Monthly Archives: October 2013

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In the (ever-shrinking) shadow of my superstar husband lies 4 newborn babies!

24th October 2013 12:33 am / 3 Comments / Nicky

Ever since we have gone LCHF it has been my husband, Chris, who has had the most impressive weight loss out of the 2 of us. He has lost an incredible 36kg to date and is definitely the star of this show. Personally, I couldn’t believe what was happening to him, and right before my very eyes. I mean I see him EVERY day, we work together, live together, eat together, and sleep together and it was truly blowing my mind how fast this man was shrinking!

It was all very private and personal up until this point because 2 years ago we moved 5 hours away from most of our family and friends and don’t often get to see them in person anymore. It was private and personal up until I proudly shared his photo on Facebook! It definitely sparked lots of interest from our friends who wanted to know how he did it. So to save repeating the same story 50 times over we created the Edify website.

Everybody loves an incredible weight loss story, especially with amazing before and after photos. I am so incredibly proud of my husband and words cannot express how grateful I am to know he is no longer heading to an early grave, especially after seeing how close his own father was to death a couple of years ago as a result of being morbidly obese and diabetic. While I have never cared about anybody’s weight, I have always been frightened of the health complications that come with obesity.

So in the ever-shrinking shadow of my superstar husband, I too have been losing weight. Frustratingly not as much, or as fast, as said superstar but plodding along nicely. 12kg in total over a 6 month period. I wanted to make this post for all of you, like me, that get frustrated with a slower weight loss than all those superstars out there. I wanted to encourage you, like I sometimes have to encourage myself, that these things DO take time. I had a bit of an epiphany in the shower the other day. While I was feeling sorry for myself in ONLY having lost 12kg, for some strange reason I thought about the weight of my beautiful daughter when she first entered this world. She weighed 3kg. Then it hit me, I have lost the weight of 4 .. that’s FOUR .. newborn babies!!!

😀 😀 😀

Posted in: #Edify Food, Uncategorized, Weight Loss / Tagged: Weight Loss

LCHF: A Special Dietary Requirement

22nd October 2013 12:51 am / 4 Comments / Chris

One of the issues with living a life of LCHF is eating out. Whether it is going to a restaurant or bistro for dinner, or going to a conference or meeting where a meal is supplied, or even just going over a friends place for a meal. Trying to find available meals and dishes to eat while sticking to LCHF is always a battle.

When eating out for example, we regularly see menus which are coded for V, VG, DF, and GF (Vegetarian, Vegan, Dairy Free and Gluten Free) or have notes saying many meals are available in these options and to ask the staff about possible changes, but if you ask the staff about serving one of their meals to be LCHF friendly, many restaurants are unwilling to even consider it. A lot of establishments serve almost all their meals with either chips, mashed potato or a bed of rice, so we like to ask them if they can leave out the potatoes or rice and add extra salad or veggies to the dish. Some places are okay with this, but at other times we’ve been told we cannot do that without paying for the extra salad or veggies and they end up just serving the meal without the chips or mash. Consequently we don’t return to these venues.

The same goes with attending an event which is catered for (functions, meetings, conferences, weddings etc). Often you’ll find a line on the application/RSVP form asking for “Special Dietary Requirements” to cater for Vegetarian, Vegan, Dairy, Gluten and even Nut Free options. What would happen if you requested a Low Carb, High Fat meal as part of your dietary requirements?

What about when you go over friends or families places for a meal. If you have family members or friends who are vegetarian or vegan, we all usually try and go out of our way to provide at least SOME dishes which are free of animal meat/products so they have options to eat. What if we requested the same courtesy? What if we asked for some LCHF options to be made for us when we went there?

I understand that things like Gluten, Nut and Dairy free options are more often than not an allergic or body intolerance issue, but vegetarians and vegans are regularly considered and catered for, even though that way of eating is more of a lifestyle “choice”. Well….. So is LCHF!

All in all, I think it is the right of all us LCHFers to start standing up for this eating lifestyle, and expecting it to be catered for when eating away from home. Even if the request fails, at least we may have planted the LCHF seed in another few peoples minds.

Posted in: #Edify Food, Carbohydrates, Low Carb/High Fat, Saturated Fat

Potatoes, Bread, Pasta and Rice. How good are they really?

20th October 2013 11:19 pm / 3 Comments / Chris

Just recently Nicky and I were discussing the many reasons (excuses maybe?) given by people who either don’t want to give LCHF a go, or fall off the LCHF wagon.

One of the biggest ones is the inability to give up bread, or pasta or rice or even potatoes. I bumped into a neighbor of mine recently who hadn’t seen my weight loss for some time and he asked me how I managed it. My reply was something like “Well, in a nut shell, I increased my intake of saturated fat, and cut out bread, rice, pasta, potatoes and grains”. Which his response was “Oh… so you stopped eating all the stuff we love”. That comment got me to thinking.

Potatoes, Bread, Pasta and Rice… How good are they really?

Why are so many people so obsessed with these foods, and why are they so unwilling to give them up?

Bread : How often to you just eat dry bread with nothing on it, or dry toast, or a dry plain wrap, or a piece of dry bruschetta or sourdough?

Rice : Do you often sit down to a bowl of plain steamed or boiled rice on its own?

Pasta : How tasty is a bowl of plain boiled spaghetti strands, or pasta shells or lasagna pasta sheets?

Potatoes : Of all the potatoes you eat, how often are they just plain old boiled or steamed potatoes on their own?

When I thought about all of this, it made me even more confused as to why people are so unable to part with them. On their own they are boring as a wet weekend. It’s all the other flavors we drench them in that makes them tasty.

We slather slices of bread and toast with butter, spreads and other fillings. We cover Rice and Pasta with delicious toppings, sauces, curries, stir-fries etc. We cover potatoes in mayonnaise, or salad dressing, or sauces, or we fry them in oil, or mash them with cream and butter to make them tasty. So I came to the following conclusion that…

“CARBS ARE FILLER FOOD”

Honestly, it seems that the only role of these foods is to “fill” or “bulk” up a meal. To me, its the same as companies adding soda ash to bulk up washing machine powder, or putting a handful of novelty toys from the dollar shop in kids Christmas stockings, or even half the songs on every AC/DC album since Back in Black. It’s all just pointless filler!

On their own most carb rich foods are quite dull and boring, so we need to add other foods to give it flavor. Only problem is, these supposed expert health and nutrition organisations tell us we have to cut back on our saturated fat intake, so the only other way to add flavor to this dull and boring food type is to add sugar.

Next time someone tells you they couldn’t give up their potatoes, bread, rice or pasta, ask them “On their own…. how good are they really?

Posted in: #Edify Food, Carbohydrates, Saturated Fat

Can LCHF be Environmentally Sustainable?

14th October 2013 10:46 am / 4 Comments / Chris

I was just reading a post in an LCHF group and my overworked (yet underpaid) mind shot off on a tangent to this conundrum.

Yes, I am an LCHFer for life, but I am also a permaculturalist and I started wondering about the concept of Environmentally Sustainable LCHF?

By that I mean…. Incorporating an ethical environmental stance on the LCHF foods we eat. A generation or 2 ago, people ate based on the seasons. When different foods were in season, that is when they were consumed, and when they were over, that was it until the next year.

Now days, you can go into a supermarket and get all the fruit and veg you want, all year around. Think about the negative environmental impact involved in providing fruit and veggies all year around. Growing them in opposite parts of Australia where the climate suits and shipping them all across the country, or growing it in artificial conditions often using chemicals for ripening, importing them in at massive travel/fuel impact, or worse of all, relying upon genetically modified strains to unnaturally grow produce where and when it is not supposed to grow.

All my research and reading into the LCHF lifestyle talks about all the foods we can eat for all the healthy benefits that comes with eating Low Carb High Fat, but it seems to me that much of the suggested foods (veggies and safe fruits in particular) aren’t always available. For salads, things like Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Avocados etc are only in season part of the year. Many LCHFers talk about regularly consuming berries and nuts with their yoghurt, and while nuts can store well for a long time, berries are very seasonal. Veggies are seasonal too such as Zucchini, Broccoli, and even the LCHF Super-hero… Cauliflower.

Here are a range of questions that I’ve posed inside my head while writing this post.

Should we continue to buy and consume produce that is not in season?
More to the purpose of this post, CAN we continue to eat LCHF while still consuming only produce in season?
Could we shop for produce ONLY at farmers markets and still manage to eat Low Carb/High Fat?
What would we consume when the LCHF staples are not in season

I am not writing this post to provide an answer (as I don’t yet have an answer), but purely to pose a question, and maybe even encourage some people who might not have even given it a thought, to consider the impact their food shopping habits have on this precious rock we live on and rely on for life.

I will continue to put my grey matter to the test to try and come up with ways we can ease the burden on Gaia and maybe one day I will have a new model called LCHFEF (Low Carb High Fat Earth Friendly).

Posted in: #Edify Food, GMO, Low Carb/High Fat, Permaculture, Sustainability

LCHF, Mental Impact and the obese

14th October 2013 2:39 am / 7 Comments / Chris

The last couple of days I have been thinking about my journey being Low Carb/High Fat, and how it fits in relation to the rest of my pre-LCHF life.

For those of you who don’t know of my own story, I’ve been overweight practically all of my life. Fighting food, hating food, and ultimately being controlled by food. Food was central to almost every issue in my life… Let’s face it, it’s not like giving up smoking, or cutting out soft drinks. You can’t just cut out food!

I’ve Yo-Yoed with my weight all my life, being as big as 170kg (about 375lb) but never being in control of my weight. I believed that “If I want to lose weight, I need to starve myself” so I would go about reducing the amount of food I ate to reduce the number of calories I ate. I would cut out as much saturated fat as I could, and I would eat a diet high in carbohydrates as recommended. Depending on how much willpower I had during each nutritional starvation jaunt would depend on how much I would lose, but ultimately, being constantly hungry and deprived of food can only last so long and failure would ensue, and the weight would come back.

Enter LCHF. Now to be completely honest, when I first heard about it, I was just as skeptical as any other weight loss method I’ve tried or heard about… and with good reason… Put your marketing goggles on and put LCHF down on paper…

“Have you heard about this new healthy system called LCHF? You’ll lose weight… You’ll rarely be hungry… You’ll eat lots of tasty food… You’ll have more energy… You’ll lower your blood pressure… You’ll lower your risk of heart disease… All from the comfort of your own home”

Firstly, it sounds too good to be true (which, in the case of 99% of other diets, they ARE) and secondly, the above just sounds like yet another set of cliched empty promises we’ve all heard from all other diets before.

But I gave it a go (what did I have to lose right? Just another diet fail to add to the list)… and WOW!

Sure, I am obviously loving the weight loss (as I am writing this post, I have lost 36kg in under 6 months), but the biggest WOW for me is how my mental attitude towards food has flipped so much, and it is all due to how LCHF has affected my mind.

I never knew what life was life without being constantly hungry. Now I have learned what an actual hunger pang is, and how most of the time I don’t have them.

I used to hate to cook meals because of my negativity towards food. Now I love cooking and experimenting in the kitchen.

There has been so many positive ways LCHF has impacted my life but the two biggest things are…

1. Confidence. Now I’m not talking about self-confidence (being a fat guy all my life, improving self-confidence will be a slow train) but I am talking about confidence in keeping the weight off in the long term. I can honestly say that the days of Yo-Yoing my weight is well behind me, and I am confident that I can keep it off because of this new eating lifestyle. I eat when I’m hungry… simple!

2. No More Guilt. By this I mean that I no longer feel guilty for anything I put in my mouth. In the past, as I was constantly hungry ALL the time, my will power would constant fail and would snack. I would sneak snacks between meals out of the fridge or the pantry, or polish off dinners leftovers long after dinner. And I would feel ashamed of doing it, not just because of breaking my willpower, but the fact that I would try to hide the snacking. No more though. Finally being able to read my hunger properly, I eat when I’m hungry. If I feel like a little snack, I know it is because I feel hungry so I’ll have something LCHF. My hunger goes away, and I don’t need to hide it because I don’t feel guilty for eating it!

All in all, I think that the most powerful thing about an LCHF Lifestyle is the fact that you don’t starve yourself to lose weight and be healthy. There is nothing more powerful than this for overweight people. You can eat a very generous amount of calories each day, stay full and satiated and still lose weight and improve your health. This is just so important for those of us who have constantly battled with obesity and all the negative mental issues that comes with always being fat.

Posted in: #Edify Food, Low Carb/High Fat, Saturated Fat

Butter v Margarine

14th October 2013 12:29 am / Leave a Comment / Nicky

For anyone eating anything other than butter my advice would be to STOP IMMEDIATELY! Margarine is toxic to the human body and toxins cause INFLAMMATION within the blood vessels. Toxins are substances that your body was never designed to eat. Chronic inflammation is the real CAUSE of Heart Disease, not cholesterol.

Imagine rubbing the inside of your blood vessels with a wire brush. This is what you are doing 3, 4, even 5 times a day, every day, every time you ingest a toxic substance like margarine, trans fats, vegetable oils, sugar and starch. You are injuring your blood vessels. Cholesterol, which is essential to life, is supposed to flow smoothly through your blood vessels. Once injury and inflammation begins, cholesterol gets caught on the vessel walls and when this happens the body tries to heal itself by oxidising the cholesterol which, over time, builds up as plaque on the blood vessel wall. Eventually this causes the blood flow to slow down and sometimes stop altogether leading to Heart Disease, Heart Attack, High Blood Pressure, and Stroke.

To reduce your risk of Heart Disease, switch to a diet that is high in naturally occurring saturated fats (like those found in animals, coconuts, fish, nuts) and low in carbohydrates. Ditch the highly refined sugars, breads, pastas and grains. They too are just as toxic.

Resources:

David Gillespie: Is the Heart Foundation’s advice killing us?

Article: World Renown Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

Article: Don’t Eat Toxins

Video: Forget Cholesterol, Inflammation’s the Real Enemy

Video: Enjoy Eating Saturated Fats: They’re Good for You.

The Science: Use of dietary linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death: evaluation of recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and updated meta-analysis

Posted in: #Edify Food, Low Carb/High Fat, Processed Food, Saturated Fat

Diseases/Ailments linked to Chronic Inflammation

13th October 2013 11:48 pm / Leave a Comment / Nicky

Over the last 6 months I have spent 100’s and 100’s of hours researching the modern diet (SAD – Standard Australian/American Diet). I have read countless books, articles, websites, scientific papers, watched dozens of interviews, documentaries, Ted talks etc etc etc.
In that time I have accumulated a list of diseases/ailments that have been strongly connected to the SAD diet, in other words a diet high in carbohydrates and low in saturated fats.
Most of these (if not all) are caused by CHRONIC INFLAMMATION (and no, not high cholesterol – what a croc that is!! High levels of Triglycerides, on the other hand, are a pretty sure indicator of inflammation. That and high blood sugar levels.).

Here they all are;

Heart Disease
Obesity
Overweight/Underweight
Type 2 Diabetes
Hypertension
Anxiety
Depression
Schizophrenia
ADHD
Autism
Alzheimer’s Disease (Type 3 Diabetes)
Dementia
Parkinson’s Disease
Epilepsy
Insomnia
Cancer
Arthritis
Autoimmune Diseases
Multiple Sclerosis
Headaches/Migraines
Gut problems eg: IBS, Crohn’s Disease, Leaky Gut etc
Skin Disorders eg. Acne, Psoriasis etc
Tourette’s Syndrome
Mood Disorders

I’m sure there’s a few I’ve missed but you get the general gist.

The food toxins that can lead to inflammation are;
Carbohydrates (sugars/grains/starches. Limit fruit to max. one piece a day.)
Vegetable Oils & Margarine/spreads (contain dangerously high levels of Omega 6’s and have also been linked to cancer. Majority of fast food is cooked in this.)
Processed Soy
GMO’s (of course)

Some of you will be ostriches and bury your heads in the sand, and that’s fine, you’re grown ups. But I do urge you to think about the health of your kids. It upsets me no end when I keep hearing that our children will be the first generation in the history of history to NOT live longer than the previous generation.

Posted in: #Edify Food, Low Carb/High Fat, Saturated Fat

LCHF The Wrong Way

10th October 2013 2:14 am / 17 Comments / Chris

Before I really get into it, this post is going to broach some issues that some people may get offended by, or may find confronting. I don’t plan on apologising in advance, and I don’t plan on mincing my words or softening them. This is how I feel about the subject. Take it as you will.

Since changing to the Low Carb/High Fat lifestyle, and getting involved in other LCHF communities and discussions, I have noticed a growing trend… well, it’s not so much a trend as an unfortunate habitual mental attitude in regards to going Low Carb/High Fat…. which I feel can easily cause this amazing way of eating to become just another “Yo-yo Diet” for some.

In a nut shell, I am talking about the large number of people choosing to go LCHF as a “weight loss tool” and not a “lifestyle change”. I constantly hear complaints about people on LCHF struggling with their cravings knowing that there are sugary carb snacks in the pantry for the kids, or complaints that their weight loss has been very slow after a few weeks and are considering trying yet another diet to “shift the weight”.

LCHF is not a diet. LCHF is a way of life!

Here are two simple things I know about LCHF.

1. You don’t go LCHF for a Goal Weight or a Time-Frame.
2. LCHF is for the entire family, not just you.

Now by saying all this, let me expand on these points…

You don’t go LCHF for a Goal Weight or a Time-Frame.

As I’ve stated, LCHF is not a diet. It is not a way of eating with the goal to “shed that 10kg you want to lose before cousin Jethro’s wedding”. I get really frustrated when I see comments on Facebook groups or on Low Carb blog sites complaining that they have been eating Low Carb and High Fat for 3 weeks and haven’t seen any decent weight loss results. After some discussion back and forth, it is VERY obvious that these people are going into LCHF with the same mental attitude as every other diet they have ever tried.

Now, I am not blaming these people for approaching LCHF with this attitude. I can understand the habit of approaching LCHF like this because of the ongoing history of bad diets, fad diets, nutritional lies and constant weight yo-yoing that is all too common with the weight loss industry.

What I am trying to do is, open peoples eyes to these habitual mistakes so they can start changing the way they think about food and diet and that the change is one for life, not just for now. The only way to change bad habits is to realise you have them in the first place.

LCHF is for the entire family, not just you.

This issue is quite heavily linked to the first point because it all comes down to the attitudes and bad habits people bring to LCHF from years of bad information and yo-yo dieting.

Often, people switch to LCHF just for themselves, feeling it is “yet another diet” for me to “lose weight”. Problem is, it’s not just you that needs to switch to Low Carb High Fat but your entire household. Trying to eat healthy in a house where your husband or wife is still eating breads, potatoes, pasta, rice etc, or where the kids still have sugary treats in the pantry is a recipe for disaster.

When you realise the finer details of LCHF, and start to understand the poisonous nature of sugars and grains, there really isn’t any other option than to want everyone you love in your household to want to be healthy.

What is the point of you eating lots of saturated fat and cutting out the carbs because you know how damaging carbs and sugars are to you, yet allow the rest of the family to consume this toxic buffet? Seriously… DETOX YOUR PANTRY! Get rid of it all. If it’s unhealthy for you, it is just as unhealthy for your partner and your kids.

So, having said all of that…

Put simply, if you go into LCHF just to lose weight, LCHF will fail you. Sure, if your body needs to, you’ll lose weight, but the moment you get to your goal weight and stop eating Low Carb and High Fat, you’ll go back to all of the bad foods and the bad habits that has continually put the weight on in the first place.

Why is Low Carb/High Fat for life?

The human body doesn’t need high carbohydrate foods… at all!
Sugar and Grains (all grains) are toxic to the human body.
A diet high in Saturated Fat and low in Carbs lowers your risk of; Heart Disease, Diabetes, Obesity, Alzheimers, Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) and so much more.
A diet high in Carbs INCREASES your risk of the above.

Why would you want to STOP eating LCHF once you get healthy and lose your excess weight?

Conclusion

LCHF is not a diet, it is a way of eating for life…. for your entire family!

Posted in: #Edify Food, Bad Science, Low Carb/High Fat