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The last diet you will ever need, plus how to not stroke out in your 80s
I managed to lose 1.25 inches on my waist this week. This represents an enormous victory in combating entropy and it was expensive in terms of energy and action foregone. I know, from 23&me that my father’s family has genetically elevated blood lipids. From observation, I note that to a man or woman, they die of a stroke at the age of 84. I am confident that my 7 longevity genes from the bog-dwelling Celtic wise women, those two hundred generations of bitter survival and occasional magic, will trump my more civilized genetics. Those genes are gnarly and stubborn and frankly refuse to die.
But what if I live to 100 and start stroking out at 80? That is more than possible because no matter what, cancer, heart disease, depression, we live into our upper 90s at the youngest. So possibly I can start stroking out in my early 80s and live for 20 more years a burden to the universe and anyone who loves me. That’s a big hell no.
What that means is no submental fat. No fat layered around your liver and heart and stomach and pancreas. And of course, where does fat layer itself on my body? Right where it is most dangerous, right where it sits, cozy and happy till one day it rises and turns me into a vegetable.
Last week New York Magazine published an excerpt from a memoir called This is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World and Me, by Marisa Meltzer, who interviews thin celebrities for a living while being fifty pounds overweight and is miserable because of it.
“I am nearly constantly aware of the feeling of my stomach hanging down toward my pelvis, of my thighs rubbing together, of the fat under my chin touching my neck when I look down. And I have tried my best to change my body — dieting, working out, spas, personal trainers, radical body acceptance, Botox, fillers, fat-melting shots of Kybella in an attempt to get rid of a double chin. I’d even gone under general anesthesia for liposuction.
And that list is not complete.”
I just want to hug her. To me, Meltzer is a beauty, zaftig, with luxurious rolls of fat, a gorgeous pink cake of a woman who must stand in a room and watch everyone yearn towards her and not believe them. She reads miserable in her skin, agonized, obsessed, and self-hating as if she has internalized the perspective of the vilest, transactional male from high school. This may not be true, but if it is, it sucks. I hope her book’s journey finds her fighting her way past that internal censor. It may be that her genetic programming does not require that she be 50 pounds lighter and she can stay her gorgeous zaftig self. Body positivity, baby girl.
Mine, however, does require that I be thin. When I was 17, I got so sick of my mother’s obsessing over her weight, I just cut down on eating, I got used to being hungry and ate only when I absolutely had to. Later, I had two friends in London who were consort/wives/baby mothers of famous pop stars and they too starved themselves regularly – they had to in order to maintain their considerable beauty. I followed along in their footsteps for a while, did lose some weight, learned how, again, in adulthood to do it. Then thought, ‘Fuck it, food is so delicious and I want to learn how to cook and well”. I did and in the process put on 20 pounds.
20 death-dealing pounds. In my case, maybe not yours, but on average being overweight, obese, shaves 9 years off your life. Nine. NINE. Smoking only takes 7 years.
So here is what I have learned from the beauties in my life, among which I include my beautiful, brilliant, tortured mother. Humans’ natural state for millennia was hunger. Just an edge to keep you sharp, just enough to say, I’m hungry but not faint. Biohacking freaks say that fasting releases ketones, which they claim are the fourth major nutrient, the nutrient that makes your brain sharp, your body responsive. Fasting is so good and useful that your physiology begins to repair itself. Not only eliminating heart disease but Alzheimer’s can be prevented – yes, prevented by fasting.
The following is from “The Effects of Caloric Restriction and Its Mimetics in Alzheimer’s Disease Through Autophagy Pathways”
“The aberrant accumulation of these misfolded and aggregated proteins results in neurotoxicity, and AD is therefore recognized as a proteinopathy,” the paper states. Other pathological events frequently seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients include:
- Synaptic deficits and axonal degeneration
- Mitochondrial dysfunction
- Abnormal metal homeostasis
- Oxidative stress
- Neuroinflammation
- Many of these occur as a result of “insufficient elimination of neurotoxic proteins or damaged intracellular organelles,” the paper notes. In other words, they occur when there’s insufficient autophagy occurring in your body.
Autophagy happens when you fast. Or diet.
So to Meltzer and all the other gorgeous over-weight women out there, this is the easy, or rather, simple part of it. Start small, fast until you can eat a cow, then eat. Eat whatever you want. Then start the fast again. Repeat until it’s too painful. Notice the pain. Value the pain. Recognize the pain as telling you something valuable. Find out what it is. Deal with it. Eat. Repeat. Again. And again. Eventually, and I promise you this, something will click, and you will start to feel good. At that point, the unneeded weight will start to drop off. A whole lot of unnecessary buried emotional crap that has been holding you down, will have resolved itself. And you will have saved your life. Because that is how important fasting (or dieting) is.
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Covid-19, Globalization, Racist Viruses and Building Immunity
Today’s intermittent fasting routine consists of me, black tea, milk, and Manuka honey which is anti-microbial. I am also hitting my herbal anti-virals twice a day. This week, Johns Hopkins released a study stating that 7 herbs can kill Lyme disease, video linked just there. This is, perhaps, the first time the mainstream has stated, without equivocation, that herbal medicine is possibly even more powerful than pharmaceutical anti-virals with regard to the insidious vicious bug called Borrelia burgdorferi.
After I collapsed for the second time with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I found myself in a form of stasis for almost two years. I was quietly frantic, burning a hole in the digital world searching for answers. And it wasn’t until I found Dr. Rawls, a GP who contracted Lyme, and collected the herbs he recommended, that I started to dig my way out.
My problem was that over time I’d contracted three herpes viruses (of the 8 or 9 in that complex). I know exactly where or from whom, I caught each one. The first, Epstein-Barre, or mono, I caught from my daughter’s father when I was about 17. CMV or the cytomegalovirus I caught from my ex-husband after he flew home from Japan and had sat beside someone very ill. I nursed him back to health, got sick myself, infected my mother and that virus plagued our lives for the next 20 years. Herpes 2 I also caught from him, because he was a slut in Japan, so I caught Japanese herpes. I was lucky I didn’t get AIDS because human behavior in downtown Manhattan in the 80s was frankly, disgusting. And a striking number of people I knew then are long dead because of it.
Foreign viruses beat the crap out of you because you don’t have built up immunity. Globalization has subjected us all to this vulnerability, hence the full-on panic out there in the big world. Collect Japanese Knotweed, Chinese Skullcap, Garlic, Colostrum, Fo-Ti, Cats Claw, Olive Leaf, Lomatium. Drawn from ancient cultures, they are just as “diverse” as the viruses they will eliminate. Twice a day until this crazy-ass thing is over. Which will be soon.
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Ultimate Sleep Hacking
I have had a disrupted sleep since I was a kid, but it didn’t become chronic until I grew up and assumed the anxiety of the adult, whereupon it became a real problem, requiring drugs that were hard to get. Doctors would be abstemious and hard-nosed about prescribing them, so I tried all their various recommendations, and even taught myself to meditate which took ten years. The result? I became so depleted, I contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from a trio of the many herpes viruses which basically eviscerated my energy, and sent me into a quiet, a very quiet, too quiet life. The eight or nine herpes viruses are carried by most of us, but they need stressors to become active. I provided them with many stressors, moving countries, continents, chasing stories from dawn to dusk and parties from dusk to dawn.
We now know that 80 million Americans suffer from a variety of sleep problems and that there are 80 kinds of sleep disorders. By the time I was 40, I found that a tiny dose of an old-fashioned anti-depressant could deliver a night of sleep, and my life began to improve, radically and fast. But fifteen years of broken sleep has rendered me paranoid and worried, so last summer I bought an Oura Ring, which is the most sophisticated sleep tracker on the market to date.
Below I attach the Oura’s records of last night’s sleep. I have about 20 data points to consider. First of all, I know I was over-tired by supper-time, but instead of a nap, I powered through and by 10 pm, I was frazzled and it was hard to sleep – took me almost 80 minutes. And I woke constantly, through the night. My heart rate was high, my deep sleep low. Based on the data, I am more aware. I can make adjustments. The reason this is important is that the 20% of us (Please see my RCCX Theory essay, linked here ) who carry this sensitivity, which goes along with a more intense sensibility, can easily tip into complete sleeplessness. More and more people are recognizing that they are carriers and that their lives are impacted. Last month Justin Bieber confessed to the syndrome, his manifests as Lyme and it sent him to Christianity and marriage. Lady Gaga has it. Morgan Freeman, ‘Girl’s’ creator, Lena Dunham, Cher, and a host of others less famous. Ten million Americans and between 3 and 6% of the world’s population are sick with fibromyalgia, which is cousin to CFS.
Last week, a woman just south of me, Darden Burns, who had CFS for decades, killed herself because she hadn’t slept for months. Everything she tried worked for a while, then failed. Her life was heroic and makes it clear that, if you want to live, you must apply sleep hygiene. You must be conscious.
Next week Your Best Sleep Ever, an alternative medicine approach to improving sleep begins. It’s free and you can register here.
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This is Bullshit
I might as well call this entire blog, This Is Bullshit, because every day there is a new emergency requiring panic and alarm and warnings and shutdowns, which end only with a fresher panic, now morphing into low oil price panic and market dive, but which is actually stimulative, you utter morons.
Yesterday’s panic, the COVID-19 virus transmission has crashed to 20 new cases today in China, in Wuhan, where the virus originated, and where just last month the paranoid were tracking satellite images of the supposed over-use of crematoriums because the dastardly Chinese were burning people to hide the “evidence”.
We. Are. Pathetic
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The 20-Hour Fast
So, on my quest to lose ten or fifteen pounds fast, I have cycled through the 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet and the Bone Broth Diet, and Melt Your Menopausal Middle in Ten Days Diet, within a week. Too much work, too much detail, too much shopping, too much girl stuff.
Instead, I am trying the Warrior Diet, which is 20 hours of fasting, with a four-hour eating window. I am trying this because of a hot Israeli scientist, Eltan Okun, who only eats 2 hours a day.
AmIright? “It is perfectly possible for people to eat 8 hours a day,” he says, with all the confidence of a hot Israeli scientist.
Yesterday my 20 hour fast was screwed up by generous amounts of chocolate chips which appeared magically in my palm every twenty minutes. So no, not that today. I am already 15 hours in. I can do five more hours. Maybe. Possibly. Check back tomorrow.
Equally, my quest, which is to preserve cognitive ability far into my 90’s, plus being able to spend money, which seems to be my favorite activity, which means I have to work, which means I have to be healthy and smart, this diet, the hungry-all-the-time diet, seems to be the only thing that delivers everything I want. Plus it is cheaper, no buying of endless amounts of vegetables and cutting them up and making complicated recipes. Nope, it’s cheap and fast and delivers benefits far beyond just losing weight.
“There would be no problem if everyone lived to the age of 50,” he says. “The difficulty is to reach the age of 95 with a lucid mind. In the modern world, we enjoy a long lifespan along with high food consumption, which prevents the body from looking after itself.”
You’d have to have been sleeping under a rock to not know about ketones. Fasting 20 hours a day produces ketones, which are credited with everything, including killing cancer. “Avoidance of eating sets in motion alternative processes for producing energy – mainly dissolving fatty acids to produce ketone bodies. The latter have been drawing increasing attention lately as an energy source for cells, by virtue of their beneficial effects on laboratory mice,” says the hot scientist.
I am doing it because it is simple. I am after the high. Ketones make you high and sharp and clear. I want that, I need it. I’m toughing it out.
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I am So Bored with Panics.
Add the Covid 19 virus to the list of things that draw a pall of weariness over my soul. The stock market has crashed a preposterous amount, which terrifies me. I am not in it, or rather I am not responsible for my accounts, a few fund managers are and I hope they start buying back soon, because ffs, this isn’t going to last and it’s time to make some money. Which I need.
First of all, new Chinese cases are dropping. (update: today the Chinese report that there are only 20 new cases in Wuhan.) And while this may be propaganda, because WHO is reporting it and the right rightly suspects everything out of WHO, it must be considered. New Chinese cases hover around 200 a day, which is .0000000000000001% of their population. Therefore, NOT a pandemic. Their chart looks like this:
Today the Korean Health Minister reported that their new cases are dropping. Korea was the second country to report the Covid virus. Michael Fumento in the New York Post points out that “pandemics” work on a bell curve, and drop off quickly after critical mass is reached.
Farr’s Law, (f)irst formulated in 1840 and ignored in every epidemic hysteria since, the law states that epidemics tend to rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern or bell-shaped curve. AIDS, SARS, Ebola — they all followed that pattern. So does seasonal flu each year.”
Michael Fumento, New York Post, 9 March 20Viruses mutate, but they mutate to become weaker. There is a magnificent statistical analysis that demonstrates how quickly a “pandemic” evaporates, as the past few have done. Basically, rather than a bell curve, it is the classic exponential curve, one of the four basic charts in basic statistics. In the absence of said analysis, I post the chart below. This is what is happening in China and Korea and going to happen everywhere. Check back in three weeks if you don’t believe me.
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Fasting Sucks….it is not virtue, but it is the one necessary thing.
I am on a 24 hour fast right now, barring coffee with collagen and herbal tea and gallons of water. I am trying to break into ketosis, which is that state wherein you do not feel hungry, and your energy soars. It is hard to get into for women and there are a bunch of cautions around it especially if you are pre-menopausal, which I thankfully am not. I am in my 22nd hour and I am not hungry. So I may extend it. Yesterday, after all, I was sneaking chocolate chips, so the “fast” was hardly rigorous. Onwards.
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Five Clicks Up From Trailer Trash
An English journalist, Victoria Mather, called Meghan Markle five clicks up from trailer trash yesterday, and again sang the song that she had disrespected the Queen. I personally think almost all of this hate is based in the sheer gorgeousness of the woman, and the disjunction between the British people (and Victoria Mather), most of whom are strikingly homely, the descendants of whom have populated trailer parks all over the world.
In fact, 99.9% of us are five clicks from trailer trash, and those among us who’ve climbed out should be damned proud. Climbing out of the trailer park takes discipline, furiously hard work and opportunity, which, frankly is better found in the US, Canada and Australia than in the hidebound, very expensive British economy wherein toffs have dug themselves so deeply into the lifeblood of that economy that they grift off every single transaction. Compare prices in England to the US. $1.50 = $1.00. That’s 50% that the British aristocracy and other clever buggers take for themselves. The Queen, financially speaking, has no leg to stand on.
The British media lost themselves, Meghan Markle, through the most vicious envy in print that I have ever read. Yeah, some of it was fabulous fun, but taking it? I was mentioned in a British tabloid once with regard to my sex life and it took six months to stop shuddering, it’s brutal and humiliating.
Luckily MM will continue to entertain us with her intoxicating mix of beauty, silliness, vulnerability, (preposterously) identifying herself with the marginal, and courage. I don’t blame her for taking up residence in the furthest flung islet in the Commonwealth with the strongest privacy laws, surrounded by Canadians who are far too shy to do more than say ‘hey’, duck their heads and scurry away to their entirely safe and comfortable lives.
