A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Medicine Go Down

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Most people have heard the phrase that the body is a temple, but I have been spending my life turning mine into an incubator for cancer. I have filled it with carbohydrates (yes lots of sugar and fructose) and inflammatory foods and oils for most of my life. So if anyone is to blame it's me. If I had listened to my body and answered it's request for things like fat (it was begging me to add butter to those steamed vegetables and olive oil in my salads), I might not be in the situation that I'm in now.

Based on everything that I had been taught (which was wrong), I patted my self on the back at my self discipline in not indulging in full fat to yogurt, sour cream and ice cream for example. Instead I just ate low fat, sugar free. Was there any milk in them? Everything was filled with gums, chemicals and extra charbs to give them the texture of fat. I don't really know, maybe just enough enough dairy to give them a dairy hecksher. I could kick myself in the behind if I could reach it. Every magazine and news report includes new health tips and diet info, and more diet info. And did I mention the diet info? And now we know it was all wrong. Have you seen the latest cover of Time Magazine? "Ending the war on fat". They are just catching up along with the rest of us that we've been duped and getting sicker for decades. This giant dietary experiment has been a big flop.

So, what to do?

I found that when I started the Ketogenic diet, the first 3 weeks were very difficult. My body took it's time to become keto-adaptive. It was screaming for something sweet, even when I knew I wasn't hungry. Rather than continue fighting it I started sweetening my tea, my coffee and finding a chocolate substitute. I knew that my need was psychological, but going cold turkey wasn't working. I ordered EZ-sweetz (a sucralose sweetener that doesn't raise blood glucose) and used it liberally. A year latter I don't need it so much but at the time it was a life (and diet) saver.

This diet was formulated for babies and small children who were either easier to feed and were able to tolerate large amounts of oils and fats, or mixed milk and meat together to raise fat contents of protein meals. I realized that I would need to go into the kitchen and create my own recipes to be compliant with the nutritional needs of the diet as well as Jewish dietary laws. If it's not palatable and takes too long to make it's a total turn off and makes it easy to prematurely give up.

In the early days I was both hungry and nauseous most of the time. The first task was to make an non inflammatory mayonnaise so that I could make my own salad dressing. I could add different oils to it one milliliter at a time to meet the percentages I needed. And if it was too oily I could add an egg yolk as an emulsifier to thicken it. I had to look at cooking techniques that were use in the depression era before so much of our food was processed. I found myself looking for cook books at places like goodwill where people would take the remains of their grandparents basement and if I was lucky I would find recipes from a time before fat was vilified. It was challenging and rewarding at the same time.

I hope that I will be able to really upgrade the recipe and meal planning part of the website and have an integrated format where others can share their best results as well.