Last week I pointed out that I was down 11 lbs or so I believe, which is a fair distance along my goal of being quite a bit skinnier before I take off for South America. I still have three months, so I can still do a lot more damage to my fat cells before I leave. Last month I decided to take an engineering approach to things, so I went out and bought a digital scale. Weighing food is obviously kind of a pain in the ass, but I thought it would be a good spot check to make sure I was actually eating as much food as I thought I was. Surprisingly, I was actually underestimating some food by as much ...

I've been writing about obesity and something called hyper-insulinemia for about as long as I can remember. For those of you who don't know, many people nowadays have something called metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of symptoms including obesity, high blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, and high cholesterol. The main component of all of these is something called hyper-insulinemia (which is also called insulin resistance). What I just wrote is pretty much accepted as fact nowadays. What is still up for debate is a) whether insulin resistance is the cause or the effect of obesity and ...

Now that I have a blender, I've been experimenting with a few variations of a low-carb protein shake at home. My best iteration so far is a chocolate and banana flavoured protein shake. Here's how to make it: 125 ml of normal or unsweetened soy milk 6 ice cubes 2 tablespoons of whey protein isolate 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder 1 cap-full of banana extract 3/4 of a teaspoon of stevia sweetener 1/4 teaspoon of Xanthan gum Put all of that in a blender and chop/mix it all up. It's actually pretty tasty. Nutritional info: 227 calories, 6.8g of fat (4.5g of omega-3), ...

A few months ago I picked up a pretty cool cook-book called the Low-Carb Gourmet. It was written by a Vancouver chef, and most of the recipes in it came about from some professional recipes used in some local Vancouver restaurants. I haven't had a pile of time to create many recipes from it yet, but one of the ones I have used a few times is a really great recipe for Flaxseed muffins. I can't really say that I'd eaten a lot of flaxseed in my life prior to making these, so first thing I did was do a bit of research about Flax on Wikipedia: Flax seeds come in two basic varieties, brown and yellow ...

So, it's only been about 5 days since I started, but I thought I'd drop a quick update. As most of you know, I am a big supporter of low-carbohydrate diets, mostly because a great deal of research show they are superior for treating things like diabetes and heart disease, but also because I once lost a great deal of weight (with relative ease) by just giving up carbs. Effectively, the last few days have really been a transition from a moderate carbohydrate to a low-carb one for me. I've been keeping accurate food, weight and activity logs, which should help me figure out what's working and what's ...

I picked up a book the other day that I've been meaning to read for a few months now. It is a book by a scientific journalist named Gary Taubes entitled Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) (although after reading it, I think a more appropriate title might be something like "The People's History Of Diet And Nutrition.") For those of you who follow nutritional research, you may remember Gary from a controversial article he wrote in 2002 in the New York Times called 'What If It's Been A Big Fat Lie?" In that article, ...

If you would have mentioned that you were trying to lose weight by a reducing your carbohydrate intake a few years ago, people would have dismissed you as crazy and told you that you were only hurting your body. However, that all changed sometime around 2003 when a prestigious medical school released a peer-reviewed study that basically showed Low Carbohyrate diets not only help people lose more weight, but also result in better blood-lipid profiles than their low-fat counterparts. Since then, I've read countless studies on PubMed that basically indicate the same thing. However, another fairly ...