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Swedish LCHF Cruise 2016

Wow, where do I even start?

After an amazingly interesting, fun and touching 24 hours on the Baltic Sea, there are so many impressions to take in.

All the fantastic people I’ve met and that have inspired me. The success stories. All the incredible speakers. The community. The energy. The happiness.

To attend the world’s largest LCHF cruise was a very intensive experience, filled with many emotions, meetings and laughter. New lessons were mixed with reminders of how things are  and how they should be.

The LCHF cruise of 2016 started with all of us checking in at the Tallink Silja Line terminal building in Stockholm, Sweden. We were heading to Turku, Finland, where we’d turn around and go back, meaning a total travel time of 23 hours.

As soon as we got onboard the “Galaxy” dinner was served in the form of a special LCHF buffet, where everyone could find great and healthy food that they liked. With 600 participants, this could not have been done in a better way.

With our stomachs full and our mood happy, we went to one of the ship’s bar areas, where we mingled with old and new friends, enjoying the company thoroughly. We didn’t stay all too long, because the following day was going to be very intense.

The lectures started promptly at 9am the following morning, just after we had left Turku, Finland, to head back to Stockholm, Sweden. After a lovely and inspiring welcome speech by the organisers Karin Eldh, Margareta Lundström and Bo Zackrisson, it was time for our first speaker, Sweden’s own DietDoctor, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt.

He told us about the “Food revolution”, and the explosion of type 2 diabetes currently underway in the world. Even if you’ve heard Dr. Eenfeldt speak before, he has an amazing ability to update his presentations to the newest information available. He’s a great speaker and has a very easy way of speaking and teaching the world the information it needs to hear.

Ann Fernholm, author of “My Sweet Heart”, was next on stage, and brought with her an incredibly interesting topic; children and food. How can we change our children’s food habits so that fast food doesn’t become a usual part of their diet? What should babies eat? I’m certain there were many parents in the audience wishing they had known all of this when their children were really small! Ann also spoke about “Kostfonden”, which aims to coordinate impartial research into the effect of food on different illnesses. Their previous project was/is about IBS and food, and their next will be about type 1 diabetes and the role of food, something that touched me very deeply.

After a quick coffee break (with heavy cream and/or coconut oil!) it was time to hear Ralf Sundberg speak. His presentation was about sponsorships within research studies, and how the result of these are therefore often very biased. He also touched upon the cholesterol myths we’ve been told for the past few decades and how these are used to make us take more medications. It was interesting to see how the results of the studies that the cholesterol guidelines are based on came about.

It was time for lunch, which we ate at one of the ship’s restaurants. Instead of dessert we listened to the journalist Henrik Ennart, who spoke about the research behind his book called “The Blue Food”. He has visited so called “Blue Zones” in the world, where inhabitants live to be older than the average, often over 100 years. These zones can be found on Sardinia, or in Greece, for example. Mr. Ennart presented his findings in terms of commonalities between these places, as well as the differences. The food was not the same everywhere, for example, whereas the fact that they ate clean food that they had grown themselves, was.

The funniest speech of the cruise was held by Nisse Simonson. He has an amazing energy and ability to make serious facts into something funny. He spoke about the impact of sugar, the role of sugar and how to live a long, healthy life. After concluding his talk with Peggy Lee’s “Is that all there is?” he almost received standing ovations.

After Mr. Simonson we had to make a choice between a lecture bloc called “If I can do it, you can too!” or “We want to know more”.

The first one was 3 of Sweden’s biggest weight loss success stories. Lindha Vikström, Johan Falk and My Klasson shared their inspiring and touching personal stories of how low carb and LCHF has helped them half their weights that didn’t leave anyone unphased. These three are the definition of determined weightloss heroes!

The second set of lectures were Mats Humble and the duo Karl Hultén and Cecilia Nisbeth Nilsson who shared about their expertise. Mats Humble spoke about the most important, and most forgotten, vitamin of them all, vitamin D. He provided a lot of facts and insights, I think many left the lecture with an urgent notion of the need for vitamin D. Ms. Nilsson and Mr. Hultén presented their “Autoimmune Cookbook”, the first of its kind on the Swedish market, and showed us the theory and delicious recipes from their book.

After the last speakers had been applauded off the stage, we met at the BUffet restaurant where it was time for a snack, some coffee and lots of good byes, as well as trying to find and talk to the last few ones we hadn’t managed to find yet.

A HUGE thank you to the organizers of the Scandinavian LCHF Cruise, it was amazingly well organized and incredibly interesting. It was fantastic to meet all the great people and listen to enriching presentations. Next year I’ll definitely be there again!

Diabetes Lies

Diabetes Lies

How do you feel when you find out that someone has been lying to you?

You feel cheated, stupid and end up having trust issues.

It doesn’t even have to be full-on lying, it can also be a few mis-truths, or not telling you the whole story so that you can’t put things into context.

For 26 years I believed a lot of things about diabetes that I now know are untrue. For 26 out of 30 years I believed that I knew less than my doctors, that I couldn’t trust my instincts and that I was just doing it all wrong.

And all along my mother has said that “you’re always your own best doctor”. Boy, oh boy is she right! But when you’re told, repeatedly by people who “know better” that this isn’t the case and that you should really be doing it their way, which is usually straight out of a medical textbook, you start losing faith in your own thinking, reasoning and ways. What about what works for YOU as an individual? We both know that diabetes is a very individual disease and there are as many options to manage it well as there are people who have it.

It wasn’t until I was finally brave enough to look my own health in the eye and decide to take it into my own hands that I noticed that I truly had the power to change my own health destiny. This was an incredibly difficult step to take, not to mention scary.

I had been told for far too long, and far too many times, that what I was about to do I would probably die from. Straight away. This was clearly a blatant lie, I’m still here and I’m doing better health-wise than ever.

But what I’m really here to do now is to stop the lies. Stop the untruths that are clearly ruining more people’s lives than they have to. They’ve had their time on stage, it’s time for the truth.

Do you ever feel like there has to be more to it than just “eat like everyone else and take more insulin”?

Have you lost a little hope to ever get diabetes more controlled?

Diabetes can often put you in a life or death situation. Sometimes more often than you’re willing to give it credit for. This is why it’s so important to stop being lied to, to trust your gut feeling and to realize that more insulin isn’t automatically the only answer there is for you to control diabetes better.

I know what it’s like to being close to giving up completely, just do what the doctors tell you (because-they-know-best) and deep down wonder “why me?”. To play a game of Russian roulette with your life at stake – every day. It sucks. It feels so hopeless and there’s no end in sight. At the same time, you don’t have the energy to do anything about it, either. Mainly due to your fluctuating blood sugars, where curves closely resemble something like a roller coaster. You’re stuck in a well, looking for the rope you need to get out.

In order for you to actually get out, and here comes the major suckage, you have to take responsibility for your situation AND your own health. You need to look your own health in the eye and show it who is boss. Plainly put, it’s about going from not giving a shit to giving tons of shits.

But you can only get there if and when you know the true facts. The real things that will help you feel better, be healthier, happier and more blood sugar stable. The information that takes you off the roller coaster and puts you in the spinning tea cups, if you will.

Diabetes will never be completely at bay, especially not if you have Type 1. But with a few changes of food, simple tricks and lifehacks it can get so much better.

You just have to realize how to make the shift of going from doing-it-by-the-book-but-it-doesn’t-work to ah-this-is-awesome. With this shift, you choose to be healthy and happy.

A great first step could be to join the webinar I’m hosting on Monday, 13th July 2015, where I’ll be talking about 5 major lies your doctor tells you about diabetes. This is your chance to learn how to help yourself to a better life with diabetes. It’s not hopeless, if I can do it, so can you.

Sign up for the webinar here.

LCHF Pancake Recipe

Do you remember when you were little and your mom would make you these amazing, perfectly fried pancakes?

Well, I do. And I’ve been missing them a little since I cut out grains from my diet, a good few years ago now.

Throughout the years, I’ve been trying one low carb pancake recipe after the other, but they never quite get to where I would like them.

They’re either too soggy, too thick (I much prefer crepes to american style pancakes!), taste too much like nuts, don’t contain enough fat, or, frankly, are too complicated to make with ingredients that you have to really go on a hunt for.

Call me the Goldilocks of Pancakes if you will, but finding an easy, yummy, healthy, low carb pancake recipe has not been easy. I might as well have gone out for that hunt of those ingredients no human has in their pantry ever.

I’ve recently given up a bit on searching for The Pancake Recipe. Too much milk products isn’t an option, neither are fake ingredients. Or combinations of ingredients that give them a funky flavor. No, thanks!

Until now.

I’ve quite frankly completely stumbled upon what might just be The Complete Pancake Lovers Awesome Recipe For Low Carb High Fat Pancakes!

I was first alerted to this recipe through a fantastic Facebook group I’m in, and thought it sounded a little weird, to be honest. “Egg and cream cheese, that’s it?! They’ll never keep together and the’ll taste like, well eggs and cream cheese. Perhaps sometime when I have n o t h i n g else at home.” my mind started blabbering.

That day was the other day (although we had tons of other yummy food at home). Turns out, they hold together just fine, almost better than “normal” pancakes. And the taste… I bet you anything no one would realize they’re not “normal” pancakes if I served them these. They taste exactly like I remember pancakes tasting!

 

lchf_pancakes

Yummy LCHF Pancakes

 

This recipe is from the wonderful blog I Breathe I’m Hungry, where you can find the recipe in all its glory and originality.

This is my version:

Real LCHF Pancakes

Makes: Four pancakes/crepes

You’ll need

  • 2 oz (60 grams) cream cheese (I used Philadelphia)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon xylitol (or sweetener of your choice) (this can also be completely skipped, they’ll still be awesome)
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (because who doesn’t love cinnamon?!)

Do this

  1. Put all ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth
  2. Let rest for 2 minutes
  3. Pour some batter into a hot pan with some melted butter. Cook for 2 minutes until golden, flip and cook 1 minute on the other side.
  4. Serve with some fresh berries, cinnamon, sweetener if you want, lemon, almond butter, butter, bacon… The world’s your oyster and the sky’s the limit!

 

lchf_pancake

LCHF Pancakes with Raspberries, Coconut cream and Cinnamon

 

Approx nutrition info per batch:

344 calories
29g fat
2.5g net carbs
17g protein

Enjoy these amazing pancakes!

Hope they can become a staple in your food routine, it’s always nice with new inspiration.

Do you have a favorite pancake recipe you want to share with me? Comment below!

 

Making Lists

Making lists

Do you have to make shopping lists when you go grocery shopping, just so you won’t forget half of what you went out to get in the first place?

Or, have you ever underestimated the power of a to do list, and missed to call that one person you really had to speak to?

No? It’s just me then.

This is of course a super simplistic way of looking at it, but the main message stays the same: unless you write down what you want, it will be difficult for you to get it. Or get there.

How do you keep track of everything that needs to be done?

For me, it’s definitely the easiest to make a list out of it.

Until what needs to be done becomes a routine, it’s very difficult to remember all the things that require your attention. (Not least if you’re handling something like diabetes.)

And, if there’s something outside of yourself that you want and you don’t formulate clearly what it is, how will other people ever know how to give it to you? And also, how do you get a crystal clear view of exactly it is you want?

Before going on last month’s Low Carb Cruise, I felt a bit nervous about it. First of all, it’s a long trip and secondly, I was about to be in the same room as so many of my Heroes!

I talked to a brilliant friend of mine about it, and she told me to write a list of the people I wanted to talk to during the cruise.

“This is so silly”, I thought to myself, “what’s the use of a list?!”

But, as the excellent friend she is, she pushed me to do it anyway. And am I glad I did!

Lo-and-behold, when I found my list again a few days after we had gotten onto dry land again (but my body was clearly still on the ship, everything was swaying), I had accomplished Every. Single. Thing. on that list! I had talked to all the people I wanted to talk to, and a good few more!

This close-to-obsessive list writing of course doesn’t just apply to rather mundane things, like grocery shopping, or super exciting things, like making sure you grab the chance to talk to your heroes. It’s also absolutely useful for everyday things, like what to bring on your holiday, or things like where you want to be in a year from now, what you’d like your A1c to be and what kind of tools you want and need to simplify your life. For example. Not to mention the good old to do list!

Lists don’t have to be exclusively used for practical things, you can very well use them for things like your emotions and actions to. In that case it’s called a to be list.

What do you want to be like today? How would you like to act in certain situations? And, how do you want to feel?

If you know what (or who) makes you feel good, why don’t you ask for it?

And how do you formulate said wishes, thoughts, questions and desired actions? If you leave it at just a thought, you most likely will forget it. If you see it on and off it’s easier to focus on it. You and I both know that any goal you have is so much easier to reach if you know what you want and you state it clearly, making you focus on it.

Remember that goals like “one day I’d love to be able to go skydiving” just won’t cut it either. It’s too general! Your goal needs to be a SMART one, Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. The one about skydiving then becomes “In 3 months I want to have the appointment booked for skydiving, providing my doctor says it’s ok at least 2 weeks before”

Then the challenge is just how to get there.

What do you make lists of?

Low Carb Cruise 2015

Low Carb Cruise 2015

How am I supposed to summarize a wonderfully magical week full of meeting amazing people, seeing paradise islands and learning superinteresting new information? Perhaps just like that?

This years Low Carb Cruise in the Caribbean at the end of May was a complete success. We were about 200 participants, with a wonderful mix of backgrounds and reasons for being there, that set sail on the 24th May 2015.

Our ship, “Independence of the Seas” is one of the biggest cruise ships in the world, with over 4000 passengers. This made our group of low carbers pretty small, but at the same time feel closer together.

With that big of a ship, the food was definitely not low carb adapted. The sheer mix of sugar, grains and other stuff we know we donät do well with was at times overwhelming before seeing the options before my eyes. Every night was a sit down dinner in the glamourous 3 floor dining room, where you could choose freely what to have to eat from a menu that changed each night. A certain knowledge of how to navigate a menu was required, at least if you are handling food insensitivities (like most of our group are). This sometimes meant that you had to choose something else than what you really wanted from the menu, although the staff were amazing at meeting every single request of special orders that they possibly could.

Food on the ship (and mainland USA, too) is still very calorie based. “Low-fat” and “sugar-free” are still considered “words of wisdom” for most people, without a care in the world that these removed items have been replaced with chemicals and additives that I would prefer not to have in my body.

 

Lobster Night at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Lobster Night at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

 

As for the Low Carb Cruise itself, we were listening to presentations by the speakers when the ship was in transit at sea. The days on the islands of Puerto Rico, St. Maarten and St. Kitts I spent with other low carbers that had chosen to go on the group excursions as well. It was wonderful to see all these places of paradise that I’ve previously only heard about!

The first seminar day of the Low Carb Cruise had a clear theme: diabetes. This was the whole reason for me to initially actually click “book” on the cruise, so my expectations were high to say the least. Especially with speakers such as Dr. Eric Westman, Dr. Keith Runyan, Jimmy Moore, Jackie Eberstein and Sweden’s own Diet Doctor, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt.

Both Dr. Runyan and Dr. Westman talked about how eating low carb high fat helps in the treatment of diabetes, the former focused on both Type 1 and Type 2, the latter more focused on Type 2. These presentations were, for obvious reasons, particularly interesting to me! But it can’t be denied that Diabetes was mentioned in a vast majority of the other presentations as well.

 

 

Dr. Westman and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Dr. Westman and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Dr. Runyan and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Dr. Runyan and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

 

Amongst other highlights from the first seminar day was Dr. Justin Marchiagiani’s presentation on hormonal imbalances and the blood sugar connection, where thyroid issues were lifted forward as well. And Dana Carpender’s colorful presentation about ADHD and low carb eating. And, brilliant as always, was also Dr. Eenfeldts presentation about the Food Revolution.

For the following 3 days there was socializing and excursions on the menu:

 

Amazing view on St. Kitts

Amazing view on St. Kitts

Orient Beach, St. Maarten

Orient Beach, St. Maarten

Yummy fresh coconut in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Yummy fresh coconut in San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Juan, Puerto Rico is one happy place!

San Juan, Puerto Rico is one happy place!

 

Once we had all gotten some sunshine on our noses, fresh ocean breeze in our hair and were many smiles and laughs richer, it was time to continue the seminars. By this point, the ship was already on her way back to Fort Lauderdale in Florida.

This seminar day was nothing short of amazing, either. Speakers such as Dr. Ann Childers, Jackie Eberstein, Cassie Bjork, Dr. Jay Wortman, Emily Maguire, Jimmy Moore and the founder of Ketonix, that measures the ketone level in your breath, Michel Lundell were responsible for masses of great information, laughs and well-made presentations.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Diabetes got a lot of attention here as well, although it wasn’t explicitly on the agenda. The BIG focus was on Type 2, and how it often comes hand in hand with other health issues.

We were taught about the misunderstandings of a ketogenic diet, why you won’t lose weight although you’re eating low carb, how women’s hormones relate to weight loss and how LCHF is seen in the rest of the world.

The final day of the Low Carb Cruise 2015 was featured by Dr. Michael Fox, who spoke about women’s hormones, fertility and how low carb eating ties into it. As well as Dr. Jose Lozado’s presentation on how certain forms of cancer can be prevented by eating low carb high fat and other lifestyle choices. After that the whole intensively awesome week was wrapped up with a great Q&A session with all the speakers (and a private cocktail party after that).

The whole experience was absolutely phenomenal! I’ve met so many amazingly warm and open people (see some of my heroes that I met below! (I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t get a proper picture with Mr. Moore…)), made new friends, learned so much of the latest research and had such a fun week!

Even if this week definitely wasn’t just fun in the sun and beach life, I’ve gotten to see and experience new knowledge, new places, new food and new, lovely people.

I really can’t wait for next years Low Carb Cruise!

 

Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, Sweden's Diet Doctor, and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, Sweden’s Diet Doctor, and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Jackie Eberstein and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Jackie Eberstein and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Emily Maguire and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Emily Maguire and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Cassie Bjork, aka Dietitian Cassie, and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015

Cassie Bjork, aka Dietitian Cassie, and I at the Low Carb Cruise 2015