Nutrition/nutrient Geek Thread
so much kale. put a punnet in and next thing, massive plants and so many. Organic, tick! they are very easy to grow. I think they’d do well in a big pot (they get pretty tall) and need plenty of N rich fert for all those leaves. mmmm yummy
Obsessive researcher. Love that description. That would be me also.
For me the searching started to try and find out what the hell was wrong with me, and how I could help myself get well - thank god I did because the medicos have been very little help!
It’s turned into an obsession of the nutrient geek kindIt’s taken a sideline turn this week. A very good friend has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is having surgery Tuesday…he has expressed an interest to attack it with a holistic approach. Thankfully I’ve already done a lot of that research so will pass on info to him, and do a bit of food prep for him also. But if anyone has any excellent suggestions to include I’d be thrilled to hear them.
Kombucha - I haven’t done this yet. My Mum used to brew this stuff back in the 70s when she was on the Pritikin Diet, but it’s not something I’ve ever done. I might try this also. Now to search out a scoby - all my FB friends offering them are interstate or overseas!
Butter coffee update: I went out to lunch with some ski friends yesterday to the Naked Fig in Swanbourne, they have great food on the menu and use organics where possible. I got a fabulous Beet Booster juice with ginger, carrot, beetroot and some other stuff. And finished the meal with a butter coffee (a small one)....it’s the first time Ive actually seen it on the menu anywhere. I didn’t really need or want a coffee at the time, but I wanted to try it and see how it compared to mine. It was more buttery, obviously they use more butter in theirs than I do, and they don’t have MCT oil in it.
Haha sometimes I wish I could turn some of my obsessive dials down, my mates often joke that they wish I would put my mind/research towards something useful like making them rich on the stock market! 
Ok so I better tell the story of how I got into all of this. Fortunately I’ve never had weight issues and have always been fairly fit and active. Unfortunately this didn’t = healthy. For as long as I can remember I’ve been getting sick a lot. Lots of chest/throat/sinus infections topped off by my allergies and asthma. Most months I was on rounds of antibiotics and steroids when it got bad. I also baffled doctors by having high blood pressure and cholesterol (I was the young fit guy in specialists offices surrounded by overweight 80 year olds) I’d always had pretty good guts but at the start of the year I began to notice I was getting pains and cramps more often (suspect I had leaky gut and next to no good bacteria due to all the antibiotics).
I was really frustrated and depressed (I’ve wasted so many years not being able to do things I loved because I was home sick) and was going through all my documentation when I started reading about the use of eliminations diets to narrow down food alergies. The problem was there didn’t seem to be one set type of elimination diet to follow. After a couple of months of non stop research I decided I’d go it on my own and attempt a “whole 30” which is essentially strict paleo with a reintroduction phase at the end to test allergies.
Coming from a “healthy” diet of weetbix and oats for breakfast, wholegrain sandwiches for lunch and something with rice for dinner followed by fruit I wasn’t sure how I would go (i’ve never been a big junk food eater or drinker). Long story short I ended up doing 38 days as I got sick on day 28 (never got to to the reintro) but discovered I probably wasn’t highly allergic to any food groups. Even though I hadn’t answered any questions on my health the research/science kept stacking up and I decided it was as lifestyle change I wanted to continue with.
I’d love to say my health is perfect now but the truth is it isn’t. I still get sick way more than I should but when I’m well I feel better than I did previously. A couple of things I hadn’t even noticed weren’t optimal with my health have improved and my blood pressure has dropped which was a nice side benefit.
I’m sorry to hear that news about your friend.Unfortunately I don’t have anything to add that you probably don’t already know (Chris Kressers thyroid ebook etc) There would be absolutely no harm in him going for a nutrient rich diet and I recall reading things about intermittent fasting helping with chemo etc (although you need to be eating this way a while before you can start IF) As sceptical as I have become about the treatments dished out by the medical scene, cancer is serious business so I would certainly encourage him to follow doctors orders and “supplement” it with a healthy diet/lifestyle.
I have a SCOBY with your name on it, but am I correct in guessing you are in WA going by the Swanbourne comment?
I’m not a drinker of it but I’ve heard that bulletproof style coffees are showing up around the place. Must be completely bewildering to some people.
I must ask what is the butter of choice in the LMB household? I mostly use butter for cooking or coating veges but I have been using Westgold which is a NZ presumably grass fed butter.
Yesterday’s lunch, some outstanding mushrooms and a poached egg with truffle oil on a piece of ciabatta - I considered not eating the ciabatta, but in the end went for it. I need to keep the carbs low (weight needs to be lost) but I’m not sweating the small stuff
Sounds delicious!
so much kale. put a punnet in and next thing, massive plants and so many. Organic, tick! they are very easy to grow. I think they’d do well in a big pot (they get pretty tall) and need plenty of N rich fert for all those leaves. mmmm yummy
You’re such a tease with all your fancy kale, eggs and bacon! 
I’d love to say my health is perfect now but the truth is it isn’t. I still get sick way more than I should but when I’m well I feel better than I did previously. A couple of things I hadn’t even noticed weren’t optimal with my health have improved and my blood pressure has dropped which was a nice side benefit.
excellent results. I’ll share a bit more of my story later.
As sceptical as I have become about the treatments dished out by the medical scene, cancer is serious business so I would certainly encourage him to follow doctors orders and “supplement” it with a healthy diet/lifestyle.
absolutely. I’m thinking more about green drinks, keeping the body alkaline etc. to help with cancer fighting, and stuff like the bone broth to help with healing post surgery.
I have a SCOBY with your name on it, but am I correct in guessing you are in WA going by the Swanbourne comment?
yeah I’m in WA. I appreciate the thought, but I’ll try and source one locally 
I’m not a drinker of it but I’ve heard that bulletproof style coffees are showing up around the place. Must be completely bewildering to some people.
the waitress seemed so excited that someone ordered it LOL
I must ask what is the butter of choice in the LMB household? I mostly use butter for cooking or coating veges but I have been using Westgold which is a NZ presumably grass fed butter.
Same one I use. My research has shown that it is uneconomical to feed cows grain in NZ, so most are exclusively or mostly grassfed. I also find it tastes the best. Only other one that I rate is Pepe Saya, but geez….talk about mortgaging the house to afford your butter!!! 
Thanks for the thoughts DRC. I want to make it clear that I’m using it as a tool to teach myself healthier habits and not as a crash diet. Losing excess weight is just a pleasant bonus for me.
I don’t know how to do that thing where you just quote different little bits of your post at a time and answer them - sorry!
With the legumes, we don’t eat them more than once or twice a week. I might make 2 thai curries a week (max) with loads of vegetables, bit of chicken and some lentils in it to make it a bit more filling.
Then another meal or two might have a bean mash or refried beans with it….so I don’t think we’re going too overboard in this department?
Cheat day: We certainly don’t go overboard with this, I don’t think either. Certainly not ‘binging’. We enjoy the meals we eat throughout the week, but its also fun to have a day where we can eat things we don’t the rest of the week….for example having a bit of milk in my tea as a treat and a cinnamon scroll with it (I’m in sweden - a heaven filled with delicious cinnamon flavoured baked goods!)
I also enjoy having a glass of apple juice or orange juice with my dinner instead of just water. I’m not a big fruit eater at all, so the no fruit rule pretty much doesn’t affect me. I pretty much only eat green apples (yeah I know I’m weird)...and I can’t really see this ever changing.
Overall I think the benefit of cheat day comes with realising that a lot of the foods we ate regularly before, should really only be sometimes foods, and that we can enjoy our food the rest of the week without those things. It is basically teaching us a bit of self-discipline that we didn’t really have before…so I think that can only be good. I don’t feel like I’m ‘enduring’ the week just to last until cheat day, but cheat day is definitely a nice bonus. I definitely don’t feel like my body needs lollies, cake, etc but it would also be dumb and setting myself up to fail if I just decided to give those things up entirely, so setting aside one day of the week for those things (the day is definitely flexible, depending on what we’ve got on) means the eating of those things is much more controlled.
Eating the same few meals over and over: I don’t see this is as a rule, more of a recommendation….and for people like me who get zero enjoyment out of cooking, that is the short answer as to why why why!
It makes it much easier to comply with the diet when you’re first starting and when you’re not really interested in exploring recipes etc, its good in that it doesn’t make it overwhelming and/or impossible.
We definitely don’t see it as a rule though and we’ve figured out a whole bunch of meals we can make that are slow carb. A particular favourite at the moment is turning up to the supermarket 2 hours before they close and getting the bbq chooks 50% off reduced for quick sale and having that and a big salad. 2 chooks for $7 and salad is a delicious dinner (and lunch the next day). Quick, cheap and easy!
Rule 3, drinking calories - once again, I agree and I’m not going to feel guilty for doing this every now and then…but I think its necessary as a rule because there are a bunch of people out there who do drink large amounts of calories without realising it.
These rules and the diet I think are developed for people who are severely overweight, people who have zero self control and who have to lose weight quickly. In that sense I think it is much more realistic for those kinds of people.
Anyway I hope that explains a bit more where I’m coming from with it. I’m definitely not hating on anyone’s ‘team’ and definitely agree that as long as it helps people be healthier then it can only be a good thing. As you said, different things work for different people. I definitely can’t see myself returning to my previous eating habits after doing this and I guess that is what is important as well, long term change of habits.
I see it as broadening my mind and tastes…I’m not going to stick to it strictly forever, but I’ll eat much smaller portions of breads, rice etc when I do re-introduce them and I’ll also have a bunch of other alternative dishes I can use as well. It feels good to get out of the mindset that if it doesn’t have potato or rice or noodles with it then it can’t possibly be a real meal!
I’ve also been training myself to see meals without meat in them as being legitimate meals. Falafel is a clear winner in that particular change! mmmm felafel and tabouli!
also would like to hear people’s thoughts on Stevia being used in things?
Not sure about at home but here in Sweden they’ve just brought out ‘Coca Cola Life’ which is sweetened with Stevia. I don’t know much about it though.
Thoughts?
First batch of sauerkraut done!
As an added bonus it was excellent therapy for my hand for the first full day castless.
I don’t usually use Stevia Cords, but I don’t sweeten much - when I do it’s usually Rapadura sugar or honey.
I wanted to make some almond milk but couldn’t find my nut milk bag… Then I was at the local store and spotted these.
Got my nut milk bag and a cute milk bottle, but I thought this was an awesome initiative to get the message out there that you can really DIY these alternatives to milk.
Wow.. so much info in a short thread!!! It’s so dense with info so I’ll try to keep it short.
I’d like to “address” drc13’s Q’s on 4HB.
Long story short, I had massive gains in ‘12 due to just eating my way in NZ, and not stopping whilst the snowboarding stopped. Started 4HB in Dec, kept it for 6 months and the fat loss was huge, and noticable. I try to incorporate into to may daily diet altho’ not as strict, but recently I just went nuts on carbs in NZ, (I didn’t last year and stuck to mainly meat and veg and it was ok.)
But anyways.. =P
First I should state that I think “paleo perfectionism” and “choosing a team” is a problem that seems to haunt the community. My approach was to use paleo/primal/bulletproof/perfecthealthdiet/4HB/the list goes on as a framework and adapt it over time into a lifestyle that seems to work for me best via research and experimentation.
Totally agree and is the best way. But I think alot of people like myself who aren’t highly detail oriented or have the patience to spend hours reading up on this without getting frustrated at how to mentally sort the info easily find that if something is put to you simply, it makes it easier. Of course the trap of this is that when you get complacent and you plateau, you get into a mental block state which screws you over.
RULE 1: AVOID “WHITE” CARBOHYDRATES:
Much of the diets mentioned above achieve a lot of there gains from being lower in carbs than the average diet. By ruling grains/sugars/processed foods out your daily carb count is automatically cut to pretty low levels.
You probably didn’t know but it’s offset by carbs that you eat from beans. In my head 4HB = beans beans beans beans BEANS.
Oh, did I mention beans? =P
White rice is another carb that is fine to eat in moderation. It doesn’t offer much in the way of nutrients but to knock back a sushi roll would be silly.
I know but the key word moderation, not everyone can do it. I know I can’t. See my previous NZ trip comment. LOL.
RULE 2: EAT THE SAME FEW MEALS OVER AND OVER AGAIN:
My simple question to this is why? we have such amazing foods to work with why restrict it to being plain and boring. This stipulation in my mind makes it less likely to be adopted as a lifelong lifestyle change.
Because this keeps it simple and avoids overthinking things. Most of what Tim Ferris advocated at the time were aimed at the typical time-poor bachelor (like himself) who really needs to get results. KISS principle.
That being said, in his latest book the 4 hour chef, he did say that he was oversimplifying things when he wrote 4HB, which he’s learnt that there are other optimal approaches.
RULE 4: DON’T EAT FRUIT:
This continues the “carb phobic” way of thinking. I used to demolish fruit at least a couple of pieces a day and it was my strongest craving when I first converted to this way of eating. Once again I see absolutely no problem with eating fruit in moderation and not allowing it once again makes it harder to commit to long term. FYI I pretty much don’t eat fruit at home anymore but might have fruit salad once a week when I visit my parents.
I haven’t eaten fruit since Dec 2012. The reason for this was fruit = sugar + minimal fibre. That being said, fruit > sugar.
RULE 5: TAKE ONE DAY OFF PER WEEK:
Haha this is the one that really annoys me. This scheduled 1 day a week where you go nuts and binge on everything ignoring the physical health side of it just sets up all kinds of mental issues. It basically banishes the other 6 days of eating “the same meals over and over again” to be a hard slog in which you are rewarded once a week with a prize of eating/drinking a bunch of crap that’s really no good for you potentially setting off a bunch of food cravings while you are at it.
No, it actually worked for me. I’d get so full of the stuff that I listed during the week that I wanted to eat, that I ended up pretty much eating the smaller portions in general on my cheat day. The reason for this as well is to “reset” the body. Tim understood at the time that the body will adapt, and this was the optimal time to ensure that the body didn’t adapt to the standard meals eaten. The mental push to keep eating the same meal and a big reward at the end of the week is just a bonus.
You have to remember as well that the purpose of this “diet” is to shed fat.
The same way a bodybuilder will try to unnaturally shed to under 10% body fat. Have you ever been around a bodybuilder when they’re in the fat shed phase? NOT RECOMMENDED is all I have to say.
This also means that you have to supplement your meals with certain nutrients on 4HB as your body will be starved of it (which you mentioned.) it’s also in the book.
You know, I think if you met Tim you’d probably be in agreeance with most of his theories, as he has a penchant for details. However, he also knows that to sell books and get people on board, you’d have to “sell” to the lowest common denominator, which is probably what you’re baulking at in principle. In essence I have a low level of detail unless I know there’s something in it for me. Knowing that, I kinda rely on people I trust to tell me what I’d like to know, and I go and research that. And even then most times I barely remember the details, I just remember what I need to do to get to my goal, whatever it is.
Anyways, on to something I’d like to point out (sorry gaiz, I barely just skimmed the other threads, low level of detail, you see,) that if you’re having BP coffee like me, you’d want to make sure that your butter is from NZ.
AFAIK the regulation for NZ is that cows are grass fed, except when there’s a drought. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
I used to get Zeagold, but switched to Woolies home brand, as it says that it is made in NZ. =)
If ya ever in Bowral, go to Wolfgang’s and try his pork knuckle!!!!!
I rate it as the best I’ve had!!!!!
I’m gonna have to give the sauerkraut a go!!!!! What’s ya recipe?????
I’m actually down there on Friday for a wedding! Even with my appetite I’m not sure I can knock over a pork knuckle and a wedding feast + drinks
Good man, with your culinary skills I’m sure you’ll manage with super complex sauerkraut making!
I kind of wing it without a recipe each time so I’ll go through the basic method off the top of my head hopefully I don’t poison you all:
1: Buy yourself a nice fresh cabbage (organic is better blah blah)
2: Take off the other leaves (keep one to the side)
3: Shred the cabbage into nice thin strips.
4: Load the cut cabbage into a nice big bowl and add some course salt usually around 2-3tbsp for a medium cabbage (non iodised course sea salt or himalayan rock salt)
5: Let it sit for a while then start massaging/squeezing the cabbage for 10mins or so, do it in batches if needed (the texture of the cabbage will change and it will release it’s liquid brine the more of this you get out the better)
6: Once you have finished massaging all of the shredded cabbage and got it nice and moist pack it tightly into a clean glass jar.
7: Put that spare outer leaf you kept over the top of the cabbage and if you want weigh it down (so all of the cabbage is submerged in liquid) with something like a smaller glass jar.
8: Seal the jar with a lid and store the jar in a room temperature dark place (if you ferment other stuff keep some distance between them).
9: Leave it there for at least 3 weeks (this changes depending on the temperature in the house and how big your batch is but it needs time to go through all the stages of growth) you may get some pressure build up and leaking of juices so I put the jar in a big bowl to start off with. You’ll notice the colour change and hopefully some bubbling. The cabbage will hopefully stay submerged the whole time if not you may need to press it down with the jar a few times to prevent any mould growing. When you think it might be ready give it a taste. It should have the familiar “sour” taste to it and no longer taste/smell “cabbagey”. If it’s not ready yet seal it back up and leave it another week and test again.
10: If it tastes how you like move it to the fridge.
11: Enjoy with reckless abandon (actually no not too much to start with as your guts may need some adjustment time to the flood of probiotics a daily serve is many times more potent than a yakult or inner health plus)
Sorry Dave, just need confirmation on the “Liquid”?????
The Brine that was extracted, water, vinegar?????
It’s just the brine as released by the cabbage Miz.
But I’ve got another question…few recipes I’ve seen say four days then it’s ready…is it better to be weeks?
Just got home from a wedding and haven’t slept since Thursday consumed way to much alcohol and ate sooooo much grains/cake/sugar like heaps and heaps so maybe someone should take my paleo badge off me! 
Really need to get to bed but great to see a bunch of discussion here since I last checked. Will definitely get back to Cords and Grudge when I get a chance!
Cords Stevia is a surprisingly complicated subject that I’d love to get into with you.
Mizu, its the liquid that is naturally released by massaging the cabbage with the salt. If you don’t have enough liquid you can formulate a salt brine but I’ve not needed to as the cabbage has produced enough to keep it submerged.
LMB yes longer is definitely better not only for a better taste but over the weeks different bacteria are formed. I have a timeline somewhere but it will have to wait until I can keep my eyes open!
goodnight fellow nutrient geeks!
Cheers, LMB and Dave!!!!!
..... if you’re having BP coffee like me, you’d want to make sure that your butter is from NZ.
AFAIK the regulation for NZ is that cows are grass fed, except when there’s a drought. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
I used to get Zeagold, but switched to Woolies home brand, as it says that it is made in NZ. =)
I use Westgold.
I don’t know about regulations but I read the theory that it is simply uneconomical to grain feed the cows…there’s so much lovely grass! But best bet apart from mortgaging your house to buy Pepe Saya butter (organic/grassfed/hormone free certified) is NZ butter.
I use Lurpak!!!!!
Got no idea what the cows have been eatin, but damn it tastes gooood!!!!!