FCAS: My "Crash" Diet

ven though my microbiomic samples are still filtering through Viome's complex analyzation process, in anticipation of doing a third sample—to find out how my greatly modified diet is standing the test of time—I will be sticking to this reduced fat, carbs-and-sugar diet, which I've dubbed FCAS (pronounced "EF-Cass," in a nod to that Boeing 737 MAX nose-into-ground software, MCAS, or "EM-Cass").

FCAS is my friend, and it should be your friend, though hopefully with the "Reduced" always in front of it (because Lord knows, most of my life like my Boeing friends I strove mightily to place "MAX" in front of it).

Adhering to my "simple is better" worldview, my diet is composed primarily of the four major food groups for vegetarians: vegetables, nuts, legumes and chocolate.

As a lacto- ovo- pesky-vegetarian (the last meaning I can eat fish), the only animal I'm including for now is shrimp, although when I start branching out I'll start with chicken and maybe later meringue, but all that will only happen after I see my first microbiomic results.

The way I see it, the main demon perching on my shoulder with the most vested interests in my progress is the Sugar Demon, a fact I recognized as long as five years ago in a now-defunct blog.

As I'm sure you all know by now—as Sauron was to Mordor, Ancel Keys was to the keeper of the Sugar Flame—sugar in your diet does not always come wrapped in little pretty foil wraps or in 1.5-Megaliters of Mountain Dew.

It more frequently comes in that mound of home fries or bowl of rice . . . your liver does not know the difference, and furthermore, doesn't give a shit (although your colon will beg to disagree).

So I had to give up my two favourite foods: rice and pasta; with potatoes and bread just falling all over themselves to get to the top of my food pyramid.

This, my friends, is like a crime against living; at least, to me it was. Deprived of my late-night Delverde Linguine Fini with my favourite Japanese pasta sauce, or a huge dish of scalloped potatoes or a thick slice of cracked wheat toast and Bonne Maman Confiture de fraises, not to mention the nightly dessert feasts of ice cream with strawberries and nuts and whipped cream . . . all . . . gone with no possibility of return . . . well, that's just a crime, folks.

But as usual, we think of these things as isolated events. I'll go back to my regular no-ice cream diet soon. Today's splurge was just today. It won't hurt.

But when that's what you say, every day, well, it will hurt.

It's been now exactly two weeks since I went on my Reduced FCAS regimen, and what can I say? My blood sugar has normally been around 7.0 mmol/L/126 mg/dL and yesterday I got out of the car and felt a strange sensation, as if my pants were falling down! But my pants were falling down!

My new FCAS routine, crafted over these past two weeks, has been relatively easy to adopt, and barring the occasional lapse—allowed by any sane diet counsellor—will never result in a failure like its relative, the MCAS . . .

The message here at BiomeMechanic II is So Far, SO GOOD.