What I've Been Up To

Perhaps I should redirect this blog once again to my personal life, and update it about 4 times per year. hahah. For those of you who think I've fallen off the face of the earth, not even close. Here's what I've been up to.

Fitness

I canceled my CrossFit membership for a variety of reasons. I was afraid of getting injured, I travel a lot which makes weekly commitments there difficult, it is almost an hour from my home, etc. I would pursue some other method of weight training such as a home gym with barbells or a gym membership, except I'm short on cash right now (see below for why) and I am not eager to spend an extra two hours in the car every week, already having a daily commute of almost two hours to work (one hour there and one hour back). I've come to accept that most people who live in the foothills on the Front Range have insane commute times, but I still don't enjoy it. For now, I spend many evenings per week walking with hubby and dog around the neighborhood -- which involves 1000 foot or so elevation rises since we live at 8400 feet. So that will have to be good enough, for now, til nasty weather hits and/or I have money.

Weight Loss

I am at my lowest weight in about a year since combining Seth Roberts' protocol of taking oil before meals, and combining this with a bland food protocol recommended by neurobiology researcher Stephan Guyenet. I have not lost that much weight, and I'm wary of proclaiming that I've found the holy grail with regard to weight loss because I'm tired of sounding like the boy who cried "diet success!" but I'm hopeful. I've put a lot of pieces together after various n=1 experiments over the past three years. Here are some of my conclusions.

1) Macronutrients don't matter for me. I can cycle from weeks of very low carb to weeks of carbs as 30-50% of my calories and it doesn't affect my weight or well-being at all. Zilch. In fact, I'm frustrated that I spent about two years believing that carbohydrate above 10-20% of calories was a problem. I am glad "low carb" works for so many people, but I am grateful for the acknowledgement in the paleo community that there is an enormous range of diets/macronutrient intakes that are healthy for humans, and that individual differences will necessitate individual optimization.

2) Intermittent fasting doesn't help me to lose weight. For most workdays of the past six months, I have eaten very little, if anything, making most days at least 18 hour fasts. That said, weight loss is not the only benefit to this. I am exceedingly glad that eliminating refined grains, sugars, and seed oils means I'm no longer a mental wreck when I can't get a hit of food, like a druggie, every several hours -- something I've suffered from most of my life.

3) Paleo alone (elimination of refined seed oils, grains, and sugars) didn't do much at lowering my weight. It's been said by prominent paleo bloggers that diet determines 80% of your weight. That's not true for me. Either I need to exercise more, reduce calories more, or adjust hormones. I struggled to lose 15 lbs on low carb paleo and was at my lowest 4 year weight at my wedding 2 years ago, after a lot of stress and starvation. Even at that time, I was still at least 15 pounds heavier than I think I should be.

4) Dairy is a major problem for me. 6 oz. of cheddar cheese in one sitting? A huge bowl of cottage cheese or full fat yogurt? A 16 oz. glass of full fat Jersey milk? Right over here! R i g h t. O v e r. H e r e. I have binged on dairy most of my life and I suffered from severe constipation problems without realizing it. (Until I experienced what normal stools were supposed to be like I had no basis of comparison. I thought it was normal to have a difficult bowel movement 1-2 times a week.)

When I discarded my preconceptions about full fat dairy, I was quite satisfied to eat two big tablespoon fulls of full fat greek yogurt and that was satisfying enough for me for practically a whole breakfast. But the same amount became less and less satisfying as time went on. A year later I was eating whole bowls of Greek yogurt, drinking 1/3 c. heavy cream daily in coffee, etc., and proclaiming that it didn't matter how much of this I was eating because only insulin determines fat retention: this was basically affirmed by most of the people I read at the time. Basically, I was superdouching with fats. Of course, you can get the idea this is good for you if you spend too much time listening to WAPF. I have great respect for the work of Weston A. Price and the general mission of WAPF, but I think the focus on dairy, loads of dietary fat, and fermented grains is potentially unhealthy for some people. Giving up dairy hasn't helped me to lose any weight, but I definitely feel better. Small amounts of milk, cream, and butter are probably not issues for me, but cheese was a major problem.

5) I am currently focusing on making food as boring as possible and it seems to be working. For many people, the paleo diet works wonders at weight loss. Many people will not need to go past the three of five steps listed here. But in the past several months, I've finally realized that I spend an enormous amount of time making appetizing meals that, quite simply, cause me to overeat. It's amazing how much time I spent avoiding the fact that I was overeating.

There is a huge focus now in the paleo community on making every paleo meal novel and exciting. I think there is a bit of an obsession in the low carb/paleo communities with assuring loved ones, who we want to assume a healthy diet, that food can still taste good without refined sugars, grains, and seed oils. "See, look how much steak and bacon I'm eating!" I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me before. If food tastes really good, you'll probably eat more than you otherwise would. I don't snack outside of meals, but when I find myself eating at meals, I definitely keep eating past the point of fullness at times merely because it tastes good. This morning I had some plain salmon cooked gently in water, with no added fat, and it was impossible to finish what was on my plate. This never happens to me. I can count on two hands the number of times in my life I've left food on my plate. I guarantee you that if I'd fried it in lard and added salt and spices, I would have eaten the last bite and possibly gone back for more.

This concludes the distended weight loss section. I do admit it's a bit liberating to not spend an hour cooking really tasty food every night, and leaves lots of time for other stuff. I just had to get those things off my chest and will issue another update in a half year or so. :) We'll see if my current thoughts are affirmed at that time.

Teaching

I am still having lots of fun teaching introductory biology to college students, but as I have perfected the courses as much as I can within the confines of institutional restrictions, its reward has begun to wane and I am getting bored. I very much enjoy the students, but I am disappointed with the lack of focus on mentoring quality students through independent studies. It is offered in the course catalog, but proves practically impossible for a variety of reasons.

Unfortunately, colleges can be dishonest places even though the one at which I work now has been better than others in the past. I find it disingenuous that students can be offered an education in biology without offering them the possibility of doing research if they want to do it -- especially when your course offerings say this is possible (duh!), when the costs are minimal to none, and when the professor is not even requesting payment for this mentoring. It is difficult to find a full time job in my area, because there are so many overqualified and educated people that want to, and already do, live in Denver. Many people with PhDs, who are overqualified to be teaching in junior colleges, are doing just that because they were trained in niche areas of biology for which there is no big market demand. Which brings me to the finale.

Research

My PhD research was a really long and difficult slog. I was a highly motivated student as an undergrad and master's student who was going places. But then things went seriously awry. When I started my master's degree, I got less than six hours of sleep nightly. I was mostly lacto-ovo vegetarian due to budget constraints. This meant I subsisted on pasta, rice, beans, doughnuts, sandwiches, hydrogenated soybean oil coffee creamer, and vending machine snacks as sole carbon sources for roughly 10 years. For around two years I drank at least one strong pot of coffee daily. As a result, I was an impossible person to be around, and I let hassles with the college bureaucracy demotivate and depress me. To offer an example, I recently purchased a bunch of lab equipment, used, on EBay. Not only did it cost me 1/10 the amount it would new, I did not need to buy it from special vendors with state contracts. Nor did I need to wait a month for the necessary purchase orders to be obtained through a slothlike bureaucratic office, just so that I could order a measly pair of bloody PCR primers that only cost $30 and couldn't afford, since I only made $12k a year!!! Just writing this paragraph brings back horrible memories that raise my blood pressure and cortisol levels.

As a result, I lost my focus and drive, and it took me 8 years to finish a PhD degree that probably should have taken me only four. I haven't published a thing since 2004, despite the fact that my dissertation describes around ten new genera, scores of new species, and plenty of other interesting stuff basically unknown to science. I think the whole process was so mentally taxing that I needed a serious break from it after officially graduating.

But while I've enjoyed the bucolic existence these past few years, it's time to live up to my potential.

As a result, I've kicked myself in the ass and decided to start doing mycology again in a serious way, beginning with publishing the new species and genera above. I've also begun to set up a basement molecular biology lab to pursue mycological research again with some European colleagues. I did all the ordering for this lab in a DAY on Saturday. None of this is possible in a university environment. I admit, working in a university environment offers many freedoms and benefits. What I write here should not be in any way considered a slight against those who have chosen that life (I may yet choose it at some point in the future myself), but I eventually found it very confining and tiresome.

Eventually, when I can afford it, I will probably purchase a research scope with drawing tube so I can continue new taxonomic work at home indefinitely. For those of you who weren't aware, I actually have some artistic talent. Those are some new fungal species described back in 2004 from a class of fungi called Laboulbeniales: obscure and tiny Ascomycetes that grow on the exoskeletons of insects. Here are pictures of some other photogenic ones. I estimate anywhere from 10 to 50 thousand species of this particular class of fungi exist, based on potential numbers of hosts and the degree of host specificity. Only 2100 species are currently known to science. This is no anomaly. These figures generally reflect most hyperdiverse but poorly known/documented groups of organisms: prokaryotes, insects, fungi, etc. Even around 50% of plant species are estimated to be currently undescribed.

The diversity of life on earth is amazing and staggering.

So, I'm pretty happy and pretty busy. And that's what I've been up to!