Keto Sushi Handrolls

This is one of my favorite meals. Adding seafood to our diets is essential, and I highly recommend wild caught seafood whenever possible to minimize toxins and maximize nutrients. Seafood has long-chain fats that cannot be found in any other food, including DHA and EPA, and is also rich in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins D and B2 (riboflavin), as well as calcium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, iodine, magnesium, and potassium. Seaweed paper (called nori) is also highly nutritous, containing as much protein as some meat, as well as high levels of iodine, an essential mineral.

Keto Salmon Handrolls:

1 lb wild salmon, seasoned with ground ginger and soy sauce, and sauteed in butter until medium rare

a few ounces of salmon roe (fish eggs), optional

1 package nori (seaweed paper)

1 hothouse cucumber, julienned

1 carrot, grated fine, optional

1 red or yellow bell pepper, julienned

2 ripe avocados, julienned or sliced fine

4 scallions, sliced fine

one jar of pickled ginger

wasabi

tamari (gluten-free soy sauce)

Instructions:

Take a nori seaweed wrap and lay a slice of salmon down diagonally, adding your desired julienned vegetables and toppings, and roll up, pinching the bottom and adding roe, tamari, and wasabi to the top. Enjoy, with bites of ginger before and after!

Insulin Resistance

Why are so many of us overweight, and what links does obesity have to diabetes and other major disease of our time, like heart disease and cancer? Even the "experts" agree that these diseases are all linked - its called the "Metabolic Syndrome," and that insulin plays a major role.

The part that is unclear to most nutritionist and doctors is the cause and effect. Most health care professionals believe that obesity is caused by simply eating too many calories and that its the obesity itself that causes insulin problems in the body. I believe they have it backwards.

Insulin is a hormone in the body that plays many roles. Its primary job is to enable us to use glucose as fuel for our cells. It is, in fact, the only hormone that causes fat to be stored. We have insulin receptors on our cells - all cells. Heart, liver, adipose (fat), muscle, and brain all have insulin receptors that sense the presence of glucose in our blood stream, and allow the addition of GLUT4 receptors on the cell membrane to uptake the glucose into our cells.

When the body is overwhelmed by the presence of carbohydrate, the insulin receptors begin to stop being as productive. They become resistance to the presence of glucose. (Fructose as well, which is a major cause of the problem, and I'll get to that in a little bit.) Sometimes the receptors work properly, but they are unable to signal the introduction of the GLUT4 receptors that actually absorb the glucose into the cell. Either way, the body responds by releasing additional insulin from the "islets of Langerhans" cells in the pancreas. This additional release of insulin has tragic consequences.

Frequently, the first cells to become resistance to insulin, and thus become unable to use the glucose as fuel, are the muscle cells. Usually adipose tissue is less insulin resistant. So the body responds to this additional insulin by dumping fat and protein into the fat cells. See, its not even the glucose that gets stored. Many in the field of nutrition talk about glucose as being the "preferred fuel" but that doesn't make sense, as glucose is simply empty calories. The body is poisoned by the glucose because it raised blood sugar levels, which have to be kept within strict limits - between 4-6 mM. Because the body wants to be rid of the glucose, it stores the fat and protein in the blood stream for energy use after the glucose is burned off. And any excess glucose is stored as well.

Fructose is even more poisonous to the body. It only exists in the wild in very small amounts in fruit. Most fruit grows in the summer, or in tropical climates, when there is ample sunlight available to also produce large amount of vitamin D in the body. Vitamin D plays a big role in the digestions of carbohydrates and the release of insulin, although this relationship is not well understood. Fructose is digested exclusively by the liver, and has to be packaged into very-low-density-lipoproteins (VLDLs) to be carried through the blood stream. These VLDLs have strong links to heart disease. Also, the fructose often get stored in the liver, and has strong links to fatty liver and liver cirrhosis, also known as "non-alcoholic fatty liver disease." Fructose makes up half of the sugar molecule, as well as about half of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and has never been present in the human diet in the amounts seen today. Mainly this consumption comes from soda (which I call the "cigarette of the future"). There is a growing body of evidence that the fructose itself is what causes the insulin resistance in the first place, and creates the situation where the body can't effectively digest glucose.

So how do we improve our insulin sensitivity, especially in the muscle cells? How do we get our bodies to begin to use the glucose in our blood streams as fuel, rather than storing it as fat, along with the dietary fat and protein? How do we lose weight?

There are a number of things we can do. The first and most obvious, which I have written about extensively, is to cut our carbohydrates, especially sugar and other forms of fructose like HFCS and excessive fruit. A little fruit is not the problem, but it's also not the health food it's made out to be. It's meant to be eaten in the fall at harvest time, in order to store fat for winter, or eaten in tropical climates with 8 hours a day of sunlight on the skin.

In addition to vitamin D (which is needed in much larger amounts in places like Minnesota -I take 10,000 IUs a day), the other less obvious solutions include supplements of magnesium and fish oil. The long chain fatty acids in fish oil improve our cell membrane structure, and allow the body to heal from insulin resistance.

And most importantly, we can engage in a type of exercise called "interval training". This includes small periods of high heartrate-inducing exercise, followed by periods of rest. Usually about 60 seconds on, and then 75 seconds off. This is more effective than long periods of cardio, which is suspected to be hard on the heart and nervous system. It's not so much the "calories" burned by the exercise, as it is the increased insulin receptors that the exercise creates on the muscle cells. When we have additional insulin receptors on our muscle cells, our body is able to use the (small) amount of glucose that we consume as fuel, rather than only storing it and the food we eat with it, as fat. 

This not only enables us to continue to safely eat a little carbohydrate, but it helps us lose weight and improves our resistance against metabolic diseases, which are the number one killer in our society!

Eating Low-Carb for Health and Weight Loss

THIS IS AN OLDER ARTICLE, I NO LONGER RECOMMEND A LOW-CARB DIET EXCEPT IN SPECIAL SITUATIONS! AFTER SEED OILS ARE DETOXED, WE CAN SLOWLY INCREASE CARBOHYDRATES AND DECREASE FATS FOR INSULIN SENSITIVITY AND HEALTH! ASK ME FOR MORE INFO!

Some of us have health problems that require a more strict Carnivore way-of-eating, or even Beef-Water-Salt, which is the ultimate elimination diet. Some of us don’t have metabolic disease or weight to lose, and do well on a more animal-based diet including the least toxic plant foods. I would love to meet with you and help you find the version that works best for your body.

Once we realize that the food pyramid has been upside-down our whole lives, what do we eat? We pretty much have to re-think everything that goes in our mouths. They have literally turned the truth completely upside-down on us! They tell us that sugar is innocent and that animal fat is killing us, and the exact opposite is true. Sugar, grains, and industrial seed oils are killing us and animal fat is the healthiest food we can eat. Saturated fat is absolute health food! The Inuit (Eskimos) are the healthiest people we've ever found and they eat 80% animal fat. There is an amazing researcher responsible for this discovery, Vilhjalmer Steffansson. You can read his book, My Life With the Eskimo, on google books.

The question people most often ask me is, What should I eat? So here is a list of meal and snack ideas.

Breakfast: easy peasy, as long as you love eggs. If you don't, it's time to learn. After a couple days of eggs for breakfast, you will start to crave them right when you wake up. Eggs have an amino acid profile of 100. They essentially set the standard for all other proteins. Plus they are full of extremely healthy cholesterol (doesn't cause heart disease, that is a huge myth), other healthy fats, and vitamins. If you aren’t feeling like having eggs, yogurt with berries is a great option. For weight loss, choose nonfat yogurt without “nonfat milk powder” which is just additional lactose.

If you eat some less toxic plant foods and tolerate dairy:

Frittata: 8 eggs, 1 cup of cheddar cheese, half cup cream, 10 pieces of pastured bacon or sausage, any other ingredients you want like zucchini, sweet potato, or olives. Fry up the meat and veggies in some butter or bacon fat, then stir in the beaten eggs, cream, and cheese, then bake in the oven for 20-30 mins at 350 degrees until cooked through. Delish.

Another amazing breakfast recipe that can be premade and frozen to have something quick to grab in the morning: Bacon Muffins! These are fabulous. There is a recipe on my blog.

Lunch or dinner ideas:
Wild caught salmon, with melted cheese, dill, and lemon.

Grilled brats with pickles and mustard, with or without cheese melted on top.

Coconut curry -  soup or stirfry with any veggies or meat you want, fish sauce, ginger, garlic. I like to use half broth and half coconut milk to cut down on fat and calories.

Sweet Potato Shepard's Pie, heavy on the meat and non-root vegetables and light on the sweet potatoes, covered in butter and/or cheese.

Zucchini noodles with homemade alfredo sauce and your choice of animal protein.

Any big piece of meat like a steak or some oven baked chicken, with a side like squash, sweet potato, or cold cucumber salad, etc. Baked chicken breast is really good with herbs, garlic, and butter smeared on it before you bake it.

Pot roast. So easy and so good. Brown the roast in a hot pan with some bacon fat or butter in it, then pour broth over the top, add onion and garlic powder, and a couple carrots and cook on low heat for many hours.

Three awesome dessert ideas: yogurt with berries and a drizzle of honey, Panna Cotta, or Egg Custard. Recipes are on my blog. These can be made with honey.

Hope that gives you some good ideas to get you started! Remember you only need to measure carbohydrates, keeping fat low and protein high for weight loss. Keep your carbohydrates below 50 grams/day for weight loss for most people - about 2 small servings, spaced throughout the day. Then eat all the beef, pastured pork and chicken, yogurt, eggs, and fish that you desire and watch the pounds fall away! Happy eating!