My nutty nut-free diet

And NOT by any means a recommendation

In April 2015 I had dinner with an old friend in Paris, who also happens to be the retired founder of a storied biotech company.  He looked in unusually splendid shape and being a competitive sort I was most curious why.  He told me elliptically that much of what we know about nutrition is wrong.  I eventually wheedled out of him the information that he had converted to a Paleo (very low carb/sugar) diet.

That dinner conversation was life altering — well at least diet altering. I gave up all deserts, bread, rice, potatoes, oatmeal breakfast, cranked up on pumpkin seeds and almonds and began to ferment my yogurt for at least 24 hours (to reduce sugar content).

Later that year, in September I decided to take a glucose/lipid test.  Horrors: my total and bad cholesterol had gone up. It had always been highly variable and borderline high, so I consulted a cardiologist. She wanted to put me on statins immediately, but I asked for an angio-CT (basically x-rays of my coronary arteries)

It showed a low single digit calcium score (which I’m told is good) but also mild arterial plaque.

And apparently I had the bad kind of bad cholesterol (small molecule) and the not so good kind of good cholesterol (again small molecule)

The cardiologist of course saw this as proof positive that I should be on statins. 

I refused.  Another physician friend of mine then suggested I look into the Esselstyn diet http://www.dresselstyn.com/site/

This is supposed to have the potential to *reverse* plaque but it would also require further measures, namely going vegan – and giving up oil and nuts.

I then happened to be in Stockholm and discovered that oatmeal yogurt is “thing”. Further investigation suggested that yogurt making bacteria can pretty much chow down on anything with carbs or sugar, so my new breakfast routine became “yogurt” created by blending oatmeal, quinoa, chia seeds, hemp protein and bananas and letting that blend ferment for several days….

Lunch comprises cake whose “batter” consists of fermented quinoa, spiced up Indian style, and baked with no oil or butter.

Dinner? I don’t eat dinner. A glass of red wine does the trick.

Sticking to the diet is no easy task but the results have been remarkable. I also lost about 20 pounds..

This is *not* a recommendation.  Worked for me and may not work for anyone else…