Junk Feed - thank you chocolate

[FrankoBear]

It has been a tough week.

Had to fight for my job. The bureaucracy was muscle flexing. Must be some shifting, some musical armchairs up in the corporate suites. The ramifications shake the workplace foundations as efficiencies, disruption and innovation words buzz around like angry hornets.

Anyhow. There was a cortisol spike. My body said “Eat, there may be lean times ahead (not as in beach body ready lean, men’s fitness magazine cover lean), but no food for you lean.” My brain can get chatty when the body sends the wrong signals.

Driving to the petrol station for car fuel, instead of listening to my standard nutrition or physiology podcast, I listed to commercial FM radio. What a load of superficial air waste. But I couldn’t stop listening. And at the end of the drive I bought and ate some chocolate.

Then my joints started to ache, I felt tired, brain fog moved in etc. But in that fog I realised we are fed junk from everywhere in modern western society.

It’s not just the highly processed foods and industrial seed oils entering our digestive tracts, it’s the television (or screens) we watch, the social media we enrage in, and the pollution that comes spewing out over the airwaves, in-between songs by long-dead rock’n’rollers.

Our junk inputs are multiple, not just what we eat. The battle for hearts and minds is real. Sick hearts and sedated minds.

[ 0.2mmol/L betahydroxybutyrate this morning. Maybe dodged a sharp insulin spike.]

By going keto I had cut out the junk. The keto podcasts and YouTube presentations replaced TV and radio. Nutrition documentaries replaced Hollywood churn romantic comedies or corporatised action and violence dressed up as heroic acts. In the morning I went out and walked bearfeet in the sunshine, rather than listen to the news. Or, I went swimming. I was out tending and watering the food forest and companion plants. Or, I was checking the surf. A whole lot changed that i hadn’t really noticed until I was re-exposed to the junk this past week. The junk filled mainstream society. A polluted place.

The wider world as a junk feed was a revelation to me. I’ve been so focused on nutrition. My wife looked at me when I mentioned it and said “You’re starting to wake up.”

[Fangs]

I really enjoyed reading your post.
I so agree life is a junk filled sewer of crap bombarding us all the time. When we do wake up like you mentioned we can bob and weave thru the stupid of it all and find the good information out there, the good acts of others, the great benefits this planet offers, like a nice hike in the sunshine or just sitting on the back porch soaking up the rays and relaxing in good form.

I am Carnivore. I eat only meat BUT rarely I will have some very dark chocolate. Like the 85% kind cause I just want a taste of chocolate. It is never anything driving me to it, it is my body saying, hey, you love love love chocolate, just have a few squares and enjoy…and I do. But the nice thing is I don’t want it after for a long time. When something is available on your own schedule to be incorporated into your life you can space it out simply…when the world smacks us around with pollution of all kinds thrown at us, we react in so many ways that are damaging and not nurturing. I so get that!!

One thing on Carnivore eating is the brain fog has lifted. I also don’t want so much of this society in my life, lol, I am like you and turn from this stuff very fast. Good post.

[atomicspacebunny]

Your body wanted the chocolate, nothing wrong with that, people think they are living in some kind of cultic monastery in their mind when they go on a ketogenic diet like they are on some kind of eternal vow of silence and living in a religious retreat?

They forget that they created a shield against the refined carbohydrates when they do eat them!

Being keto is not a life sentence to not indulge occasionally on the food of the sugar burners, the only prison is in your mind and what you choose to eat as your primary source of nutrition?

How dare those mere mortals (sugar burners) tempt me with a candy bar?

[Fangs]

sugar burners LOL
that is funny…now I will look at them different now with that saying in my head HA

[CrackerJax]

Chocolate is natures antidepressant and is very good for you. As long as its not filled with too much junk!

[Shinita]

True, there are various kinds of pollution. I stopped listening to TV and commercial radio happens because there are some great stuff there but when it starts its political propaganda, I stop listening. The most popular music is pretty horrible IMO and it’s not the genre, too many of the popular songs are really stupid and the music isn’t very good either. It’s good we can find our own style. I stopped watching TV a few decades ago.

My love for chocolate is eternal though. I eat it practically every day, a bit fatty but I still can afford some even when I try to lose fat. I do my own since years (it’s not real chocolate, it has no cocoa butter because it didn’t improve the taste much but it’s what chocolate means to me now), I keep 3 little jars in the kitchen all the time, with different sweetness and carb content. The carbiest, sweetest one (with a little xylitol if we have some) is for my high-carber SO and the unsweetened one is only for me. Meals at home almost always include chocolate for both of us and I can’t see anything wrong with it. I don’t crave it, keto cured that right away but it’s nice to have.

People have very different ideas about what junk is, of course. Ketoers have some wildly different ideas about those as well. Some think keto cakes and chocolate are no food. I consider them normal food, I just need to eat something even more proper before. My SO has no such conditions, cake is the perfect breakfast for him. And if I look at the ingredients, it’s great food and he thrives on it… I don’t know what exactly junk means for me but definitely not a good, nutritious cake that has no added sugar, no flour and nothing else I might consider bad. Not like I consider flour so bad in general, it works for many people but it’s quite bad for many others and people tend to overuse it anyway.
Some people doesn’t look at the ingredients. If we consider it pancake, it doesn’t matter it’s basically scrambled eggs, it’s junk. I’ve read it on a whole30 page, I don’t know if they are all like this but it’s pretty ridiculous to me… But it shows that we have very different ideas about junk. I met a lot of similar ketoers on the Net. If we make something that substitutes a carby stuff or it’s simply some sweets, nothing like the carby kind but not the sacred and one true way of meat and veggies, it’s junk, no matter what and we are weak persons with cravings and we don’t even try to get rid of our shackles but cling to our mental and possibly physical poisons. I totally disagree, of course though I agree that some people do it wrong. I am a hedonist and I have no problem with people who consider food just fuel, I expect them to accept that most people enjoy eating various food and it’s not necessarily a problem. But it’s very interesting to talk with people with a wildly different attitute towards eating and desires. Once someone tried to talk me out of being a hedonist (or something, I never got it). We totally couldn’t understand each other, I am sure we had no idea about how the other thought even after several long messages.

I’m sorry, I got carried away but it’s such a juicy topic, it makes one think and remember…

[KetoSnaps]

The wider world as a junk feed was a revelation to me. I’ve been so focused on nutrition. My wife looked at me when I mentioned it and said “You’re starting to wake up.”

Oh my word, I’d never even thought about this! Thank you so much for posting it.

Hope all’s well, @FrankoBear. Sorry to hear it’s been a tough week.

[AuntJane]

It’s not just the highly processed foods and industrial seed oils entering our digestive tracts, it’s the television (or screens) we watch, the social media we enrage in, and the pollution that comes spewing out over the airwaves, in-between songs by long-dead rock’n’rollers.

OMG agree with you so much!!! I have put myself on a path to cut down my Facebook interactions to at most 2 hours per week, and may go below that. I intend to spread that out over 4 days per week. I had my first Facebook-free night on Wednesday and was like, what do I miss? I realized it was CONNECTIONS, so I decided to start calling my friends and family more often. What a concept… and how much we’ve lost to the cheap interactions we find on social media. It was a video by Dr Robert Lustig that inspired me, when he said that Facebook is one of the apps that makes people MORE depressed!

[FrankoBear]

Have been working all day. Saturday here. Working on left over work from the working week that needs to be done before Monday.

The chocolate craving is so strong!

I went outside and made a wire protection cage for the small fig tree in the food forest. I watered some trees. Fresh air activity sunshine. It was great. But the cravings remain.

I drove down to the market. Surprisingly I bought some local strawberries and, since it’s Spring, some lamb liver. And chocolate… 70% chocolate.

Fried some slices of lamb liver with some slivers of home grown spring onion in butter. Slivers and livers.

Now here is the thing flash fried liver and 70% chocolate is amazing. It only took 20g of chocolate plus the livers and all cravings have switched off. 6g carbs eaten in that fix. The horse I fell off? I just caught its tail.

Listening to Dr. Cate Shanahan on the Peak Human podcast.

[Fangs]

very smart to eat real good foods and then see if the craving exists.

for me chocolate has to be in my plan. Carnivore here and chocolate is not recommended LOL but for it to fit my life I had to modify a smidge.

with chocolate in my plan for the day, I find I do not crave it AT ALL.

I went out and bought like 6 of the lowest dark chocolate bars on the market. Tasted tested all of them. One stood out. I love love love Endangered Species dark chocolate. 17g carbs for 5 squares. I slowly dissolve them in my mouth and just experience them and enjoy the heck out of them.

at 5 squares every day for a good bit til one day I was down to 3 squares cause I couldn’t stand any more.

now I eat 2 squares ONLY when I truly crave it. which is more and more rare.

I don’t think I kicked my chocolate lovers love of it but I have trained my body into a truth about chocolate over time.

I like to do little experiments on me. When I wanted my 2 squares of chocolate I went off and ate a can of tuna and mayo. Nope. Then I had some pepperoni and cheese. Yup…after those 2 things no chocolate was eaten that day.

I absolutely need ‘plans’ and ‘controls’ in my life. I require them. So for me I control and plan for everything I need in my life when it comes to my food intake. It is truly the only thing that works for me and being longer on the lc bandwagon I now have a ton of fixes for what might ail me when it comes to food situations.

eh, this all works for me, everyone’s mileage will vary a ton cause our food is so darn personal to each of us…physically and emotionally.