3 posts tagged “bacon”

In honor of the very tasty bacon I had for breakfast this morning...
Gotta dig that Married to the Sea.

So. My personal life is a bit...um...complex right now, and I'm officially in "obese" territory according to the height/weight charts (with a BMI of 32), but at least I'm otherwise healthy.

Today I got to do a health assessment through work (where they stick your finger and test your cholesterol, fasting glucose, and other fun stuff). Everything is terrific, including my blood pressure, and especially my cholesterol, all in the optimal range.

I chalk it up in part to my favorite breakfast: bacon and eggs.

Now, I don't eat bacon and eggs every day for breakfast. But I do eat two eggs most days, usually hard-boiled (easier/faster to cook and eat), and have bacon at least once a week, sometimes more, and usually the regular pork kind (although I also like turkey bacon and veggie bacon; although they are not anything like real bacon, they still taste good in their own special way). The eggs I eat are organic, cage free, usually local, and vegetarian fed. Non-vegetarian eggs are from chickens whose feed includes meat by-products, often other chickens. Now don't you think it's worth it to buy the more expensive organic kind? They also taste five million times better than their pale imitators.

While I was waiting for the little machine to spit out my test results, I heard the advice the skinny woman next to me got (apparently her numbers were not as stellar as mine): eat whole-wheat Total or Cheerios if you eat cereal, get lots of fiber, eat good fats (avocados, almonds, etc.). Switch from white to wheat bread.

Even if she follows that advice, it may not help enough -- it didn't help me when I was trying to regain my health, back when my triglycerides were in the triple digits, and the doc was threatening me with blood pressure medication. Have I mentioned that the majority of my immediate family takes statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) and blood pressure medication?

What did help me was cutting out most grains altogether, except as an occasional treat (I regularly eat flaxmeal and some wheat and oat bran, as well as low-carb tortillas, which have a LOT more fiber than even the whole wheat ones), and eliminating almost all sugar (including most kinds of fruit).

It also helps that I can't stand to spend too much money on meat, so I wind up eating a lot of inexpensive chicken and ground turkey. But I eat full-fat cheese, half-and-half in my coffee, peanut butter (the grind-it-yourself kind is awesome, with no sugar or salt), walnuts, almonds, avocados, olives, and as many veggies as I can stand. And yes, bacon.

Remember when nutritionists said "don't eat fat or you'll get fat"? Turns out they were wrong. I think they are also wrong about dietary cholesterol and cholesterol in the body -- it isn't a direct correlation. Scientists have discovered that artificially created trans fats (all those "partially hydrogenated" oils) are the real culprits in many cases. Eggs are good for you (especially eggs from healthy chickens!). Bacon can be a part of your life. You might want to think twice about that bowl of Cheerios, though -- maybe try some oatmeal instead (or hot oat bran cereal), or something else that your great-grandparents would recognize as food?

My numbers...
Total cholesterol: 138 mg/dl
HDL: 62 mg/dl
TC/HDL Ratio: 2.2
LDL: 65 mg/dl
Triglicerides: 55 mg/dl

Fasting glucose: 79 mg/dl

Blood pressure: 110/65

P.S. - I love coffee too, but it has to be decaf, or I get as jittery as a spider monkey.