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.

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.

The rest of it is about evolutionary diets and fitness. It’s definitely worth hearing, no matter which thing you’re interested in.

Re: [...]]]> I found an interesting Russ Roberts podcast with Art DeVany. The first 25 minutes is about baseball and steroids, and while I’m not a baseball nut, I still found DeVany’s ideas quite interesting.

The rest of it is about evolutionary diets and fitness. It’s definitely worth hearing, no matter which thing you’re interested in.

Re: cardio vs HIT, I never thought of this (paraphrased from memory and show notes):

For example, most of the early laboratory work on exercise was done with aerobics exercise because that was done in the lab. You can’t do anaerobic or intense exercise very well that way because the body never hits a steady state. Models are far more difficult. There’s bias toward testing aerobic exercise simply because that’s where the light is…

(i.e. Look for your keys under the street light because the light is better there.)

I have switched to sprints/HIT myself – it sure takes a lot less time! That’s not to say that I won’t do walking, hiking or yoga, but for the moment, I’m not taking them seriously as training exercise.

The “Tough Love” section applies to ANY dietary changes you want to make. The whole article is absolutely worth [...]]]> The Whole9 folks are doing another Pure Paleo 30-day challenge. You’ll find an explanation of it here, and if you’re looking to cut the crap out of your diet, there’s a lot of support available.

The “Tough Love” section applies to ANY dietary changes you want to make. The whole article is absolutely worth reading, but this bit is super important:

1. It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Giving up heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard. You won’t get any coddling, and you won’t get any sympathy for your “struggles”. Because if we (Dallas and Melissa) can do this while living out of a car on our road trip, relying on a restaurant or a cooler for 90% of our meals, while constantly socializing for business, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. It’s only thirty days, and it’s for the most important cause on earth – the only physical body you will ever have in this lifetime. So suck it up and join us.
   

2. Don’t tell us you “slipped”. Unless you physically tripped and your face landed in a box of Krispy Kremes, you DID NOT SLIP. You made a choice to eat something of poor quality. It’s always a choice, so do not phrase it as if you had an accident. Commit here, 100%, for the full 30 days, or go somewhere else.

3. You never, ever, ever HAVE to eat anything you don’t want to eat. You’re all big boys and girls. Toughen up. Learn to say no (or make your Mom proud and say, “No, thank you”). Learn to stick up for yourself. Just because it’s your sister’s birthday, or your best friend’s wedding, or your company outing or the Fourth of July does not mean you have to eat anything. It’s always a choice, and we would hope that you stopped succumbing to peer pressure in 10th grade.

4. This does require a bit of effort, people. If you’re cutting grains, legumes and dairy for the first time, you have to replace those calories with something. You have to make sure you’re eating enough, that your vitamins and nutrients are balanced, that you’re getting enough protein, fat and carbohydrates. You’ll have to figure out what to eat for lunch, how to order at a restaurant and how often you’ll need to grocery shop. There are a ton of good resources search-able on this site, and Googling “Paleo Recipes” is a great place to start. We’ll give you plenty of resources here, but take responsibility for your own plan. Improved health, fitness and performance doesn’t happen just because you’re now taking a pass on chocolate milk.

I’m a big believer in the whole idea of diving into your changes 100%. Whatever you want to cut, CUT IT. There’s a lot to be said for making a decision and sticking to it. No tapering off. I’m not a smoker, so I’ve never had the experience of quitting smoking, but I’ve certainly seen a lot of people around me quit. I can tell you that the people I’ve seen who quit successfully do it cold turkey.

Step up to the plate and COMMIT to whatever it is you’ve decided to change about your life. It will boost your confidence, and it will make you feel better about everything you do.

It’s coming from a little different place than I [...]]]> I’ve had something about polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) in the hopper that is my brain for some time, but when I was finally catching up on my blog reading, I found that Dr. Kurt Harris has written something about it recently. It’s a good one.

It’s coming from a little different place than I am, and winds up somewhere a bit different, but it’s close. Ultimately, vegetable fats are not your friends. I’ll get to mine eventually, but go read his, especially if you’re a Paleo who uses canola oil, flax oil or eats a lot of nuts.

Anyway, another concept that I’ve been thinking about a lot came up on Robb Wolf’s podcast this week. Here’s “Bill’s” question:

Quick question about maximizing effectiveness of carb intake on cortisol levels. In a nutshell, if carb intake is restricted sufficiently to require more or less continuous gluconeogenesis to maintain blood sugar, and cortisol is the pathway by which gluconeogenesis is activated, wouldn’t eating close to zero carbs result in continuously elevated cortisol levels?

I’m pretty sure that this is what triggered my cortisol and adrenal issues. If I didn’t have *other* issues, it might not have happened, but I can’t help but notice that a lot of people (especially women) in the paleosphere also have hypothyroid symptoms. Non-raging hypothyroid symptoms (like gluten intolerance) are something you can experience for quite a long time and not realize that you just aren’t performing up to snuff. Once they start to abate, you realize just how many problems you had that were caused by your hormones that *aren’t* insulin. People in the low-carb world, paleo or not, tend to blame everything on insulin.

Here’s Robb Wolf’s answer (this is my transcription from the podcast. It may not be perfect, but I’m sure it’s pretty close):

Cortisol is not the only way to turn on gluconeogenesis, it’s one way to do it, but it’s not the only way to do it. The thought here is good, and this is part of the reason why the Intermittent Fasting stuff is really interesting, but also potentially very, very problematic because if you are in a fasted state, and then begin training, especially at a high intensity level, the likelihood of you releasing cortisol to prop up blood sugar levels is very, very high.

When I was talking with Lon Kilgore [not sure about that name, maybe this guy?] the other day about how cortisol levels can be elevated from overtraining and one of the obvious places this can happen, like if we’re doing intense, mixed modal activity where we’re using a lot of muscle mass intensely, like basically taking things down to failure, we’re causing a huge stimulus to uptake glucose into the muscles. If we clear all the blood glucose out of the bloodstream into the muscles, we’re going to really perturb the system, and if we do not have an easy way of replenishing that glucose then we are going to stimulate the release of cortisol and adrenaline to release glucose out of the liver. And so this is one of those things that when I’m looking back at my own problems with elevated cortisol levels, the AM training in a fasted state, when I’m looking back at it and I was already stressed, already having problems, already overly caffeinated and then throwing in fasted training on top of that? Oh, I was an idiot, no wonder I ended up producing the problems that I had.

He goes on to talk about moderation, and says that (paraphrased) some of the HIT training, some of the fasting is OK and maybe you can fly under the cortisol radar if you’ve got everything else in order, if you aren’t stressed and you’re sleeping enough and all that.

Robb and Andy Deas have discussed caffeine in the past, so they don’t go into that piece again here. Basically, they feel a moderate intake is OK and that something to slow down the jolt (heavy cream or coconut/almond milk if you don’t do dairy) is beneficial. They take a lot of questions about caffeine and alcohol in the podcast.

Also, Robb seems to feel pretty strongly that benefits of Intermittent Fasting max out at 16 hours. He has mentioned that more than once in these podcasts. The other half of the question:

Likewise, to maximize development of muscle (occurring in reduced cortisol environment) wouldn’t the ideal, though perhaps unattainable, diet be the one that provided JUST enough carbs to nearly eliminate gluconeogenesis, thus generating the lowest levels of cortisol due to diet (all other factors being equal)? Or is my understanding of this simply immature?

Robb’s answer:

I think that’s pretty spot on from the reality for maximum muscle development, although I am no means an exemplary expert in this area, the things that seem to go into it are insulin sensitivity but then also getting away with as much carbohydrate as you can definitely has some growth promotion to it, but different people have some different levels of buy-in on how much carbohydrate they can tolerate in this whole scene. The cortisol management piece is definitely really important from an androgen perspective. If your cortisol is going up, testosterone is going to go down and it’s going to have some other collateral damage effects including insulin sensitivity because of elevated cortisol, so there’s a lot of reasons for keeping cortisol in tight check.

As your pro-sleep hormones fall off (your best quality sleep for hormone balancing occurs before midnight), your system starts to produce cortisol in the morning to get you going. This is normal, but it’s *not* normal if you’re getting that shot of cortisol at 3am or 4am and waking up then. I found that if that happens (I can usually go back to sleep for a couple of hours, but it’s not high-quality sleep), I have a higher fasting blood glucose in the morning (in the 90s or about 105 instead of my normal low 80s) as well. This also makes sense, because the cortisol is driving the liver to produce some glucose as part of the waking process. So, this is a deranged reaction as the BG is too high and I was waking up too early.

Since I added the carbs back (a serving of fruit at the end of two meals and one meal with root veggies – I eat about 100g of carbohydrate a day including fiber), my morning blood sugars are coming down from 95-100. Yesterday it was 72 (which is really too low), and today it was 87, which is just right. I’m not waking up at 3 or 4am either, obviously. It’s a slow process, but everything keeps getting a *little bit better* every day.

Within what I can only describe a mean-spirited and pointlessly rude blog post from Matt Stone, there’s one interesting nugget of possible truth:

“…remember that prolonged dieting (this one, [...]]]> I’ve been seeing reasoned debate about the effect of long-term low-carb diets for a while now, but this last week, things kind of exploded into a yelling fest.

Within what I can only describe a mean-spirited and pointlessly rude blog post from Matt Stone, there’s one interesting nugget of possible truth:

“…remember that prolonged dieting (this one, low-fat, low-calorie, or a combination) tends to shut down thyroid function. This is usually not a problem with the thyroid gland (therefore blood tests are likely to be normal) but with the liver, which fails to convert T4 into the more active thyroid principle, T3. The diagnosis is made on clinical ground with the presence of fatigue, sluggishness, dry skin, coarse or falling hair, an elevation in cholesterol, or a low body temperature. I ask my patients to take four temperature readings daily before the three meals and near bedtime. If the average of all these temperatures, taken for at least three days, is below 97.8 degrees F (36.5 C), that is usually low enough to point to this form of thyroid problem; lower readings than that are even more convincing. It may be appropriate for those of you who fit these criteria to be prescribed thyroid by your doctor, and if so, a natural form of the hormone, which contains T3, is far superior to the most popular form of prescription thyroid, synthetic T4.”

-Robert C. Atkins

Google books says it comes from The Complete Dr. Atkins. Since I don’t own that, and I’ve never read it, that would explain why I’ve never seen this quote.

Jimmy Moore responded in the comment section of Matt’s site as well as on one of his blogs. Richard Nikoley of Free The Animal leapt to Jimmy’s defense. Matt has also previously said disparaging things about Richard.

My concern about all of this is that vital information might be missed. A lot of former low carbers or current paleo dieters *do* seem to have thyroid or metabolic issues of some kind.

Jenny, who runs diabetes update, talked about why low-carb stopped working for her. The whole piece is worth reading, but here’s the introduction:

The enthusiasm for the low carb diet as a weight loss diet arises in the first few weeks and months when most people experience dramatic weight loss.

What rarely gets mentioned–especially in the miracle weight loss books–is that very few low carb dieters ever get to their weight loss goal, especially those who start out with a lot of weight to lose.

I am enthusiastic about the power of carb restriction to lower blood sugar to normal or near normal levels. I am not as enthusiastic about low carbohydrate dieting as the solution to tough weight loss problems.

Because even the online low carb community tends to believe that people who stall out are “not doing the diet right” and respond to stall posts with that assumption, most people who do stall out long term leave the discussion boards, leaving only those who have succeeded to greet the newbies.

I’d like to point out that “not doing it right” is *exactly* what the purveyors of conventional wisdom spew at fat people trying to lose weight. If eating less and exercise is not working, then clearly, you aren’t doing it right. Or you’re lying about what you’re eating and your workout schedule. I think these amount to the same thing, but “you aren’t doing it right” is a lot nicer than “you’re a liar”.

I’ve seen many of the same complaints on BBSes like Low Carb Friends and Active Low-Carbers and even on Atkins Diet Bulletin Board. People will complain (almost exclusively women, though this may be a function of the boards themselves rather than an indication that all the people having the problem are women) that they can’t lose weight unless they cut calories to 1,400 or even lower, and generally, they do this by eating very low carb because they aren’t (as) hungry that way. This does not seem to get them anywhere either, and most low carb books I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot of them) indicate that counting calories is a bad idea. While they admit that it’s possible to eat too much, they recommend you don’t count calories, but because almost everyone tracks their carbs in something like Fitday, they always know what the calorie count is.

Atkins says that if you have a lot of weight to lose, it’s OK to stay on induction a long time. So, people stay on induction a long time because, in their minds, they have a lot of weight to lose. At some point, their weight loss becomes negligible. They either add a lot of cardio at this point, or get very strict about what they are eating. The Atkins book says that after induction, you should be adding carbs back at the rate of 5g per week until you don’t lose weight any more, then back off a little. There’s a “carb ladder” that indicates the order. The ADBB folks who have made goal by following the instructions in the book always push for this, but I think it scares people to think they will stop losing weight, gain weight or even go on a carb binge, so they don’t do it.

In Lyle McDonald’s The Ketogenic Diet he has a section on hypothyroid and euthyroid stress syndrome that contains this sentence: “The decrease in T3 due to hypothyroidism must be contrasted to the decrease seen during dieting or carbohydrate restriction.” Basically, that the decrease in T3 is a known issue with ketogenic diets (Atkins is a ketogenic diet).

Any diet of sufficient length and restriction will slow the metabolism. It seems to take longer on a low-carb diet than a straight-up low-calorie diet, and it’s possible that alternate day diets or calorie cycling might be an even better option, but I think what a lot of low-carbers (Atkins and lwo-carb Paleo Dieters alike) are experiencing is an evolutionary adaptation that makes complete sense once you see it from the right angle. I think that it handily explains the idea of the Atkins “One Golden Shot”.

In my next blog post, I’ll try to give the right angle.