Stevie Puckett

Category: Wellness

  • Nutritive Mismatch

    Today I keep thinking about Mark Scatzker’s book “The End of Craving.” I read it at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite books of the year. There were many interesting case studies and ideas in the book, and I highly recommend it.

    In particular, my thoughts return to Dana Small’s research and ideas about what she calls nutritive mismatch. When the tongue senses the sweetness of food and drink, the stomach expects to find the corresponding amount of energy in the stomach. When the two calibrations don’t match up, the work of metabolism is left undone. Undigested sugars are left to float around in the bloodstream!

    After learning this, I immediately changed my diet to eliminate artificial sweeteners. I’ve heard arguments before regarding reasons to stop using them, but this one tipped the scales to avoid for me. It’s a fine line because I want to eat in a low-carb way and believe that artificial sweeteners allow me to have my cake and eat it too, hahaha, but now I see that they may throw a wrench in the works of the body’s calculations.

    It is shocking to have an understanding that gets blown out of the water. It has happened several times in my lifetime regarding nutritional information alone. I hope that by continuing to learn and to be willing to try the new ideas in my own life that one day I will truly have an optimum way of eating that serves me well.

  • Neuroplasticity and Healing

    Obnoxious title to this Revero podcast by Shawn Baker, but it is a good listen for the section about neuroplasticity and healing. How they are talking about managing your thoughts daily to make a new habit of mind is familiar to me. The maxim, “What you think about you become,” is even uttered.

  • Shawn Baker

    I wrote yesterday about Kelly Hogan and Zero Carb Life. Today, I want to mention the very first modern person I ever heard of who made an intentional and ongoing nutritional plan to eat only meat. That person is Dr. Shawn Baker.

    It was fall 2019, and I was exploring the low-carb rabbit hole on Reddit, and someone mentioned Dr. Shawn Baker and some of the points he makes about what he called a carnivore diet.

    The funny thing is I didn’t recognize the name right away, but when I saw his picture, I recognized him because my husband was in school with him 25 years ago or so! This group of guys and their significant others would eat out together for all-you-can-eat crab legs or tacos or whatever the special of the day was on Tuesday nights after work. I met Shawn Baker at a few of those meals. He was the tallest and most muscle-bound man I’d ever seen IRL, and I remember he played Rugby.

    When the group got together to eat out, he would keep eating and eating and eating at the restaurant that advertised all-you-can-eat deals until the restaurant manager would come out and say they had to cut him off. Then, he would argue with them a bit about whether this was an all-you-can-eat place or not. Although it felt outlandish to me at the time, it’s nothing compared to his current talking points. Suffice it to say, he’s been prepared and preparing for battle for years and years. God bless him. It’s amazing to catch up with him again in life and see him still saying the things that are unpopular to say and, at the same time, helping so many people in his unique way.

    So, this new way of eating called carnivore that I was learning about in late 2019 intrigued me. I was pretty worried about trying it, though, because I had electrolyte issues when I would go very low carb. A couple of years earlier, I learned through trying keto that the leg cramps and sleeplessness could be cured by adding more fat. Yes, fat. I had tried supplementing potassium and broth and adding salt to everything, but adding fat solved the issue.

    Dr. Baker is also an inspiration to me. Thanks to him, I made my first run at switching to a carnivore way of eating in January 2020. I lost 25 pounds in one month that month, and it was easy. The pounds just flew off. I have never had results like that before in my life.

    In the past, the most I had ever lost after 18 months of trying was 30 pounds, and it took me only six months to put it back on once I folded and let carbs back in at a rate of more than 40 grams a day. It was just not maintainable for me.

    The carnivore way of eating is maintainable, though. It strikes all the right chords for me, yet to others, it may look and sound like quite a weird idea of how to eat for good health. I can see now as I prepare to begin again that I’ll just have to have the courage to be a little weird and a lot determined to stick to the carnivore way of eating plan.

  • Zero Carb

    Kelly Hogan of My Zero Carb Life is an inspiration to me. This week, I ran across this post, which reminded me of her story. Meat cookies are what she calls the little hamburger patties that she has eaten many a meal. She is so funny.

    I’m pretty sure I will need to do what she did to lose the extra weight I’m carrying. I’ve made a few passes at it before, but so far, I give in to sweet tastes, then I meander around off-target for a while before trying again. No sweet tastes, ever, that’s the bit I must remember.

    I try to make room for honey or fruit a la info from Dr. Paul Saladino, but probably I need to avoid it altogether. All I get from letting some in is wanting more. I’ve already learned from following Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades for a couple of decades that if I don’t get under 40 carbs a day, I will not lose weight anyway.

    I’m pretty sure it will take a Kelly Hogan approach for me to get ‘er done and it’s about time to stop messing around. Luckily, I’ve already locked in a change over the past few months that will be very helpful for moving in the right direction.

  • Be Expansive

    What follows is an excerpt from my book Bliss Or Bust: Uplifting Thoughts.

    Whatever you like about yourself, appreciate that specifically and often. The most important thing is that you feel good. Take it easy on yourself.

    Pay attention to your emotions and do something about it when you notice you aren’t feeling good — change your focus! Be open and expansive about allowing yourself to feel good. It’s not easy to let go of how you’ve been thinking, but it’s worth the effort if you want different results.

    You are where you are, but you can start again at any time. It doesn’t matter what happened before. What matters is what happens next, and your results going forward are directly related to feeling good now.