Let's Talk About Poop, Baby! Let's Talk About You and Me! (Please sing this aloud in your office to George Michael's, Let's Talk About Sex, Baby!) bahahahaha!

Ok, so I can't remember where I read this, but I read something about our gut biome changing very quickly in response to changes in our diet. So I wanted to open this for a round table here with you brainiacs. It proposed that eating a healthy diet can make us start craving healthy foods, rather than our old CRAP diets, the SAD--which make us crave...you guessed! More crap! I was eating lunch today: big ass chopped salad with freshly smoked turkey and avocado tomatillo salsa and was reveling in how much I jones for this salad these days--how much I actually enjoy eating a crap ton of veggies, more fruit than I'm used to, and adequate servings of low fat protein. I actually feel like I crave them! But it wasn't so long ago that I was jonesing for Lay's or Whataburger Chicken Fingers and Cream Gravy! So I went looking and found these articles about the gut biome and our diet.

Do Gut Microbes Control Your Food Cravings? (just love Chris Kresser)

How Gut Bacteria Tell Their Hosts What To Eat

Gut Biome Changes Rapidly With Diet

Hazda Diet and Gut Biome

Here's an embedded cool YouTube clip

Anyone want to talk about some serious poop? Have you experienced a shift in your patterns of food cravings now that you've cleaned up your diet?

Ok, go! (hopefully, come on...go! you know you wanna!)

Edited October 27, 20178 yr by FluffyChix

Never a dull post with you is it?

Bored much? Why, yes. Yes, indeedy, I am! tehe

I have Tom Petty and Heartbreakers cranked to the top (Mr. Fluffy's gone and didn't tell me not to play the music too loud.) off the charts, I'm sposed to be working and don't want to...and well. Come on. Is there ever a bad time to talk about poop?

Edited October 27, 20178 yr by FluffyChix

Fascinating stuff! Makes me wonder if we're all just pooppets that are having our strings pulled by our little microbiome friends (or enemas)...

Toilet humor is the best.. why trash talk, when we can dump on ideas?!

But in all seriousness, how on earth did they remove the ability of Drosophilia to manufacture an amino acid?? HOW???

Now I have to go see if they've analyzed poo from centenarians..

@Berry78 Hahaha! Toilet humor is the best! I adored yours! You're very punny, you know!

Seriously on the fruit fly! IRK?!

Did you find anything piling up on the centenarians?

(I really shoulda said, "come on...you know you're just straining to!" LOL)

I really am interested in hearing if other people have experienced craving new things rather than their old flames. I'm finding myself craving clean food: low fat, low carb, simple, lots of veg. I also crave fruit (not like a binge crave), but when I'm hungry mid-day, I'm craving my 1/4 of a GS apple with a string cheese and a 1/2 ounce of almonds. It fills me up for at least 3 hours and I love it. I now crave it.

Have your cravings changed?

I found a really interesting study that was done on the microbiota changes across the lifespan. Very small children and the very old (80+) have a relatively high number of "bad bugs", whereas everyone else has a minimal number of them. There was another difference that I'd have to look into more, where infants have a large proportion of a certain type of good bug, and they consistently dwindle through life to be virtually gone by time you're 80+.

So, from that study, I don't think the super elderly have a special kind of good bug that made them live longer. (But, the bugs were separated into phyla, not individual strains, so it's possible they did have higher proportions of certain critters within families).

We had a special occasion yesterday, and so we were supposed to have cake. My hubby was prepared to drive an hour to go get some extra special cake, and I was like, not interested AT ALL! We did have cake, and it was very good (from a local place), but I was almost the opposite of craving it. I was shocked, however by how much cake I could eat once I started, because I did enjoy it. Couldn't handle the frosting, though.. way too sweet. No restriction on soft, moist cake! Good to know! Lol!

If I've been craving anything, it's sweet potatoes and butternut squash. That stuff is da bomb! Sweet and orange.

My newest dilemma is how to make sure I'm getting fat with all my veggies. I don't want to eat meat with them because I get full too fast, but if I have to add a ton of oil to them, then it increases my calorie load. It's not clear exactly HOW MUCH fat you need to efficiently digest the fat-soluble vitamins, but it's a decent amount.

Yesterday I put an egg with my lentil soup, (I had missed it for a couple days), and oh my gosh, was that good. There is definitely something in eggs that I need (from the first egg I ate postop, I felt it). I eat whole eggs because egg whites alone actually make you more deficient in something (I want to say biotin).

@Berry78 LOL good to know about the cake being a slider food! Hope you enjoyed yesterday and being with your fam. Do you find they treat you differently now post-surgery, or now that you are almost normal weight? Do you feel you have a better status in the fam?

Interesting info about the gut bugs! I knew the mix deteriorated in the geriatric population--but I just wonder if we can't mitigate that as we age, by really getting deep nutrition? Will have to look into that. I do know that they're thinking some diseases such as Parkinson's and possibly demential/Alzheimer's are at least partially diet/gut biome diseases in origin.

I've read (can't find my source! ) that it's as little as 15% fat is need to absorb ADEK, but I'm not sure there is a definite number. I just figure having 1/2tsp-1tsp of fat in a big ass salad is gonna do it. I get that from either adding evoo, or a nut oil, or adding avocado, or seeds--sometimes small amounts of all of those things. LOL! I enjoy 3zero's Greek Dressing, and also like Walden Farms Asian Dressing, WF Sesame Ginger, and WF Italian. I really love the idea of having a huge salad for less than 150cals--and that includes adding avocado.

Avocado does it for me--cuz it's a fat, but also gives great phytonutrients and fiber at the same time. So it's a win win--plus it's high in magnesium (if I remember correctly) and mg is needed to truly properly absorb the ADEKs. I love the Weston A. Price website and love Chris Kresser, Sally Fallon, the late Mary Enig, etc. Here's a good primer on the fat soluble vitamins.

Nourishing Traditions was my bible about 10 years ago.

Interesting article:

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/2/396.full

Quote

Our data suggest that 3-5 g fat should be considered a minimal amount that may not be sufficient for optimal bioaccessibility of carotenoids within the intact structures of plants.

Ok, so for those that don't want to read the study.. basically they tested the carotenoid absorption after eating salad with fat free dressing, reduced fat dressing, and full fat dressing. (Carotenoids are the plant pigments that give them their bright colors and are thought to be good for us.. for example the "Vit. A" found in carrots).

Each salad weighed 8.8oz, and contained spinach, romaine, shredded carrots, and cherry tomatoes. They added 1oz dressing to each salad.

The test subjects absorbed pretty close to zero carotenoids from their salads with fat-free dressing. Yep. You think you're doing that great thing by squirting lemon juice on your salad.. and you don't get to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins at all!!!

They absorbed lots of the carotinoids from the full fat dressing (2 tablespoons of dressing provided 28g fat).

The reduced fat dressing had 6g fat, and they absorbed about half as many nutrients.

I'm sad they didn't test something between 6 and 28g fat.. there is a big grey area there where maybe we don't need a whole 28g.

Our salads are more apt to weigh about 4.4oz since we have tiny tummies, so our equivalent dressing would be 1 tablespoon.. 14g fat.

There had been a previous study with cooked veggies, and 5g added fat (1 teaspoon) may have been enough to absorb the nutrients from that.

Either way, these quantities of fat ARE small compared to what people like to do, dumping a gazillion tons of dressing on their salads... but for me, I'm watching my calorie goals go flitting out the door! Eek!

Get a Laboratory you two. Or a Lavatory.

1oz nuts is about 14g fat.

3.5oz avacado is about 14g fat. (Lol, there'd be no room for salad!)

1.5oz cheese has 14g fat

I already eat the nuts, so that makes sense. But cheese and avacado really don't show up in my current plan. At the moment.. it's autumn. Fresh salads aren't a big thing for me this time of year anyway. A teaspoon of butter on cooked veggies sounds pretty good. 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon .. so I can have 3 "meals" of cooked veggies for the same fat as 1 fresh salad.

Half-Tum, you are a riot! Thanks!!

3 minutes ago, Berry78 said:

1oz nuts is about 14g fat.

3.5oz avacado is about 14g fat. (Lol, there'd be no room for salad!)

1.5oz cheese has 14g fat

I already eat the nuts, so that makes sense. But cheese and avacado really don't show up in my current plan. At the moment.. it's autumn. Fresh salads aren't a big thing for me this time of year anyway. A teaspoon of butter on cooked veggies sounds pretty good. 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon .. so I can have 3 "meals" of cooked veggies for the same fat as 1 fresh salad.

@Berry78 Oh crap! Can I send you to Dexter's lab to be shrunk into a tiny tot so I can carry you in my pocket?!!! I had NO idea an avo was that low. I've been eating 1oz to 1 1/2oz in my BA salads (pre-surge). So I was counting on having 1/2oz after surg. Guess that won't cut it? Well fork me!

@Half-Tum Don't you mean a LAV-orrrrrr-i-tore-y?

And I just gotta ask...are avocados a slider food like cake? *hoping and praying*

1 hour ago, FluffyChix said:

Do you find they treat you differently now post-surgery, or now that you are almost normal weight? Do you feel you have a better status in the fam?

My 11 year old son (an Aspie), can't help himself, and keeps calling me fat. He didn't do that before surgery.. so he's noticing the difference, but yes, I'm STILL 50lbs overweight.. so it's true. He himself is rail-thin, and is paranoid about becoming heavy. I have to tread carefully around him because he'd be prone to become anorexic.

The adults in the house are jealous, so started their own diets. But it really hasn't changed anything in our relationships. I always wore the britches.. they're just smaller now

My biggest challenge is in trying to "help" them with their diets. Either they expect someone to do 100% of the work.. feed them what they are supposed to have for every meal.. or they want to rebel against the plan and secretively "cheat".

It's a weird place to be, because, obviously they need a plan that they are comfortable with and that they can feel in control of. But since they don't do the legwork to figure out why they should eat some things, and not eat others (which is what I'm all about).. they don't have that foundation of true understanding. Without a good foundation, the house will fall.

Any diet book you pick up makes a strong case for its own diet, eschewing all others. Much like religion. In the past, I'd read a book, fall for the enticing claims, and come out at the end with something that was unsustainable. So I'm trying to create something new without having to quote any one author. Find my own path through the weeds by looking at each thing individually and figuring out how they fit together.

The only way I can do this is by having GOBS of free time, and I do, because I don't work right now..

I'll have to report back r.e. avacados. Haven't bought one in a while. I figure I can eat half of one, but not sure what I'll be able to eat with it.

I usually eat 1/4 of an avo which depending on size is about 1 to 1 3/4oz. Any more and I "feel" like it stalls me? Ridic, I know!

I can understand that about your fam. To an extent Mr. Fluffy and I share that dynamic. He's not jealous, rather he's supportive. He is on a mission to get healthy and get his T2 into submission. I'm teaching him as much as I know, as quickly as I can assimilate it. But sometimes it would be nice if he came up with a meal plan on his own. LOL. And then I have to tell him about his business lunches, "The beatings are just gonna continue until morale improves, buddy! So quit eating the dayum sweet potato fries. They are NOT a superfood!" But he's great about eating what I put on his plate (except crustaceans and mollusks). And he's very supportive of my journey and just wants me to feel better and have more energy and less pain.

And just hugs to you and your son. You are a great mama and he's very lucky to have you on his team (as you are blessed to have him)! Yes out of the mouths of babes. My niece is an Aspie, and when told about Mr. Fluffy's and my engagement said, "Oh nuts!" One of the best things is that you ALWAYS know where you are with them. Needless to say she, nor her parents are my biggest fan.

Edited October 28, 20178 yr by FluffyChix