Repelling blandomness with randomness.

[heather marie]

Woo, bethany, I'm also adapting the new almost vegan diet! We should talk!

[morgan]

I felt a lot healthier and happier when I was vegan, actually.  I think I will end up eating mostly vegan food when I get home, even though the boy basically only eats meat and potatoes.

[bethany_m]

Totally! I've been vegan before, so this isn't totally strange or anything.  I'm going without meat or dairy, but I'm still eating some fish and seafood (I do live in coastal Maine...) and my friends have chickens, so I get really good eggs from them that I feel fine about eating.  I will also make exceptions for meat if I know where it came from.  This is all for health reasons, I'm trying to limit my exposure to extra hormones. 

[heather marie]

Mine is health reasons, mostly, as well. A little bit of animal rights, just because I started reading Skinny Bitch at work after someone returned it and I was bored and it grossed me out to no end. I was always tired, stressed, cranky and my stomach hurt after I started eating meat, and being lactose intolerant is no fun, so this seemed kind of logical. I mean, if I continue to feel this way after doing this for a month or so, then I know that my diet had nothing to do with it, but we shall see. I've actually been feeling great the past couple of days so we're off to a good start.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i know when i was home for christmas my mom fed me meat at pretty much every meal and i felt AWFUL after a couple days. i think i've eaten meat once since i got back home, maybe not at all. i'm sure not eager to do so.

[jess]

Personally as far as health goes, I'm way more concerned about dairy than meat, especially with all the recent information about dairy proteins and immune/inflammatory responses and dairy fat and hormones (apparently people are even revising the whole diet doesn't affect your skin thing to implicate dairy because of that), so I keep trying to cut it out, but cheese and yogurt and occasionally ice cream are evil and sucker me back in. I'm working on reducing it at least. I don't drink or use real milk ever though, because I don't like it, so that makes it easier.

[Andrew_TSKS]

oh, i have such a weakness for dairy. i try to eat meals that have slight dairy ingredients for the most part, like cheese on a veggie sub, rather than meals that are all dairy, like mac and cheese or pizza. but yesterday i must admit that i had some ice cream AND some pizza, at the same meal. in retrospect, meh. but at the time, i was stoked.

[bethany_m]

I'm feeling pretty good, but my body has decided that it also doesn't want coffee or alcohol which does not make me happy AT ALL.  So I'm also not drinking and I switched to green tea to combat the lack-of-caffiene headache.  

Needless to say I am having a very grumpy week. But healthy!

And yeah, I wouldn't be worried at all, my diet was pretty healthy to begin with, but I've got a specific condition I'm trying to improve.  sigh.

[ellaguru]

My diet just seems to be a function of my exercise regimen. Last two weeks I didn't work out at all, and as a result was totally happy to eat whatever crap was close by. But when I'm on my normal workout schedule (starting back up today), all I really want to eat is healthy. Light meals, fresh fruit, all that. Which is lucky, as I have no interest in following any sort of "healthy eating plan", but am not opposed to eating healthy if that happens to be what looks delicious at the time.

[morgan]

Yeah, when I work out I never want to eat crap.  It's not a mental thing, either -- none of this, "well, I'm exercising, so I shouldn't eat bad foods to offset it" -- it's totally physical.  My body just doesn't generally want unhealthy foods when I'm on a regular exercise routine.  Pretty awesome, actually.

However, when I'm not exercising regularly, I basically only want to eat mac and cheese, pizza, hot dogs, Chef Boyardee, and anything else that is normal in a 5-year old's diet.

[C of heartbreak]

Today at work I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the term "romcom" and how much I hate it and how it's probably Blucas' fault I ever heard it in the first place.

[heather marie]

My mom's office caught on fire today. I mean, not her whole office, just her office. Is it wrong that after she told me this, I started singing "Valerie started the fire!" a la Dwight Schrute? The answer is: yes, you are a horrible daughter and deserve to die.

She's pretty chipper about it, though. I mean, in her own words, "Hey! My office has a skylight now! That's cool."

[diesel_powered]

How did that happen?

[milesofsparks]

I wish I was in better biking shape; if I were, I'd do this memorial bike ride this weekend:
http://www.ghostbikes.org/node/173

[edit:  memorial for bikers killed by cars]

[YojimboMonkey]

Unrelated but there were like a fuckload of fires in chicago last night/this morning.  I heard about a restaurant fire early this morning so I started looking on local news sites and found a ton of news about other overnight fires but not that one.  Crazy.  It can't be like that every night, my buddy is a fireman and spends a lot of time sleeping seems like.

[YojimboMonkey]

Damn MoS, that's a long time to be riding in the cold.  If it's anything like the Critical Mass rides I've been on, you're not riding fast enough to really get your blood going so you just end up miserable with your toes all froze. 

[milesofsparks]

yeah, and I'm still getting over being really sick.  maybe next year.

[slow west vultures]

Personally as far as health goes, I'm way more concerned about dairy than meat, especially with all the recent information about dairy proteins and immune/inflammatory responses and dairy fat and hormones (apparently people are even revising the whole diet doesn't affect your skin thing to implicate dairy because of that), so I keep trying to cut it out, but cheese and yogurt and occasionally ice cream are evil and sucker me back in. I'm working on reducing it at least. I don't drink or use real milk ever though, because I don't like it, so that makes it easier.

do you have some links on that jess?  i know i should probably avoid dairy because i get all kinds of bad immune/inflammatory flare ups, especially when i have a whole bunch of milk and cereal in the morning.  but milk's all rich in serotonin or tryptophan and makes me feel all warm and cozy.  so its hard to stay away from.  i read in some diabetes book that they hypothesize one of the immune triggers that sets off the body to attack the pancreas could be a protein found in cows milk from northern european countries and the US.  they speculated this was so becuase people in the mediterranean or northern africa - where they use a different type of dairy cow - get diabetes far less often than people in northern european countries.

[jess]

But of course!

I've read a whole lot of articles, most of which I don't have, but here's a couple.
This one is really dense but goes into the potential mechanism for the autoimmune thing.
And here are two sources that explain the issue more generally:
One on allergies and one on RA (as an example of autoimmune stuff)

The inflammatory agent in milk is casein, which is in the protein, so the only dairy that doesn't cause that response is clarified butter (and regular butter is almost casein free too). However, the hormones in milk are carried in the fat, so the fat is viewed as problematic too, just differently. Turns out that it's not even about growth hormone or antibiotics so much as that producing milk constantly (which even organic dairy cows do) means producing tons of estrogen, progesterone and androgen precursors, which ends up in the milk. That's what they believe creates the link between milk(fat) consumption and acne, and you can imagine what other effects that could have too.

FYI, the tryptophan in milk (and turkey) has no therapeutic effect because it's outshadowed by the other, more abundant amino acids. Tryptophan needs to be consumed on an empty stomach without protein to have a sedating effect, which is impossible in either case. Take a supplement if you want to feel it, and otherwise, you probably get plenty in your diet to not be depleted in it at all, milk or no (it's also in stuff like meat, poultry and beans).

[Greg Nog]

Can you get Tryptophan in the US?  I thought it was illegal here or something.

[Andrew_TSKS]

motherfuckers be distilling turkeys and shit.

[slow west vultures]

motherfuckers be distilling turkeys and shit.

 
thanks for that information jess.  i will look that over.  i saw a diabetes educator recently and one of the first question she asked me was "who'd you get it from, who else in your family has type 1 diabetes" and nobody does so she asked me if anyone had rheumatoid arthritis, which my grandpa did and she's like "bingo, that's where you got your diabetes from.  all the autoimmune diseases like diabetes, graves disease (which i also have) and RA are related".  not sure if that's true or not, but it makes sense.  prior to having my thyroid destroyed, i never really had that bad of problem with allergies or inflammation, because i think most of my body's autoimmune attack went towards my thyroid.  but a couple of months after i had my Radioactive iodine, and started thyroid replacement, i had some horrible allergic/immune attacks which i haven't quite been able to quell yet, mainly because i haven't been to a doctor who wanted to take on the task of figuring out what they were.  but one thing i have noticed is that the attacks get a lot worse if i have say, three bowls of cereal for breakfast, or binge on milk and cookies the night before.

yeah you can get tryptophan in the US i'm pretty sure.  its sold as L-Tryptophan i believe in vitamin stores.  and you can 5-HTP - which is basically serotonin.  i'm not really sure how effective they are, as they probably get broken down in your body, and don't necessarily get to your brain.  jess could probably explain it. i read that niacin (a b vitamin) "is necessary to ensure that tryptophan won't get side-tracked from serotonin production".  so maybe if you take a tryptophan supplement with some niacin you'll feel all nice and mellow.   i need to try that in the future.  i should probably just go back up on my ssri, but i'm determined to see if there's not another way to trick my brain into feeling good. 

FYI, the tryptophan in milk (and turkey) has no therapeutic effect because it's outshadowed by the other, more abundant amino acids. Tryptophan needs to be consumed on an empty stomach without protein to have a sedating effect, which is impossible in either case. Take a supplement if you want to feel it, and otherwise, you probably get plenty in your diet to not be depleted in it at all, milk or no (it's also in stuff like meat, poultry and beans).

then why does it make me feel so good when i have a bowl of cereal with milk?  something switches on in my brain that says 'more more more, milk is good for you'.  maybe its the sugar or something else. 

[YojimboMonkey]

I have to drive to Quincy and pick up the kids tonight


...which is the only thing keeping me from rushing to this place and trying these wings.  Oh hells yeah.

[Greg Nog]

why does it make me feel so good when i have a bowl of cereal with milk?  something switches on in my brain that says 'more more more, milk is good for you'.  maybe its the sugar or something else. 

Maybe the combination of protein and fat?  Like how our ancient proto-human ancestors used to scavenge bone marrow to sustain life?

I dunno, all I can say is that I love me some cheese.  I have six pounds of cheddar-wheels in my fridge at home, just biding their time, waiting to be eaten.

[Andrew_TSKS]

oh my god i am envious. cheddar cheese is the nectar of the gods.