GESTALT

GESTALT

I have been trying to think of a word I once knew that refers to how the mind, once having learned or seen something new, then sees the same thing repeated more often afterwards, since the mind has been sensitized to whatever it was. Separate unnoticed items suddenly coalesce into something you didn’t see before.

Aha! I quit trying so hard and it just appeared in my mind--Gestalt! I’ll go back to the top and type it in for the title.

The first instance of gestalt that I can remember is after I went to the Chevrolet dealer in town to buy a Geo Metro. I was riding the company van every day with a dozen or so people out to the power plant where I worked, which was about forty miles from my house.

I had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and was taking an immuno-suppressant drug. I got sick so often I ran out of sick leave, so I knew I had to get out of the van and start driving myself to work, and I wanted the highest mileage car I could get.

I was very specific on the car I needed--a used Geo Metro with 5 speed manual transmission, and no extras except a heater. I had read reports that it got 54-55 miles per gallon of gas, and that’s what I needed to match the cost of the van.

After a couple of weeks, the dealership called me up to show me a car they had found for me. They had been unable to find a Geo Metro to my specs, but they had a Ford Festiva with 5 speed manual transmission and a heater. I had never seen (or at least noticed) a Festiva, but I researched it and found it got 54 mpg on the highway, and Consumers Reports listed it as very reliable, so I bought it. That was in 1995, and I still have it, running good, with 308K miles on it.

But that’s not what I sat down to write about. What astounded my wife and I was that after I got the Festiva, everywhere we looked there were more! They became so noticeable that we would just point and say, “There goes a red one!” or “There goes a blue one!” and we both understood perfectly.

In a week we went from “Never heard of it” to “They’re all over the place!” I’m sure there were not more Festivas on the road--our increased knowledge had changed our perception. That’s my understanding of gestalt!

Now I’m having the same experience with the diet I’ve started. A couple of months ago, in the spring, I was dismayed to find I was nearly 240 lbs and my belt and pants were straining to encircle me. 40” waist and 240 lbs seem to define a red line in my mind that I just cannot cross. So I started my annual end of winter diet again.

I usually do a modified Atkins diet after a three day fast to erase my insulin levels and kill the hunger. I have been researching such low carb, increased fat, fiber and protein diets and I find more and more research supports this as a healthy alternative to just counting calories.

The great thing about this diet is ignoring calories. Fat is far more filling and the sense of fullness lasts for hours, not just minutes as carbohydrates do. There is a reason Chinese food leaves you hungry in an hour--it’s all white rice and corn starch--major carbs, which trigger an insulin burst and then the crash.

I lost 9 lbs the first week, and after nearly three months I’ve lost 31 lbs and still slowly losing weight.
I’ve heard this diet described as a “no white” diet. No white sugar, no white potatoes, no white rice, no white pasta, nothing made from white flour, etc.

The only good white thing I can think of is cauliflower--eat all that you want! In fact, if you steam it, mash it with lots of butter and a little garlic salt you will think you’re eating mashed potatoes.

For breakfast I have a Gardenburger™ with a big pat of butter on top. I eat it like a pancake. It’s very filling, but doesn’t leave you with that sick feeling that too many pancakes do. I also drink a tall glass of Kirkland™ Soy Milk with vanilla, which I use to take my morning medicine (I’m still on immunosuppressants).

For snacks I eat peanuts, cashews, pecans, walnuts--big handfuls and calories are not important. Nuts fill you up quick, unlike chips. I can’t eat just one bag of Wavy Lays™.

Did I mention that my wife and I are vegetarian? Meat and milk makes Carolyn’s stomach hurt, so when she decided to go veggie, so did I. I was raised that way, and it’s easier for two to do it if you’re cooking and eating together.

For dinner we have all the vegetables we want: broccoli, Zucchini, asparagus, Brussel’s sprouts, green beans, etc. either steamed or nuked with lots of butter or cheese. We’ve found that Mexican food is wonderfully suited to this diet, and we love Mexican food. Beans, onions, peppers, avocados, and lots of cheese. There are some carbs in the tortillas, but not many if they’re thin enough.

Remember, if you don’t eat carbs, you can have all the fat you want. Contrary to conventional wisdom, fats are not only good for you but are essential for good neurological health.

I’ve been waiting for years for the first large scale study on people who live on low fat diets and early onset of Alzheimer’s. I suspect a link, but I can’t prove it yet.

I do know that one hundred years ago, Johns Hopkins University hospital was curing about a third of infantile and juvenile epileptics whose seizures were uncontrolled by any other method. They completely removed all traces of carbohydrates from their diet and fed them all the fat they wanted--lots of meat, butter, cheese, etc. They remained on this strict regimen until they went through puberty, then were able to resume a regular diet without the seizures returning.

Anyway, back to gestalt. Since I’ve been on this diet, everywhere I look someone is mentioning new research, or a new book is out, or a TV or radio program is mentioning low carb high fat diets.

I heard Bob Edwards on SiriusXM™ radio interview Daniel Lieberman on his new book The Story of the Human Body. His field of study is evolutionary biology, and his book contends that humans were adapted for a hunter/gatherer diet, which has few cereal grains or sugars, and mostly consisted of nuts, fruits and wild meat, with fibrous leafy vegetables and tubers added during hard times.

He attributes the rise of many health problems to an agricultural diet which started about ten thousand years ago when men first started tilling the land and planting crops, especially grains. He dates the onset of many diseases and epidemics including heart disease, diabetes and tooth decay, to the inundation of starches and sugars into our bodies, which were not designed for them.

I went to my dentist’s office last month for a routine teeth cleaning, and the dental hygienist was amazed that I had no plaque or scale on my teeth. What usually takes an hour or so with ultrasonic tools took about ten minutes with a simple scraper tool. Since my less than rigorous dental hygiene was not the cause, it must have been my low carb diet!

I was listening to the radio program “On Point” a few days ago, and they were having a panel discussion on low carb diets with three doctors. The one doctor that still touted low fat dieting was trying to make the point that if you limit any food group, you will lower calories and lose weight. He was right, but he missed the part about carbs creating hunger by triggering insulin rushes. You can lose weight on a low fat diet, but you will be fighting hunger the whole time. Several surveys and studies have shown that people lose weight faster on a low carb diet, and they tend to stick to it better because their hunger is satisfied by the fats.

Last night I watched a special PBS NOVA program on The Ghosts of Machu Picchu, a city built high in the Andes mountains by the Incas. The archeologists and other scientists were very interested in how they managed to grow enough food to sustain a city built on top of a rugged mountain peak.

They analyzed bones found in the ruins with scientific instruments and found a higher than average amount of Carbon 13. This isotope is indicative of a diet largely of corn. Corn is mostly carbohydrate, with easily digested sugars. It’s no accident that High Fructose Corn Syrup is becoming the dominant sweetener in most processed foods and drinks. It’s cheap and plentiful!

The other confirming evidence was the terrible condition of their teeth, with great decay evident in young adults. Once again, carbs have proven to be detrimental to teeth, as well as the pancreas, liver and circulatory system.

At the risk of oversimplification, I visualize starches and sugars as alcohol, burning fast and furiously, and needing a lot of insulin quickly to deal with all the fast energy. Fats and oils, on the other hand, burn slowly, spreading their energy over a much longer time frame, and not needing any insulin at all. Your body needs energy, and if there are no carbohydrates to burn, your body will burn the fats instead, actually lowering the lipids and cholesterol in your circulatory system, and using the stored fat in your body as well.

So here I am on a quasi Paleo veggie diet, losing weight and feeling better than I’ve felt in a long time. Someday when I reach my weight goal, I will have to introduce a little more carbohydrate to get stabilized, but I’ll never go back to all the starch and sugar I used to eat. I like having healthier teeth and reducing my chances of type 2 diabetes. I also like the feeling of being full most of the day, with no cravings bedeviling me.

I also like the fact I need to buy some new pants and belts. I’m against the last hole in my belt, and all the other holes have been used in this last year.

Don Rogers
Sept 5, 2014

Late edition, gestalt still operative:

Shedding pounds with a high fat diet

Can you lose weight with a diet that places no restrictions on your fat intake? Those who swear by the Atkins plan and other low-carbohydrate regimes have long insisted you can--and new research backs them up, reports The New York Times.
In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, a racially diverse group of 148 obese men and women were given diets to follow. Half were put on low-fat regimes, which limited their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, while the other half followed low-carb diets that involved eating mostly protein and fat.
Over the course of a year, those on the low-carb diet lost more than eight pounds more body fat, and showed greater improvements in cholesterol levels and other measures of cardiovascular health. Those on the low-fat diet did lose weight, but most of it was muscle, not fat.
“This is one of the first long-term trials that’s given these diets without calorie restrictions,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study. “It shows that in a free living setting, cutting your carbs helps you lose weight without focusing on calories.”

THE WEEK, Sept 19, 2014, page 21 under Health and Science.
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