ive recently been pouring olive oil on top of cheap coleslaw - it makes the coleslaw tasty and is much less addicting than nut binges.
ive been back from europe for a week now. europe was a lot of exercise, and my weight was 100 upon arrival (despite intermittent binging on nuts and fake meat => some european fake meat, esp the Swiss and French kind, is quite delicious even though it’s better to just eat tofu). I was at 97lbs prior to Europe so maybe I gained 2 lbs but it’s okay.
I didn’t make use of semaglutide while there either (I could have made use of it, but god, there was so much delicious supermarket food and I wanted a lot of it). i overate some foods after arrival but weight is still roughly stable (and now I bought soymilk which should curb appetite, ESP on top of mt hagen coffee). It is higher-calorie density than nut milks though [and SURPRISE - is surprisingly high in soybean oil, so nut milks are still healthier than soymilk].
As you can see at What are your favorite low(er) calorie, low calorie-per-volume-ratio, or appetite-suppressing foods? - #11 by AlexKChen - I’ve pointed out some of my favorite European foods here.
They have glass jars of mushrooms (esp in France and the Netherlands) that are super-cheap and tasty. France has LOTS of glass jars of soft vegetables that are SO cheap and easy to use as fast food.
I made a youtube video of myself shopping at a french grocery store: French grocery store - YouTube (note I have not fully recovered from a traumatic incident this year so some parts of it still strangely come out when shopping).
Food log:
Nov25-28 in Berlin. I overslept the last day (I was still stressed from a traumatic event).
Nov28-30 in Zurich. I totally remember overeating A LOT in zurich (there are LOADS of jarred swiss mushrooms that are delicious). Swiss food is said to be expensive, but there are exceptions and I did not go much for restaurant food.
Nov30-Dec1 in Lausanne. Was treated to a coconut curry meal upon arrival (at ULausanne/EPFL, I had 4 swiss persimmons that massively spiked my BG). Weight temporarily at 107 lbs (even though it was all food weight - my natural weight was still at 100)
Dec1-4 in Geneva. there was lots of free brainhack food (fruits) but a lot of the glucose-spiking kind that allowed me to test my CGM. Dec3 was day of the geneva marathon. I know I ate 700 calories of bread + acarbose at the Geneva Hostel and it barely spiked my BG, making bread safer than many fruits!
Dec5-7 in Skopje. loads of apples/oranges on dec5 evening that didn’t spike glucose TOO much. (I got SushiCo the middle day [the cabbage was incredibly delicious - my host said that Macedonia was an agricultural nation and felt flattered that I said the cabbage tasted so good], and delicious mushrooms in the mall that evening). They say how vegetarianism “comes to die” in the Balkans, but there is so much delicious low-cost food in the Balkans
Dec7-10 in London lots of beans, loads of veggies (tho processed snack foods on the 7th), also was treated to a Chinese restaurant in London on Dec8. I did eat 500g of roasted peanuts the last day.
(Dec10-12) in Paris. On the 11th I first went to a veg restaurant (way too expensive for how much it contained) and then I ran all around the tourist-y parts of Paris to get a mental map (tomatoes and fake meat near the Eiffel Tower). I know I ate LOADS of glass-jar veggies on the night of the 11-12 (when I got treated to a hotel). It is really easy to find healthy fast-food in France. Train from Paris to Amsterdam where I joined a call AND found out bad news that I am still re-adjusting to…
Dec12-14: in Amsterdam. Lots of mushrooms and carrots in the intermediate day (also was given some roasted mixed nuts, and psitchiaos ealrier in the day.
Dec14-15: in Berlin. Cranberries +tomatoes in Amsterdam [the cranberries were so tart they made my tongue bleed, and tomatoes were painful to eat]. Then at the airport Albert Hejn I ate more green beans, mushrooms, and tofu (before the plane). I know later on the 14th at Berlin I got hungry and ate A LOT of food at the ring center (b/c the regular supermarket was too crowded. [I binged on 200g dried apricots, 100g dried mangoes, 200g almonds, and then on the flight back it was 200g of brazil nuts [they the cheapest at the REWE even tho im concerned about the huge amounts of selenium] + mangos. But that didn’t seem to increase my weight.
I miss European supermarkets now. American ones are not terrible, but they certainly don’t contain some of my favorite soft vegetables in glass containers. It is harder to use vegetables as fast food in the states. In Europe they do often sneak in sugar in a lot of the glass-jar-vegetables so you have to be careful, but there is still enough vegetables that does not come where they easily sneak sugar in that I could live on just these vegetables
(overall, America still > Europe largely for air pollution reasons [yes it’s that impt] unless you’re in the extreme north or left-most coastline of Europe [Amsterdam has clean air])
Wow people asked me to describe my eurotrip and I was too tired for even bare outlines til now. Maybe it’s the instant coffee… I forgot to bring supplements with me to europe too (so no plasmalogens or creatine even though these are so impt for my brain)
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But really, Mt Hagen instant coffee (why I have not discovered this earlier, I do not know - it would have prevented the plot-altering nicotine overdose this year). Some brands of instant coffee are higher-quality and lower-acrylamide.
Ugh, caffeine pills don’t work great enough for me, and I know from conferences and Harvard that drinking LOADS of coffee works great for my alertness. Coffee-makers are too bulky. Why didn’t I discover this simple solution earlier, why didn’t I?
What is the chemical composition (and kcal/g) of the polysaccharides/oligosaccharides/raffinoses/non-digestible fraction found in beans vs bread/rice/corn/pasta and other starches? - #8 by AlexKChen - I discovered keto bread at target and am recalibrating. I have been dead tired for much of the first week after europe and discovered why I horridly OD’d on nicotine earlier this year (b/c I’m tired after exhausting events and maybe it’s OKAY to oversleep after them. But when I’m tired I tend to take A LOT of nicotine to try to recover [and sometimes the first few batches don’t feel like ANYTHING so you do more…]. This time around I was not proximal to any mania-genic stimuli this time so this time the nicotine just barely felt like anything and did not propel me into a strange manic episode like the one that hit me in June).
I am recovering in energy now and FINALLY did my proper research into instant coffee, b/c I KNOW that instant coffee works better for me than most things.
I have been so lazy and lagged to do proper research in lots of things this year. Like, I overate pretzels in Montreal this year (without doing the proper compensation by acarbose).
FWIW I actually enjoy the major side effect of acarbose (it is not all that uncomfortable and a total indication that “something is working”).
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I had two periods of weight gain this year (one at the beginning due to nut binges, and one in SF in late July/early August, possibly due to nut binges, possibly partly due to Future Forum [and adjacent] food). My biggest fear [of gain in TX] did not materialize and I stayed the same weight there. I had one huge weight loss period in early June [connected with nicotine…] and then [actively] again in October when I finally drank enough nut milks to fill myself up [tho I had a period of depression too]. Overall it balanced out and I’m back at 98-100 lbs as it always recalibrates to…