Down 20

Book update: After vacillating on names, I’m back to Fire for the second book. Revisions have made it more realistic, and the plans I have for Book 3 make it realistic that I will finish the series at 3…plus the novella that I’m creating from all of the things I’ve pulled out of Fire. 

Fire is off to the book design/layout crew and a few wonderful beta readers and proofreaders. They should be done by the end of November. Then I’ll insert/verify the secret code that will lead readers to bonus content. Shhhh…don’t tell anyone. Jesh is working on the cover – he did the new cover for SPARK, so I’m looking forward to what he comes up with.

Fire will be available by mid-December, in plenty of time for your Christmas shopping. SPARK recently came back to life as an eBook and is available through Kindle Unlimited for free.

Diet update: I’ve been following Perlmutter’s diet for two months. I’ve lost 20 pounds but have never felt like I’m starving. The hardest part has been transitioning my caffeine of choice. I’ve never been a coffee guy, always preferring my stimulants cold and carbonated. Now, I turn to coffee. And solely because of the study Permutter cited in Grain Brain. I don’t remember the citation, but it was a European study over ten years and half a million participants. Coffee drinkers were less likely to die of ANY Cause than those that didn’t drink coffee. Similarly, a study of 171,000 healthy residents of the UK followed over seven years (University of Miami citation) showed that coffee drinkers had a 27% lower risk of death. Decaf dropped that to 14%.

I’m very aware that correlation is not causation, but studies that long and with population sizes that large shouldn’t be ignored.  I’ll go coffee until someone does a Diet Mountain Dew study. I’m also watching sugar.

Based again on Perlmutter, I’m avoiding sugar. Unsweetened coffee is miserable, so I’m experimenting with Stevia and Monk fruit options. Thus far, I prefer Monk fruit. I drink cold-brewed coffee and the Monk fruit dissolves better in the chilly blackness of the coffee.

Weight loss was not the primary goal. Risk reduction for Alzheimer’s was, and is. The weight loss is a nice side effect of cutting out all the carbs and chocolate cake. I’ve taken two cheat days in the two months: once for pancakes (with real maple syrup) with my family and then another night when we had company over to watch the Astros win the World Series (this time without any sign-stealing drama).

A couple points of interest: Perlmutter suggests a daily probiotic. I’m throwing a BS flag on that play. The purpose of a probiotic is to supply new, healthy bacteria to your gut. Sounds reasonable. However, if the purpose is to get these little critters established in your gut biome, then once they get established, there should be no reason to keep spending close to $1 per day for Perlmutter’s (or anyone else’s) probiotic pills. Harvard Med School says that 4-6 weeks should do it if it’s going to do any good at all. I’ve stopped the probiotic after two months based on their research.

Coming up: Great read from Michael Chabon, cover reveal for Fire, and much more!