His basic rules for eating are much more tight with the fat than what I know a lot of Primal/Paleo types eat. I have to say that, to be honest, I cannot free-eat Paleo [...]]]> I’m currently reading Art DeVany’s new book (The New Evolution Diet) – only the Kindle version is out at the moment.

His basic rules for eating are much more tight with the fat than what I know a lot of Primal/Paleo types eat. I have to say that, to be honest, I cannot free-eat Paleo with unlimited fat and expect to lose weight. I don’t *gain* weight, but don’t lose any either. He does allow for cheese as a flavoring – just not much of it – so that sets him apart from Cordain (Loren Cordain, The Paleo Diet). He also recommends no dried fruit at all and limited nuts. Cordain is pretty generous with both.

I do say that I share some of the paleosphere’s confusion on the canola oil thing. Why allow ANY OF IT at all? Cordain has changed his mind about it, and I think he’s right. If you need cooking oil, use light olive oil or 100% olive oil (these are more refined than extra-virgin and don’t burn anywhere near so readily).

I’m just getting to the bit on fitness, something I’m very interested to see.

Eventually, I’ll put up a proper review.

I’m not willing to carry the paleo placard in lieu of common sense. No, we don’t eat grains, legumes, or sugar. Yes, we eat plenty of grass fed meats, saturated fats, and [...]]]> I’m going to start out plugging this blog entry at Tribe of Five, because it echoes a lot of my feelings on this subject.

I’m not willing to carry the paleo placard in lieu of common sense. No, we don’t eat grains, legumes, or sugar. Yes, we eat plenty of grass fed meats, saturated fats, and fermented foods. But, so what? I’m not going to Trader Joes, picking up a pack of “free range” eggs and a jar of coconut oil and smugly walking out, feeling like I’m doing my part for the paleo party. We need to be connected to our food, to our farmers, to our land, and to ourselves in order to really understand how our ancestors walked this earth. That’s the only way we can make a difference of significance.

You should read the whole entry – it’s worth the few minutes it will take.

I’ve been trying to write something about this without sounding like a complete bitch. You don’t win friends by beating people over the head with your ideas. These entries at Honest Meat have been kicking around in my brain since they were written.

• So You Say You Want A Food Revolution?
• So You Say You Want a Food Revolution? Part Dos
• The End of our Farm

The following is the most relevant bit to me, but if you want to know more about the trials and tribulations of running a small biodynamic farm, read the entries above:

We certainly have some amazing customers, some who have been with us since the beginning, others who have loaned us money, and many who put faith in us when purchasing an egg share. We get the occasional compliment like “your eggs changed my life” or “I feel comfortable eating meat again when it is from you”. Yet we have other customers who want our products to be cheaper, for us to stop using organic feed, or for us to lower our standards in other ways. There are people who want us to use a soy-free feed, but yet are not willing to pay the added price that a non soy feed will cost (it takes longer to grow out an animal without soy and laying hens produce fewer eggs when not on soy). Many customers, in fact, will choose to get eggs from several states away from a farm they have never seen in order to get a soy-free egg or they will buy bacon or sausage that is sugar-free but happens to come from some nameless farmer in Iowa. Many people prioritize their personal dietary preferences du jour (I say “du jour” because these preferences change often over time) over supporting an actual local farmer or perhaps over humane animal care, environmental sustainability, etc. I encourage you all to look at the bigger picture and think about what values you want to support.

I know a lot of paleo peeps on the web would not approve of the beef I buy from the farm where I get my eggs and raw milk. Some of the meat they sell was grain finished for the last 30 days, but I care a lot more about the fact that I might have seen that beef out walking around and eating grass for the other part of it’s life. Some of the hamburger I’ve been eating for the last few months actually came from a former dairy cow, so it’s the final product of raw milk production. That cow ate grass for probably six years. The meat is a bit different than a steer that’s raised in a short window solely for meat, but it’s still quite good. I think it’s a great deal at $3.89 per pound.

The pork I buy is out in a pasture where the pigs can do as they like. They do root and dig, but they also get a corn and soy feed. What I care about is the fact that when I go to pick up my meat share once a month, my future meat is out there living a normal piggy life. They never use farrowing crates for piglets. It does not really matter to me if their feed is organic or contains soy. I care more about Haskins Family Farm staying in business. He makes most of his money on bacon, and you need fatty pigs for that. The realities of the marketplace are that people want particular cuts from an animal, and are not interested in many of the others. Corn and soy make for more pork belly. You have to pick and choose what’s important to you.

Speaking of Haskin’s Family Farm, a while back I wrote about stewing hens. That bird came from their farm, and that hen laid (I’m sure) many tasty eggs while she ate bugs and was fed a grain supplement and was protected from predators (foxes are a real problem – they have a dog out at night when foxes hunt and the chickens are in their coop). Again, it’s the end product of your breakfast eggs – it’s worth learning to work with it, especially if you like schmaltz.

Small scale farming will not make you a millionaire – the only reason to do it is because you want better food for yourself and your family, and you make that work by selling in what is a difficult marketplace. Part of the issue is slaughter.

This is from Honest Meat:

This topic warrants a much longer post, but basically California has only a handful of USDA-inspected slaughter and butcher facilities. Because there are only a few, it is hard to even get an appointment to bring your animals in (one place we called had a 7 month waiting list!). Also, because these abattoirs don’t have much competition, they don’t have to provide high-quality customer service to ranchers. They can charge what they want, they can choose not to follow your detailed butchering instructions (for example, put nitrates in the hams that you asked for “nitrate-free”, cut all the fat off your pork chops when you asked for 2 inches of fat on them, etc.). These abattoirs charge you by the carcass weight of your animal and then sometime they won’t even give you the whole animal back that you paid for, such as taking the head, the organ meats, the feet, etc.

The situation in Virginia is much the same. The Haskins Family can’t seem to get necks and organs back from their chicken processor. I’m not really clear on whether it’s not allowed for that processor or if it’s more of a demand issue where the processor just doesn’t have to care much what the customer wants. Their pigs are taken to True and Essential Meats in Harrisonburg, which was resurrected through the efforts Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. Without them, they have few options.

What this all boils down to for me is that buying meat at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s is no different than buying at a conventional supermarket. I know just as little about the meat either way. Most of TJ’s and WF’s products come from industrial farms that have jumped through the hoops to get that organic label. If you read the Omnivore’s Dilemma, you know that’s worth the paper it’s printed on and nothing more. Small farms often can’t manage that, but the meat is more honest and lives a normal life, even if it’s getting a grain or soy supplement. These people are barely making this work – support them instead of buying what is, let’s face it, mystery meat from supermarkets, even organic ones.

If you join a meat CSA, you might get cuts you have no clue what to do with, but it’s worth it. Ask the farmer what to do with it – they always have ideas. Branch out from the premium cuts – your grandmothers and great-grandmothers did. Look at old cookbooks for more ideas. It’s more economical, and you’ll eat more variety this way and support people who are worth the effort.

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.

Just in the last few months I have finally wrapped my brain around the idea that insulin [...]]]> I’m pretty big on diet shake-ups: if what you’re doing is not working for you then change it. Doing the same thing (or more of it) and expecting better results is just *nuts*, if you think about it.

Just in the last few months I have finally wrapped my brain around the idea that insulin is not the only hormone. I’ve recently gone back and read the actual food suggestions in Neanderthin and The Paleo Diet and found that those diets have 25-35% of calories (maybe 150g in a 2,000 calorie diet) from carbohydrates. For The Primal Blueprint, that’s near the top of the curve, but it’s definitely still on the curve. Certainly, from the point of view of the USDA Dietary Guidelines, that is a low-carb diet, but for people that come from a world of GCBC and Atkins…from the way they react to the idea of eating a banana, you’d think it was SAD-levels of carbohydrate.

I found myself saying on a forum “but I eat a lot more fruit than is currently fashionable in Paleo circles”, and I realized that it is probably more than just fashionable — it’s more like a dogma. In particular, there seems to be a terror of fructose, but the accepted leading authority, Robert Lustig, has no problems with fruit. He thinks fruit juices are a really bad idea, but not whole fruit because it comes with fiber. I’ve seen others (and I’m not sure who, unfortunately) say that juice is OK if it’s fresh squeezed in your own kitchen (something Ray Audette has on his Neanderthin meal plans, BTW) – that what makes fruit bad is *cooking* it. Since virtually all bottled juice is pasteurized, that would eliminate all but that you’ve squeezed yourself. That whole end of the discussion seems to provoke incredulity in people like Jimmy Moore who think all sugar is bad and that’s that. I believed for a long time that any kind of sugar would make me gain weight, but it just doesn’t.

A trip around paleohacks.com will show that there are more than a handful of folks that have stalled out with muscle gains and/or weight loss while eating 50g or less of carbohydrate a day. I see people on the low-carb boards and forums decide that they are eating too many calories, so they take carbs lower or go ZC because more protein and/or more fatty meat allows them to eat fewer calories. They either can’t stick to it or it still doesn’t work, and they just come on and off the threads alternately sounding discouraged or confused. It gets a little sad to read because it gets to the point where, though they diet is failing them ultimately, they think *they* are a failure for not sticking to it properly. If you can’t stick to it, that’s a failure of the diet too. TRY SOMETHING ELSE. Many of these folks have lost a lot of weight already, and they have demonstrated they have will power…but suddenly it’s not working, so it must be their fault!

Here’s how it seems to me:

• If you have an insulin resistance problem, low-carb will work well for you and you probably don’t need to deliberately reduce calories. You may or may not be eating less, but reducing the glucose load on your already burdened liver and pancreas is so helpful that you lose weight no matter what.
• If you don’t have an insulin resistance problem, low-carb will work well for you if it causes a decent-sized spontaneous reduction in calories.
  

The insulin resistant folks seem to stop losing weight when they have solved their sugar problem. This is often way before they’d *like* to stop losing weight. Eventually, kind friends and internet acquaintances start talking about how health is more important than appearance. Goodness knows, I think that a long-term low-carb diet is quite healthy for people. All their biomarkers are excellent, but if they want to be thin, they need to take a chance on something else!

I’ve made this marinade twice now, and both times it was excellent, but I think I got better results today.

1/4 cup fresh squeeze lime juice 1/4 cup pineapple juice 1/4 cup diced onion 1 t. sea salt 4 garlic cloves Rooster sauce to taste (I used a goodly squirt)

The lime and pineapple work really well together. I used boneless [...]]]>

I’ve made this marinade twice now, and both times it was excellent, but I think I got better results today.

1/4 cup fresh squeeze lime juice
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup diced onion
1 t. sea salt
4 garlic cloves
Rooster sauce to taste (I used a goodly squirt)

The lime and pineapple work really well together. I used boneless skinless breasts and thighs, and marinated at least four hours. I chopped and skewered the meat, and grilled over charcoal fairly slowly, dumping on additional marinade and rotating the skewers.

Chicken is not my favorite meat, but these were darn good.

I had these with traditional BBQ fare on the 4th and today I just had slaw and mango. The mango worked really well with this.

The grind that occurs at the gym is a big reason why I don’t go to one.

I don’t really do any exercise I don’t enjoy. If I don’t like it, I [...]]]> After spending the afternoon at the St. Louis City Museum, I’m starting to think fun exercise is something I need fit in every week.

The grind that occurs at the gym is a big reason why I don’t go to one.

I don’t really do any exercise I don’t enjoy. If I don’t like it, I find some other way to work that part of my body, but I haven’t really had so much fun being active for a long time, with the exception of some days backpacking. A lot of backpacking is about immersion in nature and meeting constant challenges, but sometimes, it really just is a long slog up a viewless mountain in 85′ heat. Other times, it’s physically fun, climbing over weird terrain along the side of a cliff or scaling a pile of boulders. I used to actually dread that kind of thing, but the last four bits of complex rock terrain I’ve done[1], I actually recall quite fondly! Anything on the A.T. with a bad weather trail is generally awesome.

The only kind of gym I’d actually consider would be CrossFit, and I’m not doing that because it just means I will spend waaaay too much time commuting to a freakin’ gym. It’s certainly a different kind of workout experience, but it’s still mostly about meeting challenges. CrossFit supports a number of sport activities, but most people don’t seem to make time for those, and instead spend their time at the box. I know people get a big sense of accomplishment, but I also note that CrossFit and the Paleo world generally contain a lot of forceful, Type A personalities who are also free-thinkers or libertarians. CF is kind of an anti-gym already, but I sure haven’t seen anything about it that looks painful.

I’m thinking more along the lines of climbing more trees, and when I get back to Virginia, I’m going to hike a section of the Massanutten Trail that’s a knife-edge for a long way. The map is labeled “experienced hikers only”. I’ve done it before, so I do know what’s there.

I’ve had this sitting around for a while, and I didn’t read it [...]]]> This is a review of Lyle McDonald’s The Ketogenic Diet: A complete guide for the Dieter and Practitioner. I’ve also recently read a couple of his other books, but after thinking about it a while, I learned the most from this one.

I’ve had this sitting around for a while, and I didn’t read it because I figured that 1) I wasn’t interested in a ketogenic diet at the moment and 2) I know what a ketogenic diet is already. The thing is that the book is chock full of biochemistry that I didn’t know and that was very enlightening.

Because of all the information it contains on everything related to metabolism, I’d recommend it for any non-scientist with a stubborn weight problem or really, any weight problem at all. No matter what kind of weight-loss diet you want to do, the processes detailed and explained in this book are really important to understand.

I also have a keen interest in his book The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook, but I’m not going to talk about that until Dr. Mike’s Thin So Fast shows up. It’s my understanding that it’s also a Protein Sparing Modified Fast, which is what the McDonald’s RFL Diet actually is. Anyway, moving on.

In case you don’t know what a ketogenic diet is, here’s a definition:

In the most general terms, a ketogenic diet is any diet that causes ketone bodies to be produced by the liver, shifting the body’s metabolism away from glucose and towards fat utilization. More specifically, a ketogenic diet is one that restricts carbohydrates below a certain level (generally 100 grams per day), inducing a series of adaptations to take place. Protein and fat intake are variable, depending on the goal of the dieter. However, the ultimate determinant of whether a diet is ketogenic or not is the presence (or absence) of carbohydrates.

Atkins is a ketogenic diet, as are most low-carb plans. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what ketosis is, and instead of defending it, I’m just going to say that it IS NOT KETOACIDOSIS. This is well covered by McDonald – most people cannot provoke ketoacidosis since people without diabetes that are not alcoholics have feedback loops that prevent it ever happening. If you could cause this to happen just by not eating carbohydrates, how on earth would our human ancestors have made it through the ice age? Answer: they wouldn’t. Your system will deal, so don’t worry about it.

I now understand exactly how the brain starts using ketones for fuel, why it causes fatty tissue breakdown, and how much is too much protein on a low-carb diet. More importantly, I also understand how dietary fat works, and I see why I didn’t lose weight by shifting to a high-fat, low-carb diet. I’d get into ketosis, but it was mostly from dietary fat, so it never really touched my own stores. You can still eat fat and get your body to break down it’s own fat, but not too much.

Another really important thing: I understand why stalls happen on low-carb diets. The same hormones that caused your weight to drop are only made even MORE fat sparing by cutting carbs more – the usual solution. There are a lot of questions from people on the internet wondering how on earth they could be eating 20 carbs a day and not losing weight. The answer? They need to do a re-feed because their system has freaked out and lowered their metabolism by using hormones that are not insulin. It’s much easier for women to provoke this condition with a long-term very low-carb diet, but it can happen to men too. It’s more complex than this, but I’m not going to quote a whole chapter here.

One of things about protein that I learned that’s easy to explain is that it’s about 58% non-ketogenic. Let’s say I’m eating 125g of protein and 75g of net carbohydrate (we can ignore fiber here). This means that I will have 147g of glucose available for my body as fuel. This will definitely not be ketogenic. If I keep protein the same and lower net carbs to 50g, I should get into ketosis. The other factor is fat: about 10% of fat grams are made available as glucose in your bloodstream. Fat is *not quite* too cheap to meter, and eating more fat will actually lower utilization from your fat stores. If you’re trying to lose fat, that’s not something you want to do.

One of the other stumbling blocks for low-carb eaters is this one:

Individuals who have been on a low-carbohydrate diet (of any type) will show a rapid increase in bodyweight when carbohydrates are added to the diet (2,3). This weight gain…can be anywhere from 5 to 11 pounds (2,3).

For dieters who focus only on the scale, this rapid weight gain can be disheartening, pushing them straight back into a low-carbohydrate eating style. The inability to differentiate between weight gain and fat gain tends to promote the belief in dieters that excess carbohydrates (rather than excess calories) are the cause of their problems. This may make it difficult for these individuals to ever wean themselves away from the ketogenic diet.

For people who read AND FOLLOW the official Atkins Diet, they know to re-introduce carbs slowly. Most people just stop cold and add carbs back, gaining weight and then saying the diet failed them. In reality, they didn’t follow the diet.

The vital bit that McDonald suggests is this one: “for every 2 grams of carbohydrate which are added to the diet, 1 gram of fat must be removed.” This is because calories DO matter. How much you use and how much you waste has to do with your metabolism, but eating too many calories is going to cause you to gain weight over time. When you first stop dieting, your metabolism is often quite keen to put that fat right back on, so maintenance shouldn’t be ignored. McDonald recommends around a 65% fat diet, so it shouldn’t be too painful to remove some of that to add back carbs.

I don’t agree with everything last he says, but the science is understandable and well-referenced.

This book is very much worth reading, especially for Paleo/Primal types that are looking to lose (more) weight or lean out. I’m very well read in terms of diet books of the Paleo and low-carb stripe, and I learned a ton from this book. Yes, it’s expensive, so I’ll leave it to you if it’s worth it, but if you’re really stuck, it’s probably worth the $50.