Low Carb Confidential

If you’ve ever heard the expression, “The muse has left me,” you probably heard a writer saying it.  That’s the way I’ve felt the last week or so, and is a crutch of an excuse for neglecting to post anything for many days.  Maybe I needed a break, a vacation of sorts, like LCC’s mental detox week.  He himself cautioned me to save ideas in a draft bank against the scourge of writer’s block, but I insisted on burning the low carb post candle at both ends.  Now I don’t feel like I have anything left to say.  But I’m also probably expecting too much from myself (comparing me to Hemingway doesn’t help, L), so here’s a little something that may get the juices going again.

To tell the truth, I haven’t felt much like a low-carb poster boy (no pun intended) lately.  While I was reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, I was fired up like an evangelist at a Saturday night rally, thumping my bible and ready to smack the wisdom of lords Atkins and Taubes into my congregation with force if need be.  I’m not to the point I feel I’m “losing my religion,” but I get the sense I’ve wandered from the flock.  No, I haven’t broken any “rules.”  Although I stopped maintaining a food log, calorie and carb-wise I’m probably taking in about what I was when I was recording everything.  But I’m gaining weight.  Despite the health advantages, low carb is supposed to help you lose weight, not gain it.

I wish I could find a way to put up a picture of my weight graph here so you could see the trends I’ve gone through since the beginning of the year.  My initial three week success was followed by a six week stall, to which I responded with the one month alcohol abstinence experiment.  There was an obvious decline in my weight during that four week period, which should have convinced me to continue on that course.  Instead, I talked myself into believing that I could keep the genie under control.  This is akin to a twenty-year smoker quitting for a month and then thinking he or she could enjoy one cigarette a day without a problem.  If anything, absence made the imbiber grow fonder, and it’s possible I was now drinking a bit more than before.  There’s no mistaking what the graph line has been saying for the past five weeks: let’s put it this way, if I were a company and this was my stock value, my shareholders would be very, VERY happy.  But I’m not a company, and I’m not happy about it.  When you have something staring you in the face and you have the ability to make a choice, there’s nothing left to do except crap or get off the pot.  I pick crap.

That being said, I’ll drop a post every now and then to keep those interested parties informed as to what’s happening, one way or the other.  I say this because some of the most-read posts on this blog have to do with alcohol and how it impacts low-carb dieting.  Though her weight doesn’t ever seem to be affected by her martini and wine consumption, Mrs.  Megamas has committed to join me this time as a measure of support, and I think she may be regretting that decision somewhat in these first couple days.  We’ll see.

Back to my thought on wandering from the flock:
Last night, I went out to dinner with my daughter, Young Megamas (hereafter referred to as “YM”).  She first suggested a new sushi joint around the corner from her house, and I used to love sushi, but I nixed because of the rice and all that, not to mention she said it’s so popular that it’s like trying to get into a nightclub.  I was being “Crazy Uncle Larry” again, to quote LCC.  YM seemed to recall that another nearby chain, Uno’s, had an extensive menu with low carb offerings listed on the menu, so we went there.  Maybe she was remembering this from a time when quite a few restaurants were trying to attract (or appease) the growing low carb community, because there was nothing on the menu I saw that was written in Atkins-ese.  We sat at the bar waiting for a table, she with her Blue Moon draft, I with a bottle of Mich Ultra, and she described the latest weight-control routine she and her mother were embracing: the “No S” diet. 

From a website advocating this scheme, the description is as follows:

There are just three rules and one exception:

• No Snacks
• No Sweets
• No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”

As YM chattered on about how easy it was, so much easier than Weight Watchers, for example, I listened as I’ve listened before while she described the myriad diets she’d been on.  Her best effort was WW, having lost 56 pounds; when I asked how much she regained (the almost inevitable result), she said she put back on over 30, but that’s still an accomplishment.  This “No S” diet, she said, could be the right one for her.  If she wants a milkshake, for example, she can have one on a Saturday or Sunday.  I continued to listen after we moved to a table and she dug into her Greek panini sandwich and side of mashed potatoes (I opted for the grilled chicken Caesar salad with anchovies but tossed the croutons overboard).  When I was able, I tried to interject some wisdom about carbohydrates, and insulin, and how the body reacts when a rush of carbs is forced into it.  Sadly, my descriptions sounded watered-down; there was no fire as when I was in the thick of reading my “bible” and pouncing on evil carbohydrate in all its forms, denouncing the devil insulin for what it was.  My verve was gone.  I was being met with the responses typically reserved for Crazy Uncle Larry in order to calm him down without really giving in (”Well, everything in moderation is probably the best thing;” “Everyone has to find what works for them;”), and I wasn’t coming back with anything meaningful.

So maybe it’s time to bone up on Taubes again, and make notes like I said I would.  The book is in my PDA, so going through it a second time can be done anywhere I can spare a little time.  I always used to wonder why so many people read the book actually called The Bible over and over and over.  I guess if you’re trying to convince someone else (or yourself) that what you believe in is so, you’d better be able to walk the walk AND talk the talk.

Briefly, rather than comment-reply to those posts of LCC’s in recent days, here’s my take on them:

• Crazy Uncle Larry - So true, but I don’t think I came on board the LC wagon because I’m a contrarian.  As far as the grumpiness factor goes, if anything, I’m less grumpy than I used to be.  That could be an effect of the alcohol, though; it was suggested to me by a therapist many years ago that I may be in a continually “medicated” state.  By the way, I answered all the test questions as “YES.”  Larry has left the building.
• Pickled Eggs - No, no, no, you don’t pickle them in a jar of pickle juice!  This is one of my wife’s old favorites, she used to make them once in a while when we were first together, maybe it’s time again.  She suggests you Google for a recipe, but basically it’s hard boiled eggs, vinegar (white or cider depending on your taste), pickling spices, and you can also put in cooked beets which turns the eggs a lovely shade of purple.  Yes, the longer you leave them to pickle, the more petrified they get.  We once had a couple left over in the fridge that we’d forgotten about for ages, and when I went to eat one, it was like a piece of wood.  Made properly, these are a delight, so give it another go, LCC.
• Dry Rubbed Ribs - Here’s another of Mrs. M’s specialties, but here’s how she does it: she mixes a rub concoction that she likes (located on the internet of course) and rubs the rack prior to cutting, wraps it in plastic wrap, and puts it in the fridge overnight.  The next day, early in the afternoon, we fire up the grill and brown the rack on both sides.  Then they get cut apart, put in a baking dish and covered with the lowest carb barbecue sauce we can find, which for us is Dinosaur brand.  Into the oven until they finish cooking, and let me tell you, I’ve never tasted better ribs ANYWHERE.  Serve with low carb coleslaw and you’ll swear you’ve died and gone to heaven.