Dr. Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet -- What are you eating?
 

Ok, I'm getting a little weird with my food now. I now realize I'm supposed to be eating more eggs so I acutally put an egg on my no-bread reuben. Heh! It didn't quite cook under the broiler... technique needs work. But I truly didn't taste it with all the mayo, mustard and sauerkraut in there.

I invented something that reminds me of peanut butter nougat... or a payday bar:

2 Oz Greek Yogurt (mine is greek yogurt cheese, extra, extra fat and super thick)
.5-1 oz peanut butter
Da Vince Vanilla syrup to taste

Mix well... oh me oh my.

Usually for breakfast I eat 2 egg yolks and 2 strips bacon and tomatoes work well with that. Greek yogurtl, cheese and maybe a few berries occasionally.

For lunch I make cream vegetable soups from scratch. Or the regular chicken, tuna, shrimp, ham, or turkey salads with diced celery, onions and pickles.

Supper I saute meat with onions, mushrooms, bell peppers to add carbs. Then I can add salads or extra veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, etc. If I have fish I usually make cold slaw.

Snacks can include beef jerky, cheese, nuts depending on what I need to fill up my ratios and/or if I get hungry or not.

My menus are very simple but they work for me and for some reason I don't get bored like I did when I ate almost zero carb.

Are you able to stay within your protein limit with all that meat? I find I'm having a hard time even including a few strips of bacon.

Nancy, I find I have to be creative to stay within my protein ranges - especially since I'm counting the protein in veggies/carbs/dairy etc.

Brekkie today: 100 gms greek yogurt, 50 gms mascarpone, 50 gms raspberries/blackberries, 1 Splenda

Lunch yesterday: raw veggies (peppers,cukes,celery) w/dip of 1/4 cup sour cream, 1/8 cup mayo, 2 TBSP hot sauce, chili seasoning

Lunch today: egg salad (1 egg + 1 yolk + 1 TBSP mayo) on 2 ryvita crackers

Small piece of bread with peanut butter
Cream cheese and egg pancake fried in bacon grease, topped with butter and SF maple syrup
A few french fries with lots of ranch dressing
Bacon
Bunless cheese burger with side of mayo
Green beans and bacon sauteed in butter

I did pretty good with my ranges today if I subtract plant protein.

I threw together something similar the other day: equal parts PB and coconut oil (I used 1 Tbs each), with a dash of SF vanilla syrup. I just stirred it all together at room temperature (the PB was chilled, but the CO still mixed in smoothly). It's super rich and yummy. :) I'm not eating dairy right now, but normally I'm *obsessed* with strained yogurt...ahh, lucky you!

Must try this!!

Are you feeling well and have enough energy? Seems so little food, I would starve. Do you always have the same breakfast or have other breakfasts to suggest? How do you make the hot sauce?

oh, that's just a few examples of my individual meals - not a daily menu. I actually am feeling great following the Dr. K plan! And, my 'philosophy', if you want to call it that, is that I'm less concerned with eating the specific foods that Dr. K outlines and more concerned with keeping my protein/carbs to the correct levels. I'm also working to keep my fat up - but am hopeful, from all I've read, that by decreasing my protein I will move from this stall. As I only weigh monthly, the jury is still out but I have a high level of belief that this plan will work for me. It just simply makes sense.

I've been posting my complete menus for the last 15 days (since I started this WOE) on my menu blog (see address in signature). My average calories per day have actually been higher than I was eating before starting Dr. K's plan. My protein now is 1/2 to 1/3 of what I previously was eating and my carbs about double what I was eating.

The hot sauce is a commercial one - I've used both a hot wing sauce and a chipotle sauce but I think anything that adds a bit of spice would work - even just tabasco sauce. Zero carb/protein. We actually buy it from a USA food store here in Oz.

I eat mostly eggs, canned mackerel/tuna/sardines in oil, some pork, beef and bacon, olive oil, mayo, salads, tea/herbal tea, cream...

I tend to eat only lunch and dinner and don't get really hungry. Often I don't meet the carb requirement and sometimes go past the fat one. I do best on a repetitive menu because it's easier to forget about food. I don't feel deprived from the lesser amounts of protein (52 g allowed).

Typical day:

B: 20 oz coffee + 4 tbsp full-fat cream
L: 2-3 eggs hard-boiled or fried or omelet with mushrooms/onions, bacon, mayo
D: mackerel with salad, pickles, mayo/olive oil
Lots of tea throughout the day

Gee, I don't think I'd *ever* be able to sustain this if I counted the vegetable protein. Even just counting the dairy, eggs and meat it is hard to stay low enough, though I'm managing.

Sample menus? Well here is yesterday:

Breakfast:
FAGE Greek Yogurt (full-fat, extra thick, and creamy)
1/3 cup sliced strawberries
1/2 cup pine nuts

Lunch:
2/3 cup creamed spinach (mostly spinach with some heavy cream, a little diced onion, and a little shredded cheese)
3 oz can of smoked oyters in olive oil (ate the oysters *and* the oil)

Snack: 1 HB egg

Dinner:
smallish salad made from
1 cup arugula (all I had left) with a little green onion and heart of palm, to which I added
1 tsp real bacon bits
1.5 oz chopped walnuts
1 3/8 oz deli ham
5/8 oz cheddar cheese
and topped with some homemade mayo mixed wih some coconut oil, sesame tahini and a bit of soy sauce

I hit all my protein/net carb/fat numbers numbers as long as I counted only the animal protein, and it came to about 2000 calories, FWIW. I was still hungry all day though. :D

Today so far I have had for breakfast:
omelet with mozzarella cheese (chose mozza as it's lower protein than my usual swiss)

Lunch will be another can of smoked oysters along with the last of my leftover creamed spinach, about a 1/2 cup of it left now.

For dinners I usually come home, enter my foods I've eaten already into Lifeform and see what amounts of macronutrients I still need, and then plan dinner.

One of my fave "sweet treats" = melt some sugar-free baker's chocolate with coconut oil and then some almond butter or sesame tahini (no peanut butter as I avoid legumes), and big splash of DaVinci SF syrup. Pour into paper cupcake liners and allow to cool and harden. Yum.

Most vegetables have negligible protein, I think... wait, wow! The USDA site says 2/3 cup spinach contains three and a half grams of protein! The couple of vegetables I looked at all had about 80% as much protein as "carbs by difference."


That's why I'm not sure I could do this diet. With so little protein AND less fat at the beginning, I think I'd starve. And that's not something I'm willing to do.

Mike, you don't have to start with less fat if you're not overweight.

Here is an awesome recipe for beef marrow, roasted. I watched the Bourdain episode where he went and ate at Fergus's restaurant and I salivated the entire time. Yummo!!!!! For those of you trying to avoid dairy and and dairy products, it might be beneficial to eat your fat from animals instead of animal milks and the like, if you can cotton the difference. LOL


Cook the Book: Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad, Anthony Bourdain's Last Supper

Posted by Adam Kuban, March 10, 2008 at 2:30 PM

The first recipe out of the gate this week is from a Serious Eats favorite, Anthony Bourdain, whose last meal would take place at St. John, prepared by the restaurant's proprietor, Fergus Henderson. When we talked to him last year, he also listed this dish as his favorite comfort food.

Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad

- serves 3 -
Adapted from My Last Supper by Melanie Dunea.
Ingredients

12 three-inch (7 1/2-centimeter) pieces veal marrowbone
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked from stems
2 shallots, peeled and very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons (30 grams) capers
2 tablespoons (30 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
Coarse sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Toasted bread, for serving
Procedure

1. Prepare the bones: Put the bones in an ovenproof frying pan or roasting pan; place in a 450°F (230°C) oven. Depending on bone thickness, roasting should take about 20 minutes. You're looking for loose and giving marrow, but marrow that's not yet melted away.

2. Prepare the parsley salad: While bones are roasting, lightly chop the parsley and mix it with the shallots and capers. Just before serving, dress salad with the olive oil and lemon juice; salt and pepper to taste.

3. Serve the dish: Don't completely season this dish before serving; let the diner do the last-minute seasoning. To eat, scrape the marrow from the bone onto the toast; season it with coarse sea salt. Place a pinch of parsley salad on top; eat immediately.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/...ain-recipe.html

I put the link in because the comments afterward said that some just use regular ol' beef bones with marrow. I went browsing yesterday and I have to say that I cam able to get a surprising variety of unusual meat cuts and offal. I was amazed that once I started looking, what was available. I even found an entire pig's head... might be time to dig up a head cheese recipe. LOL

If you notice, the only meat I have is 2 strips bacon, some meat salad at lunch and a small piece of meat sauteed at supper. There is not a lot of cheese and no peanut butter. The rest is all butter, cream and vegetables. I don't use cheese sauces and most of the time don't eat the nuts.

Thank you for the beef marrow recipe!!! I think I still have some beef bones in the freezer. I'll have to try making it.

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Here are some of the things we've been eating recently. We're all on different ratios in our family, so I'm not going to give any quantities; just wanted to share some ideas. :)


Breakfasts:

Scrambled eggs made with added sour cream & seasonings, served with grated cheese and pesto

Homemade sausage made from seasoned ground pork, with scrambled eggs & extra yolks cooked in the pan drippings from the sausage

Lightly cooked bacon, and a soft-boiled egg with added butter

A small cup of heavy cream (this is meant to be a meal in itself, not a beverage ;) )


Snacks:

Celery sticks with blue cheese dressing (blue cheese, yogurt, egg yolks, seasonings); any extra dressing can be eaten with a spoon :yum:

Hard boiled egg with a big dollop of mayonnaise

Savory nut flour muffin or mini scone, with butter

Yogurt made with half & half

Drained full-fat cottage cheese (or yogurt cheese) with added sour cream, onion powder, & herbal salt

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Everyday lunches and dinners:

Tasty Chicken:

Heat a pan on medium, then add a package of bone-in chicken thighs, skin side down. Sprinkle the chicken generously with poultry seasoning.

When the chicken is seared, turn it over. Add a lump of butter, some sliced vegetables of your choice, and a few chicken livers or hearts, if you have them (I had some left over from whole chickens used to make stock).

Add about 1/2 cup water, and stir to deglaze the pan. Put the lid on and simmer until chicken is done. Serve the chicken, vegetables, and juices together in a bowl.


Hamburgers and Green Beans

Make hamburgers with 80/20 ground beef, an egg, and your choice of seasonings. Melt a tablespoon of beef drippings in a pan, and cook the burgers. Remove the burgers to a plate, put a small slice of cheese on each one, and put a lid or inverted bowl on top (to keep the heat in and melt the cheese).

Add some green beans to the pan drippings, and cook them until they're well-done and the pan juices have been absorbed.

Serve with mustard and sauerkraut.


Salmon Burgers

Mix together a can of wild salmon (with skin & bones mashed in), a big dollop of homemade mayonnaise, a squeeze of lemon juice, a spoonful of nut flour, and your choice of seasonings. Make it into patties, and coat them in more nut flour. Fry them in butter or oil until done.

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Desserts (for treats & special occasions; not something we'd eat every day):

Mini baked "puddings" made with pecan flour, cream, eggs, melted butter, & a little applesauce

Homemade ice cream made from whipping cream, egg yolks, vanilla, wild blueberries, and a little honey

----

To make gluten-free baked goods with nut flour, search online for "SCD recipes." These recipes are generally quite flexible, so you can try adapting them by reducing or eliminating the honey, substituting different types of nut flour, increasing the butter or coconut oil, and substituting egg whites for the whole eggs (to use up the extra whites, if you're following JK's advice to add yolks to other dishes). In my experience, despite what the recipe might say, they usually come out best when baked at around 325.

----

And on that note, I have to go make lunch. :)

More snack ideas:

Lunch meat spread with butter or cream cheese, & rolled up in a leaf of lettuce (or just rolled up and eaten as is)

Liverwurst mashed with butter or mayonnaise, in celery "boats"

A small cup of homemade broth, served hot or warm, with some fat left floating on top

A small handful of almonds, or other balanced nuts or nut butters

A small serving of plain pork rinds, with homemade sour cream & onion dip (most pork rinds are far too salty, but I've found a local brand that's fine; you might try checking a Hispanic grocery store)

A piece of double or triple creme Brie :yum:

I look at that list of foods and my thought is you must be eating way more protein than I am. One 3 oz serving of meat is close to 20-30 grams of protein. Have you put this food into a nutrition program of some sort?

I was thinking the same thing, Nancy. Especially with the protein from veg/dairy added in (and yes, my 1/2 cup of whole milk in my daily cappo that I REFUSE to give up!)....I am lucky to have a 3 oz serving of protein with my evening meal and in order to do that, I need to keep protein quite low during the rest of the day.

Not that I'm not satisfied with the 3 oz but in comparison to what I was eating, it's quite small.
My protein level is 46-57gms at month two.

Is anyone else questioning whether the ratios will still apply if you don't eat all of the weird Polish food, organ meats, etc?? I'm nervous that I'm sabotaging myself somehow. Thoughts???

This is day 2 for me:
B: 1/2 apple, peanut butter mixed with coconut oil, 1 cup coffee
S: an assortment of olives; about 10 medium-sized
L: 3 oz pot roast (I'm estimating), 1/2 bell pepper, 1 c. strawberries
S: 1.5 deviled eggs (I tossed one of the egg whites, but I used 2 yolks with the mayo), a couple almonds, 2 sardines mashed w/ olive oil and spices, piece of dark choc
(hi... i like afternoon snacks :wiggle: )
D: plan to have a salad w/ olive oil, and boiled cabbage w/ butter and bacon fat. (If i get hungry later I'll prob have some almonds.)

I should be right on w/ the ratios, but will OD actually help break my stall if I'm not eating the right foods? (I recognize that I'm not eating the right foods!) I'm getting super concerned - I've been trying to get to 148 lbs since December... :help:

I don't know that anyone has specifically addressed this with information from Dr. K himself (yet). My thought is that Dr. K designed this WOE based upon the foods that he had available in Poland at the time (was it 30-40 years ago, I think?). I don't think my body 'knows' whether I'm getting my protein from a pig or a cow or a sheep. Now, I could be totally wrong and my bod is smarter than I give it credit - but at least for now, I'm going to stick to the ratios and not worry about eating pork jowls, organ meat or bone marrow.

The thing that I've found over the last 2 years, in which time I've managed to remove 90 pounds of fat, is that whatever way of eating I select has to work with my lifestyle. For me, that is the over riding criteria for my way of eating. Yes, being a healthy weight is important to me but if I'm miserable, I might as well be miserable AND fat. (well, ok, I really don't advocate that, but you know what I mean?).

I think our diet needs to evolve as we learn new things and try things and find if they work or not. As long as we're open to that - and give new WOE a fair trial - we can't help but eventually be successful.

Maybe someone else can more specifically answer your question - I only know that I'm going to give this a fair trial - and at least until the middle of May I'm going to just worry about getting my ratios correct and not worry about whether I'm eating the same Polish-type foods that Dr. K talks about. If I find that just watching the ratios isn't enough, I'll have to decide whether I want to start eating 'the weird stuff'.

If this plan doesn't work for me - what have I lost? A bit of time? In the big scheme of things, that's not a high price to pay on the chance that this plan is a solution to my problem/stall. At least I'll know that I've given it a fair shot and that eating lower fat/higher carbs/higher fat is either good for me or not good for me.

YMMV

Liver, bone broth, and bone marrow might not be part of the standard American diet, but they hardly qualify as "weird Polish foods." They're consumed by every culture I can think of.... Hispanic, French, Italian, Jewish, British, Japanese, Chinese, Korean... and they're universally considered to be highly nutritious. So, while some of the recipes in ON are specifically Polish, the food choices are pretty much universally applicable.

Regarding ratios, I did look everything up in the beginning (I have the values for our most commonly eaten foods saved in a spreadsheet), and our meals aren't too high in protein. On this way of eating, we're satisfied with very small portions. One egg plus a yolk, or a 2-3 oz. serving of meat, is plenty for us. For instance, with the chicken dish I mentioned, I took a single thigh (with skin, pan juices, and fat-soaked vegetables), and didn't finish it. Meat goes a long way these days.

I don't think this is just some quirk of my personal metabolism, as I've always had a fairly big appetite. In past pregnancies, I could eat two full steak dinners by this stage.... then I'd wake up in the middle of the night and eat another one, LOL. My husband is also satisfied with small amounts, even though he used to love to have large servings of meat and cheese. As I was unloading the dishwasher this morning, I was thinking that perhaps we should put away our full-size dinner plates, and just use the luncheon plates.

If you're still eating a lot of lower-quality fats and lower-quality proteins, that could be the reason why you're feeling hungry. Never mind the organ meats for now; from an ON perspective, it would be a big improvement just to cut out the daily consumption of nuts, vegetable oils, and chocolate, and replace them with more egg yolks, butter, bacon, and fatty sausage. Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse here, but (regardless of what might be said on some web sites) Dr. K's books make it very clear that counting grams of protein is NOT the key to success. If the food is properly selected and optimally balanced, you can eat as much as you want.

That's correct. I'm supposed to take in 140 to 190 grams of fat per day.

May i make the gentle suggestion that this thread be kept to listing meals and food ideas, as it's title implies, and discussion of the plan be kept to the other thread? Otherwise, having 2 threads will be redundant, confusing, and not as useful as a reference.

What i ate today:
1 Jack-in-the Box Grilled Chicken Club Salad, to which I added 2 sliced hard boiled eggs and 4 extra slices of bacon, 4 T bacon ranch dressing, 3 parmesan wafer crisps, 4 T pieces of CO bark, 1 T peanut butter, 1 T butter

Calories 1,606
Fat 145.2 1,299 80 %
Carbohydrate 21.8 67 4 %
Dietary Fiber 7.1
Protein 63.4 255 16 %
(Targets: Fat 113-153, Carb 32-52, Prot 64)

I'm working from home today which means I can have the luxury of making my own breakfast. I just cooked three slices of thick nitrate-free bacon. After I removed them from the pan I scrambled two eggs in the bacon grease, and added 1 oz of crumbled bleu cheese to the eggs. I also put *heavy cream* in my coffee. <swoon>

Wow, talk about a delish breakfast. Best one I've had all week, I could easily eat it every day! Too bad I can't have it on the 5 days of the week that I'm normally in the office.

Okay, now I've added lunch to the mix. Lunch was:
1 cup of reheated cabbage (from last night's dinner) with 1.5 oz melted butter and a pinch of sea salt, served with 2 oz of Liverwurst (Braunschweiger).

For the first time this week I *did* make some of my LC chocolate candies (1 oz 85% chocolate melted with 1 3/8 butter 1 1/8 oz coconut oil, 1/4 cup DaVinci SF syrup, 1/4 cup heavy cream, 2 1/2 oz sesame tahini - poured into 6 paper cupcake liners and chilled until firm - each one has 23g fat, 4g carbs, 2g protein) and I did have 2 of those for dessert.

Right now for the day I'm at:
Calories:1558
Fat: 149g
Net Carb: 11g
Protein: 41g

my ON ranges are: protein 52-64, fat 155-219, net carb 39-52

So I still have some room to go for dinner, and for the first time this week I'm not overly hungry - compared to the other days! I wish I had some macadamia nuts right now though ;) Note: I did later have a snack of 1.5 oz cashews.

Okay, I just had dinner too! Dinner was:

brussels sprouts (about 1 cup) lightly steamed and then sauteed in some leftover bacon grease with some added butter, some chopped onion, and a small handful of walnut chunks with a 1/2 oz of bleu cheese sprinkled on top when served.

2 oz sauteed chicken breast (reheated from last night)
reheated sauce - about 2 tbsp half-and-half with a bit of chicken bouillon and some canned mushroom

so in the end I wound up with:
Calories: 2475
Fat: 222g (a bit over the top of my 155-219 ON range)
Net Carbs: 37g (actually still a hair under my 39-52 ON range)
Protein: 78g (over my ON 52-64 range, but not if you only count animal protein)

Do you have a copy of the book, pangolina? Could you visit the Optimal Diet thread in the Paleo forum? We have a lot of questions there and not many answers.

What's not to like about a statement like that? :D

Well actually, I think the main premise that attracted me was that the reason we're stalling out on our diets is because we're converting excess protein to glucose and it's making us insulin resistant. So we'd been going kind of by the info we gleaned from the web site, which was pretty much all about macro nutrient ratios.

So once again, all this conflicting info from Dr. K just makes my head spin. :lol:

So if it isn't macro-nutrient ratios that is helpful to dieters what is it? The magic of eating 20 grams of organ meats a day? I guess I find that hard to believe. Although I'll happily test that theory. I found some chicken/pork pate at Trader Joe's today.

Well I do think the ratios are important. Maybe I just need to find the right number for me. Maybe the protein number is a "happy medium" somewhere between Dr. K and Dr. Eades. Damned if I know. I'd be skinny if I did.

Not so. Aside from the fact that I've dug up a forty-year old paper written by Dr. K that says the opposite of 'eating as much as you want' if you're obese (I'm writing a long post about that and other questions that I hope to get up this weekend) -- the reality is that:

1: He wrote the OD for people to reach Optimal Health (as he saw it, at the time he lived, in the place he lived, and with the state of science being what it was at that time, but no longer), not necessarily to lose weight.

2: Most of us are not eating OD to reach Optimal Health (as he saw it, etc) -- we're simply using his theory/formula because science has recently discovered that we have a metabolic problem with protein when we eat a LC high fat diet. And his LC formula (unlike, say, PP or Atkins) addresses that problem.

3: His foods are historically and culturally based. Science has moved on since then, and we live in the here and now. I already am living an optimally healthy life. I'm just still 30 pounds too heavy because unless I'm willing to give up the high fat LC WOE -- and I'm not -- my body cannot process excess protein in the presence of fat. The quality of my foods is excellent. I eat egg yolks and liver and gizzards (and marrow when I can get it) because I love them. Ditto for veggies and some berries. I don't make broths or eat the other foods on his list because -- I don't live in Post-War Poland forty years ago, and because I don't have to. I feel great, my blood tests say I'm great, and after a two-year stall I'm losing weight.

Theory is one thing, and Dr. K's was ahead of his time, especially with his formula for the obese. Practice is another - and I believe we can practice the theory without eating those precise foods that he knew and liked best.

My 2cents; YMMV

Lisa