Tony K's Blog

Previously, in January 2008, I reported that I was at 219 lbs and about 20% bodyfat. Last week I weighed in at 211.8 and somewhere around 15% bodyfat. My rate of weight loss is not huge, but the decrease in bodyfat is really encouraging. Given the inaccuracies of bodyfat measurement, it is really hard to know if I went from 20% to 15% of 19% to 17%, or some other combination, but the main thing is to see the decrease over time. I am hoping to be down around 13% by mid-year. I recently read Good Calories, Bad calories by Gary Taubes. It is hard to read, but has led me to believe that the US Government guidelines for low-fat eating are completely out of whack. I have been following a regimen similar to what is laid out in Emotions for Engineers . I am continuing to work hard at the gym and my weightlifts are actually increasing (very slightly), rather than decreasing with my weight loss. This is really sweet. The good news is that I appear to not be losing my hard-earned muscle mass. I...

Seth Roberts of Shangri-La diet fame interviewed Gary Taubes who wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories . Fascinating stuff. http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhm4f3rg_36gg4956dm&pli=1 GARY TAUBES Interviewed November 30, 2007 by Seth Roberts [part 1] INTERVIEWER I just spoke to someone who reduced the carbohydrate in his diet, for various reasons, including your book. He found that his performance on mental problems started improving again. It had stopped improving; it had been constant for a long time, and then he started getting better. So it may be that when you reduce the carbohydrate in your diet, your brain starts working better. TAUBES Well there is evidence that your brain works more efficiently on ketones, as does your heart. So if he reduced his carbohydrate consumption sufficiently, he probably increased the level of ketones in his blood. But I'm just speculating here. INTERVIEWER: The book seems to have had an unusual beginning. You’d been writing about salt, and ...