A four-year post-weight loss study by the NIH shows that motivated people *do* keep weight off. I weigh 50 [...]]]> If you read Tara Parker Pope’s article The Fat Trap, you might be led to believe that weight loss is difficult and maintaining a weight loss is a herculean feat. This is just not true.

A four-year post-weight loss study by the NIH shows that motivated people *do* keep weight off. I weigh 50 pounds less than I did in 2000. I lost that weight in two big pieces, one in 2000 and one over the end of 2009 into 2010. Don’t let her defeatism convince you to not bother.

People who maintain a weight loss do pay attention to what they eat. I do not weigh and measure everything, and I do drink alcohol and eat sweets or chips sometimes. The key is to eat the most nutritious diet that you can, using fruits, vegetables and healthy protein sources to crowd out foods that don’t contribute much to your nutrition bottom line.

A few points:

• If you go back to what got you fat, you will gain back the weight. You need to find a weight-loss formula that is really a lifestyle change.
• Eating like “everyone else” isn’t what you think. If you mean the “everyone else” that’s overweight or obese, that’s an obvious problem. If you mean someone who is active all day and you aren’t or someone who is still growing, that’s another problem right there.
• People who are naturally thin don’t eat the way you imagine. The two very thin people I know DO eat a lot less than I do on average. One of them fasts and binges, which is actually a formula for weight loss if done correctly.
• You must eat high-quality food while dieting and afterwards. Yes, you can eat a bit more afterwards, but the basic composition of your diet needs to be the most nutritious food you can get.

I think the next big thing in dieting will be micronutrient sufficiency. I’m see it becoming a popular topic on blogs and podcasts. Here are three references to it from the last week:

Paul Jaminet’s The Perfect Health Diet
Free The Animal’s post on Malnutrition and Obesity
Jimmy Moore’s Podcast with the authors of Naked Calories.

On the heels of that, they published a real stinker in February. It starts [...]]]> In January, Men’s Journal had a terrific article about fitness by Daniel Duane. The gist of it is that you should pass on the treadmill and elliptical and lift heavy. If this is news to you, go read it.

On the heels of that, they published a real stinker in February. It starts out well. The #1 rule is “Don’t go on a diet, change your diet.” Daniel Duane starts out by quoting Gary Taubes theory of Why We Get Fat. I mostly agree with Gary. Mostly, but not entirely. That’s a subject for another time, however. The #2 rule is to shop the periphery of the supermarket:

If you want to live by one rule instead of 10, this is it, not least because it’s the easiest to follow. Shop only the periphery of the supermarket, choosing whole fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and dairy products…

Again, agreement here. After this, Mr. Duane presents a food pyramid (god save us all from food pyramids!) that goes like this:

Never Eat: refined carbs, simple sugar
Eat as a treat: whole fruit
Eat these less often: whole dairy, whole grains
Eat these every day: nuts, seeds, legumes, tofu, extra-virgin olive oil, canola oil, avocado
Eat these every meal: leafy, cruciferous, brightly colored vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, game, eggs

Whole grains are NOT found on the periphery, and it’s suggested here that one should eat more whole grains than fruit. Tofu is also a processed food and should be on the “do not eat” list, but here it is presented as something it’s ok to eat every day. Canola oil is heavily processed. You’d be better off using coconut oil or ghee for higher heat cooking.

It’s abundantly clear that Mr. Duane is leery of saturated fats. He quotes this:

Many major research institutions, including the Harvard School of Public Health, no longer believe that dietary fat, even saturated — found in red meat, pork, butter, and cream — is bad for heart health. What’s more, a study published last year in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found no link between saturated-fat consumption and incidence of heart attacks.

But then says this in the next paragraph:

This rethinking of dietary fat doesn’t mean you can consume all the steak and eggs you want. While it’s best to eat a little protein at every meal, you should vary the type you consume by rotating through beef, poultry, fish, game, and pork, in addition to eggs and plant-based protein like soybeans.

Again with the damn soybeans!

He later concedes that butter made from organic cream might be OK, but his meal plans contain this oh so appetizing breakfast: Oat-bran toast with extra-virgin olive oil; scrambled egg.

Wow. Sounds delicious! Here’s the breakdown on this meal assuming 2 slices of toast, one scrambled egg and 1 teaspoon of olive oil:

This is not a low-carb meal, it doesn’t contain enough protein, and 266 calories *might* keep a child satisfied until lunch time, but a grown human? I really doubt it with that level of protein and fat, the two most satisfying macronutrients. If you subbed egg whites (keeping one whole egg) and vegetables instead of the toast, you could get the same amount of calories and a *filling* breakfast.

His third rule is to not count calories. I’m fine with that one – it seems to psych people out, make them feel deprived and make them stressed. Four out of seven of his breakfast meals are distinctly NOT low-carb and sound pretty calorie restricted to me. On Monday and Saturday his breakfast includes meat and eggs, and are pretty normal for an adult.

Monday: Mixed-herb omelet with applewood-smoked bacon; side of sauteed spinach
Saturday: Scrambled eggs with bacon at your neighborhood diner; swap cottage cheese with hash browns

Both of those sound good to me, and they are actually low in carbs. They appear to contain sufficient protein as well. Good luck finding cottage cheese to sub for potatoes – this is something I try to do sometimes, so I do actually know about it. At least half of the breakfast places I eat don’t have it at all, and the ones that do charge you for substitutions. Most will charge you the normal price to leave off the hash browns (or anything else) and then charge you for a side of cottage cheese. It’s annoying. Anyway, on to the other days.

Tuesday: Steel-cut oatmeal with organic raspberries and sliced almonds

Wednesday: Sprouted-grain toast with almond or peanut butter; whole orange

Thursday: (oat-bran deal mentioned above)

Friday: Steel-cut oatmeal with halved, raw walnuts and fresh blueberries

Sunday: Time to cheat again: banana pancakes with melted butter and maple syrup

Since he acknowledges that Sunday is a “cheat” (I hate that term), I didn’t bother to run the numbers on it. On a typical day, breakfast averages out to 350 calories, 15g of protein and 50g of carbs. That is a recipe for failure. I’m too lazy to analyze all the meals (and let’s face it, reader’s eyes would glaze over), but this is a lot of cooking for not enough calories. He later quotes Gary Taubes’ rules for weight loss, and the first one is to eat 20g or fewer carbohydrates a day. This meal plan is moderate in carbs, but it’s nowhere near 20g! He’s big on the glycemic index, but it does not take into account the total carb count, just the way a food causes a diabetic’s blood sugar to react. A low-GI food can be very high in fructose, and eating fructose is no way to lose weight. I’ve complained about the glycemic index before, of course.

His plan doesn’t include snacks, but he knows people will eat them – I know I’d be starving at 10:30 with most of those breakfasts. Here are his snack suggestions:

Stay stocked up on healthy, low-GI foods like nuts, beef jerky, cheese, plain yogurt; low-sugar fruit like berries and apples; and even energy bars made from only whole ingredients, like Lärabar, Raw Revolution, and Clif Nectar. In the store, reach for natural nut butters like Justin’s Classic Almond Butter or plain organic yogurt from Stonyfield. Pair a stick of Golden Valley Natural organic beef jerky with cheese sticks from Horizon Organic, or indulge in a low-sugar treat by looking for dark chocolate with a cacao content of greater than 70 percent.

Craving something salty? Avoid pretzels, potato chips, and rice cakes, and reach for a bag of mixed nuts or pop your own popcorn and flavor it with extra-virgin olive oil. If you like crackers, choose RyKrisp, Ryvita, or Wasa instead of Saltines, Ritz, Melba Toast, Wheat Thins, or others made from enriched wheat flour. Sweet-potato chips and even protein-packed pork rinds can be healthy snacks when consumed in moderate amounts.

Larabars and Clif Nectar bars are made of dried fruit with some nuts and are mostly carbohydrate. If you’re going to eat popcorn, why avoid rice cakes? Their nutritional profiles are very similar. And as for flavoring popcorn with olive oil…I sure hope people don’t pop the stuff in extra-virgin olive oil (oxidized fats, anyone?), so I’m assuming he suggests you should use that instead of butter. Ew!

After the awesome article on fitness, I’m really disappointed in this one. Most of Gary Taubes diet advice is taken straight from Dr. Atkins, but this reads more like a Dr. Oz diet than anything Dr. Atkins would recommend. I feel like this is an opportunity missed after the goodwill engendered by pointing out that cardio is a waste of time. You’d do a lot better following the Tim Feriss slow carb diet.

I think there’s a lot [...]]]> After years of long study of nutrition and diet, I seem to be coming around to the idea that you can either have carbs or fat along with your protein, but not both. When I saw that this appeared to be Zoe Harcombe’s thing, I bought her book right away.

I think there’s a lot of great information in there, particularly the folly of counting calories. Her basic rules are good ones, but her explanations of what is a carb meal and what is a fat meal bother me. First, here are her three rules:

1. Don’t eat processed foods;
2. Don’t eat fats and carbohydrates at the same meal;
3. Don’t eat foods that cause your cravings.

Personally, I don’t really have food cravings. All my compliance issues with diets are usually about eating too much generally, but anyway, these are sound, yes?

The problem is this: she defines anything containing a food that had a face to be a “fat” meal, which means that fish and lean meat cannot be eaten with a high carb meal. Carb meals may contain tofu, quorn, milk, cottage cheese or high quality yogurt. Skinless chicken breast and fish aren’t OK, but coconut milk is OK? She has a recipe for a delicious sounding butternut squash curry that contains 25g of creamed coconut per serving. That’s 195 calories and 16.9g of fat. It’s all healthy fat, but it’s still fat. For 6g of fat and 150 calories, you could have a 1/3 lb. pork chop, so why is the prohibition on meat instead of fat?

Why allow tofu at all? Soy can’t be eaten by humans if not processed, so I’m not really clear why it’s allowed at all. It causes problems for *so* many people, and if they can’t eat dairy, what’s left? Quorn? I still can’t actually figure out what that stuff is. The wiki entry for mycoprotein sounds kind of…creepy somehow. “The fungus can double its mass every five hours.” Ewww…

I think she’s really on to something here, but the arbitrary nature of how she defines a fat meal and a carb meal really leaves me cold. I know a lot of people find fat to be the most satisfying macronutrient, but for me, it’s definitely protein. There’s an experiment in my future, but done my own way.

Like any diet that’s ad libitum, I don’t think I’d lose weight on it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a healthy way to eat. I am leery of the fact that the non-mixing of carbs and fat just “sounds right” to me, but I think it’s worth a try for maintaining weight while eating some high carbohydrate meals. Sometimes, the hunting wasn’t good.

Part of the problem is that every day paleo mostly consists of meat and veg and maybe some fruit for dessert or some nuts [...]]]> I read a number of blogs from Paleo eaters, and while I enjoy them, I’ve been seeing a lot more…excuses lately. These so-called excuses are almost always about non-paleo recipe ingredients.

Part of the problem is that every day paleo mostly consists of meat and veg and maybe some fruit for dessert or some nuts for a snack. This doesn’t mean the diet is at all boring, but it does mean that half the recipes seem to be for desserts. It’s not that hard or complex to make meat and vegetables taste great, after all.

I’m not even going to pretend that it’s easy to stick to a Paleo diet. If you’re not surrounded by like-minded people all the time, it’s socially difficult. If you eat out much it’s even harder. Personally, I’ve only made it two weeks on full paleo, then I added dairy back in and made it an additional month or so before I started experimenting with adding back foods and ethanol.

If you’re putting up a recipe for paleo pancakes, cave cookies or a dish containing white potatoes, why do your readers need to hear about how you “don’t eat like this all the time”? Anyone reading the recipe can see that it contains butter or potatoes or whatever. Flag it as non-paleo, mostly paleo or primal or whatever you need to do. It’s not a competition or a re-enactment – just tell us what’s awesome about it and get on with the recipe!

I always wonder if the rationalizations are about assuaging guilt. Guilt over eating is stressful and unhealthy. Please do *yourself* a favor and move beyond it. And speaking of guilt, the other thing that drives me bananas is the idea of a “cheat meal.” Who or what are you cheating (on) exactly? Is there a referee watching and waiting to call you out for crossing some line? Are you “on a diet”, or is this a lifestyle change? I hope it’s the latter, but either way, a “free meal” sounds one hell of a lot better than suggesting you’re “cheating” on an inanimate concept like the Paleo Diet.

This is not the most awesome picture, but it’s the one [...]]]> I don’t believe I’ve said much about this here, and I’m a bit behind everyone else because my copy of Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution was to be shipped when Amazon ran out of copies. I attended Robb’s seminar in July at Potomac CrossFit.

This is not the most awesome picture, but it’s the one I’ve got!

Long story short, I think Robb is a great guy as well as being extremely knowledgeable. His book is very easy to read, and I’d recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about nutrition and digestion. Even if you’re not sure that you’re interested in going Paleo, it’s chock full of information.

I did get to ask Robb my most pressing question: Why can’t I lose weight on a ketogenic diet? Yeah, that’s right, I don’t lose weight. In fact, according to my BIA scale, I put on fat and lose lean mass. I don’t *gain* weight even if I eat a lot, but my body composition definitely goes the wrong way. At this point, my weight is normal so everything is about body comp for me. The answer was “Cortisol“. My workouts force gluconeogenesis which raises cortisol. This causes my body to decide to break down protein instead of running on fat because it thinks it *needs* that fat.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but if you’ve stopped losing weight via low-carb, you might want to try easing some carbs back in. It helps if you have a glucose meter so you know how you handle carbs. My sugars are normal and stable. I have other hormonal issues to deal with (thyroid, estrogen dominance), but hyperinsulinemia and hypoglycemia are not among them. I can’t eat a breakfast composed entirely of caffeine and carbohydrates, or I do get hypoglycemic, but I figured THAT out in high school, though I didn’t know what was going wrong. I just knew that I felt like crap, so I started eating sandwiches for breakfast instead of cereal.

At this point, I have decided staying full Paleo is not for me. I did find out a number of things that I should not eat, and for that, I’m really grateful, but I just can’t ban whole classes of food forever. Here’s where I’ve landed.

• Gluten: Total lifetime ban. I just cannot digest it, no way no how. I only eat it accidentally.
• Legumes: Extremely minimal consumption. I do not do well with these at all. I recently tried adding them back so that I could unify more of the meals at home (Tino is a vegetarian), and it was a bad idea. In addition to the digestive issues of the infrequent bean eater, I also had noticeable bloat and inflammation. Incidentally, broccoli does the same thing to me, whether it’s cooked or not. I have to eat all my crucifers cooked, but only broccoli (so far anyway) messes me up this much even when cooked. It’s too bad, because I do actually like it. I also adore green beans, but I have to only eat them once in a while – they actually cause trouble for me like beans and broccoli.
• Vegetable Oils: Minimal Consumption. I eat out too much to eliminate them completely, but I either get all my dressing on the side or bring my own. I can’t eat fried food out of fryers that have contained gluten, so I do eat little of this outside the house. Basically, I eat McDonald’s fries now and then. Pretty much everyone else I know of cooks fries and breaded items in the same grease. At home, it’s very easy to work around with Extra Virgin Olive Oil for salads and Light Olive Oil (100%, not extra-virgin) for cooking where butter, bacon grease or ghee won’t do for some reason.
• Non-Gluten Grains: I eat white rice and corn tortillas with no blood sugar problems, no carb cravings and in moderation, no weight gain. My diet is a lot more enjoyable for this inclusion. You can only eat so many sweet potatoes. I do have problems with some of the more exotic non-gluten flours, so I try to stick to stuff I make myself from rice flours or eat foods that are inherently gluten free, like corn tortillas. I do have to watch it with the corn chips – I can really over consume those if I’m not careful with portions. I have yet to find a gluten-free beer that I actually enjoy. I hate sorghum in beer – it tastes metallic, and rice beers seem to always lean towards white ale, not something I never liked much. Nothing has enough hoppy bite either, so I just stick to wine and cocktails.
• Refined Sugar: I generally avoid this, but I don’t freak out about small amounts of sugar in stuff (liqueurs in cocktails in small amounts), and once in a while I like some ice cream, a gluten-free brownie or whatever. I do avoid HFCS because it’s always a sign that a product is totally jive.
• Potatoes: With the skins on, white potatoes are a problem for me. Yams and sweet potatoes are not an issue at all.
• Dairy: I eat dairy, but I’ve very recently made changes to that.
• Intermittent Fasting: I exercise fasted at about 7am, and I don’t generally eat after 7pm. I eat breakfast between 8 or 9am. This sucked the first few days, but I think it’s really working, and now I’m used to it. Basically, 13 hours every day, some days a little more. If I get much over 14, I turn into a raging bitch, and nobody likes that.
• Alcohol: I average out to slightly less than two drinks a day, cocktails or wine. My most common cocktail now is a Martini, and I generally only drink before dinner (except wine – that’s with dinner). I try not to overindulge as it’s dehydrating, and if I drink after dinner, I generally pay for it in less restorative sleep. I’m not binge drinking on the weekends, in other words, but some days I drink wine and cocktails and others I abstain completely.

If you’re not sure why you feel like crap, the Paleo Diet is a great way to straighten yourself out. After you’ve eliminated the possibly meddlesome foods for at least three weeks, you can add one back in ONCE and find out what happens. If you haven’t cut them for 21-30 days minimum, you’ll never sort that out. I really didn’t know that adding legumes back would be so bloody obvious. Lots of people tolerate legumes just fine but can’t eat corn. Everyone is different, and it’s worth finding out where you are at if you aren’t looking, feeling or performing to your potential.

I have recently cut way back on fruit. I decided I’m better off with the sweet potatoes, corn tortillas and the rice than eating more fruit. It’s not that I’m afraid of fructose exactly, but I think starches are a better choice for my goals. I’m also no longer using dairy as a protein source (the Zone was a bad influence there). I do eat my home made raw milk yogurt with frozen berries or cherries every day. I’m back to drinking my coffee black. Dairy (or coconut milk) would break the fast I’m trying to keep, and I’ve found that I drink a LOT more coffee if I have half and half or coconut milk in it.

I quit caffeine completely for three days and felt like a wet dishrag almost all the time. I could get out of bed just fine, but I felt groggy or just unmotivated most of the time. I’m now back on half the coffee I was drinking before. I feel like what I was doing before was probably excess and that this is more moderate.

I also cut back on nuts. The fat blocks for The Zone drove my consumption up. I eat less than 1 ounce of nuts per day. Most are unsalted and raw, but sometimes, I eat roasted and salted cashews.

I’m doing my workouts (CrossFit, three days on, three days off) fasted, and I’m trying to eat my largest and most carbo-rific meal at breakfast. Lunch tends to be small, and dinner is kind of medium. Some days I have a snack at 3 or 4pm if I’m hungry and my lunch was a bit *too* small.

I have no idea if you can call this Paleo or not. Certainly, I learned things from it and incorporated elements into my diet. Beyond that? I don’t care. I’m doing well, and things are moving in the right direction, and I think that’s a lot more important than obsessing about what to call my style of eating.

In 1977 America changed its health advice. In a nutshell (or, more likely, an ADA approved Mars bar): Eat more starchy foods, eat more carbohydrates, saturated fats are bad. If that sounds [...]]]> I cannot believe I’m about to link to the Huffington Post, but this article really gets to the meat of the so-called obesity epidemic.

In 1977 America changed its health advice. In a nutshell (or, more likely, an ADA approved Mars bar): Eat more starchy foods, eat more carbohydrates, saturated fats are bad. If that sounds like pretty good advice to you, then you don’t know enough about what you are putting into your mouth.

Your grandparents were raised in a generation aware that God’s supermarket was better than man’s. Saturated fat was a vital part of their diet. For them, obesity was not a common health problem. They were not suffering malnutrition in the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K). Remarkably, you, dear Western reader, probably are.

The 2010 Dietary recommendations are very much simply “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” It is total insanity.

I think the biggest danger out there is the foods with a health halo – too many people, even supposedly smart Whole Foods shoppers – fall for the idea that processed foods, if it fits their particular orthorexia, are healthy. Evaporated cane juice and agave nectar are *still* sugar. You might as well feed your kids HFCS for all the difference it makes. Most fat-reduced dairy products are full of additives that, let’s face it, you don’t even KNOW WHAT THEY ARE! But if Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods is selling it, you trust them that is must be OK.

Don’t even get me started on the gluten-free junk food revolution. It’s going to be the next giant money maker for the processed food industry.

I think I need one of those “bang head here” signs on the wall today.

It’s a little short on potassium and calcium, but those could be brought up with the “clear broth” suggested if it were made with bones. Potassium can be supplemented with NoSalt.

Here’s the food list. Pretty standard diet material.

I’d lose [...]]]> I entered the suggested “safety and comfort” reducing diet for my ideal weight into Fitday.

It’s a little short on potassium and calcium, but those could be brought up with the “clear broth” suggested if it were made with bones. Potassium can be supplemented with NoSalt.

Here’s the food list. Pretty standard diet material.

I’d lose weight on this, I’m sure, but note that this diet is chock full of protein and would likely be pretty satisfying. It’s moderate carb and low-ish fat.