About Me

Who Am I?

My name is Joe Kalb. I'm a 30-year-old optimist. I love to learn, and nutrition is my favorite thing to learn about right now.

While I haven't actually done much writing on nutrition and health yet, I plan to do just that with this blog.

Why I'm Writing

I'm writing because nutrition is powerful. Really powerful. Nutrition changes the way a human forms. . . seriously. . . it changes how the bones form! It is fascinating, and nutrition is way under-appreciated in mainstream thought.

The process of writing helps me learn. It helps clarify my thoughts. For hundreds of hours, I have read about and listened to podcasts about health and nutrition. Writing about it puts me to the test. Can I explain any of it or is it all a jumbled mess in my cranium? Putting words to weblog forces me to articulate and sharpen disparate thoughts, confront my biases, and it holds me at least somewhat accountable. If it ever leads to any kind of readership, it will be able to spur constructive dialogue.

I'm writing because I am trying to collect information on how to healthfully raise children someday. Thanks to Weston A. Price's work (reviewed here), I now understand that nutrition is the primary driving force behind childhood health. As a new husband thinking about potential kiddos in the future, it's on my mind. Writing about proper nutrition makes me think ideas through, and the writings may be useful references in the future. Likewise, if I talk to a co-worker, family member, or friend about way-outside-the-mainstream ideas, I can at least reference these writings so they know I'm not pulling things out of thin air.

I'm also writing because I'm not trying to be an asshole. When I pass on certain foods, skip out on dessert, or have annoying orders at restaurants, I don't do so to be difficult. It keeps me feeling my best: immediately after eating, in the short-term, and to the best of my current knowledge, in the long term. And no, it does not feel joyless. At all. Quite the opposite. Eating healthfully keeps my brain and my body fueled and filled with positive energy. Consider this blog my defense for not eating the Buckeye Donuts someone brought in to the office!

I'm writing because nutrition is about way, way more than weight loss, about way more than vanity. It has physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual effects. . . it is all connected!

How I Currently Exercise

I exercise every day. I do 100 burpees as a baseline, and most days I add some resistance training to that. On top of that, I play basketball about once a week and mix in some tennis and sand volleyball when it is nice out.

How I Currently Eat

I currently follow a ketogenic, nearly-carnivorous way of eating. 80-90% of my diet is beef or other ruminant meat, such as lamb. After that, it's sardines. Some eggs (preferably pastured). Steaks and eggs cooked in, if anything, butter (or better yet, grass-fed ghee). Lots of salt! Liver once every couple weeks. A little cheese. Avocado, other seafoods or meats on occasion. Maybe a few green veggies, some other dairy, or nuts every once in a while. I drink water, coffee, seltzer water, and the occasional green tea. And once or twice a week I might have a red wine, some bourbon, or a Miller Lite. In some social situations, I might venture a little bit outside those foods-- but in those cases I still try to keep it relatively low-carb, and more importantly, no vegetable oil!

Also, I do a lot of intermittent fasting (e.g. go at least 12 hours without eating anything), and I do occasional 24-72 hour fasts. I often eat only one meal a day.

Upcoming posts will likely detail why I prefer to eat such a  diet. (Spoiler alert: it's because it keeps me feeling terrific and energetic.)

How's That Working Out for Me?

I have been working out approximately this way for years, with adjustments here and there. I have been largely eating this way for 6-7 months. I don't think this is the only way to eat to be healthy, but it has worked well for me. It has helped energize me through an exciting but packed year so far (buying home, wedding, reading, writing, exercising, hobbies, etc).

I feel better than ever before. Physically, mentally, emotionally. Nutrition is not everything. But. . . it does a lot and it helps facilitate basically all other positive health habits.

And, since some people like to see quantifiable data, let's run the numbers.

I'm 6-5 1/2, 205 pounds. I don't know to what extent it has affected my performance in the gym, but it certainly hasn't hindered anything. I hit my 2018 one-rep-max goal for hex bar deadlift in April by pulling 505 pounds.

At my last lipid panel at work (FYI I'm a software developer for an insurance company), I had the following values. This was about 4 months ago.

04/11/2018:

• Blood pressure: 114/72
• Fasting blood glucose: 92 mg/dL (5.1 mmol/L)
• Triglycerides: 47 mg/dL
• HDL cholesterol: 100 mg/dL 
• LDL cholesterol: 122 mg/dL
• Waist: 33 inches (at belly button)

Blood donation blood pressure, 04/04/2018: 120/78

Blood donation blood pressure, 06/05/2018: 102/80

For a little perspective on the cholesterol and triglyceride numbers, I ran them through the report generator at cholesterolcode.com/report (cholesterolcode.com is a phenomenal resource with tons of valuable info). The report generated, at 3 months keto, 15 hours fasted with a remnant cholesterol score in the lowest risk quintile, remnant cholesterol to HDL in the lowest risk quintile, and an Atherogenic Index of Plasma (AIP) in the lowest risk third.

I'm very happy with all of the lipid values. I hope to get some other lab testing done soon.

In Summary

Nutrition is really, really important. It has helped me to feel really, really good. Good nutrition has helped a lot of people shake diseases typically thought of as being irreversible. A lot of what I write here will be old news to people who fervently read about nutrition online. However, there is a wide gap between what those people think and what most people think about nutrition. I hope to bridge that gap for at least a few people with this blog. More to come!