Eating high on the hog!

Dennis and I have been venturing out into a new paradigm. For years, we've all been told over and over that two reasons we have an obesity epidemic is because people eat too much and do too little, and that most fat, especially saturated fat, is bad for you. Not only will fat make you fat, it will clog your arteries, kill you early, etc. Therefore, plans to lose weight nearly always severely limit fat, except Atkins, which touts high protein and low carb with some fat.

Then we had a neighbor down the street try a new way of eating called low carb high fat (LCHF) who posted on FB about it. Wanting to avoid diabetes that runs in his family, he lost 60 pounds and his wife lost 40. Both of them brought their high triglycerides and blood sugar levels down to low, healthy levels. We had started experimenting with eating less carbs and more fat, and found a great cookbook at Barnes and Noble by a guy in Sweden who lost more than 100 pounds with LCHF and gained a much healthier heart and circulatory system.

Since we still felt like we didn't know enough, we had our neighbors over to see how it all worked for them. Besides sharing how they did it, they told us about the Diet Doctor online who has explanations for why and how to do LCHF that we are just beginning to explore. He also interviews other doctors on videos who explain their research and experience in the realm of how and why LCHF produces better health. They explain how and why the two reasons given above for the obesity epidemic are not true.

Today we came home from church to face a package of thawed hamburger, two zucchini and a bunch of kale. Usually I make a kima with the burger and zucchini, adding onions, garlic and curry seasonings. But then Dennis recalled my sister saying you could make pizza crust with zucchini and eggs and we were off! He discovered we had bacon we could use for bacon bits in the kale salad plus bacon on the pizza. He started on the salad and frying 4 slices of bacon while I worked on the zucchini pizza crust (from an online recipe) and browned the hamburger into an italian spiced tomato sauce with onions and mushrooms. Dennis sauteed the sliced mushrooms first in the bacon fat (very tasty!) before they went into the sauce. Arthur came out and grated two cheeses. Dennis added red onion and sun ripened tomato to the kale and bacon bits,  I added some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and s&p, then he added feta crumbles and a tad of stevia. We built the pizza with the italian meat sauce and the cheeses with pepperoni slices in neat concentric circles by the aproned Arthur. The pizza baked for 15 more minutes and we were ready to eat!

Because I hadn't baked the zucchini crust long enough to make it hold together for handling before adding the toppings, it was more like a layered dish we ate with forks that tasted great, as did the kale salad. Since we just learned that to lose weight with LCFF you need to keep your carbs under 50 grams for the day, we have to learn to track our carbs and the pounds should start coming off. In the meantime, we are eating high on the hog, enjoying a great variety of meals and feeling full, with less need to snack and less achey joints.