Author: MR

Old problem, new (partial) solution

/ MR / 13 Comments

This-morning I tried something very different from my usual first-of-the-day coffee.

As almost anyone who finds time to peruse my egocentric ravings knows, I have a permanent problem with what I put in my cakehole. This is because it goes in there and rarely does aught but settle into all crevices and make itself comfortable, knowing it’s there for the long haul.I did, she said modestly, go down from around 105kg to 75kg, but that was about four years ago; and since then my anxiety about keeping those kilos off has grown more or less exponentially. In other words, I worry now a great deal more about my weight than ever I did in days of yore, when I was … how shall I say ? … round.

I have put on 5kg: that’s the bottom line. I weighed in at 80 the other day, and burst into tears: I couldn’t get into my size 16 jeans.

“I didn’t mean to gain weight, it just happened by snackcident” – SO funny (not !).

Anyway, enough with the background miz.

I drink far too much coffee, everyone knows that: I reckon I get through an average of 5 or 6 of those double-walled latte glasses a day. I’ve never been a black coffee drinker, so there’s a shitload of milk going down the little red lane. When I was on WW (have to give those bastards the credit: it was they who got me down 30kg), the milk in my coffee was possibly my leading WATCHOUT ! I don’t recall the points they gave to my lactose-free long-life (UHT) low-fat milk, but it was not a teeny number and I had to be on the qui vive at all times; in fact I can recall going without various food items in order to add the LF-LF-LF to another coffee.

And that is relevant still, alas ! But I no longer drink my milk as I did: it’s now full cream because I am, these days, an adherent of low carb|high fat as a food directive. In truth, I have been attempting carnivore as a NO carb|high fat rule – without a whole big lot of success, it must be admitted. But that’s another story (do not scream loudly and cover your ears: I am not about to tell more of it here).

So that’s the over-all picture: I drink a very large amount of coffee, to which I am well and truly addicted, and I drink it with milk, thus accumulating an extremely noticeable number of both carbs and cals.

Pfuh ! – a 35-y-o female @ 170m and 65kg ? – is that actually possible ? Should it not be based on an 81-y-o female who’s 168m and 80kg (sob !) and for whom the likelihood of walking for three-quarters of an hour in order to rid herself of those 12g of carbs – which are over the DAILY limit if you’re doing ketovore – is remote to the point of invisibility ?! And that’s totally ignoring the 158 calories !!! AND we’re talking only milk for two coffees !!!!!

Sighh … I have now worked myself into an absolute lather.

There. Intro over.

I’ve read in more than one place about bullet-proof coffee. It is, basically, black coffee, but with … stuff added. All the gurus who recommend the low carb|high fat regimen mention bullet-proof coffee at some stage. I decided to give it a burl.

I sorted among the various recipes and plumped (that’s what I do: I plump for something !) for this one, seeing as how it’s on a website for nothing but bullet-proof products:

No idea why that warning’s there about the MCT oil; it’s a product from coconut, one of my favourite flavours. But I put in only a big teaspoon rather than a tablespoon; and when I have my next coffee I shall forget all that shit and go for it.

No blender in this household; but I bought a stick one from (ugh !) Amazon and it works brilliantly. The coffee came from my new little red moka rather than my Barista Express, because I needed more of it than the espresso machine produces.

And – FINALLY ! – what was the result ???

Amazingly … astonishingly … astoundingly … I LIKE IT.

Searching but not finding

/ MR / 8 Comments 
Kendrick, Malcolm; MbChB, MRCGP. Medical Director; Adelphi Lifelong Learning. Adelphi Mill, Bollington, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK10 5JB, United Kingdom. Essays

is my health hero (you may recall that I have one only hero in just about every category that an old broad’s life can cover); and he it is who has caused me more trouble, anxiety, worry and frustration than, I think, any other individual in all my days.

Because Malcolm writes books about – well, check these:

that I find absolutely credible. I believe every word he writes – well, those I know the meanings of. Malcolm is no fly-by-night snakeoil salesman: he is a fully qualified and still practising medico; and were you to look him up on Google you would find that he is ubiquitous (to put it mildly). I am completely persuaded of Malcolm’s evidence-based beliefs; and will remain so to the end of my days.

The problem is that the medical fraternity is up in arms about Malcolm and what he writes, but they cannot come up with anything to prove him wrong. As has happened several times in the past, medicos worldwide have locked arms against “new” medicine – and they are wrong, which makes their arm-locking even tighter (of course).

What this division amongst doctors – for Malcolm is far from being a lone voice crying in the wilderness – means to people like me is that we have no access to those who understand what he has written and agree with him. They’re far too scared to raise their heads above the medical ramparts and identify themselves, because the majority have the power to not only make their lives hell, but to see them relieved of their qualifications and kicked out of their positions. And, needless to add (but I do), the majority feel hurt and injured and are behaving badly – petty, bitchy, thunderous, sneering … think of a pejorative and it is applicable.

So here is an ancient fattish broad who wants to go carnivore but needs to really understand her own medical condition and if/how it relates to such a radical step, and I cannot find any doctor, be it at GP level or cardiologist, who will say aught but how vital statins are to my long-term health !

Having with huge pleasure come across

— which made me feel a shitload better about the whole thing, seeing as how nearly all these people are fully qualified medicos, like Malcolm — I picked out all the Australians in the list and wrote a group email thus:

With the exception of Dr Kendrick, whose writings are what turned me into one of these – and I make ZERO claims for the right to be numbered amongst this august fraternity ! – all can be contacted in Australia — unhappily, none in Victoria.

My approach, gentlemen, is a fervent hope of anyone’s being able to refer me to someone in Melbourne to whom I can turn for medical advice.

My GP and my ex-cardiologist are both wedded to the status quo regarding the evils of cholesterol and the benefits of statins. As I’ve made it utterly clear that nothing on this earth will convince me to take statins and I would like my “cholesterol level” to be a lot higher, my GP is now more than somewhat off-side and the cardiologist gone. I have … ahh … interviewed one or two new GPs in hopes of their being more up-to-date, without success.

I seek a credible “medical supervisor” because I have, I’m told, hypercalcemia.

      • I had an ECG some years back, given at Cabrini because I’d been taken there by ambo after passing out at a laundromat, that showed AF – none has been seen since; but I’m told this is due to the rivaroxaban and the atenolol.
      • When sent back to the Cabrini cardio after a year, it was to a new one because he had retired. She sent me for a calcium score that showed calcium – I believe around the heart.
      • Then I was sent for a nuclear medicine stress test that again showed too much calcium.

I’m a young 81. Until all this started I thought myself in perfect health; and I find this mysterious degree of hypercalcemia irritating to the point of infuriating: I feel absolutely fine !

I want to embark on a carnivore regimen. I now detest cooking and, having before that fainting episode managed to lose 30 kg (am now ±77 kg), I’m desperate to maintain (if not improve on) that weight loss. But I would greatly prefer to embark on something as radical as carnivore with rather than without medical advice.

Please, gentlemen, can you point to anyone whose medical opinion I can respect ?

In the words of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, that famous writer and poet, relevant to whom anyone knowing me is aware of my fondness for his work —

«but answer came there none.»

One had since died; one’s email sent an automatic reply saying he wasn’t there any more; two were simply silent and one actually replied – but it was so off-topic in terms of what I’d asked for that it might as well have not arrived. Total fizzog, basically,

I hope you now see why I describe the wonderful Dr Kendrick as the most infuriating, irritating, trouble-causing hero I have ever had …

 

Testing, testing …

/ MR / 18 Comments

My good mate Colorado has just posted that she was being “helped” by AI when trying to write on WordPress.

I said I hoped that was associated with her theme, and that AI hasn’t dared raise its bloody ugly head here.

So creating this fairly meaningless post is to check that WordPress hasn’t done some utterly vile worldwide template change and introduced AI everywhere.

So far so good.

OMG …

/ MR / 11 Comments

I just heard a KOEL !!!

I didn’t know they were down here in Melbourne: Stringer and I used to spend summers cursing the bastards day in, day out.

All I need, right now.  😦

Off I go again

/ MR / 12 Comments

Today is the first day of my second week back on the carnivore regimen.

I’ve learned there are several different ways of ‘doing carnivore’, and I appear to be following the General Carnivore path. Certainly not doing the Lion Diet or the BBBE; and as I decided to transition in continuing with coffee, it may be said that I’m some sort of dissenter even from the General. It’d be bloody typical of me, that’s for sure.

Today I’ve drunk only TWO coffees. I am appalled. Normally I drink at least four, and mostly five per day; and as it’s now too late for me to have another, that’s a day gone with less than 50% of my usual intake (at this time I do not have a headache …). It’s not my intention to abandon coffee; but if this goes on, whose nose ?!

I subscribed to a meat delivery company and am unsubscribed before my first fortnight is over: it was not the quality I expected for the not teeny amount I paid. My intention is to start travelling in to the QV Markets and wander about checking and pricing before buying. I also want to talk to the butchers, tell them about my health quest and see if I can get their help; and something tells me they will be interested.

My new electric skillet is a big success, as is my new Ninja Airfry & Grill – now that I’ve finally got my act together, read the mandible closely and MADE MYSELF UNDERSTAND (the caps are because my wandering concentration makes reading manuals quite difficult !)

Yesterday I cracked 8 eggs into a bowl and beat the shit out of ’em then added them to the skillet, without anything except a little bit of fat. It made a whole soup-bowl-full of a very rich kind of solid omelette-y thing and I put it into the fridge when it was cool; then today I cooked a Woolie’s ‘scotch fillet’ in the (cleaned) skillet and when it had produced some of its own melted fat, added a couple of slices of the solid omelette to the pan. To say I ate this meal with enjoyment is understating things.

My delivery of LMNT electrolytes has arrived and I’ll start with those tomorrow first thing. They turned up with some ‘real’ salt – true sea-salt, and it’s interesting stuff ! Oh the things I’m discovering !!

I’m kind of getting myself organized, but it’s taking a while. Still, a YouTube short from the wife of one of the people I follow – his site is called Homestead How – told me this-morning to be patient with myself. I’ve told everyone I know that impatience and intolerance are my two worst character failings, so this is good medicine. I follow a young bloke who’s a Kiwi, and who has tons of info. and advice; and an old-ish Aussie I was following until I found out he lives in Japan led me to an Australian EXPERT, a man called Paul Mason. I was so happy to come across an Aussie doctor who’s not only a carnivore but who entirely supports Malcolm Kendrick’s ‘cholesterol is good for you’ choices that I could’ve cried.

Here’s an interview of Paul Mason by one of the American doctors I follow, Dr Ken Berry; it’s too techo for me, but I’m rapt that one of the Yanks sought out Paul to interview him. Most material on the Internet about carnivore is American, and Berry is just one of the several fully qualified medical doctors who has a site to talk and inform about carnivore – they all believe passionately in it and are wonderful examples of carnivore’s benefits.

I’m sorry: I’m now totally boring.    😦

This is what happens when a person becomes deeply interested in something – especially when she can actually get involved with it. There’s so much online about carnivore that I don’t think I could ever get it all read – considering my age. [grin] I have taken up this regimen because I want to be rid of myriad small physical problems, and I wouldn’t weep if I could shift some weight off my arse ! So it’s onwards and upwards, and I’ll do my best to be more interesting.

 

 

Enforced hiatus

/ MR / 38 Comments

Although I have spent the last three days (Sunday was meant to be a sort of rehearsal, but turned into a full new diet day) being a carnivore, I shan’t be able to continue unabated.

It’s only now that I read – amongst the plethora of YouTube videos on the topic – that I’m supposed to TRANSITION !! The two or three very well-muscled blokes who are doctors among the carnivore fraternity (what word fits with fraternity and sorority but means both genders ?) I find to be instructing me that it’s not sensible to go the full monty from day one. They utter dire warnings about diarrhoea and/or constipation, mostly – as a fairly logical bodily response to so radical a change overnight.

ACK !!

So now I must boringly read up on some method of transitioning from omnivore to carnivore.

Sighh …

 

This’ll rock you !

/ MR / 28 Comments

I’m going carnivore.

Yep, full carnivore – no plant material of any kind. Just meat, meat products like bone broth, and eggs. My only dairy will be the raw milk I have in my coffee – for I sure as anything cannot go without my coffee !

I’m planning to start on Monday, and will organize myself and my kitchen and pantry in the meantime.

You are probably wanting to shout at me “You’re kidding, right ? – how do you think you’re ever going to be able to afford it ?!!”, and there is some justification in that cynical question. But when you consider that these items are ALL that will be in my shopping lists – nothing else except the raw milk and possibly mineral water – you’ll realize that it won’t be as prohibitively costly as you first think. Besides, I don’t intend to be buying grass-fed Cape Grim: it’s unnecessary to consider as a carnivore that one must eat quality meat. No: I mean to visit the QV Market and do a lot of comparison note-taking. Also Aldi !

THE RATIONALE:
As some may recall, I’m a convert – a fanatical one – to the medical opinions of a Scottish GP who works in the UK, Malcolm Kendrick. Kendrick’s best book is “The Great Cholesterol Con”; and I believe unhesitatingly that anyone who reads it (not skipping through it, mind !) and is not convinced by his arguments and facts is a complete fool.

However, the worldwide medical fraternity is very foolish indeed – or perhaps I might describe it as being unwilling to backtrack and show itself up as having espoused for half a century belief in a deeply flawed view, conceived by a VERY deeply flawed medico who cherry-picked some countries from a much larger number in order to publish on his pre-conceived views. There it is: ‘research’ carried out to support a theory !

OK: the porpoise here is to point out that, while there are many doctors around the world who agree entirely with Kendrick, in the English-speaking world there is such opprobrium piled on his proven viewpoint that individual doctors are not prepared to come out and admit to their being so controversial. In Oz, the AMA has virtually threatened to strike off any doctor not toeing the line regarding cholesterol and its evil partner, statins, as treatment.

And since I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with the belief in cholesterol’s being in any way harmful, or to ever in my life agree to taking (ugh !) statins, I have no doctor who can care for my health according to my convictions.

So it’s up to me ! – gonna care for it myself.

STOP PRESS !
“it’s not the AMA (the doctors’ union) which is now down to just over 30% of doctors being members that GPs need to worry about. It’s AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioners Registration Authority) which can instantly deregister any doctor”

My bad: I had been told that, but forgot. (I can forget anything at 30 paces …)

…not to mention talking !

/ MR / 18 Comments

Been doing a lotta that.

After the eventual issue of the interview shot by the Homes Victoria cameraman – https://www.instagram.com/p/C8Wfa_8BSlD/ – you’d think the world had seen and heard enough of me to last a bloody lifetime ! But no: today I went into the offices of my beloved Care Services Provider, Aunty Grace, to do another.

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time – and by ‘known’ I mean via blog as well as corporeally (is that a word ?) – is already clear on the fact that I can not only talk the hind leg off a donkey, but both hind legs and the tail too. Probably the entire second half, from behind its front legs backwards.

But my Aunty Grace friends gave me flowers, the dear hearts;

and not only flowers, but an EFTPOS Aunty Grace card to spend. You can readily understand why I’m so stuck on them.   🙂

Wondering if I should let Homes Victoria know, in a subtle-hint kind of way. [grin]

What should I buy myself ? I’m thinking some more Audible items – around eight more books ! But in truth I’d like something that related better back to my Aunty … can’t think of what.

In truth, I’m just commenting on the fact that grumpy old women can have pretty good lives, all told. Only the one complaint: how to eat a protein-packed but v. low-cal lunch every day … Oh, two (I lied): where to find a doctor who shares my thinking on cholesterol ?!

 

 

Thinking … and even doing

/ MR / 32 Comments

Thinking’s an interesting activity – far more so than most of the regular ones on offer to anyone like me.

Sighh … and now I’m obliged to define ‘like me’ – what a dickhead I am !

Well, that’s a beginning – I’m a dickhead, for starters. And then, I’m no longer young; no longer in possession of any noticeable degree of tolerance; no longer fat; and the key thing I want to get across is that I’m definitely no longer interested in watching drama on screens of any size.

Tonight when I’d finished glomming down my favourite food – Woolworths frozen (but thawed in the microwave !) blueberries and Greek-style yoghurt – and this combo has been eaten for brekkie and dinner every day since last October … when I finished, as I say, I realized that Boodie was ensconced on my recliner with me, tucked tightly between my knees. Now, as any cat person understands clearly, having a cat sitting on you means that you cannot change position. Well, not until the cat does, anyway. I’ve finished crocheting the back, the two fronts and the two sleeves of a new cardi and had intended to start assembly; but it’s all on the crochet table and out of reach.     😦

So I hauled up the laptop, opened my browser and went to my BritBox shortcut. After some wandering about its CRIME DRAMA menu I re-found a program I’d been watching and picked up from where I’d left off. A British police crime story set in Dublin (which looks truly dreary, I hafta say) about a Mancunian policewoman trying to solve her daughter’s murder and care for her two Irish grandchildren. (It was easy to remember what was going down when I’d last switched off. At least, I thought it was; but I’d remembered a totally different program !)

After ten minutes Boodie shifted position, distracting me; and I realized I was thinking about a new coffee shop in the CBD I discovered on Google and how I’ll go and look at it tomorrow, and— you get the picture. I had lost interest in the program roughly two minutes after starting it up.

I’m pretty sure this loss of interest in the final stage of an activity in which I once participated to earn my living is a result of being old. I’m not whingeing nor going to whinge coz I’m not characterized by my age, and there is a second possibility – the failing I’ve written about before: loss of ability to focus / concentrate. That failing was posted about in relation to reading; but it strikes me that watching stories on a screen (fact or fiction) is the same kind of activity as reading them on a page, requiring one to Pay Attention. And I don’t seem to be able to do that except when I’m conversing with a person or persons.

And yet that statement is actually untrue and uttered prior to thinking about it: I can Pay Attention to things I do on my own – of course I can. If I couldn’t I’d be where my eldest sister is now, in a care home.

So OK, so it must be how much interest I have in whatever it is, mustn’t it ?

But no: that would mean that I’m not interested in reading … oh, say, my favourite author’s novels – and that’s not at all true ! I remember when I first discovered them, through one my second-eldest sister sent me that made me buy all the other eight immediately. I was in love !!!

Still, since then I’ve been able to buy six of them as audiobooks; and the readers are pretty good … Hmmmm … sheer laziness ? Delight in discovering that a good reader can bring a book to life and let you find out all the little bits you missed because you skip when you’re reading ?

So why don’t I give a rat’s arse about television or movies any more ?

These are a two of my UNfavourite things

/ MR / 22 Comments

This pair of fashion items — I almost choke with frustrated rage as I write those words — has defied the major trend of fashion (transience) to  become, apparently, locked in forever. I know I’ll have karked before either has lost the dedication of the sheep people.

This … “style” is so ugly and unappealing in its untidiness (and lack of staying power) that I’m unable to work out how it ever gained a foothold. To me it’s a woman who has had a fancy hairstyle but was then caught in the rain, and doesn’t have a brush or comb to fix up the destruction.

And by the time a woman who’s just had the “style” inflicted on her has paid and left the salon, it’s already started to lose whatever ‘zhuzh’ it had.

Then there’s this.

Do I need to actually utter a syllable about it ?

[thinks]

Naah …