommodation. My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have been taught to filter. “How can anyone have a relationship to food?" He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs. I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas, you have been taught to grow out I have been taught to grow in you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much I learned to absorb I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters and I never meant to replicate her, but spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits that’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades. We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit weaving silence in between the threads which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house, skin itching, picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again, Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled. Deciding how many bites is too many How much space she deserves to occupy. Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her, And I don’t want to do either anymore but the burden of this house has followed me across the country I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry". I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza a circular obsession I never wanted but inheritance is accidental still staring at me with wine-stained lips from across the kitchen table.

So let’s consider an alternative diet, say 1200 kcal consisting of 30% protein, 15% carbs (i.e., 180 kcal or 45 grams), and 55% fat. After a week or two of getting adapted (during which you may experience some of the fuel limitation symptoms discussed above), your serum ketones rise up in the range (1-2 millimolar) where they meet at least half of the brain’s fuel supply. Now if you go for that 5 mile run, almost all of your body’s muscle fuel comes from fat, leaving your dietary carb intake plus gluconeogenesis from protein to meet the minor fraction of your brain’s energy need not provided from ketones. And, oh yes, after your run while on the low carb diet, your ketone levels actually go up a bit (not dangerously so), further improving fuel flow to your brain. So what does this mean for the rest of us who are not compulsive runners? Well, this illustrates that the keto-adapted state allows your body more flexibility in meeting its critical organ energy needs than a ‘balanced’ but energy-restricted diet. And in particular, this also means that your brain is a “carbohydrate dependent organ” (as claimed by the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as noted in Chapter 3) ONLY when you are eating a high carbohydrate diet. When carbohydrate is restricted as in the example above, your body’s appropriate production of ketones frees the brain from this supposed state of ‘carbohydrate dependency’. And because exercise stimulates ketone production, your brain’s fuel supply is better supported during and after intense exercise when on a low carbohydrate diet than when your carbohydrate intake is high (see below).

Looking at obesity without preconceived ideas,” she wrote, “one would assume that the main trend of research should be directed toward an examination of abnormalities of the fat metabolism, since by definition excessive accumulation of fat is the underlying abnormality. It so happens that this is the area in which the least work has been done.” She added, “As long as it was not known how the body builds up and breaks down its fat deposit, the ignorance was glossed over by simply stating that food taken in excess of body needs was stored and deposited in the fat cells, the way potatoes are put into a bag. Obviously, this is not so.

It's unrealistic to expect to not eat the types of foods you really enjoy, so when you restrict what you can eat too much, it often leads to binge eating and then giving up completely and ending back up at square one.

Carbohydrate in any form other than fiber is eventually metabolized by the body into sugar. In fact, it starts turning into sugar as soon as it hits the saliva in your mouth. It doesn’t matter if it’s a piece of fruit, a brownie, or a bowl of whole grain cereal, it still turns to sugar, and feeding sugar to a diabetic to lower blood sugar is nonsensical. (There are some carbs that are better for you than others, but nevertheless, any carb that is not fiber eventually ends up as sugar.)

Cheeseburger-Stuffed Twice-Baked Potatoes • MAKES 8 SERVINGS • THIS RECIPE IS THE LUSCIOUS love-child of a stuffed potato skin and a cheeseburger, where Russet potatoes are scooped out and twice-baked to make crispy carriers for a generous helping of beefy filling that’s smothered in melted cheddar cheese. It tastes as decadent as it sounds, but it is actually quite healthy, because hollowing out the potatoes keeps carbs in check (and gives you the makings of mashed potatoes for the next day) and amping up lean beef with chopped mushrooms, broccoli, and tomatoes gives you a big portion with a sensible amount of meat.

How specialized do restaurants get in Japan? Every weekday at lunchtime, people queue up on a side street just south of Ningyōchō Station, in an old Tokyo neighborhood. They're waiting to get into Tamahide, a restaurant that (at lunchtime) serves one dish, oyakodon. Written with the characters for "parent" and "child," oyakodon is a runny chicken omelet (get it?) served over rice. There are very few ingredients to this dish: chicken, egg, and rice, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. There is no vegetarian version, no low-carb salad version, no side dishes other than a tiny dish of pickles perched atop the lid of your bowl. If you're not in the mood for diced chicken meat, however, you can order the dish with chicken liver or ground chicken.

I threw hollowed self at your robust, went for IV drips, mercury detoxes, cilantro smoothies. I pressed my lips to you, fed you kale, spooned down coconut oil. I fasted for blood sugar, underboomed the carbs, chased ketosis, urine-stripped and slip-checked. Baked raw cocoa & mint & masticated pig thyroids. You were contemporary, toxic, I can’t remember what you were, you’re in my brain, inflaming it, using up the glutathione. I read about you on the Internet & my doctor agreed. Just take more he urged & more. You slipped into each cell. I went after you with a sinking inside and medical mushrooms for maximum oom, I plumbed you without getting to nevermore. O doom. You were a disease without name, I was a body gone flame, together, we twitched, and the acupuncturist said, it looks difficult, stay calmish. What can be said? I came w/o a warranty. Stripped of me—or me-ish-ness— I was a will in a subpar body. I waxed toward all that waned inside.

One courageous person raising awareness is Amy Kubal, “the Paleo Dietitian,” a licensed dietitian who has worked in the Paleo community for more than a decade. In February 2014, Amy came out on a prominent Paleo website as anorexic. “In my case,” she wrote, “Paleo was a convenient way to justify restriction. I entered the eating disorder world with an intense fear of fat, a fear that didn’t go away with Paleo—it let up a little but it also villainized many of the foods that were once ‘safe’ to me. Now carbs, dairy, beans, grains, and fat were evil and my list kept getting longer.” Amy spoke candidly with me about her own experience and her impression of the Paleo community in general. “You know, it works for some people,” she says. “But for 60 to 70 percent, it turns into a religion. Following this is like their commandment—does that have gluten? Does this? Their lives revolve around it, thinking constantly about what foods are at the places they’re going to be. I have more and more clients who bring their own food to restaurants and family gatherings.

Vern did not trust humans was the long and short of it. Not a single one. He had known many in his life, even liked a few, but in the end they all sold him out to the angry mob. Which was why he holed up in Honey Island Swamp out of harm's way. Vern liked the swamp okay. As much as he liked anything after all these years. Goddamn, so many years just stretching out behind him like bricks in that road old King Darius put down back in who gives a shit BC. Funny how things came back out of the blue. Like that ancient Persian road. He couldn't remember last week, and now he was flashing back a couple thousand years, give or take. Vern had baked half those bricks his own self, back when he still did a little blue-collar. Nearly wore out the internal combustion engine. Shed his skin two seasons early because of that bitch of a job. That and diet. No one had a clue about nutrition in those days. Vern was mostly ketogenic now, high fat, low carbs, apart from his beloved breakfast cereals. Keto made perfect sense for a dragon, especially with his core temperature. Unfortunately, it meant that beer had to go, but he got by on vodka. Absolut was his preferred brand. A little high on alcohol but easiest on the system.

You coming with us?” “Not this time. I’ve got a different errand to run.” “Okay.” She reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear affectionately. “Be careful. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the worst Spanish student in the history of the language.” I laughed. “No probelmo.” By the time I found Reth, he was deep in discussion with the banshees, their discordant voices chiding him for something or other. I hated to pull him away from getting chewed out, but it had to be done. Another faeries, all spring and mint green, was with him. After briefly explaining about the location of the dancers, she left to retrieve them. I wanted to send Reth because I trusted him more, but he didn’t look good. I’d keep him with me so I could keep an eye on him. He wouldn’t ask for help—not from anyone—but I’d be there no matter what. When we got back to the house, Lend was already there with several grocery bags full of bread. Reth turned his head away as though the very sight of it was distasteful. “Even the food of this world is nothing but decay.” Clearly he had never tried pizza, because honestly. We linked hands—my ex-boyfriend, my boyfriend, and my former friend-then-enemy-then-friend and I—and walked through a door to see if maybe empty carbs were good for something after all.

Small Change Snack Tips 1. Limit a snack to approximately 200 calories maximum. 2. Turn coffee or a tea into a snack by adding a cup of low-fat milk or soymilk. 3. Do not have a carbohydrate alone (such as an apple or a serving of crackers); you will still be hungry. Instead, pair a carb with a lean protein or healthy fat. Have low-fat cheese with your apple, or some peanut butter on your whole grain crackers. 4. It’s okay to have carbs alone before bed (such as a piece of fruit) because it doesn’t need to keep you full—you’re about to go to sleep. 5. Don’t double dip. For instance, don’t do string cheese and nuts, or string cheese and yogurt. Instead, choose one high-fiber carb and one lean protein or healthy fat; otherwise your calories (and fat) can add up. 6. When you eat straight from the bag, box, or can, you’ll consume more. Preportion items like nuts in resealable snack-size bags. 7. Try to keep snacktime to three hours after you have eaten. If you eat it too close to your last meal, it won’t do its job for the next meal. 8. If buying an energy bar, read the label and look for more fiber and protein, less calories and fat. 9. Just because it’s a “100-calorie pack” doesn’t mean it is a healthy snack. Make sure it offers some fiber and protein or healthy fat—and if not, skip it.

THE DIET-GO-ROUND LOW-CALORIE DIETS Diets began by limiting the number of calories consumed in a day. But restricting calories depleted energy, so people craved high-calorie fat and sugar as energizing emergency fuel. LOW-FAT DIETS High-calorie fats were targeted. Restricting fat left people hungry, however, and they again craved more fats and sugars. FAKE FAT Synthetic low-cal fats were invented. People could now replace butter with margarine, but without calories it didn’t deliver the energy and satisfaction people needed. They still craved real fat and sugar. THE DIET GO-ROUND GRAPEFRUIT DIETS Banking on the antioxidant and fat-emulsifying properties of grapefruit, dieters could eat real fat again, as long as they ate a grapefruit first. But even grapefruits were no match for the high-fat American diet. SUGAR BLUES The more America restricted fat in any way to lose weight, the more the body rebounded by storing fat, and craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. Sugar was now to blame! SUGAR FREE High-calorie sugars were replaced with no-calorie synthetic sweeteners. The mind was happy but the body was starving as diet drinks replaced meals. People eventually binged on excess calories from other sources, such as protein. HIGH-PROTEIN DIETS The new diet let people eat all the protein they wanted without noticing the restriction of carbs and sugar. Energy came from fat stores and dieters lost weight. But without carbs, they soon experienced low energy and craved and binged on carbs. HIGH-CARB DIETS Carb-craving America was ripe for high-carb diets. You could now lose weight and eat up to 80 percent carbs—but they had to be slow-burning, complex carbs. Fast-paced America was addicted to fast energy, however, and high-carb diets soon became high-sugar diets. LOW CHOLESTEROL The combination of sugar, fat, and stress raised cholesterol to dangerous levels. The solution: Reemphasize complex carbs and reduce all animal fats. Once again, dieters felt restricted and began craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. EXERCISE Diets weren’t working, so exercise became the cholesterol cure-all. It worked for a time, but people didn’t like to “work out.” Within 25 years, no more than 20 percent of Americans would do it regularly. VEGETARIANISM With heart disease and cancers on the rise, red meat was targeted. Vegetarianism came into fashion but was rarely followed correctly. People lived on pasta and bread, and blood sugars and energy levels went out of control. GRAZING High-carb diets were causing energy and blood sugar problems. If you ate every 2 hours, energy was propped up and fast-paced America could keep speeding. Fatigue became chronic fatigue, however, with depression and anxiety to follow. FOOD COMBINING By eating fats, proteins, and carbs separately, digestion improved and a host of digestive, energy, and weight problems were helped temporarily. But the rules for what you could eat together led to more frequent small meals. People eventually slipped back to their old ways and old problems. THE ZONE Aimed at fixing blood sugar levels, this diet balanced intake of proteins, fats, and carbs. It worked, but again restricted certain kinds of carbs, so it didn’t last, and America was again craving emergency fuel. COFFEE TO THE RESCUE Exhausted and with a million things to do, America turned to legal stimulants like coffee for energy. But borrowed energy must be paid back, and many are still living in debt. FULL CIRCLE Frustrated, America is turning to new crash diets and a wave of high-protein diets. It is time to break this man-made cycle with the simplicity of nature’s own 3-Season Diet. If you let nature feed you, you will not starve or crave anything.

Dear Jon, A real Dear Jon let­ter, how per­fect is that?! Who knew you’d get dumped twice in the same amount of months. See, I’m one para­graph in and I’ve al­ready fucked this. I’m writ­ing this be­cause I can’t say any of this to you face-to-face. I’ve spent the last few months ques­tion­ing a lot of my friend­ships and won­der­ing what their pur­pose is, if not to work through big emo­tional things to­gether. But I now re­al­ize: I don’t want that. And I know you’ve all been there for me in other ways. Maybe not in the lit­eral sense, but I know you all would have done any­thing to fix me other than lis­ten­ing to me talk and al­low­ing me to be sad with­out so­lu­tions. And now I am writ­ing this let­ter rather than pick­ing up the phone and talk­ing to you be­cause, de­spite every thing I know, I just don’t want to, and I don’t think you want me to ei­ther. I lost my mind when Jen broke up with me. I’m pretty sure it’s been the sub­ject of a few of your What­sApp con­ver­sa­tions and more power to you, be­cause I would need to vent about me if I’d been friends with me for the last six months. I don’t want it to have been in vain, and I wanted to tell you what I’ve learnt. If you do a high-fat, high-pro­tein, low-carb diet and join a gym, it will be a good dis­trac­tion for a while and you will lose fat and gain mus­cle, but you will run out of steam and eat nor­mally again and put all the weight back on. So maybe don’t bother. Drunk­en­ness is an­other idea. I was in black­out for most of the first two months and I think that’s fine, it got me through the evenings (and the oc­ca­sional af­ter­noon). You’ll have to do a lot of it on your own, though, be­cause no one is free to meet up any more. I think that’s fine for a bit. It was for me un­til some­one walked past me drink­ing from a whisky minia­ture while I waited for a night bus, put five quid in my hand and told me to keep warm. You’re the only per­son I’ve ever told this story. None of your mates will be ex­cited that you’re sin­gle again. I’m prob­a­bly your only sin­gle mate and even I’m not that ex­cited. Gen­er­ally the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing sin­gle at thirty-five will feel dif­fer­ent to any other time you’ve been sin­gle and that’s no bad thing. When your ex moves on, you might be­come ob­sessed with the bloke in a way that is al­most sex­ual. Don’t worry, you don’t want to fuck him, even though it will feel a bit like you do some­times. If you open up to me or one of the other boys, it will feel good in the mo­ment and then you’ll get an emo­tional hang­over the next day. You’ll wish you could take it all back. You may even feel like we’ve en­joyed see­ing you so low. Or that we feel smug be­cause we’re win­ning at some­thing and you’re los­ing. Re­member that none of us feel that. You may be­come ob­sessed with work­ing out why ex­actly she broke up with you and you are likely to go fully, fully nuts in your bid to find a sat­is­fy­ing an­swer. I can save you a lot of time by let­ting you know that you may well never work it out. And even if you did work it out, what’s the pur­pose of it? Soon enough, some girl is go­ing to be crazy about you for some un­de­fin­able rea­son and you’re not go­ing to be in­ter­ested in her for some un­de­fin­able rea­son. It’s all so ran­dom and un­fair – the peo­ple we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the peo­ple who want to be with us are not the peo­ple we want to be with. Re­ally, the thing that’s go­ing to hurt a lot is the fact that some­one doesn’t want to be with you any more. Feel­ing the ab­sence of some­one’s com­pany and the ab­sence of their love are two dif­fer­ent things. I wish I’d known that ear­lier. I wish I’d known that it isn’t any­body’s job to stay in a re­la­tion­ship they don’t want to be in just so some­one else doesn’t feel bad about them­selves. Any­way. That’s all. You’re go­ing to be okay, mate. Andy

alpha-lipoic acid 600 mg daily coconut oil 1 tablespoon daily, taken straight or used in cooking DHA 1,000 mg daily (Note: It’s okay to buy DHA that comes in combination with EPA; opt for a fish oil supplement or choose DHA derived from marine algae.) probiotics 1 capsule taken on an empty stomach up to three times daily; look for a probiotic that contains at least ten billion active cultures from at least ten different strains, including Lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidobacterium resveratrol 100 mg twice daily turmeric 350 mg twice daily vitamin D3 5,000 IU daily

So what is a healthy dinner anyway? Well, to start, it should be filling, without the need for exorbitant amounts of sugars and carbs, and should be able, to a degree, to keep you satisfied for a while. Thankfully, after trying and taste testing, we came up with many easy to make, and

If our early ancestors hadn’t developed a way to use ketones for energy, our species would have ended up on Darwin’s short list eons ago!

Peanut Butter Cookies   Time: 30  minutes Servings: 24   You don’t have to give up cookies on a wheat-free or low-carb diet. These delicious cookies are also healthy with minimal ingredients. Ingredients: 1/2 cup coconut flour 1/4 tsp. salt 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder 1 1/2 cups peanut butter 1 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract 4 eggs How to Cook: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, mix the coconut flour, salt and baking powder. Then, add the peanut butter, vanilla and eggs and mix well. Drop about 1 tbsp. of dough at a time onto a cookie sheet, leaving space between them. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes or until they are golden brown.     Tips: Skip the vanilla extract to make this recipe gluten-free.

No-Grain Granola Bars   Time: 2 ½ - 3 ½ hours Servings: 16     Granola bars make perfect breakfasts or afternoon snacks. These delicious granola bars surprisingly don’t contain any grains at all.   Ingredients:   1 cup assorted nuts 1 cup assorted seeds 1 1/2 cups coconut flakes 1 cup assorted dried fruit 1/4 cup almond butter 1/4 cup coconut oil 1/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract 1/2 tsp. cinnamon 1/4 tsp. nutmeg   How to Cook:   Finely chop half of the nuts and seeds with a knife or in the food processor. Roughly chop the rest. Put all the nuts and seeds in a large bowl and add the fruit and coconut. Heat the wet ingredients and spices on medium heat in a pan until the mixture bubbles and then add it to the bowl and stir it together. Spread the mixture into a baking sheet lined with tin foil or parchment paper. Press the mixture into a block with your hands or a spatula. Allow it to cool for 2 to 3 hours and then cut it into rectangular or square granola bars.       Tips: You can use any nuts, seeds and dried fruit you want for this recipe, although the nuts and seeds should be raw or dry roasted without added oil. Experiment until you come up with a flavor combination you enjoy.

alpha-lipoic acid 600 mg daily coconut oil 1 teaspoon daily, taken straight or used in cooking DHA 1,000 mg daily (Note: It’s okay to buy DHA that comes in combination with EPA; opt for a fish oil supplement or choose DHA derived from marine algae.) probiotics 1 capsule taken on an empty stomach up to three times daily; look for a probiotic that contains at least ten billion active cultures from at least ten different strains, including Lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidobacterium resveratrol 100 mg twice daily turmeric 350 mg twice daily vitamin D3 5,000 IU daily

A Microwave That Counts Calories? Someday you might pop your plate into a countertop gadget and press Count instead of Cook. General Electric Global Research has developed a prototype that emits enough microwave energy to estimate calories in food—without heating it up. Microwaves have different signatures when they travel through fat, carbs, or water, which could allow this technology to calculate how much of each is in your food. Researchers hope to release a counting device in the next few years.

A trial published in January 2010 in the American Journal of Cardiology found that statin medications actually increased the risk of death. Researchers in Israel followed nearly 300 adults diagnosed with heart failure for an average of 3.7 years, and in some cases up to 11.5 years. Those who were taking statin drugs and had the lowest levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) were found to have the highest rates of mortality. Conversely, people with higher levels of cholesterol had a lower risk of death.

I did try giving up carbs, but it was like… giving up sunshine.

The 49-year-old Bryant, who resembles a cereal box character himself with his wide eyes, toothy smile, and elongated chin, blames Kellogg's financial woes on the changing tastes of fickle breakfast eaters. The company flourished in the Baby Boom era, when fathers went off to work and mothers stayed behind to tend to three or four children. For these women, cereal must have been heaven-sent. They could pour everybody a bowl of Corn Flakes, leave a milk carton out, and be done with breakfast, except for the dishes. Now Americans have fewer children. Both parents often work and no longer have time to linger over a serving of Apple Jacks and the local newspaper. Many people grab something on the way to work and devour it in their cars or at their desks while checking e-mail. “For a while, breakfast cereal was convenience food,” says Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. “But convenience is relative. It's more convenient to grab a breakfast bar, yogurt, a piece of fruit, or a breakfast sandwich at some fast-food place than to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal.” People who still eat breakfast at home favor more laborintensive breakfasts, according to a recent Nielsen survey. They spend more time at the stove, preparing oatmeal (sales were up 3.5 percent in the first half of 2014) and eggs (up 7 percent last year). They're putting their toasters to work, heating up frozen waffles, French toast, and pancakes (sales of these foods were up 4.5 percent in the last five years). This last inclination should be helping Kellogg: It owns Eggo frozen waffles. But Eggo sales weren't enough to offset its slumping U.S. cereal numbers. “There has just been a massive fragmentation of the breakfast occasion,” says Julian Mellentin, director of food analysis at research firm New Nutrition Business. And Kellogg faces a more ominous trend at the table. As Americans become more healthconscious, they're shying away from the kind of processed food baked in Kellogg's four U.S. cereal factories. They tend to be averse to carbohydrates, which is a problem for a company selling cereal derived from corn, oats, and rice. “They basically have a carb-heavy portfolio,” says Robert Dickerson, senior packagedfood analyst at Consumer Edge. If such discerning shoppers still eat cereal, they prefer the gluten-free kind, sales of which are up 22 percent, according to Nielsen. There's also growing suspicion of packagedfood companies that fill their products with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For these breakfast eaters, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam may seem less like friendly childhood avatars and more like malevolent sugar traffickers.

BLOOD ORANGE MIMOSAS Hands-on: 10 min. Total: 12 min. We love the color blood oranges give this classic brunch cocktail. A dash of bitters adds depth. Look for orange bitters—such as Fee Brothers or Stirrings— at liquor stores or specialty grocers. The sugar cube dissolves as you sip, balancing the bitters and giving of bubbles for a festive touch. Juice the oranges and keep chilled up to a day ahead. 12 sugar cubes 1 ⁄ 2 teaspoon blood orange bitters or angostura bitters 1 7 1 ⁄ 2 cups sparkling wine, chilled 3 cups fresh blood orange juice (about 6 oranges) blood orange rind curls (optional) 1. Place 1 sugar cube in each of 12 Champagne futes or slender glasses; add 1 drop bitters to each fute. Combine wine and juice. Divide wine mixture evenly among futes. Garnish with rind, if desired. SErVES 12 (serving size: about 3 ⁄ 4 cup) CalOriES 143; FaT 0g; prOTEiN 0g; CarB 11g; FiBEr 0g; CHOl 0mg; irON 0mg; SODiUM 0mg; CalC 5mg

ORANGE, HONEY, AND THYME BISCUITS Hands-on: 23 min. Total: 36 min. Bake biscuits up to a day ahead, and keep in a sealed zip-top plastic bag. 2 ⁄ 3 cup nonfat buttermilk 2 tablespoons clover honey 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme 2 teaspoons grated orange rind 10 ounces spelt four (about 2 cups) 5 teaspoons baking powder 1 ⁄ 4 teaspoon kosher salt 1 5 1 ⁄ 2 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into small pieces cooking spray 1. Preheat oven to 425°. 2. Combine the frst 4 ingredients in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. 3. Weigh or lightly spoon four into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine four, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk mixture to four mixture, stirring just until moist. Turn dough out onto a lightly foured surface; pat into a 7 1 ⁄ 2-inch square; cut into 12 rectangles. Place dough on a foil-lined baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Bake at 425° for 13 minutes or until lightly browned on edges and bottom. SErVES 12 (serving size: 1 biscuit) CalOriES 162; FaT 6.1g (sat 3.3g, mono 1.4g, poly 0.2g); prOTEiN 4g; CarB 22g; FiBEr 3g; CHOl 14mg; irON 1mg; SODiUM 330mg; CalC 61mg

Regular-Cal Food Guidelines The following Serving Size Simplifier should be used as a portion quantity guideline for each meal. Its intuitive approach is customized to your body size and will help you put calorie counting to rest for good. It was originally inspired by the amazing work done by my friends at Precision Nutrition. •Fibrous veggies: 2 to 4 handfuls •Clean protein: 1 palm-size portion for women, 1 to 2 palm-size portions for men •Starchy carbs and fruits: 1 handful for women, 1 to 2 handfuls for men •Fit fats: ½ shot glass (1½ tablespoons) for oils and butter (easier to measure/eyeball since these are generally poured); for nuts and seeds, 1 thumb-size serving for women, 2 thumb-size servings for men Each element needs not be present at each meal, but do your best to keep them all in mind throughout the day. For instance, normally a green juice would consist of only leafy greens and other vegetables. However, you can power it up with a shot of flax oil or fish oil. Adding in these fats will not only stabilize your blood sugar but also improve your absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins found in the greens. With that said, I would strongly recommend that each time you eat (other than the odd apple here and there), you include protein and fiber in your meal. Doing so will prevent your blood sugar from rising and keep you full longer, both of which will help you lose fat instead of storing it. For dinner, you might have a fillet of salmon (protein) cooked in butter (oil and fats) with a side of steamed greens (fibrous vegetables) and a small amount of quinoa (starchy carbs). Nuts and seeds would not be present in this meal—again, no big deal. You can always have a few almonds throughout the day. For solid meals (not smoothies or juices), these guidelines should yield a plate that is:

I've gotten to the point where I'm not even a little apologetic about this business of not eating stuff that's bad for me. No one else has to live with my fat, work through my energy and mood swings, pay my doctor bills, fight my cravings, for face my family history of diabetes and cancer. If people insist, I can get a little testy.

As the first humans acquired tools and an appreciation of minimalist cave art, they turned their attention to improving their lives and understanding the cosmos. Homo erectus erected the first blazing fire 500 000 years ago. After burgers went from raw to medium-well, a truly long time elapsed before the next human milestone: the bun. The first planting of grains and other crops, which occurred just 12 000 years ago, ended our million-year low-carb diet and freed us from being hunters. No longer plagued by the frustration of trying to sneak up on animals with bigger ears and faster legs, humans started staying put. Our nomadic days were ending.

Energy Drinks for Power Cyclist Cycling is a high intensity sport where huge amounts of calories are burned, muscle tissue broken up and a lot of water lost through sweat. To recover and regenerate energy and muscle tissue, your body undergoes a repair mechanism that depends on what you eat and drink. While eating proper foods keeps you healthy and builds your muscle stamina, taking energy drinks cannot be overemphasized as it increases energy and hydration needed for cycling and recovery. Energy drinks are formulated with ample supply of carbs and electrolytes ideal for maintaining high energy levels as well as replacing fluids lost during the rides.

Eating before bed not only messes with leptin levels, but it can impede growth hormone release, which is critical for tissue regeneration and growth and repair of many cells in the body. And if that snack is sugary or rich in refined carbs, it also pushes insulin levels up, which may lead to a blood sugar crash in the middle of the night. This affects melatonin secretion, which governs our sleep patterns, and means you could

I know that if I have any type of carb before I go to bed, I will almost always end up wide awake at 3:00 a.m. and have

It is important to know that you do not have to do exercises that you absolutely hate – that is unlikely to help you in the long term. If you seriously dislike something, but try to force yourself to do it anyway, it will just deter you from continuing to work out and this is another way to set yourself up for failure. Find ways to work out that you enjoy, and if you don't enjoy any type of exercise right now, find something that you at least don't despise doing.

Days that you are intensely active are going to require a higher amount of carbohydrates to keep your metabolism up, and these will be referred to as high carb days – if

No matter how many calories you are ingesting, if you aren’t getting what you need nutritionally, your body sends you out for more in the form of cravings or a yearning to eat something else. It’s a primal urge, and hard to ignore. It’s literally a survival mechanism that kicks in. The body is saying (sometimes rather urgently), “I haven’t gotten enough nutrients, go get more food!” The problem is that meat, cheese, and refined carbs don’t have what it takes to satisfy the body’s needs, so the body is never satiated on a diet that is made up mostly of animal protein and junky processed food.

Some say America's forgotten workin' men rose up in a single, inchoate scream of rage at a system that for too long had provided them with nothing but empty promises, bad trade deals, and government-subsidized carbs. Some claim it's from a generation weaned on talk radio, Fox News, and the comments sections of a million tea party websites. Some say it's a sign of a merciless god testing us to the breaking point. I still think it's because we didn't let that old gypsy woman vote when she couldn't produce a photo ID back in 2012.

In July, we started work on my next album, and Tommy wanted to go all in on making me a combo of Britney and Mariah. He said he would be even more involved this time and said I needed to be doing more dance pop over the ballads I loved. I also had to get even skinnier. I started the Atkins diet hardcore, envying and resenting anybody who could just eat. Off the diet, I obsessed over how I looked 24/7; on the diet, I was also hyperfocused on food. It made me nervous. My anxiety had something to hold on to, and instead of examining my emotions, I could just block them out by focusing on carb counts and waist sizes. If I focused on controlling my outward appearance, I could avoid thinking about my emotions and fears. My mother sometimes, with the best of intentions, fed into it. Her aerobics-teacher past would kick in, seeing a problem to fix and giving a solution she thought would help. When she urged me to exercise or told me she was going for a long walk and maybe I should come along, I knew what she meant. We ended up doing the Atkins diet together.

It’s rare that we don’t understand intellectually how to cut back on carbs, or wake up earlier, or stop smoking. It’s that somewhere inside our Feeling Brain, we have decided that we don’t deserve to do those things, that we are unworthy of doing them. And that’s why we feel so bad about them. This feeling of unworthiness is usually the result of some bad shit happening to us at some point. We suffer through some terrible stuff, and our Feeling Brain decides that we deserved those bad experiences. Therefore, it sets out, despite the Thinking Brain’s better knowledge, to repeat and reexperience that suffering.

In Gina's experience, cheese made everything better- Parmesan on popcorn, crispy fried goat cheese in a salad, a swipe of cream cheese on a toasted bagel, or melted gouda on an egg sandwich. She even liked a dollop of sweetened mascarpone on a slice of warm cherry pie instead of ice cream. But grilled cheese, gooey from the griddle, crisp on the outside, melty on the inside, that was the pinnacle of dairy possibility. No matter how it was dressed up, with balsamic reductions or micro greens, a grilled cheese was still luscious goodness between carbs. Simple, wholesome comfort food at its finest.

When low-quality carbs in a diet go up, doctors observe that patients’ health declines, and they don’t know why, though it’s easy to blame the carbs. What no one realizes is that the problem is the combination of sugar with fat.

Carbohydrates, on the other hand, deplete your hormones, specifically testosterone. You may find this hard to believe, but some common high-carb foods like cornflakes and graham crackers were invented a century ago to lower the male libido. Kellogg and Graham believed that male sexual desire was at the root of all society’s problems, so they set out to make bland foods that would reduce libido. (This is true; look it up.)

To expand on the above list, I think the most powerful strategy out there to avoid or treat cancer is to starve your cancer cells by depriving them of their only food source – sugar. Normal cells in your body can adapt to different energy sources, allowing them to use both carbs and fat for fuel. Cancer cells, on the other hand, do not express that metabolic flexibility and are only able to use sugar as an energy source. A man by the name of Dr. Otto Warburg was actually given the Nobel Prize in Physiology for this discovery over 75 years ago, and still virtually no oncologist actually uses this information! He discovered that cancer cells have a fundamentally different energy metabolism compared to healthy cells. He called his theory the “Warburg Effect,” which occurs in up to 80 percent of cancers.

To think that we are spending up to $215 billion a year on dementia care in this country—far more than we’re spending on any other disease—is infuriating when we consider that the vast majority of these dementia cases could have been prevented with simple lifestyle modifications early in the life cycle.

This analogy is going to seem out of left field, but bear with me. My husband, Jon, and I have a peace lily plant that we bought when we first moved into our home. It was always in the front room. It got frequent care and adequate water, but it never bloomed. The foliage was green and beautiful, but the plant remained the same. It didn’t die, but it didn’t grow, either. It just existed. Then one day I thought to bring it into the kitchen and put it in the bay window with our fresh herbs. Within less than a week, I noticed the first signs of a tightly wrapped white flower bud waiting to bloom. A couple of days later, up popped another bud. Who would have thought that all that plant needed was a little more light to thrive? It instantly struck me that there was a beautiful analogy for my own life here. This peace lily had everything it needed to survive, but it didn’t have the missing piece that it needed to thrive. I couldn’t help but think of all the times in my life when I had given myself only the bare minimum that I needed to survive and offered myself none of the things that I needed to thrive.

Lion Daily Schedule 5:30 a.m.: Wake up, no snooze. 5:45 a.m.: Breakfast: high-protein, low-carb. 6:15 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.: Big-picture conceptualizing and organizing. Morning meditation. 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.: Sex. If you have kids who need help getting ready for school, make it a quickie. 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.: Cool shower, get dressed, interact with friends or family before heading to work. 9:00 a.m.: Small snack: 250 calories, 25 percent protein, 75 percent carbs. Ideally, have it at a breakfast meeting. 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.: Personal interactions, morning meetings, phone calls, emails, strategic problem solving. 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.: Balanced lunch. Go outside for sunlight exposure, if possible. 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.: Creative thinking time. Listen to music, catch up on reading and journaling. In a workplace setting, lead or attend brainstorming meetings. 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.: Exercise, preferably outdoors, followed by a cool shower. 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Dinner. Keep it balanced—equal parts protein, carbs, and healthy fats. A carb-heavy meal like pasta might make you crash. 7:30 p.m.: Last call for alcohol. A drink after this hour will knock you out. 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.: Socialize on the town, or connect with loved ones online while relaxing at home. You bought yourself an extra hour, so make the most of it! 10:00 p.m.: Be in your home environment by now. Turn off all screens to begin the downshift before bed. 10:30 p.m.: Go to sleep.

For people who never consumed fish, the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease during the four-year follow-up period was increased by 37 percent. In those individuals who consumed fish on a daily basis, risk for these diseases was reduced by 44 percent. Regular

when animals are on a reduced-calorie diet (typically reduced by around 30 percent), their brain production of BDNF shoots up and they show dramatic improvements in memory and other cognitive functions. But

In the normal process of producing energy, each mitochondrion produces hundreds if not thousands of free radical molecules each day. Multiply that by the ten million billion mitochondria that we each possess and you come up with an unfathomable number, ten

Integrity is making a commitment to yourself, regardless of whether anyone else is watching. It involves making a conscious decision to “do the right thing,” to no longer cheat yourself by making poor choices while attempting to convince yourself that it doesn’t matter.

Focus on choosing whole foods. Eliminate all processed and refined foods and follow my “90/10 rule”—eat clean 90% of the time, and have a little fun 10% of the time. So that means 1 out of every 10 meals can be whatever you choose, it’s your reward meal. Eat and enjoy guilt-free, you earned it, and it’s built into the blueprint.

If carb cycling is a foreign term don’t worry, it sounds way scarier than it actually is. All it means is cycling your carbs from higher to lower (don’t worry, we guide you step-by-step) throughout each week.You see, when you manipulate carbs in this way you keep your metabolism guessing (more on this later).

HEALTHY OILS– Deep fried foods should be eliminated from your diet, but if you want to stir fry or sauté vegetables, use a healthy oil like olive, walnut, flaxseed, macadamia, avocado, or coconut. These oils should be unprocessed and unrefined, to make sure you are getting the most out of their nutritional profile. Avoid processed (polyunsaturated) vegetable and seed oils, such as soybean, canola, and corn oil.

I know I briefly mentioned them previously, but these are some of my favorite go-to snack ideas: 1. Quality beef jerky 2. Hard boiled eggs 3. Veggie sticks 4. Tuna and veggies 5. Almond butter and apple 6.   Nut mixes (be sure to practice portion control) 7. Chicken breast 8. Cubed sweet potato with spices 9.   Canned pumpkin, vanilla protein powder, sliced almonds, chia seeds, and cinnamon (this is lower fat but stays pretty low-carb too, thanks to the pumpkin)

Stop loading up on excess protein. Stop eating diseased, tortured animals that cause inflammation. Stop fearing real carbs that have fed thriving populations for all of civilization. Feast on beautiful, delicious fruits and vegetables. Eat food that looks alive. Eat food that has been grown and made with love.

What normal Americans are willing to implement the strategies they use on that show, let alone capable of doing so?! I

LIMIT FRUIT. Adhere to our carb management cutoff and limit yourself to no more than 15 g net carbohydrates per meal. Choose fruit with the least carbohydrate content and greatest nutritional value. From best to worst, choose from: berries of all varieties, cherries, citrus, apples, nectarines, peaches, and melons. One-half cup of blueberries, for example, contains 15 g total carbohydrates and 3 g fiber = 12 g net carbohydrates. This meets the 15 g or less net carbs limit (but don’t forget to factor in other foods you consume along with the blueberries, as it all adds up).

intermittent fasters reported that this is how they busted through a plateau of a month or more (in order of number of responses): Time and patience Altering window length Changing time of window Lowering carbs ADF (alternate-daily fasting, or the up-and-down-day protocol) Delaying alcohol A weekly 36- to 48-hour fast 23:1 Delaying sugar Delaying processed foods Adding exercise 5:2 (five up days, two down days per week) 4:3 (four up days, three down days per week)

All that preamble out of way, here’s what Big Dom eats. Keep in mind that he weighs roughly 100 kg (220 lbs), so scale as needed: Breakfast 4 eggs (cooked in a combo of butter and coconut oil) 1 can of sardines packed in olive oil (such as Wild Planet brand) ½ can oysters (Crown Prince brand. Note: Carbs on the label are from non-glycemic phytoplankton) Some asparagus or other vegetable TF: Both Dom and I travel with boxes of sardines, oysters, and bulk macadamia nuts. “Lunch” Instead of lunch, Dom will consume a lot of MCT throughout the day via Quest Nutrition MCT Oil Powder. He will also make a Thermos of coffee with a half stick of butter and 1 to 2 scoops of MCT powder, which he sips throughout the day, totaling about 3 cups of coffee. Dinner “One trick I’ve learned is that before dinner, which is my main meal of the day, I’ll have a bowl of soup, usually broccoli cream soup or cream of mushroom soup. I use concentrated coconut milk in place of the dairy cream. I thin it out [with a bit of water] so it’s not super dense in calories. After eating that, the amount of food that I want to consume is cut in half.” Dom’s dinner is always some kind of large salad, typically made up of: Mixed greens and spinach together Extra-virgin olive oil Artichokes Avocado MCT oil A little bit of Parmesan or feta cheese A moderate amount—about 50 g—of chicken, beef, or fish. He uses the fattiest versions he can get and increases the protein in the salad to 70 to 80 g if he had a workout that day. In addition to the salad, Dom will make some other vegetable like Brussels sprouts, asparagus, collard greens, etc., cooked in butter and coconut oil. He views vegetables as “fat delivery systems.

Here’s my protocol for my usual monthly 3-day fast from Thursday dinner to Sunday dinner: On Wednesday and Thursday, plan phone calls for Friday. Determine how you can be productive via cell phone for 4 hours. This will make sense shortly. Have a low-carb dinner around 6 p.m. on Thursday. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, sleep as late as possible. The point is to let sleep do some of the work for you. Consume exogenous ketones or MCT oil upon waking and 2 more times throughout the day at 3- to 4-hour intervals. I primarily use KetoCaNa and caprylic acid (C8), like Brain Octane. The exogenous ketones help “fill the gap” for the 1 to 3 days that you might suffer carb withdrawal. Once you’re in deep ketosis and using body fat, they can be omitted. On Friday (and Saturday if needed), drink some caffeine and prepare to WALK. Be out the door no later than 30 minutes after waking. I grab a cold liter of water or Smartwater out of my fridge, add a dash of pure, unsweetened lemon juice to attenuate boredom, add a few pinches of salt to prevent misery/headaches/cramping, and head out. I sip this as I walk and make phone calls. Podcasts also work. Once you finish your water, fill it up or buy another. Add a little salt, keep walking, and keep drinking. It’s brisk walking—NOT intense exercise—and constant hydration that are key. I have friends who’ve tried running or high-intensity weight training instead, and it does not work for reasons I won’t bore you with. I told them, “Try brisk walking and tons of water for 3 to 4 hours. I bet you’ll be at 0.7 mmol the next morning.” One of them texted me the next morning: “Holy shit. 0.7 mmol.” Each day of fasting, feel free to consume exogenous ketones or fat (e.g., coconut oil in tea or coffee) as you like, up to 4 tablespoons. I will often reward myself at the end of each fasting afternoon with an iced coffee with a bit of coconut cream in it. Truth be told, I will sometimes allow myself a SeaSnax packet of nori sheets. Oooh, the decadence. Break your fast on Sunday night. Enjoy it. For a 14-day or longer fast, you need to think about refeeding carefully. But for a 3-day fast, I don’t think what you eat matters much. I’ve done steak, I’ve done salads, I’ve done greasy burritos. Evolutionarily, it makes no sense that a starving hominid would need to find shredded cabbage or some such nonsense to save himself from death. Eat what you find to eat.

Once You’re in Keto, How Can You Keep It Going Without Fasting? The short answer is: Eat a boatload of fat (~1.5 to 2.5 g per kilogram of body weight), next-to-no carbs, and moderate protein (1 to 1.5 g per kilogram of body weight) each day. We’ll look at Dom’s typical meals and day in a minute, but a few critical notes first: High protein and low fat doesn’t work. Your liver will convert excess amino acids into glucose and shut down ketogenesis. Fat as 70 to 85% of calories is required. This doesn’t mean you always have to eat rib eye steaks. A chicken breast by itself will kick you out of ketosis, but a chicken breast cut up into a green leafy salad with a lot of olive oil, feta cheese, and some Bulletproof Coffee (for example) can keep you in ketosis. One of the challenges of keto is the amount of fat one needs to consume to maintain it. Roughly 70 to 80% of your total calories need to come from fat. Rather than trying to incorporate fat bombs into all meals (one does get tired of fatty steak, eggs, and cheese over and over again), Dom will both drink fat between meals (e.g., coconut milk—not water—in coffee) and add in supplemental “ice cream,” detailed on page 29. Dom noticed that dairy can cause lipid profile issues (e.g., can spike LDL) and has started to minimize things like cream and cheese. I experienced the same. It’s easy to eat a disgusting amount of cheese to stay in keto. Consider coconut milk (Aroy-D Pure Coconut Milk) instead. Dom doesn’t worry about elevated LDL as long as other blood markers aren’t out of whack (high CRP, low HDL, etc.). From Dom: “The thing that I focus on most is triglycerides. If your triglycerides are elevated, that means your body is just not adapting to the ketogenic diet. Some people’s triglycerides are elevated even when their calories are restricted. That’s a sign that the ketogenic diet is not for you. . . . It’s not a one-size-fits-all diet.

YOUR LONGEVITY HEALTH, FITNESS & LONGEVITY WEEKLY CHECKLIST 1. Hydrate. Drink half your body weight in ounces of water per day. Add some fresh lemon and a pinch of Celtic sea salt to optimize your hydration and electrolyte balance. 2. Eat foods closest to their natural source. Avoid processed carbs, and low quality processed meats. 3. Decrease Disease Risk. Consume at least one serving of cruciferous vegetables per day including broccoli sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, or kale. 4. Commit to a structured eating window. Consume meals in an 8 to 12 hours and fast for 12-16 hour window each day. 5. Stay consistent with sleep. Go to sleep and wake up at about the same times each day. 6. Get strong. Perform three resistance training sessions per week. 7. Strengthen your heart, lungs, and build endurance with 3 cardiovascular exercise sessions of 20 to 30 minutes each session. 8. Consider the power of using heat and cold to use positive stressors to lower your blood pressure, reduce inflammation, reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s, and cut your risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 50%.

A food isn’t fattening or slimming because of the quantity of calories it contains, but because of the quality of those calories—and whether they fill us up. Processed food isn’t fattening because it has “a lot of calories” or “a lot of fat” or “a lot of carbs.” It’s fattening because the calories and fat and carbs in processed foods don’t fill us up as much as the calories and fat and carbs in whole foods.

Create a list of what you do—and don’t—eat and drink. Advice on what to eat is its own industry—and a particularly unregulated one. The blizzard of advice can make it hard to separate fads from science, which suggests that common sense is a good starting point. You already know the fundamentals: avoid “bad” fats, lighten up on the carbs, eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and go easy on the meat.

common for diet plans to make allowances for “cheating.” And the ads on television give testament to all the ways people try to fool themselves into thinking that there is some “healthy” way to continue their addiction, from sugar-loaded “fiber bars” to sugar-loaded “fruit” punch with a few added vitamins. You cannot afford this. Every time your blood sugar goes above 120 mg/dL (6.7 mmol/L) your body sustains irreversible damage, and that damage adds up. Every time you fall for this nonsense, you will move a little closer to disastrous consequences.

Foods today contain higher amounts of toxic proteins, which can trigger survival mode. Because of this, the rates of dangerous allergies to foods like peanuts or shellfish have gone up many-fold during the last few decades.

One problem is that when you cut your carbs too much, cortisol rises. Remember that one of cortisol’s jobs is keeping your blood sugar up. There’s a drop in blood sugar when you miss meals or you are fasting, but it also happens if your meals are too low in carbs.

People who are Wired and Tired often can sleep, but not at practical times. They may notice that after a night of tossing and turning, they finally go into a deep sleep at 4 or 5 AM. If possible, they would happily stay up until early morning and sleep until late in the day. Usually, most life schedules will not accommodate this.

The core feature of being Crashed is the overwhelming exhaustion. Common symptoms include debilitating fatigue, muscle wasting, mid-body obesity, a feeling of general weakness, cravings for sugar or salt, and dizziness when getting up suddenly. There can also be muscle aches and pains, joint pain, unusually low blood pressure, and a variety of digestive symptoms including gas and bloating.

So, the liver does its best work cleaning out your body during your deep sleep. This is also when your liver is able to convert your food into energy for your muscles. When the body is full of pollutants, though, your liver never gets to rest and it ends up sending both calories and toxins to your belly fat instead.

In many cases, those at this level are not hungry for breakfast, but they get ravenous in the evening and end up bingeing on salty or sweet foods like chips, ice cream, cookies, or pretzels.

When your fat is exposed to fructose, it causes your adrenals to make more stress hormones.7 The adrenal glands make a strong stress hormone called cortisol and a weak stress hormone called cortisone. Fructose literally causes your fat to take the weak stress hormone and make it into the stronger one.8 Finally, the fructose leaves your blood sugar so unstable that you end up making extra cortisol for hours in an attempt to fix the situation.9

Alcohol is not good for your body for a few reasons (among them, it weakens the immune system and ups your sugar intake), but the fact that it interferes with sleep is especially problematic, because of the domino effect: If you’re not rested, your body craves sugar and carbs (for quick energy); you might be too tired to exercise; you overdo it on caffeine and throw off your internal clock, which messes up your next night’s sleep.

after age 45 or so, because most people become increasingly carbohydrate intolerant, meaning the body doesn’t metabolize carbs as efficiently as it once did. This is why the risk of diabetes goes up. Starchy foods also cause inflammation (see Inflammatory foods age the body) and, no surprise, weight gain, especially in the belly region. The solution is to change your eating behaviors so your body becomes fat-adapted; that is, it gets in the habit of using fats rather than carbs for energy. This is achieved by eating lots of leafy greens and healthy natural fats, some protein, and very few carbs. So nuts, salad, eggs, avocado, non-starchy veggies, grass-fed meat, fatty fish. Healthy

The mood at the table is convivial throughout the meal. A dried-sausage and prosciutto plate gives way to briny sardines, which give way to truffle-covered gnocchi topped with a plethora of herbs. Richness cut with acidity, herbaceousness and cool breezes at every turn. A simple ricotta and lemon fettuccine topped with sharp pecorino is the perfect counterpoint. I am not driving, and apparently Anjana isn't, either, so we both order a Cynar and soda. "How can we digest all the pasta without another digestif?" we exclaim to the waiter, giddily. Meat, carbs, sunshine, and lingering music coming from across the plaza have stirred us up, and soon our dessert--- some sort of chocolate cake with walnuts--- arrives. It's dense in that fudgey way a flourless concoction can be, like it has molded itself into the perfection of pure chocolate. The crunch of the walnuts is a counterweight, drawing me deeper into the flavor. I haven't been inspired by food like this in a long time, despite spending so much time thinking about food. The atmosphere at work has sucked so much of the joy out of thinking about recipes, but I find myself taking little notes on my phone for recipe experimentation when I get home. The realization jolts me. I've always felt like I have the perfect job for a creative who happens to also be left-brained. Recipes are an intriguing puzzle every single time. Today's fettuccine is the perfect example. The tartness of the lemon paired with the smooth pasta and pillowy ricotta is the no-brainer part. But the trickier puzzle piece--- the one that is necessary to connect the rest of the puzzle to the whole--- is the light grating of the pecorino on top. That tang, that edge, that cutting spice works in tangent with the lemon to give the dish its power. Lemon alone wouldn't have been enough. Pecorino alone wouldn't have been enough. The dish is so simple, but it has to fit together perfectly to work. These little moments, these exciting eurekas, are the elation I normally get in my job.

The Slow-Carb Diet® Cheat Sheet Many people lose hope when trying to lose weight. Fortunately, it need not be complicated. Though I regularly fast and enter ketosis, the Slow-Carb Diet (SCD) has been my default diet for more than a decade. It works almost beyond belief and affects much more than appearance. From one reader: “I just wanted to sincerely thank Tim for taking the time to research and write The 4-Hour Body. My mom, in her late 60s, lost 45 pounds and got off her high blood pressure meds that she had been on for 20+ years. She did all this in about 3 months. This means that I get to have her around for a long time.” The basic rules are simple, all followed 6 days per week: Rule #1: Avoid “white” starchy carbohydrates (or those that can be white). This means all bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and grains (yes, including quinoa). If you have to ask, don’t eat it. Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again, especially for breakfast and lunch. Good news: You already do this. You’re just picking new default meals. If you want to keep it simple, split your plate into thirds: protein, veggies, and beans/legumes. Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Exception: 1 to 2 glasses of dry red wine per night is allowed, although this can cause some peri-/post-menopausal women to plateau. Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. (Fructose → glycerol phosphate → more body fat, more or less.) Avocado and tomatoes are allowed. Rule #5: Whenever possible, measure your progress in body fat percentage, NOT total pounds. The scale can deceive and derail you. For instance, it’s common to gain muscle while simultaneously losing fat on the SCD. That’s exactly what you want, but the scale number won’t move, and you will get frustrated. In place of the scale, I use DEXA scans, a BodyMetrix home ultrasound device, or calipers with a gym professional (I recommend the Jackson-Pollock 7-point method). And then: Rule #6: Take one day off per week and go nuts. I choose and recommend Saturday. This is “cheat day,” which a lot of readers also call “Faturday.” For biochemical and psychological reasons, it’s important not to hold back. Some readers keep a “to-eat” list during the week, which reminds them that they’re only giving up vices for 6 days at a time. Comprehensive step-by-step details, including Q&As and troubleshooting, can be found in The 4-Hour Body, but the preceding outline is often enough to lose 20 pounds in a month, and drop 2 clothing sizes. Dozens of readers have lost 100–200 pounds on the SCD. My 6-Piece Gym in a Bag I take these 6 items with me whenever I travel.

Shakshuka with Feta and Mint I started noticing many restaurants serving shakshuka and said to myself, “Hey, I can make that at home for much cheaper and way better.” Turns out I was right! It’s a North African one-pan tomato and egg dish that is perfect for a lazy Sunday morning. You can’t mess it up. Tip When a recipe calls for canned tomatoes, make sure to only buy Italian San Marzano canned tomatoes. They are grown in the rich volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius and have the best flavor. To watch a similar video tutorial for this recipe, search “FlavCity shakshuka” on YouTube. Ingredients: - 1 green bell pepper, sliced - ½ cup red onions, diced - 4 cloves garlic, minced - ¼ cup roasted assorted bell peppers - 1 teaspoon smoked paprika - 1 teaspoon cumin - ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper - 20 ounces of canned tomatoes, chopped - 4 eggs - ¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled - Fresh mint, minced - Parsley, minced - Kosher salt and fresh pepper - Olive oil Preheat a twelve-inch skillet over medium heat along with 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the green peppers, onions, ¼ teaspoon salt, and a few cracks of pepper. Cook for 12 minutes or until the veggies are soft, stirring often. Add the garlic and cook for 3 minutes. Add the roasted peppers, paprika, cumin, and cayenne pepper and cook for 1 minute. Add the chopped canned tomatoes with juice along with ½ teaspoon of salt and a few cracks of pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook until the tomatoes have reduced and the sauce is somewhat thick, about 15–20 minutes. Turn the heat to medium-low. Then use a spoon to make indentations for the eggs, and crack the eggs directly into the spots. Season the tops of the eggs with a pinch of salt and pepper, cover with a lid or sheet pan, and cook for 7–10 minutes or until the egg whites are set. Remove from the heat, garnish with the feta cheese and herbs, and enjoy! You can use the keto pita bread recipe to dip into the tomato sauce. You can even char the pita bread in a hot grill pan to make it crusty. Storage and reheating: You can store the shakshuka in the fridge for three days and reheat in the oven.

Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I never wanted for diner food, whether it was from Bob's Diner in Roxborough or the Trolley Car Diner in Mount Airy. The food wasn't anything special- eggs and toast, meat loaf and gravy, the omnipresent glass case of pies- but I always found the food comforting and satisfying, served as it was in those old-fashioned, prefabricated stainless steel trolley cars. Whenever we would visit my mom's parents in Canterbury, New Jersey, we'd stop at the Claremont Diner in East Windsor on the way home, and I'd order a fat, fluffy slice of coconut cream pie, which I'd nibble on the whole car ride back to Philly. I'm not sure why I've always found diner food so comforting. Maybe it's the abundance of grease or the utter lack of pretense. Diner food is basic, stick-to-your-ribs fare- carbs, eggs, and meat, all cooked up in plenty of hot fat- served up in an environment dripping with kitsch and nostalgia. Where else are a jug of syrup and a bottomless cup of coffee de rigueur? The point of diner cuisine isn't to astound or impress; it's to fill you up cheaply with basic, down-home food. My menu, however, should astound and impress, which is why I've decided to take up some of the diner foods I remember from my youth and put my own twist on them. So far, this is what I've come up with: Sloe gin fizz cocktails/chocolate egg creams Grilled cheese squares: grappa-soaked grapes and Taleggio/ Asian pears and smoked Gouda "Eggs, Bacon, and Toast": crostini topped with wilted spinach, pancetta, poached egg, and chive pesto Smoky meat loaf with slow-roasted onions and prune ketchup Whipped celery root puree Braised green beans with fire-roasted tomatoes Mini root beer floats Triple coconut cream pie

Here are a few notable things that can spark inflammation and depress the function of your liver: Alcohol overload—This is relatively well-known. Your liver is largely responsible for metabolizing alcohol, and drinking too much liquid courage can send your liver running to cry in a corner somewhere. Carbohydrate bombardment—Starches and sugar have the fastest ability to drive up blood glucose, liver glycogen, and liver fat storage (compared to their protein and fat macronutrient counterparts). Bringing in too many carbs, too often, can elicit a wildfire of fat accumulation. In fact, one of the most effective treatments for reversing NAFLD is reducing the intake of carbohydrates. A recent study conducted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and published in the journal Cell Metabolism had overweight test subjects with high levels of liver fat reduce their ratio of carbohydrate intake (without reducing calories!). After a short two-week study period the subjects showed “rapid and dramatic” reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors. Too many medications—Your liver is the top doc in charge of your body’s drug metabolism. When you hear about drug side effects on commercials, they are really a direct effect of how your liver is able to handle them. The goal is to work on your lifestyle factors so that you can be on as few medications as possible along with the help of your physician. Your liver will do its best to support you either way, but it will definitely feel happier without the additional burden. Too many supplements—There are several wonderful supplements that can be helpful for your health, but becoming an overzealous natural pill-popper might not be good for you either. In a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, it was found that liver injuries linked to supplement use jumped from 7 percent to 20 percent of all medication/supplement-induced injuries in just a ten-year time span. Again, this is not to say that the right supplements can’t be great for you. This merely points to the fact that your liver is also responsible for metabolism of all of the supplements you take as well. And popping a couple dozen different supplements each day can be a lot for your liver to handle. Plus, the supplement industry is largely unregulated, and the additives, fillers, and other questionable ingredients could add to the burden. Do your homework on where you get your supplements from, avoid taking too many, and focus on food first to meet your nutritional needs. Toxicants—According to researchers at the University of Louisville, more than 300 environmental chemicals, mostly pesticides, have been linked to fatty liver disease. Your liver is largely responsible for handling the weight of the toxicants (most of them newly invented) that we’re exposed to in our world today. Pesticides are inherently meant to be deadly, but just to small organisms (like pests), though it seems to be missed that you are actually made of small organisms, too (bacteria

You need to carb up.” “I’m teaching yoga, not running a marathon

Some people have accused me of being a carb-o-holic, but I prefer to think of myself as a carb advocate. There are so many people hating on carbs these days that I feel they are an underserved food and someone needs to stand up for them. I’m the Joan of Arc of pasta.

However, over the course of a day (or even a few hours) your weight can go up or down by as much as five or six pounds, and that fluctuation isn’t at all representative of body fat gained or lost. You can eat a few higher-carb meals and gain a few pounds of water weight, or wake up dehydrated and “lose” a pound or two.

The waiter appeared beside her, distributing artfully foamed lattes and herbal teas around the table, and setting down two baskets of shiny pastries in the middle. There wasn’t a woman here who would let her hand come within six inches of the sugar-filled carbs, but they served the purpose of brightening up the table, like a floral centerpiece

Everywhere I look, everywhere I turn: salad. Potato salad. Pasta salad. Tuna salad. Ham salad. There aren't any leafy green ones, although some, like my aunt's beloved cottage cheese lime Jell-O salad, are decidedly green. No, the bowls lining the tables and windowsills are filled with the kinds of salads I grew up with in Michigan, most containing some combination of proteins and carbs, the ingredients bound up with a spoonful of mayonnaise or its zesty cousin, Miracle Whip, my mother's all-time favorite condiment. She told me she'd never met a recipe that couldn't be improved by a spoonful of Miracle Whip. That, and maybe a dash of rum.

Overeating, or comfort eating, is the cheap, meek option for self-satisfaction, and self-obliteration. You get all the temporary release of drinking, fucking, or taking drugs, but without - and I think this is the important bit - ever being left in a state where you can't remain responsible and cogent. In a nutshell, then, choosing food as your drug - sugar highs, or the deep, soporific calm of carbs, the Valium of the working classes - you can still make the packed lunches, do the school run, look after the baby, pop in on your mum, and then stay up all night with the ill five-year-old - something that is not an option if you're coming off a gigantic bag of skunk or regularly climbing into the cupboard under the stairs and knocking back quarts of Scotch. Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-deconstructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice.