Report from an outlier

It's just that all around me, people are: Eating.Carbs.Constantly.

It does not stop. Ever.

They are trying to eat in a way they have been told is "healthy." No meat, no fat, lotsa healthy whole grains.

So I observe this perpetual intake of whole grain cereal with fruit and skim milk;  nonfat yogurt containing lots of sugar with whole wheat toast, no butter but a dollop of jam; pretzels and snack mix and crackers and cookies and granola.

They cannot stop. They joke about it, "they walk it off" at lunch, they occasionally wonder about it. But they are told this is the healthy way to eat. They struggle against the screaming hunger... and then succumb to it.

Because they are "only" ten or twenty pounds overweight. Everyone around them is doing the same thing. They are considered Normal.

However, I never had that cushion. I was, on the exact same eating pattern, thirty and forty and fifty pounds overweight. I never had the luxury of laughing off a few extra pounds and a dress size higher than I wanted to be. My overweight status was always an emergency; a ridiculed, can't-find-jeans, stupid-fat-pig kind of emergency.

I couldn't overlook it, and be like everyone else. I was tormented by the fact that, as far as I could tell, I ate like everyone else, but I sure didn't look like anyone else.

It is a state of perpetual hunger. The only difference is that other people feed their perpetual hunger, and only put on a nominal, norm-adjusted, amount of overweight that is considered almost inevitable for their age group.

However, myself, and those like me, react in an entirely different way. We blow up like party balloons.

But this healthy advice wasn't satisfied with insult; I also got injury. If I did the same thing my peers did, upping my activity and lowering my calories, they dropped those few extra pounds. So did I; except I never got to an "acceptable" weight the way they did. I stayed overweight unless I starved myself. So I did.

Until I couldn't, any more.

Without eating low carb, and now, Paleo, I would now be over a hundred pounds overweight. I would have diabetes, high blood pressure, rampant arthritis, and rotten, rotten, moods.

How do I know this? The same way I have known for decades. I simply look around at the people who are my own age.

The difference is: I no longer eat the same way they do.

The cheese omelet: cravings extinguisher

Another mental barrier falls.

Now, when I think "pastry," I make my goat cheese omelet with jam. When I would like a classic New York bagel with cream cheese and lox from my favorite local breakfast spot, I have it as an omelet, instead. And the Deep Dish Pizza Quiche is a variation that can be dressed like pizza. (I enjoy it with sliced mushrooms in the base.)

make our own to control the sugar content

It all started with me exploring our local farmer's markets. I successfully avoided the artisan breads, but the jam aisle was far more tempting. When I reached the lady who used local fruits and 75% less sugar, I got some in my favorite flavors; blackberry, peach, and strawberry/rhubarb.

It's also a great place to get goat cheese; and I did. Once upon a time, I would have enjoyed this combination on crackers. But even gluten-free crackers have too many carbs for best results.

So I activated my latest trick: Will this work with eggs?

And the answer came back: Why not?

The flavors of the jam are so wonderfully fruity and intense a single spoonful can be spread over a 2 egg omelet, and still satisfy me. As they say in the British Isles: it works a treat. And I mean that! The beauty of low carb eating is that we can have "treats" every day... and still lose weight.

We simply have to redefine our definition of what a treat, is.

I am a fat burning engine.

I'm on my third week of a new Intermittent Fasting milestone: 24 hours without food. I've gone as long as three days, eating only a big lunch every day. And... loving it!

I finally got my hip problem straightened out. This lets me be able to go for actual walks, and now, hiking. I find it much easier to spend a few hours climbing up and down mountains and walking through the woods than getting to the gym every day; and this activity is much more enjoyable. But to compress a week's worth of "gym time" into a day or two a week means using our friends intensity and stamina.

Our original engine burns fat

I think it was the hiking that got me this "higher gear."

Because I discovered that I could have a big breakfast, go hiking and deliver boxes and jump out of my car every fifteen minutes to take pictures and put in a ten hour day and then eat dinner; without being hungry.

My body was getting fuel from my fat. And I still have some.

Let me be clear: I wasn't eating because I wasn't hungry. I wasn't worried about not being hungry because of the benefits of taking long breaks between meals; known as Intermittent Fasting. Once we become keto-adapted, we aren't dependent on the glucose our liver and muscles can store.

We run off our fat.

If we have extra; this is how we most easily burn it. We engage our alternate energy system; the ketone based, fat burning, "original engine" that is considered to be the way our early ancestors managed.

It is so easy for us to obtain cheap, high carb, processed foods we forget how all those three things fit together. Living as hunter/gatherers could not be the same as our own existence which encourages and supports constant snacking.

When I was eating high carb and low fat, I ate every two hours. I was driven almost crazy with the constant hunger. I was tired of eating but the hunger drove me on.

Now, eating low carb and free of roller coaster blood sugars, I am also free to take on all kinds of activity, even sitting at my computer, for hours and hours, without having to stop and cram something else into my mouth to shut off all the alarms my body is ringing.

I can only see that as a marvelous thing.