In which there’s a post of no interest to anyone who does not wear acrylic nails.

Sunday I went to my favorite nail salon, LT Nails, over on Issacs street, for a fill.

“A fill” is the procedure in which, after your nails have been growing out for two or three weeks, they “fill” the part closest to the cuticle with new acrylic. Accomplishing this requires polish remover, a Dremel, two kinds of filing and buffering devices, an anti-fungal, and new acrylic, which is applied with a paint brush.

The guy who did my nails observed a discoloration about the size of the tip of a ball point pen on my left thumbnail. This is interesting, because my acrylic nails are fairly discolored due to the fact that I’ve had them on for quite awhile and they age; even though you get fresh acrylic every couple of weeks, the stuff on the tips is always many weeks old, and becomes stained by contact with food and heat. This tiny little dot of discoloration concerned him enough that he just went right ahead and removed the entire acrylic overcoat from my nail, and then tried for a while to buff the discoloration off my very thin natural nail. Continue reading Yesterday, at the nail salon. →

In which I basically just link to a bunch of research.

At the Peony the other day, I was discussing my weight loss with a couple of women who were asking me how I’d done it. I gave them my blood sugar/insulin/refined carbs spiel, during which I said, “Honestly, dietary fat needn’t be avoided. You can eat brie all you want, you just can’t eat the baguette.”

One of the women I was talking to said, “Oh, we can’t eat fat at my house. My husband has been diagnosed with heart disease, so we’ve seen a nutritionist and aren’t allowed to eat any fat.”

And I thought, That can’t be right. They can’t possibly still be telling people that, with all the research to the contrary. But they are. Every day. I have an uncle with high cholesterol who eats very little fat.

Here’s just some of the research:

Effects of a Plant-Based High-Carbohydrate/High-Fiber Diet Versus High–Monounsaturated Fat/Low-Carbohydrate Diet on Postprandial Lipids in Type 2 Diabetic Patients
A diet rich in carbohydrate and fiber, essentially based on legumes, vegetables, fruits, and whole cereals, may be particularly useful for treating diabetic patients because of its multiple effects on different cardiovascular risk factors, including postprandial lipids abnormalities.

Randomized comparison of reduced fat and reduced carbohydrate hypocaloric diets on intrahepatic fat in overweight and obese human subjects.
A prolonged hypocaloric diet low in carbohydrates and high in fat has the same beneficial effects on intrahepatic lipid accumulation as the traditional low-fat hypocaloric diet.

Continue reading Dietary fat. →