Are Carbohydrates The #1 Health Menace? [Good Calories Bad Calories]

Sparkly vampires that don't die in sunlight and fall in love with inarticulate teenage girls, zombies eating brains with grapefruit spoons and their pinkies out (or off?) with Elizabeth Bennett, hapless-yet-cunning teens battling to the death in a reality show that makes Jersey Shore look like The Christian Ladies Aid Society - these are the types of books that keep most people up at night. Me? I've been up for a week now reading the gripping tales of The Fat-Cholesterol Hypothesis and The Carbohydrate Hypothesis spun by Gary Taubes in his game-changing tome Good Calories Bad Calories. Kinda like the Bible and Moby Dick, lots of people will talk about this book but very few of them have actually read it.

Not that I blame them. It's 576 densely worded pages of research paper hell. And I used to be a Graduate Assistant that was paid to write research papers so I know that of which I speak. I'm going to be honest: I read most of it. Skimmed the rest. Fell asleep and drooled all over the "Conservation of Energy" chapter. Was just like college but without all the PowerPoint atrocities.

Good thing for all of us, Taubes includes a four word summary - a dietary rebus, if you will - on the front cover. Take this handy quiz:

Like the old woman/young woman illusion, what you see is all about your perspective. In this picture, is the piece of bread the "good calories" and the butter the "bad calories" or vice versa? For years, as any of you who lived through the nineties (check yes if you ever included "grrrl" in a description of yourself!) can attest, fat - especially saturated animal fats like butter - was the devil in the Devil's food cake. Even today, the American Heart Association recommends no more than 7% of your daily calories come from saturated fats and no more than 25-35 % from any fat. Most of us are well versed in the "good fats" and "bad fats" doctrine. It is, as Taubes takes the first 4 chapters to point out, the conventional wisdom. (I can't complain too much though because it was during this introduction that I got to meet a delightful 18th century Brit named Banting who lost so much weight on a low-carb diet that he went on a pamphlet-strewn publicity tour that puts Atkins to shame. Banting is like Jared the Subway Guy dressed like Marie Osmond on Nutrisystem and with an evangelical spirit that's half Kirstie Allie and half Richard Simmons. I love him.)

According to Taubes, everything you "know" about diet and nutrition is wrong. He backs up this assertion with very (very very) detailed analyses of all the research ever done on the subject, branching into a conspiracy theory about scientists suppressing evidence and changing study results that I would have found laughably ludicrous had I not worked in academic research for so many years and found out first hand what sharks professors on tenure track can be. But I digress. Here's a summary - you're welcome - of the myths busted by Taubes:

1. Eating fat makes you fat.
2. High cholesterol is bad and the best predictor of heart disease.
3. Cholesterol should be lowered at all costs.
4. The best way to lower triglycerides and cholesterol is through cutting out dietary fats, especially saturated animal fats.
5. That Western illness like cancer, diabetes, dementia and heart disease are inevitable if you live long enough.

Basically, Taubes postulates that the surest and best way to help people not only lose weight but also live the longest, healthiest lives possible is to eat lots of fat (all kinds) and protein but cut out carbohydrates. He especially blames sugar for societal ills - no shocker there - but also includes "good" carbohydrates like fruit and whole grains. Not only do carbohydrates not provide good nutrition in the form of energy, says he, but also have the deleterious effects of leaching vitamins and weakening the body in other ways. For those of you who are familiar with Atkins or with the Paleo/Primal diets, Taubes' book is scripture. For the rest of us, these assertions fly in the face of everything we have been taught about good nutrition.

Honesty, Part Two: He makes a very compelling case. Taubes is a highly acclaimed science writer and this background is evident in his meticulous review of every study out there. He not only tackles famous studies, like the Nurses' Health Study, The Seven Countries Study and Ancel Keys' starvation studies, but he includes every minor paper, even previously unpublished ones. About halfway through the book I wanted to throw my hands up and just accept whatever he said as true because he was clearly willing to do a lot more studying than I am on the subject.

And the science is catching up to him on some points. Recent papers have come out breaking the supposed link between dietary cholesterol and heart disease (yay, we can eat eggs AND their yolks again!). Saturated fats are getting lots more good press - indeed I have had a very positive experience adding more fats of all kinds to my diet. The problem for me is when he starts dissing my beloved whole grains and fruit. No matter his comprehensive body of research stating otherwise, I do better and feel better when I eat a diet that includes those two things. That's why I flunked out of the Primal Blueprint. Twice. (Of course, new science is also contradicting him.)

It is at this point in the story my brain kicks into full-on Crazy. Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe I'm just in denial. Was my mid-afternoon crash the result of my Tabata workout or the whole grain bread I wrapped around my tuna? Maybe I SHOULD try low-carb again! If I don't, I could die a horrible death of diabetes, heart disease or cancer! Or all three at the same time!

The only thing that stopped me from dumping my oatmeal down the disposal that very second was remembering how well my current Intuitive Eating Experiment is going. I'm happy. I'm healthy. I'm 2 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and 5 from my "happy" weight (not to be confused with my ideal weight, also known as the weight I should never weigh again because even though I thought it was ideal it was really too low and I looked sick and didn't menstruate and was kind of a witch so yeah.) In a fit of reason - I'm not possessed of those nearly as often as I ought to be - I e-mailed my dear friend Dr. Jon who, also being British and therefore super cool, gave me a different perspective on Taubes, writing,

"Based on all my years of experience, I'm a great believer in moderation when it comes to diet . People lose sight of certain primary physiological facts and become obsessed with Super Foods, antioxidants, detox diets and supplements . To take some examples, a low fat diet isn't healthy because the body needs both saturated and unsaturated fats to maintain its health, LDL cholesterol is vital to well being, and reduced salt intake can literally kill anybody who works out heavily . That's the major difficulty with laying down rigid guidelines - they don't work for everybody and can actually do major harm .

A while back we talked about the Okinawan diet and I told you that the preliminary results indicate that that population's longevity and general good health seems to be both genetic and influenced by a more restricted diet and reduced intake . It is a relatively low-fat diet too, but too much must not be read into that . The Chinese diet is less restricted and pretty high in fats of all descriptions, and the typical French diet is enough to make a dietitian's eyes water . Yet all three countries have a far lower incidence of heart disease than the USA, Canada and the UK - just a thought, but maybe speaking English is the causative factor ???? :)

What you are doing these days, returning to intuitive eating and trusting your body to tell you what it needs, is the sanest and healthiest way to live . Logically, the human body has developed over the last couple of hundred thousand years and evolved the ability to signal its requirements . The plethora of mad ideas out there is truly mind-boggling . We have one particular "guru" over here who you should really have a look at . Her name is Gillian McKeith, aka the Poo Lady (if you have a look, you'll understand why - she's obsessed with it) . Amongst her insane ideas is that chlorophyll "helps to oxygenate the blood" by swallowing it !!! If you remember your highschool biology, chlorophyll is what makes plants green and uses light to photosynthesise carbon dioxide into carbon for the plant to grow, releasing the oxygen into the atmosphere as a byproduct . The only way I could imagine obtaining oxygen from chlorophyll in the gut would be by sticking a searchlight up the unfortunate soul's butt - and then what ??? The gut does NOT have gills !"

So, the take-away message from all this, is that diet books give me way more nightmares than vampires, zombies and teen-death-match-reality-shows combined. (You know it's only a matter of time before someone writes that book!) Actually, what I learned is that I still want to turn to other people - experts, by golly! - to tell me what to do with my body rather than just listening to what it says. There's a fine line here between learning enough to interpret your body's signals and going so far as to substitute everyone else's judgment for your own. Please don't misunderstand me - I'm not calling Taubes a quack and there was much of value in the book, especially on fats and their chemical mechanisms in the body, (and his chapter on paradoxes in the literature will blow your mind) but his recommendations on whole carbs and fruits just doesn't sit well with me. Lots of people live long, healthy lives on a variety of diets. You have the Okinawans with their super-low-fat diet. Then you have the Masai whose traditional diet of meat, whole milk and blood (yes, really) is about 70% fat. And these are two of the longest-lived peoples on the planet! But you know what I bet they have in common? They don't spend a lot of time reading diet books.

What are your thoughts on carbohydrates - all good, only the whole kind, or as little as possible and no grains? How much fat do you normally eat? Any of you read Good Calories Bad Calories? Do you always look for experts or research to tell you what to do, like I do??

Eating Fat Does Not Make You Fat

Confession #1: Today I stopped and bought my boys t-shirts at a garage sale to wear because I haven't had time to do laundry for two weeks now and everything they own has been worn twice. (Once right side out and once inside out - for the latter, I just tell everyone they dressed themselves. I don't add that I told them to dress themselves that way.)

I hang my motherly head in shame. But that is nowhere near as shocking as my next confession. If Charlotte-from-10-years-ago knew what I was about to confess, she'd have had me committed then and spared me this horror. In fact, the only reason I will even admit to this in black and white is because the other day Gym Buddy Allison 'fessed up to doing it - and liking it - too. So here goes...

Confession #2: I eat beef fat.

Not only do I eat it but I love it. I crave it. You know all that white stuff all around the edges of a steak? The stuff that everyone from Dr. Oz to Dr. Phil (to Dr. Oprah-spawn) tells you to trim off? Well, I eat it.

My road to debauchery started out innocently enough with a simple cow (don't all roads to debauchery start with a cow? No??). Gym Buddy Krista was talking up her favorite local beef farmer and since I started Geneen Roth's guidelines, as I explained before, I've stopped being vegetarian in favor of eating what my body - not my mind - says it wants. So I signed up for one of those grass-fed-and-finished, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, organic, kissed-by-angels bovines.

Upon retrieving the dead carcass from the super friendly farmer (any local peeps who want his info, I'm happy to pass it along! Poor man hasn't discovered the Internet yet and has no website but he raises awesome livestock so we'll forgive him.) I learned two important things. First, cows are insanely huge animals. My Bessie was 920 pounds. The smallest portion he'd sell me was 1/4 - those of you good at math (update: this group will not include me as in the original version of this post my cow and cow quarters didn't even remotely add up. I blame the tireds.) will realize that left me with 230 pounds of animal - so thank heavens Gym Buddy Megan split it with me. Second, Mr. Farmer informed me that while fat from traditionally farmed cows (read: cows fed with grain) is terrible for you, fat from grass-pastured cows is fan-freakin'-tastic with a huge ratio of those Omega-3 fatty acids health nuts are always crowing about.

Me being me, I couldn't just take some farmer's word for it, even if he is the coolest farmer I have ever met (which is only because I've never officially met the Bag Lady) so I checked out the research. And you know what? He's right. Mark Sisson of Mark's Daily Apple gives a better breakdown of all the current research and arguments than I could so check out his article "The Definitive Guide to Saturated Fat" for all the nitty gritty. Say what you will about The Primal Blueprint (and heaven knows I've said plenty!) but that man does his homework. For too long we've been conditioned to believe that adage about Good Fats and Bad Fats. Turns out all naturally sourced fats are good fats. Even saturated ones like coconut oil, heavy cream and, yes, animal fat (as long as it isn't conventionally farmed). The only bad fats are those man-made monstrosities like trans-fats and interesterified fats.

While I've embraced the "good fats" a la avocado, nuts and olive oil for several years now, I'm brand new to the saturated fat love fest. Reader Deb asked me what this looks like in real life for me. For a couple of weeks I tried to eat 50% or more of my calories from fat but after jumping on the Geneen Roth train (and quit counting calories) I still eat a lot of fat but I think probably more like 40%, depending on the day. The upshot of this mini-experiment is that eating lots of fat keeps me satiated longer and helps reduce my cravings for sugar (because while it turns out saturated fats aren't correlated with coronary heart disease like we all thought, sugar sure is!) Consider me a convert! I love my real whipped cream.

I still don't like bacon though.

What are your feelings about saturated fats? Do you ever eat the fat on your steaks or chops? Anyone else just hate bacon? And if you want to tell me about the time you bought new clothes/dishes/underwear rather than clean the ones you have, that might make me feel better;)

The Diet Wars: Learning to Listen

You can thank Reader Forest for this little gem. Hope you weren't eating!

Welcome to Dueling Diets! I'm your host, Crazy Charlotte. Today I'll be pitting the Primal Blueprint a la Mark Sisson against the Engine 2 Diet a la Rip Esselstyn, all as part of my "Striving for Perfection" Experiment this month.

I'm going to be honest with you. This has not been the best Experiment. Physically and mentally I would have been a lot better off with my original plan of kickboxing. And yet I'm still glad I'm doing this. Why? Because this is quintessentially how I think. I like extremes. I like to do things all the way. My mother loves to tell the story of 18-month-old Charlotte screaming bloody murder for 45 minutes straight until I learned how to buckle my sandals all by myself. I'm still that girl but now in big girl panties. Some would look at that 18-month-old and think "Now there's a lifetime full of frustration ahead of that one." But if this blog has taught me one thing, it is that I am not alone in the way I think. My brand of crazy's got company.

Perfectly Primal
So back to the dueling diets. First up was The Primal Blueprint. Why oh why, many of you asked, would I attempt a lifestyle that had made me so miserable the first time around? It was because, due to the way I imploded during my Primal Experiment, I wasn't sure if the epic fail was due to the diet not working for me or me not working the diet. I hadn't gone "full primal" and so I was left wondering if I simply hadn't given it a fair shot. This idea lingered in the back of my head as I read all kinds of wonderful success stories about people for whom this diet has been a Godsend and as I read Mark's Daily Apple and I pored over the latest diet research. So when Mark Sisson approached me about giving it another go, I was interested.

He advised me to start slow to avoid another elephant-poop level implosion and so for three weeks I did mostly primal (lots of fat, fish, nuts and veggies at every meal plus a couple of servings of dairy.) I gained about a pound a week. I was not happy but kept plugging away at it because everyone says it takes three weeks to get your body adjusted to burning fat for fuel instead of carbs. Finally, after watching the scale go upupup and my mood go downdowndown, I told Mark that I had two choices: a) to go Full Primal (take out the dairy and add meat) or b) quit. For the record, I want to say that he was nothing but kind and supportive. It was me pushing me, not him pushing me.

So then came my Week-O-Perfect Living. I went full primal. SAAANNNNDDAAAALLLLLS!!! I did it. One week of perfect primal living. And I gained two pounds. That was it for me. I'd given it a full 4 weeks and had nothing but 5 extra pounds, a bucket of tears and some additional crazy issues to show for it. I quit. The Primal Blueprint doesn't work for me. For realz this time. (Which is not to say that it doesn't work for anybody. There are lots of Primal success stories out there - check out Son of Grok for a great PB blog.)

Vigilantly Vegan
Next up, Perfect Vegan. Like the Primal Blueprint, I've done vegan before. I did okay on it until I decided that a life without brie and scrambled eggs wasn't worth living. Not to mention that I don't tolerate processed soy products well and they're hard to avoid as a vegan. But for my week of Perfect Vegan living, I bought a package of the evil but supertasty Spicy Black Bean Gardenburgers and prepared to stink out the Gym Buddies (they're so forgiving!).

This week was a lot easier for me to stick to, mostly because if given the choice between giving up meat and giving up carbs, I'll ditch the meat in a heart beat. I discovered I still hate soy milk but Heather at Heather Eats Almond Butter (who also gained weight on the Primal Blueprint) clued me into coconut milk and I might have a new love. The one hitch is that the Engine 2 permutation of vegan is that it is low fat. I thought this would be totally horrible - and I'll admit that counting out my 5 almonds a day made me want to tantrum - but it wasn't as bad as I'd thought. In the end, my weight stayed stable. I didn't drop any of the Primal poundage like I'd hoped but at least for the love of little green apples I stopped gaining.

Conclusions
A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine looked at dieters on several different popular diets. Their conclusion - and this will surprise no one - is that despite all the hype, it doesn't really matter much which diet you pick as long as you cut your calories. I know, the whole "eat less" thing again. The key is to find the diet that helps your body live with the calorie restriction the best. And that apparently can differ from person to person.

I think I gained on the Primal Blueprint because it gave me a free pass on the nuts and avocados. I can literally eat my way through a 35-serving jar of raw nuts (thank you Super Target!) in one week. That'd be, uh, 5 servings of nuts per day. I can eat a whole avocado in a few bites as a snack. It's hard to cut - or even maintain calories - with that kind of excess. The Primal Blueprint promises that you can eat all the fat you want as long as you don't have carbs but I think they weren't counting on butterballs like me. (My other theory is that some women have hormone issues that the Primal Blueprint isn't equipped to handle but I don't have any research to back that up. Just a bitter woman hunch.) Conversely, I think the Engine 2 Diet worked for me because it reined me in on the fat and I also liked the food choices better and so felt less deprived than I did on Primal.

However, neither diet did what I wanted them to. And that's probably because there isn't a diet out there that is designed to melt off a bad self-image. I am so grateful to all of you who commented on my Bad Thoughts post or sent me a personal e-mail on the topic. You all had some great ideas for stopping repetitive bad thoughts and were so generous about sharing what worked for you. (I LOVE YOU GUYS!) For my benefit, I'm going to summarize them here:
- Art therapy (for me it's drawing but it could be anything you do with your hands that takes your mind out of it's thought holding pattern.)
- Picture a stop sign or some other image
- Replace the bad thoughts with positive ones
- Refute the negative assertions
- Practice saying kind things to yourself in the mirror
- Write kind things about yourself on paper, use the paper whenever the bad thoughts attack
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Relaxation techniques like yoga, meditation and/or guided imagery
- Acupuncture and/or massage
- Anti-anxiety or anti-depression medication

Here's what I learned: I need to start listening. To myself. And stop listening to other people. The hard part of that lesson is that I don't trust myself. Most days, I don't even really like myself. It's funny how it all goes back to that self respect thing. I think that random diet gurus know my body better than I do. That's just silly. I've got to learn to start listening to what my spirit is telling me and to start treating myself with some dignity.

So now I'm curious about you. I know that some of you have been through this process and come out the other end. How did you finally get off the diet coaster and figure out what really worked for you? Which diet/lifestyle plan have you found works best for your body? Are you a primal wunderkind? A vegan vigilante? An everything-in-moderation mama? And for the rest of us still caught in this wasteland (waist land?), do you want out as badly as I do?

Eat Like a Firefighter (Giveaway!)

What do you suppose that a burly, buffed-out Superman in a helmet and oxygen tank eats? If your answer has anything to do with a 16-oz porterhouse in the firehouse then you don't know the firefighters from Engine 2. Rip Esselstyn, a former elite triathlete turned firefighter, is on a mission to educate you on the healthiest way to eat and get fit in his book The Engine 2 Diet. Hotties in uniform are just an added bonus.

What Do Firefighters Eat?
I'm going to give you the short version so listen closely: Firefighters eat like Skinny Bitches. That's right, these He-Men (and women!) are vegan, as in no animal products whatsoever. But in a twist that will make you take Ornish's name in vain every time you pass up those cheese quesadillas, the Engine 2 crew are low-fat vegans.

My first thought on reading through the research (more on that in a minute) and looking through the recipes was that I had found the Holy Grail of Restrictive Dieting. Not only can you not have meat, eggs, dairy, sugar or honey but you also can't eat anything fatty either. Nuts are limited. Vegan "cheeze" and other replacement foods are warned against not because they taste like crap - which they totally do as I discovered when I did my Vegan Experiment last year - but because they are too fattening, thereby crushing all the self-righteous vegans in the house. All they need to do is make it "raw" and we'd have a clear winner with celeb endorsements sure to follow. Suffice it to say, this was an inauspicious introduction to the book.

How Do Firefighters Workout?
While the diet is really the point of the book, Esselstyn includes a beginning workout straight out of "Good Housekeeping". So how do firefighters exercise? Not like this, I'm imagining. Illustrated with several pictures that look like they were snapped with someone's camera phone in the backyard, are rudimentary exercises like squats, push-ups, lunges and plank. All I have to say is that if you still need a pictorial guide on how to squat then you might not be ready for the life-changing culinary brutality of this diet. Also, if this is how real firefighters work out then I'm mystified as to how they carry unconscious people down ladders hold firehoses without getting blown backwards. I suspect Rip, who is in fabulous shape, of actually doing much more and much harder exercises than the ones in his book. I just wish he had shared them with the rest of us because I'm betting the real firefighter workout is awesomely kick-butt.

The Research
Despite my initial apprehension of his diet and my outright derision of his workout, one thing attracted me to the Engine 2 Diet: Like me, Esselstyn is a research junkie. Approximately a quarter of the book (that isn't made up of recipes) is dedicated to the studies that make the case for his diet. And they are some interesting pieces of work. Quite a few of the ones referenced, like the famous - or infamous, depending on your background - China Study, I am already very familiar with. The thing is, there is quite a compelling body of research for a plant-based diet. Studies have shown it to reduce rates of many types of cancer, lower cholesterol and heart disease, and reverse diabetes in addition to helping with other ailments such as allergies, alzheimers, and obesity.

The problem however, is that he cherry-picked his research, focusing only on the studies that support his claims and ignoring all the rest. The most pertinent of these left-out studies for me are the ones that speak to the very premise of his book: that high cholesterol is the cause of heart disease and that lowering your cholesterol is the best way to treat it. Life is never that neat. For a detailed look at the nuanced topic of cholesterol, check out this article by Mark Sisson, a fellow elite triathlete who came to the exact opposite dietary conclusion and founded the Primal Blueprint diet (which I also have my reservations about.)
Conclusion & Mini-Experiment for Me
So what is a girl all dizzied up on research to do? Try it all out, of course. In a bit of kismet, the Engine 2 Diet and the Primal Blueprint are about as diametrically opposed as any two diets could be. They both make nearly the same health claims and require the same amount of rigidity from their practitioners (not to mention both are founded by retired elite endurances athletes obsessed with research!). And yet both take fundamentally opposing approaches. This intrigued me.

Back in January, Mark Sisson of the Primal Blueprint, approached me asking me to give the PB another shot (most spectacular failure in GFE history, in case you missed that Experiment). At first I was reluctant to change up my food - you know how crazy I am with diets - but then I read this book and the lure of doing a Mini-Experiment was too much for me to resist (feel free to chide me in the comments). And so I decided to do one week of "Perfect Primal" - which I just finished up - immediately followed by one week of "Perfect Engine 2" - which I am just starting.

I figure there are only three possible results to this experiment:
1. One diet will emerge the obvious victor, as measured by me on me. (Give it up for sample sizes of 1, woot woot!)
2. Both diets will fail, proving that extreme eating of any variety doesn't work for me.
3. Both diets will be succesful, proving that it doesn't matter which diet you follow as long as it is one you can stick to.

I'll let you know my results next week.

A Mini-Experiment and A Giveaway for You!
When I told the Gym Buddies about my latest endeavor, they were naturally dubious. Gym Buddy Krista agreed to do the Primal Week with me initally and then backed out saying that she was afraid that trying and failing on it would be more detrimental than following a more moderate diet that promised less extreme results. She then accused me of having a greater-than-average amount of self control - an assertion I violently protest.

So, while I of course welcome anyone else who wants to be a guinea pig with me, I do understand that not everyone is as eager as I am to go whole-hog (or hog-shaped-tofu-loaf). Both the PB and the Engine 2 diets offer "lite" versions of their programs which basically say making any changes are better than no changes. I'm going to offer you another option: Mark Bittman, a New York Times food writer, has come up with a program he calls "Vegan until 6." All you have to do is eat vegan (or Primal) until 6 p.m. and then eat what you like within moderation for dinner. Bittman has had amazing health results with his half-way plan and yet still gets to enjoy the food he writes about.

In an effort to help you make your own decisions about the Engine 2 diet, I have a copy to give away to one of you! Love it or hate it, it's definitely an interesting read - especially if you enjoy research. And awkward camera phone pictures.

Leave me a comment below letting me know what you think of low-fat veganism. Can a normal person really do it? Any of you tried the Engine 2 diet? Or what do you think the results of my mini-Experiment will be? Or just tell me if you think I've just lost my mind and you'd like my mother's number so you can call her and ask her to stage an intervention (hint: she reads my blog so you can relax.)

Here's Your Chance To Do Some Good

Back when the husband and I were first married, I was fulfilling my new-bride task of writing thank you notes for all the generous gifts we had been given. (Random funny story: Someone gave us an electric teakettle which we promptly returned because we're LDS and don't drink tea - and also we lived in a 500 sq ft studio apartment and counter space consisted of our two-person table. The store gave me a whopping 75$ for it which thrilled me to no end. Who knew they were so pricey? But then two weeks later we got a call saying that what was in the box was not an electric teakettle but rather a cut-glass Easter basket. We had to go back to the store and give them $75 to buy back our tchotchke. But hey, that's what every newlywed couple needs - a 10-lb glass bowl that you can either use to gather Fabrege eggs OR slit your wrists!) Anyhow, every manners book said it wasn't enough to just write "Dear Mr. & Mrs. Johnson, Thank you for the set of towels." No, you are supposed to tell them how beautiful they are and what you are using them for. Well, a lot of people gave us money and so in the spirit of erring on the side of too much honesty I wrote on all those thank-you cards "Thanks for your generous gift. We are saving up to buy a bed so we don't have to sleep on the floor anymore. Love, Charlotte."

About a month later we found a money order from Grand Junction Colorado, a place where we know nary a soul, in our mailbox. It was for $250 with a post-it note that said "Buy a bed."

I was floored. The husband was floored. Never in our lives had we been the recipients of such charity. And there wasn't even a return address to send a thank-you card to! After admiring the large sum of money for a while we decided to follow our anonymous benefactors instructions and buy a bed. It's the same queen bed we sleep on to this day, 10 years later. Every time I make it I am reminded of what a gift we received. Every night before I crawl into it I say a prayer asking God to help me find a way to pay it forward (and also, if He's not too busy, to help my children learn to vomit during the daytime instead of the middle of the night. And in the toilet. Thank you). I've been blessed to find ways both small and large to anonymously help a sister (or brother!) out and today we all get another chance to do something small to help out another.

This is one of those miracles though that starts out small but if we all do it, it will be huge! What do you have to do? Just leave a comment on MizFit's site any time between now and midnight on the 23rd and she and her husband will donate (out of their not-fantastically-wealthy-but-oh-so-good-hearted pockets) a set amount per comment to an Austin area homeless shelter. And all you have to do is head over to her site and leave a comment!

So, while you're here, leave me a comment and tell me about an act of service that someone did for you that was particularly meaningful and then head over there and help her help the homeless! (Or if you are on a comment budget today, just forego the commenting here and go directly to her site.)

One more piece of information that I know will greatly excite some of you: Mark Sisson of Mark's Daily Apple is thisclose to premiering his book The Primal Blueprint. Go check out the chapter descriptions and the table of contents for a sneak peak at what the Guru of all things Primal has to say!

Have a great weekend!

The Recession Makes People Eat Less Meat But More Fast Food

Too bad Johnathan Swift died before the Internet came about.

This will thrill PETA right out of their naugahyde pumps: doing what no bag of thrown flour could ever hope to accomplish, the recession has caused the average American to cut their meat consumption. According to a survey conducted by Parade magazine (Yes, the cheesy insert in the Sunday paper. Yes, I read it. Shut up.), nearly 60% of respondents say they have reduced the amount of meat they eat due to rising food costs.

In an unrelated but strangely appropriate survey, apparently the recession has also caused an uptick in business at fast food restaurants.

Conclusion: A t-bone steak at $12.99/lb is a budget-breaker but two meat patties on a sesame bun with special sauce for $1.79 is dinner the way mama used to make. There's something wrong with this mentality and I'm not just saying that because I'm a vegetarian. Somewhere Michael Pollan just had a seizure.

In a country where affordable and accessible health care was one of the biggest issues in our last presidential election, it seems unwise to be trading whole foods for processed ones - especially those with a shelf life of 12+ years. If we want to encourage people to practice preventative health care by eating better and taking care of themselves then pricing fast food cheaper than the real deal seems downright counterproductive. Where's our health care bailout? But perhaps hitting people in their wallet is the best way to make them sit up and pay attention.

For me, as you might expect, I have tried both extremes of the meat continuum. I've been fully vegan. I've also done the Primal Blueprint (also known as The Meat-and-Veg Diet.) And I've settled out somewhere in the middle - a place I like to call "non-militant vegetarianism." Left to my own devices, I don't generally eat meat. But exceptions will be made for cases like wicked PMS, a bite of my husband's dinner at a fancy restaurant or a special dish made by a foreign friend. I also don't waste my breath trying to convert others to my veggie ways. This will almost guarantee the derision of hard-core vegetarians, but to be perfectly honest, I don't care if you eat meat. If there's one thing I've learned it's that there are lots of ways to be healthy and I don't have all the answers.

But if you are looking for ways to cut down on the grocery bill - and who isn't, considering that food prices have risen 7% over the past year and are expected to go up another 4% in 2009 - then reducing your meat consumption is a good fix. In fact, a whole new trendy name - Flexitarian - has just been popularized for folks who eat less meat but don't eschew it (get it??) entirely. There is a way to have your meat and eat it too. Just don't replace it with a Big Mac.

So where do you guys fall on the meat spectrum? How have you had to adjust your grocery shopping this past year?