I follow a paleo diet strictly on weekdays, and for probably 75% of my calories on weekends. I've been doing this for a few months. I'm basically doing this as an experiment - the argument that we should eat what we evolved eating is compelling as a general principle. I haven't lost or gained weight. My workouts haven't been much worse or much better. I don't notice a difference in energy levels, although I find it h…
"I follow a paleo diet strictly on weekdays, and for probably 75% of my calories on weekends." What about the article's claim that you have to follow the diet 100% or it doesn't work?
How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#42Firstly, it assumes that we haven't evolved since modern agriculture, which of course we have; people with ancestors from areas with grain harvesting have more copies of the amylase gene, which produce enzymes that help us to better digest calories.
Secondly, it assumes that the "priority" of evolution in paleo times was to optimize our health in our current environment. It wasn't. Our hunter and gatherer ancestors were starving; we were optimized to extract every last calorie from our food. So when simple starches like wheat came around, we evolved to have more copies of the amylase gene - something that does not help us today.
The paleo diet works precisely for the opposite of the stated reason. These are foods that our bodies are not evolved to perfectly digest. Uncooked foods are far enough in our evolutionary past that people on raw-only diets consistently lose weight, even if they eat a lot. If they were on the savannah they would die.
I'm not saying the diet itself can't be great, just that the entire article could be fodder for Penn & Teller.
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's irresponsible to recommend a diet to people that has little to no scientific support for the kinds of effects that you promise or imply: weight loss, improved physical and mental health, and longevity. In fact, some possible instantiations of the paleo diet are, I believe, currently considered unhealthy by the medical establishment, such as a diet high in saturated fats, cholesterol, and/or red meats. I…
Sorry I don't have time to find all my links as I am at work on my lunchbreak but here are a few. Weight Loss As the Paleo diet is by nature pretty low-carbohydrate: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0708681 Longevity: Cancer Patterns in Inuits - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18760245 This William Lands paper - http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/83/6/S1483.pdf Medical Establishment: Good Calories, Bad Calo…
"Weight Loss As the Paleo diet is by nature pretty low-carbohydrate": Paleo is not necessarily low-carb. You could eat squash, root vegetables, and fruit all day for nearly all your calories. I actually don't doubt that you can lose weight on the paleo diet, though. You can lose weight on almost any vaguely healthy diet.
"Cancer Patterns in Inuits" : Cancer has many other causes than diet, and this study in no way isolates diet as the factor in disease-patterns in Inuits.
"This William Lands paper": This solely studies omega-3/6 intake and health. Not the overall health effects of the paleo diet.
"Good Calories, Bad Calories" does have an explanation of why the medical establishment has made its recommendations. Still, it is written by one non-expert. Hardly enough to make radical lifestyle changes for.
"Dr Barry Groves" OK, this looks possibly legit.
I'm not going to try to figure out the rest, given the poor quality of the preceding.
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: Now there is a caveat to this. You only need to be exposed to things like gluten once every ten to fifteen days to keep the gut damaged. This can bedevil people as they “cut back on gluten” but do not notice an improvement in their overall health. I’m sorry but there is not a pink “participant” ribbon given out for doing this “almost correctly.” You need to be 100 percent compliant for thirty days,…
If you consume something out of the ordinary, your body is not used to digesting it. For example, the necessary enzymes and bacteria are not likely to be in large supply. Also, you may be hyper- or hypo- sensitive to neurotransmitters (like dopamine) that are released in reponse to the chemicals that are unusually present in the foreign food. Cut out vegetables from your diet, for example, and you will experience ser…
I've actually done that[1], and experienced the complete opposite. I found myself dreaming about eating broccoli, and absolutely craving all kinds of vegetables. When the diet ended I ate lots of vegetables -- and certainly no intestinal distress when eating them.
[1] - "Velocity Diet": the very definition of fad diet, which basically consists of drinking a protein shake 5 times a day for 4 weeks, with 1 solid meal per week. It worked, but I'd never ever do it again, nor recommend anyone ever do it.
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you consume something out of the ordinary, your body is not used to digesting it. For example, the necessary enzymes and bacteria are not likely to be in large supply. Also, you may be hyper- or hypo- sensitive to neurotransmitters (like dopamine) that are released in reponse to the chemicals that are unusually present in the foreign food. Cut out vegetables from your diet, for example, and you will experience ser…
> Cut out vegetables from your diet, for example, and you will experience serious intestinal distress when you reintroduce them. I've actually done that[1], and experienced the complete opposite. I found myself dreaming about eating broccoli, and absolutely craving all kinds of vegetables. When the diet ended I ate lots of vegetables -- and certainly no intestinal distress when eating them. [1] - "Velocity Diet": the…
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#46I'm curious if there are societies or cultures that eat significantly less grain than others. Surely looking at a large population's diet and finding a correlation to the diseases mentioned could shed some light into his claims...
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/08/cardiovascular...
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#47The paleo diet is, I think, 99% bullshit combined with 1% right-for-the-wrong-reasons. That 1% does make it worth a look, though, and I personally have lost about 15 lb in the last twelve weeks by (more or less) following it. My BMI is down from 27.4 to 25.7, and I fully expect to get back into ideal weight range within another month or so. I went into it extremely skeptical of almost all the claims, but what I did b…
Would you mind expanding on which parts you find to be bullshit? I can't find any reasons in your current post.
> I don't buy the logic behind exclusion of beans
The logic behind not eating legumes (and dairy) is the same as the logic behind not eating grains: the adult human digestive tract is not capable of fully digesting these (e.g. the protein lectin in grains), causing gut irritation and ultimately causing autoimmunity and inflammation.
> When I've lost enough I think I'll reintroduce grains
Absolutely do! Only then is any nutritional experiment, Paleo or otherwise, complete. I would wager you will feel worse after reintroducing grains, but I would love to hear your results first hand.
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nonsensical faddish bullshit. Some ( So maybe Mr Ferris has this problem. That doesn't mean that everyone else does, though this isn't the first time I've seen someone with a digestive condition go on a crusade about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease I am so tired of adapting to what is "good" only to have that change. I suggest you listen to your own body instead of attention-seeking pundits. We…
Get yourself a first-year nursing textbook on nutrition instead. Any particular books you recommend?
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#49Here's the problem with diet studies in general - they take ages to pan out. Because of that, there's varying degrees of belief in whether or not something is correct or incorrect, and even in cases where some breakthrough has been made, it takes ages to determine whether or not the choice was a correct one or not. This is the same reason why certain food products sales largely come down to packaging - how can I real…
"I'm slightly ranting but I think, food wise, the best way to judge whether or not something is good for you is quite simply, how it makes you feel immediately afterwards... I really think it's that simple." Sorry, this really doesn't make sense to me. Do you think people eat fatty, sugary, salty foods because it makes them feel bad? No, it makes them feel great. But, you may say, that is only temporary pleasure. The…
There's something to the cancer argument but like I said previously, the determinates behind that stuff are so hard to figure out - and I would say that likely, the foods that keep us feeling good day to day - ALL DAY - are not the ones causing us to have cancer - but I'm no scientist.
Re: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
#50The idea that a paleo diet will make you healthier because it's what we evolved to eat is bullshit. Firstly, it assumes that we haven't evolved since modern agriculture, which of course we have; people with ancestors from areas with grain harvesting have more copies of the amylase gene, which produce enzymes that help us to better digest calories. Secondly, it assumes that the "priority" of evolution in paleo times w…
No one is arguing that we haven't evolved at all. But humanoids have been around for millions of years, and the 10,000 years since the advent of agriculture is a very small evolutionary time step. So the reasoning is more that we haven't evolved enough to fully digest grains without damage to our gut lining.
> Our hunter and gatherer ancestors were starving
You'd be surprised that a lot of hunter gatherers (HGs) were doing a lot better than that, according to anthropologists. One number cited in Robb Wolf's book is that HGs on average only worked on procuring food 10-15 hours a week, with the rest spent socializing, resting, etc.
> people on raw-only diets consistently lose weight, even if they eat a lot
Do you have any supporting evidence for this statement? Virtually all foods on the Paleo diet can be eaten raw (meat, seafood, fruits, vegetables, nuts), and are cooked more for taste than digestibility.