How I have lost over 100 pounds and don’t know how

So... eat a carrot?

I will admit there is a societal trend to just relabel high meat low carb atkins type diets as paleo, and be done with it. That doesn't mean the paleo diet is "eat organic steaks every night".

As a programmer/hacker community the best analogy I can give is my impression of a venn diagram of a atkins/low carb type diet is the circle for the diet mostly contains meat and not much else. And the venn for a paleo diet also contains a small circle for meat, along with a whoppin big circle for fruit/veg/nuts. True both don't have grains/beans, and neither are vegetarian, but thats about it for similarity.

Another interesting analogy is the ideal stereotypical atkins low carb meal probably is a steak as per your example. The stereotypical paleo meal is probably a big ole salad full of veggies with a normal sized grilled chicken breast on top (not one of those mutant ones the size of your forearm).

Finally having fooled around with both diets a low carb ketone mode diet is super sensitive to what you eat; highly disciplined. Eat one apple and you've ruined days of work getting into ketone mode. On the other hand a paleo type diet has more to do with priorities and general trends. Always have more bags from the produce aisle in the cart than bags from the breakfast cereal aisle, that type of thing. I had a bowl of ice cream at a celebration for my son last night; under a paleo diet that's fine, once in a while... just don't eat that kind of stuff every day (or every week). Its not good for you. I drank a beer last weekend too.

Finally grains and legumes will make you fat then die, assuming you get enough of them (not starvation mode). If life's worth living, find a way not to fail at it. Right back to the first line, eat a carrot or something.

> Yes, but the important question is why. Why do an increasing fraction of people have broken metabolic feedback systems, and what can they do to fix them?

I saw a documentary on tv a while back, it contained some research that showed that overeating can break your ability to feel full.

Maybe I didn't understand it, you tell me. You're suggesting (with scoff) that driving fewer miles will naturally reduce risk of accident, so by putting less gas in the car you'll force yourself to drive fewer miles. So you tell me what I'm missing there. Because as interpreted that's a pretty poor analogy.

More importantly, I'm not trying to be a critic on your writing style, which is why I have 1 sentence about the analogy followed by paragraphs about your larger point.

Looking at the mental portion of this, the learning to eat less and better, your comments about atkins..."tend to eat less" reminds me of exactly what I say about my strategy of "intermittent fasting." (Which is a phrase I didn't learn until recently, well after I've lost the weight). What I mean is, in both cases, behavioral changes lead to eating less.

And I firmly, 100% believe that THAT is the primary mechanism that worked for me. Not changes to insulin levels effecting metabolism. But specifically: I eat far less than I used to. Far less. And THAT is why I've lost weight. And intermittent fasting helps me to accomplish that the way Atkins does to followers of that diet, ditto Paleo, ditto the Cookie Diet, etc.

Most importantly: I hope everybody acknowledges that there's mountains of contradictory research and a lot of complicated science here that nobody really understands. All we know for sure is what has worked for us, not even always why, and we are on very thin ice advocating to others what they should do.

You can gain back a lot more than you lose, even if you get into a habit of "better" eating and more exercise for months.

You probably think that exercising and eating "better" should be fine, because anything you do for three weeks becomes a habit, right? Well, not exactly. Bad habits can be much harder to break, and you may not have really broken them the way you think you have: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/form-a-habit.htm

Be really careful before a drastic change to your diet and exercise habits just to lose 10-15 lbs, especially if your doctor and the majority of those close to you don't think you need to lose weight. It can backfire.

However, a gradual change, especially when you can do it in a reasonable, sustainable way, can be a great idea.

"I don't think everyone needs to label things."

Then in the article you "There was a period of fierce reading about nutrition" followed by a long list of interesting labeled diets where your chosen course based on research was to basically select the paleo-ish part of each different diet, resulting in a basically paleo conclusion, without mentioning it by name.

Combine that with the section of the article beginning "I started first with what I was consuming:" and the following read like a laundry list from Robb Wolf himself...

You're on the right path. Its a really good path. But there's a sign you haven't mentioned hanging over the trail reading "welcome to the more or less paleo diet". You don't have to read that sign, you apparently figured it out the hard way via research. I think its cool you found the path all by yourself with intense study. Great minds think alike and all that, Very encouraging results. But folks looking for it the easy way on google or whatever are going to find it a lot easier, if you just use the commonly accepted placename / label.

The Warinner presentation is pure straw dog. There's some hilarious rebuttals to be googled for. The important point is they're PR style debates not scientific debates. A lot of credentialism, one paleontologist vs multiple actual MDs, lots of focus on minor meaningless details. Its a very strange PR event. I wouldn't read too much into either her presentation or the rebuttals. Thats nice that you say the captain of the titanic should have steered a course of 15 degrees to avoid the iceberg, but I think a more correct value is actually 16 degrees, now lets distract the helmsman from making any change at all by arguing, as the ship plows directly into the iceberg.

Given that the presentation provides little information, it does however point out that an open mind toward research is a great outlook. This is not a revealed religion. I fully expect that within my lifetime the ideal % meat consumption will change by 5% or so, but up or down, who knows? The overall message will remain the same, you should mostly eat what your ancestors ate, more or less, and the western diet is a pretty horrible epic fail at that with some really nasty negative health and financial consequences.