Saturday, 08 December 2012 - 129.4 lbs

Adoration of the Shepherds by Caravaggio, 1609

Down 0.8 lbs from yesterday. Marvelous.

This morning I did a practice PRT ("Physical Readiness Test": push-ups, sit-ups [or "curl-ups" as the silly ol Navy calls 'em] and 12 minutes of cardio on the Elliptical), and worked out my ab meat. Came home and had:

2.5 eggs with diced onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, and mushrooms cooked in bacon grease

3 slices of bacon

sugar free bread n butter pickle spear

handful of nuts 

cup of peppermint flavored coffee with full fat cream, stevia, and cocoa
Check out FoxNews.com - "Coffee: An effective weight loss tool"

Went to the gym again to work back meat, biceps, and forearms, then had:

protein drank

monster salad (romaine, red cabbage, tomato, avocado, turkey breast, full fat sour cream ranch dressing)  

An interesting article appeared a couple days ago in the Sydney Morning Herald about a dude I've mentioned several times before -- the bestselling author and science writer, Gary Taubes (his website is linked to your right, under "CLICK 'EM ALL"). Titled, "The Fat and the Fiction," the article contains a ton of useful information about what Taubes has discovered through his years-long research into the studies used to formulate the US's current "low-fat, grain-centered" approach to weight loss and nutrition. The whole article is worth the read (as are his two books), but here are the highlights:

• [Taubes's] premise? That the hormone insulin is responsible for obesity, and levels of insulin spike when we eat carbohydrates, leading us to get fat. 
• Eating fat, he says, does not have this effect on insulin and therefore is not the culprit in making people overweight or obese.
• The idea that people are fat because they eat too much says nothing meaningful about why excess calories get stored as fat[.] 
• [C]arbohydrates, such as fructose, corn, potatoes, rice and grains, affect insulin, a powerful regulator of fat. Fat is readily stored in the presence of insulin because it causes the enzyme lipoprotein lipase to suck fat inside cells where it is stored. The body only makes insulin when blood sugar levels rise, and all carbohydrates are metabolised as sugar.
• Thus, if we do not eat carbohydrates, there will not be excess sugar in the blood, the body will not make insulin and fat will not be stored by cells[.]
• Meats, fish, eggs, butter and oil contain few, if any, carbohydrates and do not cause insulin levels to spike, which Taubes says means people can eat as much of those foods as they want so long as they also avoid carbohydrates.
• ''So this idea all calories are created equal; well, in terms of the energy in the calories, yes … but in terms of the fate of the nutrient downstream, the same amount of calories of different nutrients will have a dramatically different effect,'' Taubes says.
• Even Australian nutritionists who view Taubes as a conspiracy theorist because of his criticisms of those who pioneered the idea that fat causes obesity, admit his research has enough credibility and science behind it to be considered.
• More low-fat foods are being produced and consumed than ever before. Red meat consumption is also declining, with beef consumed in the Australian market decreasing by 3 per cent in 2010-11. Yet, obesity rates in Australia are still climbing.

Today is the anniversary of the deaths of John Lennon (1980) and "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott (2004) (both victims of gunshot wounds -- Dimebag's whilst onstage performing), and since Darrell is the lesser known of the two, I'll post a video of his. Here's the first song (and one of my favorites still) I ever heard by his band, Pantera: "Mouth For War" (Dime is the one playing guitar (not bass) with the big hair and beard and razor blade necklace).