Tyrannnosaurus Rexing wrote:
If you are eating 2 eggs 3 slices of bacon, a burrito with meat, AND pork chop or steak every day, and using butter as your fat, you are getting a fair amount saturated fat and cholesterol, probably too much. Don't let the Atkins/Taubes/Paleo crowd convince you otherwise, but your "template" is not the healthiest by any means. I am not saying you can never eat eggs or bacon or read meat, but have that be your diet every day, you are risking some CVD in the long term. Exercise and eating lots of fruits and veggies alleviates some of that risk for sure, but not all of it. These are simply facts. Trading your eggs and bacon for whole grain oatmeal with raisins, walnuts and non-fat milk would give you the same protein but much lower cholesterol and much lower sat fat (but including healthy unsat fats). Swapping out some of your pork/steak for chicken breast/very lean turkey and/or Tofu would also be a good idea. Just some FYI's.
As you said: Good luck.
Thanks for the input in a noncondescending way. Tone is tough on the message board- but I genuinely mean that.
I said pork chop because I had one recently, but actually, I only eat pork chops every couple of months. Likewise, the bacon and egg thing is a standard when I'm at full mileage AND ran in the morning. Otherwise, as noted, I just have some wheat toast. Since I was giving a rough summary, I also neglected to mention 1-2 of my dinners per week would be something like pasta/red sauce/side of greens, with no meat or a brown rice/kale/red pepper/scrambled egg stir fry, cooked with about a tablespoon of olive oil.
W/r/t to fats, though, I think the arguments against fats are partially overstated and am lucky enough to have some pretty good genetics. Both of sides of my family eat pretty close to how I eat, without all the strenuous exercise, and we have lots of relatives who lived well into their 90s, still subsisting on bacon and eggs cooked in the bacon grease. I've had my cholesterol checked regularly since my teens (I'm in my mid20s now). My "bad" cholesterol is on the low end of the normal range and my "good" cholesterol is consistently on the high end of the normal range. Oddly enough, my "bad" cholesterol, which was fine before, dropped about 10-12% when I graduated from college and started the bacon/eggs breakfast routine instead of eating a bagel on my way to class or whatever. Not saying one caused the other-only that my diet hasn't impacted me negatively yet.
While my post might have suggested a pretty laid-back approach to food, I am aware of what I'm eating and I do monitor things with bloodwork at least once and maybe twice a year (I was mildly anemic my sophomore year of college from not paying attention in the dining hall and don't care to repeat the experience).