Dana's blog

Got an email today; there's just one ocean-view cabin left for the Low Carb Cruise! So if you've been thinking about it but putting off signing up, now is the time! Just click on the banner to your left. No, I do not get a kick-back for recommending you -- I don't even get paid to go. Heck, I have to pay my own way. Worth it? And then some.

Hope to see you there.

Happy Thanksgiving, all! This year it's just me and That Nice Boy I Married for Thanksgiving dinner, which is fine; we like each other! Here's what we're having:

Turkey (duh!) -- I bought an 11 pounder, so it will fit in my rotisserie. Keeps the breast very moist.

With that grasp of timing that has marked my every move, I have finally got a Thanksgiving article up at CarbSmart. Even if everything's all planned and all the shopping done, couldn't hurt to take a look.

Dana Carpender's New Carb & Calorie Counter, the revised and expanded edition, has just hit the stores, with over 200 pages of new stuff. Makes a great stocking stuffer for any low carbers on your list.

However, I want to make something perfectly clear:

I've recently read the Eades' new book, The 6-Week Cure For The Middle Aged Middle, and found it interesting; I picked up a few new ideas. In The 6-Week Cure, the Eades' recommend a couple of weeks of 4 low carb protein shakes per day, plus a very low carb meal. They also say that this is their way of getting around people's resistance to the idea of a few weeks of an all-meat diet -- they specifically state that their protein shakes are formulated to give pretty much the same protein/fat/carb ratio as meat.

Just saw my doctor yesterday to see my latest blood work. I would scan it in, but our scanner gave up the ghost a few months back, and we haven't allocated the funds to buy a new one yet. The results are:

Total Cholesterol: 195 (Reference range 125-200)
HDL: 61 (Reference range >46)
Triglycerides: 72 (Reference range <150)
LDL: 120 (Reference range <130

Ratios look like this:

HDL/total cholesterol: 0.312; anything over 0.24 is considered ideal.
Triglyceride/HDL: 1.18; anything under 2 is considered ideal.

In the Low Carb Shrinks Your Brain? thread came this question:

Dana,

What are your thoughts on Agave Nectar? The bottle says it has 16 grams of carbs per tablespoon and 60 calories, the same as honey. But it also says it has a low glycemic index. Is agave nectar easy on the blood sugar after all or not?

I'd appreciate your perspective. Thank you for all you do!

Johnnie Ann
New Mexico

Okay, I'm a dork. You've no doubt heard this from me before. I haven't been keeping up with posting here with links to my stuff at CarbSmart. So here are some links!

Do We Need So Much Fiber?

Have a Low Carb Halloween

Is Pumpkin Low Carb?

Mmmm... Bacon.

There it was, in today's Google News Alert for "low carbohydrate," the frightening news that low carbohydrate diets may shrink your brain, and even cause Alzheimer's! NOOOOOO!

I take the threat of dementia very, very seriously. My beloved mother has been institutionalized for years now with advanced Alzheimer's. I know to my vast sorrow just how cruel the disease is. If I thought for a minute that my low carb diet put me at increased risk, I'd quit in a heartbeat. I do not think so.

I find this study uncompelling. Why?

Two religious holidays this weekend: Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and Eid al Fitr, the feast that ends Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Best wishes to all readers celebrating either holiday -- and remember, it's not an excuse to eat a ton of junk! Choose your holiday Indulgences wisely.

I have, over the years, resolutely kept my political views out of my writing about carb-controlled nutrition. Not that I don't have such views, you understand. I'm just as opinionated in that part of my life as I am about food. I just had this mental image of someone with severe metabolic syndrome reading my work, finding some political view he or she disagreed with, and saying, "I'm not going to listen to anything that nutcase says!" After which, of course, they'd get their feet amputated and go blind from diabetic complications, and it would all be my fault.

Do you know what today is? It's the official 14th anniversary of my going low carb! I decided to go low carb a few days before Labor Day in 1995, but had already invited a bunch of people for a Labor Day barbecue, so I figured I'd wait till it was over. So the day after Labor Day is my official low carbing anniversary.

Fourteen years! Since I'm fifty (almost fifty one) that means I've been low carb for 28% of my life. So much for "That diet is okay for quick weight loss, but no one can eat that way long term."

Just had a big breakfast, even for me. I had:

About four ounces of leftover rib eye steak
Three fried eggs
About a cup of leftover steamed green beans with butter
Homemade sugar-free steak sauce (just mix sugar-free ketchup with Worcestershire. Okay, the Worcestershire has a teeny bit of sugar.)

As usual, I also had a sugar-free mini Reese's peanut butter cup and a sugar-free mini Hershey's Dark after breakfast; for some weird reason I like chocolate after breakfast more than after dinner.

Have you tried chard? I hadn't until the Organic Gardening Gods moved in next door. The stuff grows like crazy in their garden, and every now and then Keith shows up with a huge bunch. He did last night, and here's what I did with it:

I'm a dork; I have a few new articles up at Carb Smart since I last blogged. There's:

Going On A Low Carb Picnic

Vine Ripened Tomatoes

and

one where I answer a few reader questions

Hope you like 'em.