Beans, beans, the magical fruit?

Ok, so I really want to try and cut down on the burgeoning belly fat. Last night I went out, and my poor fancy shirt's buttons were shuddering under the strain of it al. This new gain is bumming me out. Gonna go whole hog on the Slow Carb, from Tim Ferriss' "4 Hour Body", instead of half-assing it. No more fruit/nuts/cheese except Saturday Cheat Day, as is prescribed. And now, checking to see if, as Ferriss claims, beans is the magic key to unlocking success with this new diet.

Added beans into my daily dietary mix this morning. A and I shared a can of black beans from Trader Joe's along with our sausage.

Considering how much gastrointestinal distress they have caused me in the past, I realized I had forgotten to procure any bean digestive aids along the way. Ferriss recommends rinsing the canned beans to get rid of the oligosaccharides that are soaked out in the liquid, but I like the liquid from black beans. I remembered reading somewhere that there were some food ingredients you could add to beans to help digest the oligosaccharides. A quick google search lead me to Wikipedia, of all places:

"Many edible beans, including broad beans and soybeans, contain oligosaccharides (particularly raffinose and stachyose), a type of sugar molecule also found in cabbage. An anti-oligosaccharide enzyme is necessary to properly digest these sugar molecules. As a normal human digestive tract does not contain any anti-oligosaccharide enzymes, consumed oligosaccharides are typically digested by bacteria in the large intestine. This digestion process produces flatulence-causing gases as a byproduct.^[12][13] This aspect of bean digestion is the basis for the children's rhyme "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit".

So THAT would explain my extreme stomach discomfort and gas with both beans and anything cruciferous. I had to stop eating broccoli for many years. Also, I always remembered that rhyme as "Beans, beans the MAGICAL fruit." Am I mistaken? Skipping down:

"In many cuisines beans are cooked along with natural carminatives such as anise seeds, coriander seeds and cumin. Other strategies include soaking beans in water for several hours before mixing them with other ingredients to remove the offending sugars. Sometimes vinegar is added, but only after the beans are cooked as vinegar interferes with the beans' softening."

Score! I rifled through the spice cabinet (yes, a whole cabinet devoted to spices, haha!) and found the cumin, tossing in generous amounts. Threw in a few capfuls of apple cider vinegar. Stirred and tested...Tasty! It's been about 3 1/2 hours, now...so far, so good! Stomach not rumbling, no gas pain. Knock on wood! And they taste really good. Like, too good to be good for me good. Let's hope not.

Beans are, by nature, starchy. Up til now, I've avoided them for many years, on that basis. I didn't eat them on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet that I followed to fix my gut, successfully, a decade ago. I mostly avoided them on "The Zone," and I lost 80 pounds at that time (before eventually regaining, and then some.) I was told not to eat them on many phases of the HCG diet that most recently dropped me out of obesity. But Ferriss recommends eating them on his Slow Carb Diet, with the theory that they are digested slowly because of all the fiber, thus avoiding spiking the insulin while adding valuable protein. I need protein from less caloric sources than the enormous piles of fatty meat I've been chowing down to meet the Occam's Protocol protein requirements. He also claims they stop hunger, which I think I agree with, so far. Was craving food a LOT before on my half-assed version of Slow Carb, especially fruit. Today, not at all.

I need to add more veggies to the mix, though. I should steam broccoli and cauliflower and things of that sort more often. It's hard for me to picture my salads without the cheese, fruit, nuts, minimal dressing (though I already use dressing with NO sweeteners and fairly low calorie counts, such as Trader Joe's Tuscany Italian). I want like crazy for goat cheese to be okay, buuuuut it's probably not. He says no dairy at all.

I've already cut out the milk I was using for my protein shakes, substituting Trader Joe's unsweetened almond milk instead. Amazingly, it tastes so much less sweet! Apparently I could TASTE the sweetness of the lactose in the whole milk. 13 carbs per cup! The almond milk has 2 grams of carbs, less than 1 of sugar. The downside of this switch, almond milk has 1 gram of protein, vs. 8 grams in whole milk. But 40 calories rather than a whopping 150 per cup in the milk. Sooooo...to comply with Slow Carb and give my waistline a chance, no milk, no cheese (sob!), no yogurt, no fun.

But I should give this a decent shot to see if my waistline comes back under control while I continue trying to gain muscle. Thanks for bearing with my current floundering. So hard to leave a method that worked and find a new way towards my goals. We'll see how this goes!

Warning! Warning! ALA Blood Sugar Disaster!

Yesterday, I bonked. On a gentle walk home from dinner. On the tiny hill blocks away from home. Dizziness, shaking, nausea, complete loss of energy.

The culprit?

I believe it was 2 glasses of red wine + ALA.

ALA is Alpha Lipoic Acid. It's part of a supplement "stack" that I take as part of the 4 Hour Body's recommendations for fat loss/maintenance during Slow Carbing/training. It's actually a really great supplement, and I've used it before. It has all sorts of beneficial effects, as a powerful antioxidant, chelator of heavy metals, increasing glutathione levels naturally, and most interestingly, reducing fat storage/ triggering muscle building/glycogen storage instead. However, and this is important...it lowers your overall blood sugar levels. This can be very handy for diabetics. However, if you aren't eating carbs, and you do other things that cause your blood sugar to crash, for instance DRINK ALCOHOL, and then put demands on your body/blood sugar - you can get into serious trouble. I found a few mentions of this out there, after the fact.

Except for the wine, I had no carbs with dinner. Only small amounts of delicious charcuterie meats and duck confit, a tiny amount of cheese, excellent tasty roast brussel sprouts with bacon and spring greens salad with shaved radish. Oh, and four see-through-thin slices of apple, which tasted amazing with a little lemon-thyme goat cheese. The only other carbs were two glasses of Syrah. A, on the other hand, cheated...he ate some of the bread that came with the meat and cheese, and he was unpleasantly surprised to discover that what he thought was olive oil, after soaking the bread in it, was honey! So he got a good shot of carbs, overall.

The walk to and from this awesome charming North Seattle restaurant is 4 miles, round trip. The last of it is up a small hill. Usually, that ain't nothin to me any more. This time, once I got to the hill, I realized that I felt more and more exhausted, shaky, dizzy. I felt like I would throw up. It hit me like a ton of bricks - this is low blood sugar! I told A, we stopped, and I ate half a Larabar. But I think all the fat and greens fiber in my tummy kept it from hitting my bloodstream very fast. I rested for a minute, then crawled miserably up the hill, clinging to A for dear life.

When I got home, I flopped down on the couch, still shaking violently, still nauseous. I could hardly keep my eyes open, I was so low on energy. A brought me a Zevia cream soda, which has some erythritol, enough sugar to be absorbed quickly. Then he loaded up some peanut butter on my failed chocolate coconut flour cake experiment and a few spoonfuls of apple sauce and brought that out. I ate that, and slowly began to feel okay. When I got the energy to stand, I went and took a bath because my body temperature had dropped and I was freezing.

I bonked. A didn't. A had carbs. I didn't. A drank more alcohol than me, though, to be fair, he is at least 80 pounds heavier or so.

No bueno.

Tim Ferriss, in 4 Hour Body, mentions that he takes these supplements and drinks 2 glasses of red wine most nights. But he is not me. Other people say they have to be careful with it and alcohol. I have a couple glasses of wine 2 - 4 times a week, usually if we are eating out or watching Hoarders, lol. I don't often do a significant amount of exercise after, though. I have decided that if I am going to consume wine AND do anything physical, I will skip the ALA for that meal. I may be taking too much altogether, will revisit that too.

So let that be your lesson folks. Supplements are NOT free of side effects. They can interact with lots of things, including alcohol. Those side effects can be serious! I felt very very ill. If I hadn't had a Larabar handy, I might have fainted or worse. Supplements can be very powerful. Please be careful out there. Watch yourself for signs of side effects when you are taking them. Do a little research about what could happen.

I'm a tiny bit angry at Ferriss for not mentioning such a thing. He does stress that you should make sure you are getting adequate B-vitamins. He doesn't mention specifically that ALA can sap thiamine, especially if you are an alcoholic (which I am not.) And the meal that I ate was rich in thiamine, actually, so I don't think it was that. But ALA IS a powerful regulator of blood sugar levels. And obviously, for me, I was not able to access enough energy to finish my walk without serious consequences.

Okay, gotta get SOME work done this week. Be safe!