"Calories in vs calories out" is a grossly simplistic comment. It's simplistic to the point of misleading. And I'm starting to believe this one witticism is the root of virtually all dietary confusion.
Elsewhere in this blog I talked about my progress on a purely carnivorous diet. I dropped thirty pounds in one month. I felt great. My mind was sharper than ever. I was on top of the world.
But apparently that was all a hallucination. Because I've been told by an internet guru that it is impossible to lose weight while eating a caloric surplus. He even invoked the laws of thermodynamics. While it is certainly true that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the "calories in, calories out" crowd continues to ignore the fact that energy can be changed in form. And that is the hugely important fact that makes all the difference.
What the "calories in, calories out" crowd ignores is all the different ways calories get used. One hundred calories of protein and one hundred calories of carbohydrates are not the same thing. The protein will get used to build tissue and hormones. The carbohydrates will only be used for fuel or stored as glycogen to be used as fuel later. So out of that hundred calories of protein you may only have forty calories available for fuel. And the body can't burn protein directly. It has to either convert it to fat or sugar first. Either of those processes takes additional energy. This means you end up with even less than forty calories being stored.
But the biggest thing the "calories in, calories out" crowd continues to ignore is that a significant portion of our calories go "out" through the indoor plumbing. The human body does not store energy when it senses a surplus because storing energy is not always the best survival plan. Instead, the body gets rid of the excess to keep us light and agile so we can hunt and evade predators. So if you are eating right you can easily eat an excess of calories and still lose fat because the excess will pass right through.
So what is "eating right"? I'll have to save that for another post. Suffice to say that I have a theory that ties everything together. And it explains why low-carb, high fat diets and high-carb, low-fat diets both work.
Friday, January 2, 2015
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Hunting wabbits
After months of succumbing to peer pressure I have finally managed to get myself back on track. I regained all the weight I lost during my previous experiment with pure carnivorism. But I expect to lose it again and then some this time.
Now that the trivial chat is done, on to the meat of the post.
One of the first things that people mention when I talk about my carnivore diet is "rabbit starvation". The idea being that eating a too much lean meat will lead to health issues because the body needs a lot of fat to survive. Frankly, I'm tired of old wive's tales being passed along as scientific fact.
Let me be clear about one thing right up front- you cannot exclusively eat one single food source and expect to be healthy. It doesn't matter if it's rabbit, spinach, grapefruit, olives, or pistachios. No single food has all the nutrients required by the human body. So, yes, if you eat just rabbit you will die of malnutrition at some point. Or you will at least suffer some clinical illness.
Now it seems that within the zero-carb community it is still considered heresy to suggest that you don't need as much fat as you need protein. This community insists that we should all eat like eskimos. They steadfastly insist that too a low, or even moderate, fat intake will lead to "rabbit starvation".
But the facts simply don't support this notion. First of all, all top athletes eat a low-fat diet. Yet these people manage to operate at the pinnacle of human physical prowess. Zero-carb zealots dismiss this fact by pointing out that these athletes eat a mixed diet of protein, carbs, and fat. They say the carbs get converted to fat and therefore take the place of the fat that is lacking in the diet. This may be true. But it ignores the fact that protein can also be converted to fat. So a high-protein/low-fat diet would be no different than a "balanced" diet.
What I consider the most glaring bit of ignorance within the zero-carb community, however, is the notion that fat is fat. It has been known since 1923 that certain fats are essential to human health and cannot be synhtesized by the human body. Since these fats cannot be synthesized they must come from the diet. If you don't get these fats in the right amounts or in the right proportions to each other you can experience health problems. This means you can eat a very high-fat diet and still be unhealthy because you are not getting the essential fats. Or you could eat a low-fat diet chock full of the essential fats and be in perfect health. The point being that the amount of fat is far less important than the quality of the fat.
All the documented cases of "rabbit starvation" can easily be explained as malnutrition or simple starvation. They have nothing to do with the overall fat content of the meat. Rather, they are the direct result of missing essential nutrients due to a limited food supply. Rabbit, for example, has no vitamin A or C. It hardly matters how much fat is on the bunny when two major vitamins are missing. How long can you survive without vitamins A and C? How long before you get sick on such a diet?
Anyhow, I thought I could turn to the zero-carb community for a bit of support and guidance on my quest to maintain my carnivore status. It seems I was mistaken. It's just another cult with its gurus and unsupported dogma. So I'm a lone wolf still. If anybody knows of a community of genuine carnivores, let me know. I'm not interested in living on whale blubber.
Now that the trivial chat is done, on to the meat of the post.
One of the first things that people mention when I talk about my carnivore diet is "rabbit starvation". The idea being that eating a too much lean meat will lead to health issues because the body needs a lot of fat to survive. Frankly, I'm tired of old wive's tales being passed along as scientific fact.
Let me be clear about one thing right up front- you cannot exclusively eat one single food source and expect to be healthy. It doesn't matter if it's rabbit, spinach, grapefruit, olives, or pistachios. No single food has all the nutrients required by the human body. So, yes, if you eat just rabbit you will die of malnutrition at some point. Or you will at least suffer some clinical illness.
Now it seems that within the zero-carb community it is still considered heresy to suggest that you don't need as much fat as you need protein. This community insists that we should all eat like eskimos. They steadfastly insist that too a low, or even moderate, fat intake will lead to "rabbit starvation".
But the facts simply don't support this notion. First of all, all top athletes eat a low-fat diet. Yet these people manage to operate at the pinnacle of human physical prowess. Zero-carb zealots dismiss this fact by pointing out that these athletes eat a mixed diet of protein, carbs, and fat. They say the carbs get converted to fat and therefore take the place of the fat that is lacking in the diet. This may be true. But it ignores the fact that protein can also be converted to fat. So a high-protein/low-fat diet would be no different than a "balanced" diet.
What I consider the most glaring bit of ignorance within the zero-carb community, however, is the notion that fat is fat. It has been known since 1923 that certain fats are essential to human health and cannot be synhtesized by the human body. Since these fats cannot be synthesized they must come from the diet. If you don't get these fats in the right amounts or in the right proportions to each other you can experience health problems. This means you can eat a very high-fat diet and still be unhealthy because you are not getting the essential fats. Or you could eat a low-fat diet chock full of the essential fats and be in perfect health. The point being that the amount of fat is far less important than the quality of the fat.
All the documented cases of "rabbit starvation" can easily be explained as malnutrition or simple starvation. They have nothing to do with the overall fat content of the meat. Rather, they are the direct result of missing essential nutrients due to a limited food supply. Rabbit, for example, has no vitamin A or C. It hardly matters how much fat is on the bunny when two major vitamins are missing. How long can you survive without vitamins A and C? How long before you get sick on such a diet?
Anyhow, I thought I could turn to the zero-carb community for a bit of support and guidance on my quest to maintain my carnivore status. It seems I was mistaken. It's just another cult with its gurus and unsupported dogma. So I'm a lone wolf still. If anybody knows of a community of genuine carnivores, let me know. I'm not interested in living on whale blubber.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Refining the plan
It's been said that you learn more from your failures than you learn from your successes. My recent failure to adhere to my dietary plan has taught me a lot.
First, societal pressure is evil. An individual should never be forced to alter their desires to please the masses. I'm fairly certain people hold parades to make this exact point.
Second, diet is far more important than people imagine. I realize there are countless books, scientific papers, websites, and other sources proclaiming the importance of diet. But I don't think they go quite far enough. Diet is everything. It is the foundation of your entire life. It is far too important to be politicized, commercialized, or subjected to the whims of mass hysteria.
Third, "N=1" experiments are the only valid source of information. This comment contradicts scientific protocol which says a good experiment should have a broad database rather than a single instance. But diet does not work that way. For example, oysters are a good source of several valuable nutrients. But any dietary plan that recommended eating plenty of oysters would be deadly to many people. The only way to find what diet works for you is to experiment on yourself. Throw away the books. Turn off the internet. Try something different. If you are fat, lethargic, even if you are physically healthy and just feel your psyche isn't working right; change your diet. Experiment on yourself because no book can tell you what will work for you. Try going full carnivore. Try getting all your food in one or two big, closely-spaced meals rather than several small meals throughout the day. Try something new. And stick with it for at least a month.*
Fourth, small changes won't tell you anything. "Cutting back" on sweets won't make enough of an improvement to tell you if sweets are your problem. You have to go to the extreme. Completely eliminate everything you think might be a problem. Even eliminate things you don't think are a problem. I thought for years that my body tolerated dairy fairly well. Until I cut milk from my diet completely. Now the only dairy I seem to tolerate is aged cheese. Even yogurt upsets my system. Going to the extreme was the main motivation for my carnivore plan. And it worked.
The fifth thing I've learned is specific to the carnivore lifestyle. Variety is the key. I absolutely love meat. So being a carnivore isn't a big change. But even I have difficulty eating a sufficient quantity of a single meat. Plus a single source may not give you all the nutrients you need. When I started I was eating beef, poultry, and fish at each meal. But I have a hard time finding fish I like. So I've dropped fish from the plan, Each meal includes a pound of beef. I never get tired of it. Sometimes I make a meatloaf which ends up being more than a pound. The meatloaf always contains something else with the beef. Typically I use ground pork. But I have used ground lamb with good results. That's part of the variety. My meal last night included twenty ounces of turkey breast to go with the pound of beef. I did have a banana and some raw almonds as well. So it wasn't a fully carnivorous meal. But close enough for now. The point here is that eating two pounds of beef is not the same as eating a pound of beef and a pound of turkey.
Most of these lessons just reinforced what I already knew. But sometimes we need to be reminded of things. So now I have a renewed sense of purpose and a new drive to follow through with the plan. We'll see where I go from here.
*The recommendation to try something new comes with a caveat. Learn to recognize when your body is happy. And take it seriously when it tells you it is unhappy. The internet is full of people who have stuck with goofy diets even while their health continued to decline. Your body does not get worse when you start eating right. There is no "detox" period or withdrawl symptoms. If you make a change and start to feel worse then the change you made was wrong.
First, societal pressure is evil. An individual should never be forced to alter their desires to please the masses. I'm fairly certain people hold parades to make this exact point.
Second, diet is far more important than people imagine. I realize there are countless books, scientific papers, websites, and other sources proclaiming the importance of diet. But I don't think they go quite far enough. Diet is everything. It is the foundation of your entire life. It is far too important to be politicized, commercialized, or subjected to the whims of mass hysteria.
Third, "N=1" experiments are the only valid source of information. This comment contradicts scientific protocol which says a good experiment should have a broad database rather than a single instance. But diet does not work that way. For example, oysters are a good source of several valuable nutrients. But any dietary plan that recommended eating plenty of oysters would be deadly to many people. The only way to find what diet works for you is to experiment on yourself. Throw away the books. Turn off the internet. Try something different. If you are fat, lethargic, even if you are physically healthy and just feel your psyche isn't working right; change your diet. Experiment on yourself because no book can tell you what will work for you. Try going full carnivore. Try getting all your food in one or two big, closely-spaced meals rather than several small meals throughout the day. Try something new. And stick with it for at least a month.*
Fourth, small changes won't tell you anything. "Cutting back" on sweets won't make enough of an improvement to tell you if sweets are your problem. You have to go to the extreme. Completely eliminate everything you think might be a problem. Even eliminate things you don't think are a problem. I thought for years that my body tolerated dairy fairly well. Until I cut milk from my diet completely. Now the only dairy I seem to tolerate is aged cheese. Even yogurt upsets my system. Going to the extreme was the main motivation for my carnivore plan. And it worked.
The fifth thing I've learned is specific to the carnivore lifestyle. Variety is the key. I absolutely love meat. So being a carnivore isn't a big change. But even I have difficulty eating a sufficient quantity of a single meat. Plus a single source may not give you all the nutrients you need. When I started I was eating beef, poultry, and fish at each meal. But I have a hard time finding fish I like. So I've dropped fish from the plan, Each meal includes a pound of beef. I never get tired of it. Sometimes I make a meatloaf which ends up being more than a pound. The meatloaf always contains something else with the beef. Typically I use ground pork. But I have used ground lamb with good results. That's part of the variety. My meal last night included twenty ounces of turkey breast to go with the pound of beef. I did have a banana and some raw almonds as well. So it wasn't a fully carnivorous meal. But close enough for now. The point here is that eating two pounds of beef is not the same as eating a pound of beef and a pound of turkey.
Most of these lessons just reinforced what I already knew. But sometimes we need to be reminded of things. So now I have a renewed sense of purpose and a new drive to follow through with the plan. We'll see where I go from here.
*The recommendation to try something new comes with a caveat. Learn to recognize when your body is happy. And take it seriously when it tells you it is unhappy. The internet is full of people who have stuck with goofy diets even while their health continued to decline. Your body does not get worse when you start eating right. There is no "detox" period or withdrawl symptoms. If you make a change and start to feel worse then the change you made was wrong.
Carnivore update
Well, I strayed from the path. I dropped all the way down to 293. That's the first time in a decade I've been below 300. And it was more than a thirty-pound change. That's a huge improvement for such a short span. But I let cockiness and social pressure ruin me.
The cockiness came in the form of me deciding that I had started something magical. I began thinking that the weight would keep coming off even if I cheated a bit here and there. Of course, one bad food choice won't ruin a good diet. And that's the problem. You make one bad choice, suffer no ill consequences, and decide the choice wasn't so bad after all. So that choice gets repeated. Before long you are right back eating what you were before. Neanderthals did not eat Doritos or ice cream.
The social pressure is the same as ever. We went to a couple parties with friends. It is rude to go to a friend's house and not eat what they've prepared. And when there's beer and various "treats" laid out for consumption it becomes nearly impossible to avoid it. Especially when combined with the cockiness I just mentioned.
So now I'm back up to 303. I've been sleeping poorly. I've had no energy. And my psyche has been nihilistic. The amazing part, to me at least, is that even with everything I know about the effects of grains I still chalked up my issues to everything but my diet. I started to believe it was just "getting old". Or maybe I had caught some sort of bug. I actually believed that I was still eating "good enough" to at least maintain what I had achieved. I ignored my own advice about the stupidity of the "80/20 rule".
The good news is that I finally snapped out of it. I'm back to nearly full-carnivore. The only non-meat I've eaten the past two days is a couple bananas and some raw almonds. Just two days back on track and I'm already feeling better and sleeping better. Assuming I can stay on the path this time, I expect to be below 290 within a month.
The cockiness came in the form of me deciding that I had started something magical. I began thinking that the weight would keep coming off even if I cheated a bit here and there. Of course, one bad food choice won't ruin a good diet. And that's the problem. You make one bad choice, suffer no ill consequences, and decide the choice wasn't so bad after all. So that choice gets repeated. Before long you are right back eating what you were before. Neanderthals did not eat Doritos or ice cream.
The social pressure is the same as ever. We went to a couple parties with friends. It is rude to go to a friend's house and not eat what they've prepared. And when there's beer and various "treats" laid out for consumption it becomes nearly impossible to avoid it. Especially when combined with the cockiness I just mentioned.
So now I'm back up to 303. I've been sleeping poorly. I've had no energy. And my psyche has been nihilistic. The amazing part, to me at least, is that even with everything I know about the effects of grains I still chalked up my issues to everything but my diet. I started to believe it was just "getting old". Or maybe I had caught some sort of bug. I actually believed that I was still eating "good enough" to at least maintain what I had achieved. I ignored my own advice about the stupidity of the "80/20 rule".
The good news is that I finally snapped out of it. I'm back to nearly full-carnivore. The only non-meat I've eaten the past two days is a couple bananas and some raw almonds. Just two days back on track and I'm already feeling better and sleeping better. Assuming I can stay on the path this time, I expect to be below 290 within a month.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
The 80/20 farce
If I told you it was perfectly acceptable to rape and kill twenty percent of the time as long as you didn't rape and kill the other eighty percent of the time you'd likely think I was insane.
If I told you it was perfectly fine to drink cyanide twenty percent of the time as long as you didn't drink it the other eighty percent of the time you'd know I was insane.
Yet this sort of insanity is considered normal in the paleo crowd. Every guru I listen to or read mentions the 80/20 rule as though it is gospel. It's almost to the point where it's considered mandatory to "enjoy" the twenty percent cheat time.
I don't know the origin of the 80/20 rule. But it's complete bunk. You can't achieve any goal by putting in eighty percent of the effort. Bill Gates didn't become fabulously wealthy by operating at eighty percent of his capacity. Lance Armstrong didn't win seven Tour de France races by doping at eighty percent of the recommended dose. And you won't get fit and healthy by eating right eighty percent of the time.
My wife described it perfectly when she called the 80/20 rule a cop-out designed to make the paleo idea more palatable to the masses. There's no doubt that changing your lifestyle is difficult. And something like the 80/20 rule can make it seem a bit simpler. The problem is that the gurus and most paleo acolytes see the 80/20 rule as the goal rather than as a stepping stone.
The other problem is that the 80/20 rule isn't even properly defined. Does it mean you can eat whatever you want every fifth day? Does it mean it's alright if twenty percent of your calories come from junk food?
For those who find paleo intriguing but are intimidated by the idea of jumping right in and making such a huge change overnight, I have a proposal for a real solution. Create a weaning period. The idea is simple; live just one day per week full paleo for a month. That means just one day per week without grains, processed food, dairy, and all the other evil foods. That gives you an entire month to learn enough recipes for four days and to see what the lifestyle is like.
Then continue the weaning by adding another day or two per week to your paleo period. You can wean yourself as quickly or as slowly as you like. If you need to continue the one-day per week routine for another month, fine. If you want to step up to four or five days per week after the day-a-week period, fine. You decide.
There are two benefits to this plan. First, it removes the intimidating cold-turkey factor of the "try it 100% for thirty days" routine. Second, and more important in my opinion, is that it makes it clear that the goal is to be 100% paleo seven days per week.
So there you have it. If you want people to try the paleo lifestyle give them the chance to ease into it. Give them time to learn it. Don't tell them it has to be 100% for a month but that it's somehow fine to be only 80% after that.
If I told you it was perfectly fine to drink cyanide twenty percent of the time as long as you didn't drink it the other eighty percent of the time you'd know I was insane.
Yet this sort of insanity is considered normal in the paleo crowd. Every guru I listen to or read mentions the 80/20 rule as though it is gospel. It's almost to the point where it's considered mandatory to "enjoy" the twenty percent cheat time.
I don't know the origin of the 80/20 rule. But it's complete bunk. You can't achieve any goal by putting in eighty percent of the effort. Bill Gates didn't become fabulously wealthy by operating at eighty percent of his capacity. Lance Armstrong didn't win seven Tour de France races by doping at eighty percent of the recommended dose. And you won't get fit and healthy by eating right eighty percent of the time.
My wife described it perfectly when she called the 80/20 rule a cop-out designed to make the paleo idea more palatable to the masses. There's no doubt that changing your lifestyle is difficult. And something like the 80/20 rule can make it seem a bit simpler. The problem is that the gurus and most paleo acolytes see the 80/20 rule as the goal rather than as a stepping stone.
The other problem is that the 80/20 rule isn't even properly defined. Does it mean you can eat whatever you want every fifth day? Does it mean it's alright if twenty percent of your calories come from junk food?
For those who find paleo intriguing but are intimidated by the idea of jumping right in and making such a huge change overnight, I have a proposal for a real solution. Create a weaning period. The idea is simple; live just one day per week full paleo for a month. That means just one day per week without grains, processed food, dairy, and all the other evil foods. That gives you an entire month to learn enough recipes for four days and to see what the lifestyle is like.
Then continue the weaning by adding another day or two per week to your paleo period. You can wean yourself as quickly or as slowly as you like. If you need to continue the one-day per week routine for another month, fine. If you want to step up to four or five days per week after the day-a-week period, fine. You decide.
There are two benefits to this plan. First, it removes the intimidating cold-turkey factor of the "try it 100% for thirty days" routine. Second, and more important in my opinion, is that it makes it clear that the goal is to be 100% paleo seven days per week.
So there you have it. If you want people to try the paleo lifestyle give them the chance to ease into it. Give them time to learn it. Don't tell them it has to be 100% for a month but that it's somehow fine to be only 80% after that.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Beyond "paleo"
For me, the paleo lifestyle was a wake-up call. It was what finally caused me to think critically about how I was eating. Unfortunately for the gurus who are busy pushing their paleo cookbooks and how-to manuals I did not stop thinking critically. And that critical thinking caused me to finally move beyond paleo.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I became truly paleo whereas the "paleo" lifestyle stops short of its claimed goal. I say this because the "paleo" diet does not duplicate the eating habits of paleolithic humans as closely as the gurus would have you believe. The gurus overlook one crucial detail that kept troubling me.
This detail is the simple fact that agriculture is only 10,000 years old. Yes, I know paleo folks talk about that all the time. But for some reason they only talk about it in the context of grains. They fail to acknowledge the fact that the lack of agriculture in paleolithic times meant that for most of the year humans would not have had access to very many fruits and vegetables at all. They didn't have greenhouses to grow things in the winter or refrigerators to keep foods fresh for weeks after the harvest. Except for the autumn months when fruits and vegetables commonly come available for harvest humans would have been almost entirely carnivorous. And there is plenty of evidence to support this hypothesis. We know that neanderthals ate vegetables. But the overwhelming majority of their diet was meat.
Now it's been something like two years since I "went paleo". No, I haven't been perfect at it. But I've followed the guidelines well enough that I should have some success to report. Yet I don't. My weight has stayed between 320 and 340 since I first cut bread from my diet. Even after I cut dairy from my diet my weight remained the same. This has been utterly aggravating. I did feel better. It was clear I had taken a step in the right direction. It was equally clear that I had not taken enough steps.
Nearly a month ago I decided to take the only step left. And it was a big step. I decided to emulate my neanderthal kin and go full carnivore with my diet. Now I have the success I never saw with the "paleo" diet. It's been less than a month and I've lost more than twenty-five pounds. On the Third of this month I weighed 307. This is the Fifth and I'm down to 304. Can you name another diet that causes you to drop three pounds in two days?
The funny part is that according to the diet industry I am doing everything wrong. They say to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, I eat none. They say to eat several small meals throughout the day, I normally eat only one meal per day. They say to watch your fat intake, I eat a lot of fat. The list goes on.
And I am far from starvation. My meal tonight was half a pound of bacon, five eggs fried in bacon grease, and one-and-a-quarter pounds of fried ground beef. I did cheat a little and eat some chicken tenders early in the afternoon. According to some random online meal calculator I've eaten 2,561 calories today. That's 277 grams of protein, 160 grams of fat, and only two grams of carbohydrates. I've been eating like this every day for almost a month now. Every night I have a pound or more of beef along with a couple other protein sources. Typically I grill some chicken and fry some fish. But I occasionally substitute pork or bacon & eggs depending on what I have available.
By the end of next week I'll be under 300 pounds for the first time in a decade. Within three months I'll be back in top shape. Maybe even sooner if I get back into the gym. Which reminds me, did I mention I've lost all this weight without doing any exercise at all? That's right, none. I eat like a lion, don't do any exercise at all, and drop roughly a pound a day.
Seeing the numbers drop on the scale keeps me motivated. Seeing the muscular definition return keeps me motivated. This is probably the easiest thing I've ever done. And I'm motivated enough to keep reporting on it. I may not add much more to this blog. But I think I need to at least post a monthly progress report.
Starting fresh
I erased the few posts in this blog and decided to start fresh. Although I am leaving the original introduction in place. Things have changed. I have new knowledge and new ideas. And the writing in the previous posts was rather poor. It just made sense to discard the old drivel and begin again. Since nobody ever read the old posts I'm sure nobody will mourn their loss.
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