Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Introduction

If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you are probably accustomed to me having contrarian views. Much of what I believe about nutrition, food, and health, runs counter to the advice we’ve heard from the government, the popular media, and, for the most part, even from our own professional healthcare providers. I have talked many times about my feelings on saturated fat and cholesterol, and I’ll have a few posts coming up on another misunderstood and wrongfully maligned essential nutrient—sodium.

In the meantime, there is another issue—a big, big issue—that I’d like to bring attention to, and I’m going to strike while the iron is hot. On this week’s episode of the Paleo Solution Podcast (which you can check out right here), Robb Wolf is interviewing Travis Christofferson, who wrote a book called Tripping Over the Truth: The MetabolicTheory of Cancer. I first became aware of Travis and his interest in cancer research back in 2013, when he wrote this guest post for Robb’s website. I left a comment, which spurred Travis to check out my blog, where he saw that I do book reviews. Well, he asked me to review the book several weeks ago, and you can now read my glowing review of it on Amazon.

I had intended to write an additional review tailored specifically for my blog audience, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized there is so much fascinating, educational, and potentially life-saving information to be had by digging into this material that there was no way a simple one-post book review would do it justice. So instead, this will be a multi-part series looking at a contrarian—but revolutionary and extremely promising—view on the etiology and potential treatment of cancer. 

Better than 80/20 - Exercise

(Warning: Remember to disregard what I said about writing shorter blog posts until after this one's done!)

Here it is, the last installment in my update on things going better than they were back when I posted about 80/20 being an improvement. We’ve already covered supplements and diet. Today’s focus: exercise. But the thing is, I hesitate to call it exercise, as I’m beginning to think of it more as movement. (To loyal reader P, pat yourself on the back.) I am “working out” less, but moving more. (But still working out. Keep reading and this will make sense.)

I saved this one for last because while I fully recognize the importance of regular physical movement for good health, I believe that for me, diet and supplementation are currently getting me the biggest bang for my buck. However, movement is not negotiable. At all. (And it is certainly getting me some bang for my buck.) If we think of health as a three-legged stool, diet and supplementation are only two legs, and without this critical third one, that stool is gonna fall down.

(I’m not going to get into specifics, like I do this many planks for this many minutes, or do this many sets of this many reps with this much weight. I’m not qualified to give advice about that, and also, I don’t want anyone laughing at me if I’m “doing it wrong.” I’ll give you the general stuff I do and why I do it. But you best believe nothing I do involves pink dumbbells.)

Better than 80/20 - Diet, Pt.2

In part 1 of this update on my diet, I talked about when and why I eat what I do. This time, I’ll cover the what. As I have mentioned many times on this blog, I am more low-carb than I am Paleo. I eat some foods that are not considered “Paleo,” and I sleep without fear that the food police are going to come take me away in the night. That said, I stick mostly to whole, real, non-processed foods, with a little wiggle room for occasional exceptions. (I say this to distinguish the way I eat now from how I ate years ago, when I first started learning about all this, and would eat any ol’ low carb shake/bar/food-like thing, as long as it was low carb. So I’m still low-carb, but now it’s real food, for the most part.)

Like I explained last time, I am putting only the smallest amount of thought and effort into what I’m doing and I’m getting satisfactory results. This is not to say I put no thought or effort into my diet, only that planning and preparing my food doesn’t rule my life, I can generally throw together a meal in about twenty minutes, and I’ve never found myself at a restaurant where there was “nothing” I could order and consume without worry.

So the way I eat these days isn’t entirely effortless, but it’s certainly not difficult. And yes, I could probably be “cut,” “ripped,” or “shredded” if I wanted to micromanage my diet and exercise to the exclusion of all other aspects of life on planet Earth, but call me crazy, I just think there are more worthwhile things to experience than bouncing a quarter off my abs.

Better than 80/20 - Diet, Pt.1

(Warning: That pledge I made to write shorter posts? Yeah, not happening today. Not happening for the next 2-3 posts, in fact. But once we get past me talking about my food & exercise, I really am going to try to keep things more succinct and reader-friendly. Just don’t hold it against me if that doesn’t occur.)

Well, here we are. The post you may or may not have been waiting for, but here it is nonetheless. Today I’ll give you the rundown on what I’m doing with my diet that I think is helping me feel (and maybe look) better than I did a few months ago, when I posted about feeling like a fraud. To bring you up to speed, last time, I covered my supplements. And assuming at least some of the page hits on that one are legitimate and not all of them are coming from automated search engines in Russia and China (although there is a freakish amount of those), there are a couple of people out there who are curious about what I’m doing these days. Oddly enough, my posts about beef shanks and beef hearts have way more hits, but on the off chance that someone out there finds something new or interesting here, I’ll yammer on for a bit about what I’m eating.

It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone really wants to know what I put down my piehole, but I said I would share, and I don’t want to renege on that. I’m no rock star, but people seem to be fairly curious about what nutrition and health-minded professionals eat. Since I am technically in that latter category, even though my influence is small at the moment, it couldn’t hurt to give you a glimpse into what’s on my plate and in my fridge.

So I’ll talk about my chow for a post or two, then my exercise habits, and then we’ll get back to the blog’s regularly scheduled programming. (For a look at what’s coming up, see this post.)

Thank You, Veterans

To all those who served in the past, all those who are currently serving, and to your families, thank you. Stay safe, be well, and Godspeed.

2005 (left) and 2008 (right)