Eat More Olives

~ Laura

UnknownEverybody is talking about the new study on the benefits of a Mediterranean diet. Shrug. This is what we eat. 

I buy olive oil by the gallon and store it in a special jar by the stove. I also have a special garlic jar. We eat five different kinds of vegetables for dinner.

Published by Laura

14 thoughts on “Eat More Olives”

  2. The problem with Ofnish’s criticism is that it’s the standard criticism of failures to demonstrate significant effect with large scale studies of low fat diets (especially very low fat diets): most people are simply unable to maintain them for any long period of time. I looked st Ornish’s cites, and the problem with those cites is the lack of endpoint evidence (death). I have the same complaint about other “faddish” diets, especially ones that rely on supplements (omega-3) and substitute (vegan diets that have fake meat, fake cheese). Ultimately, to me, those diets are like arguing that baby formula is better than brest milk — a pretty high bar to prove.
    Also, Ornish is ignoring the overlap in the diets.
    I’d be intrigued to see a similar study on the Japanese diet.

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  4. “I don’t trust Ornish because his name is on a strip mall by me.”
    That’s a good reason, too, though perhaps not so much if its not the same Ornish.

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  5. I had a successful three month run on a gestational diabetes diet that I came up with for myself (an old friend is a Type 1 diabetic, so I had some notion of what would work). I’m a big girl and this was the first time in my life I’ve ever been on anything resembling a diet. My results were freakishly good: My blood sugar was consistently controlled during the third trimester and I had a total net weight gain for the pregnancy of 12 pounds, 9 pounds of which were the baby herself. By several weeks post-partum (during which time I was off the diet) I was 20 pounds lighter than when I started the pregnancy. It was crazy.
    Here’s a post I did midway:
    http://xantippesblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/gestational-diabetes.html
    When I explained what I was doing to my OB, she thought it sounded Mediterranean (I wasn’t picky about type of meat, though).
    Here are some thoughts from the experience:
    1. When the nice people at the factory put portion sizes on the box, they really mean it. That is a serving.
    2. Nuts are great! (See #1.)
    3. Fat is your friend. (See #1.)
    4. I ate every 2-3 hours.
    5. I made a point of always having a little bit of carbohydrates whenever I ate, but never eating just carbohydrates, ever. So for snacks, I might have a) some blueberries and Greek yogurt b) a cheese stick and fruit c) crackers and peanut butter (see #1) d) mini-bagel and nuts. I went through vast amounts of peanut butter.
    6. I learned to keep salad fixings at home and to have a salad for lunch nearly every day. Interestingly, I ate a lot of salads out, and just about every restaurant salad I ate was fine for my blood sugar. (This doesn’t necessarily hold for those 1000 calorie cheesy salads at places like Chilis.) I had success with Greek salads, Panera’s salads, taco salads, Cobb salads, etc.
    The fine print here is that I was HUNGRY a fair amount of the time, particularly in the morning or while while I was waiting to do my 2-hour after meal blood tests.
    I’m not on anything like that sort of regimen right now. For one thing, I don’t want to accidentally wreck my milk supply. But I think I learned a lot along the way.

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  6. It’s the same guy. It’s actually an accredited, hospital-affiliated program that is probably very good. Still, it’s attached to the Dunkin’ Donuts.

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  8. Good for you, Amy P.
    I eat Med food, not because of any diet. I eat Med food, because that’s what I grew up with and that’s what I like to eat. I’ve never been on a diet in my life.

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  9. At one of my third trimester appointments, I had lost three pounds since the last visit. It was a very weird experience, but I was under close medical supervision the whole time.
    For reference, I gained nearly 40 pounds with my first pregnancy and around 50 with my second. This was not in character for me.

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  10. Oh, and by the way, the sample menu that the doctor’s office gave me after I flunked my three hour glucose test was terrible. The suggested breakfast was (and I’m not making this up) a breakfast burrito made from tortilla, egg and fried potato.

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  12. One of the points they make in the paper about the med “diet” is that it’s not a diet, but just the way some people eat and have eaten for a while. They make he point that the oil used in cooking vegetables may increase the consumption of vegetables, as opposed to the fat-free dressing (which has always fit in the lunch able category of food that is or really food for me.)

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  14. MH,
    You might want to try it, if only in the interests of science. I was just looking at the following (I don’t know how reputable it is):
    “I’ve been reading about the glycemic index, and trying to choose foods which will have less impact on my blood sugar. I really don’t understand why a food like potatoes (glycemic index 90) would be so much higher than white sugar (glycemic index 59).”
    http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/questionsandanswers/a/potatoglycemic.htm
    I had the interesting experience of noticing (because I was testing my blood after meals) that certain seemingly innocent things (like a small white floor burrito or a dish of oatmeal with no sugar) would spike my blood sugar, while I could get away with small quantities of actual sweets, particularly late in the day. I’m not sure if this has in application for people with normally functioning pancreases, but it’s worth noting.
    bj,
    I don’t think non-fat dressing tastes much worse than full-fat dressing, but it often has more sugar in it as a compensation. That’s typical of a lot of commercially packaged low and no-fat foods. I avoided that stuff like the plague during my gestational diabetes.
    I was just looking at the excellent bacon ranch salad dressing in my fridge. It’s got 13g of fat, but only 1g of carbohydrates in it.

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