Healthy eating - Resources

For any who may be interested in additional reading or research materials, you may want to consider the following. There are many paths and methods that lead to a similar healthy outcome - each of these authors and researchers comes to a slightly different conclusion, but I have found each to be valuable:

Books:

• Why We Get Fat (and what to do about it) - Gary Taubes - Amazon
• The Paleo Solution - Robb Wolf - Amazon
• Everyday Paleo - Sarah Fragoso - Amazon
• The Paleo Diet - Dr. Loren Cordain - Amazon
• The Primal Blueprint - Mark Sisson - Amazon
• Primal Body, Primal Mind - Nora Gegaudas - Amazon
• Nutrition and Physical Degeneration - Weston A. Price - Project Gutenberg Australia
• Nourishing Traditions - Sally Fallon - Amazon

Blogs

• http://robbwolf.com/
• http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
• http://everydaypaleo.com/
• http://www.archevore.com/

I cannot recommend, nor would I agree with every word of what you will find at any of the above - I have not read them all (yet) in their entirety. Suffice to say they are provided for reference, and I continue to follow them for additional information.

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Thanks to Jonathan for allowing us to team up for this challenge, and I look forward to seeing future results from him and others who may be similarly challenged to make a change. I hope you are helped by our experience.

Can we at least agree? Let's Eat Real Food.

Much of the Paleo/Primal diet's background is based in in the theory of human evolution - the idea being that humans are genetically selected and adapted to eat the foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have eaten prior to the invention of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago. While I don't subscribe to this view of how human life came into existence, you don't need to believe in it to see results from the dietary approach.

You don't need to pretend to be a caveman (even one as eloquent as this).

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In the 1930s, a dentist named Weston A. Price performed an extensive study of cultures who were isolated from western civilization - modern hunter-gatherers, if you will, who did not eat modern processed foods. Price was seeking to find out how they avoided cavities without access to modern dentistry. What he found and subsequently documented in the bood Nutrition and Disease Prevention was a much larger body of knowledge on health and diet, as the people he studied were on the whole healthy, free from diseases of affluence (obesity, heart disease, cancer, etc.), and had very little in the way of dental problems.

Modern hunter-gatherers don't suffer the health problems we in the west do. No need for evolutionary basis there - either it works or it doesn't.

Eating natural, whole, real foods as close to their production as possible is a method that seeks to avoid:

• Processed foods
• Junk foods
• Sugar & High fructose corn syrup
• Sodas and sports drinks
• Agribusiness & subsidized monocoulture crops
• Factory farming & animal cruelty

Even if you believe the items above are not harmful, are there any of the above that you would argue are beneficial or necessary to human health? Can you live without these things? If you tried this for 30 days, what might you discover?

The Trouble with Grains

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Grains like wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, and rice all have three main problems:

1. High carbohydrate levels - these grains are mostly starch, which if eaten in large amounts, raises insulin, leading to a host of problems including obesity, diabetes & heart disease.
   
   
2. Anti-nutrients - the grains we eat are the seeds of grasses. The seed has a starchy core and a hard exterior, the bran. This exterior coating contains fiber (which is not as necessary as you might believe - you get plenty of it from vegetables). The bran is designed to protect the seed from being digested by an animal who might eat it and transfer it to a new location - the seeds "wants" to live and grow anew. Your body also fights to digest these compounds, which also bind to vitamins and then pass through your system undigested - they rob you of the nutrients you have eaten with them.
   
   
3. Lectins & gluten - these are proteins that your digestive system does not know how to process well. They can pass through the intestine wall into the bloodstream undigested, where they appear to the immune system as foreign invaders. Your immune system fights against these proteins, and will often develop an immunity against them. The problem is that these lectins are structurally very similar to the proteins that are the building blocks of many of your internal organs. Chronic continued exposure to these lectins can result in developing an immune response that attacks your own tissues, resulting in inflammation and auto-immune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis.... Eating grains has also been linked to schizophrenia, depression, infertility and cancer - PDF link.

While sprouting grains can reduce the levels of anti-nutrients in grains and make them slightly more healthy, they are typically not quite the nutritional powerhouse we might think they are: PDF link (see table 4). They lack Vitamin A, C and B12, and the (admittedly inexpensive) calories they provide will offset more nutrient dense foods like non-starchy vegetables and meats. It's all enough to make one wonder if they should be the foundation of the food pyramid.

While toast in the morning is delicious and chocolate cookies can be nearly impossible to resist, the problems above are serious enough for me to at least avoid them on a trial basis - it's really not all that difficult.

Willpower - It's not what you think

One reaction upon hearing about this way of eating is: "That sounds like the way we should be eating anyway...." An all-too-common follow up is: "but I could never do it. I'd never be able to give up my ...." bread, toast, candy, soda, sugar, whatever. In my experience, it's not easy, but it's certainly not difficult.

We have been conditioned to think that weight loss is hard: you have either have to starve yourself and/or wear yourself out exercising for hours.

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My experience is that neither of these things is necessary, and it can be almost effortless. I've heard it said that nutrition & diet are perhaps 80% of the equation, exercise is maybe 20%. If you're not eating sugar, it stands to reason that you don't have to burn it off.

If you stop eating (refined) carbohydrates & avoid added sugars, you are probably 50% of the way there. Making sure to eat good fats (avocado, coconut, olive), proteins, plenty of vegetables and avoiding industrial oils (canola, safflower, "vegetable") is perhaps the next 30%. If you do these things, even without exercising or counting calories, I have seen swift and substantial changes.

Your body has the ability to heal itself - you don't need a drug to get better if you cut yourself, to get over a cold, to mend a broken bone. If you give your body the nutrients it needs to function and stop giving it garbage it fights, my experience is that your weight will very likely normalize and level off based on the balance of food you are eating.

Strength of Will

Willpower is needed, but not the way you might think. It's not really about having to control HOW MUCH you eat - the satiety provided by protein and fat takes care of that naturally, especially if dietary sugar isn't increasing your appetite and excess insulin and lectins aren't blocking the hormonal signals telling your brain you're full.

Willpower is needed in WHAT you are eating. The good news is that it gets easier. It took a month or so before my desire for sweet foods diminished, and they really aren't much of a temptation anymore. Your tastebuds change over time, and are no longer overwhelmed and desensitized by sugar. After several months of avoiding sugar, some fruits now taste almost unbearably sweet - letting me know how much natural sugars are in them. I recently tasted an almond that was startlingly sweet: I had always wondered whether Amaretto's flavor had any basis in reality - now I know (not that I'll be drinking Amaretto any time soon. Vegetables I used to dislike now taste different. It's not them, it's me.

Once you start to normalize, my experience is that you feel the desire to exercise - it happens spontaneously, not as a requirement to loose weight. I exercise now because I feel good when and after I do, and I like feeling stronger and healthier.

I don't exercise to loose weight, or to compensate for sugar in my diet. Functional strength and flexibility are my goals. Here's what seemed like a balanced approach: exercise so that you can play - whatever you want, whenever you want. You should be fit enough to tackle any physical activity you come across without undue fear of injury. That's where I'm aiming. I want to want to play with my kids, and be healthy enough that they won't outpace me when they get to be teenagers.

Sugar Is Not A Necessary Nutrient

Sugar is not a nutrient: at best it is an empty food additive, at worst it is an addictive substance.

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Refined sugar is not needed by your body - there is nothing in it that your body needs to survive. There are only a couple of body functions that require glucose (blood sugar), but you don't need to eat sugar to feed these functions. The body can create whatever glucose it needs through gluconeogenesis (source), a process that takes protein from your diet (or from your muscles if need be) and turns it into glucose.

In the FDA's instructions on how to read a nutrition label, they note the following about sugar: "No daily reference value has been established for sugars because no recommendations have been made for the total amount to eat in a day." Sugars are not identified an a nutrient to avoid eating too much of, nor to get enough of; they are simply a blank area in the FDA interpretation.

Sugar is addictive. It hits the same opioid receptors and dopamine centers in your brain that are activated by cocaine and other drugs. Here's an interesting study for you: Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward.

Sugar makes you eat more of it: most foods are a combination of the three main macronutrients: Fat, Protein or Carbohydrate. Protein and Fats are both satiating - they make you feel full. When you have eaten enough, the body's tissues to send the hormonal signal leptin to the brain, indicating you are full and can stop eating. High levels of insulin and insulin resistance block this leptin signal, meaning you continue to eat more than your body needs. Carbohydrates raise insulin, which blocks leptin, therefore carb/sugar consumption causes you to eat more.

For more info, this lecture "Sugar, The Bitter Truth" from Dr. Robert Lustig is a engaging and measured look at what effect sugar consumption has had on our bodies in the last 30 years. Watch below or listen to the audio podcast.

If your body doesn't need sugar to function and eating it is both fattening and addictive, it begs the question, why eat this refined carbohydrate at all?

Two Drink Maximum

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While alcohol can be a poison and is processed in the liver like other poisons and harmful substances, moderate consumption of certain kinds of alcohol can have several benefits:

• Red wine contains resveratrol, a polyphenol liked with decreased health risks.
• Moderate alcohol consumption can decrease the risk of heart disease and strokes, (up to 2 drinks per day for men, one for women).
• It cheers the heart

The choice of alcohol is important. It is suggested to avoid beer (liquid grain, contains gluten), and sugary liqueurs, fortified wines and mixers - sorry Port, Sherry, Midori, Bailey's, Triple Sec, Jaeger, margarita mix, tonic water, ginger ale, sodas, etc. Distilled spirits are acceptable - gin, brandy, tequila, rum, whiskey, as are red and white wine. And Rose. (Sweet wines should probably be avoided on principle.) -Editor's note: Friends don't let friends drink white zinfandel.

So it you are going to drink alcohol, try a two drink maximum per day, and choose non sugary spirits. Here's a recipe to get you started:

Añejo Especial

• 1 oz. tequila
• Juice of half a fresh lime
• Juice of 1/4 fresh grapefruit
• Splash of sparkling water

Substitute the tequila for gin and you almost have a gin and tonic.

See also the Norcal Margarita - recommended.

• http://paleogirls.com/2010/02/12/the-wolf-margarita/
• http://nick.zadrozny.com/post/318559399/the-norcal-margarita
• http://robbwolf.com/2009/11/25/the-paleolithic-solution-episode-3/

Perhaps the original post should have stated: "Unless they can be shown to have positive health effects, Don't eat things your body fights to digest, Don't eat things your body processes like poisons". This is one poison to take in moderation.

More info

Weight Loss Isn't the Goal, But...

While the previous post about this month's experiment focused on Gary Taubes' "Why We Get Fat" and the role of carbohydrate in that process, it is important to note that we entered this month not focused on weight loss. Our main interest in this experiment was to see how we would fare, how we would feel if we cut out sugar and other nutrient-scarce foods.

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Those who are overweight are certainly at higher risk for many health problems - high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, etc., so loosing excess pounds, kilograms or stone would be a health benefit. For the purposes of this experiment, weight is but one measure of health. We are also tracking body fat percentage as well as more subjective markers like energy level, food cravings, digestion, to see what effect this change in lifestyle has on us.

It is important for those who want to consider this way of eating (Paleo / Primal) on a more permanent basis, that we not to think of it as a diet, and not to refer to it by that term. Our modern culture is littered with fad diets and most of us have tried some version of one, perhaps lost a few pounds with difficulty and subsequently regained them without much difficulty.

If Gary Taubes is correct, the reason for this yo-yo effect is not a lack of willpower, a sedentary lifestyle, or eating more than we burn. It is primarily the massive amounts of dietary sugar and refined carbohydrate that we typically consume. Discovering what to eat for optimum heath is the goal, and weight loss (if starting overweight) is one trackable metric.

That said, here are the starting and mid points:

Patient Zero:

Friday June 1
Weight: 213.4 lbs
Body fat: 26.4%
BMI: 28.2

Friday July 15
Weight: 208.4 lbs
Body Fat: 25.6%
BMI: 27.5

Patient One:

Friday June 1

Weight: 220 lbs

Body fat: 32.3%

BMI: 35.5

Sunday July 17

Weight: 214.2

Body Fat: 31.2%

BMI: 34.6

No carb counting, no calorie counting, no additional exercise - but more to say about that later.

These measurements were taken using a cheap bathroom scale, so there is some percentage of error, but they were taken consistently, so they are useful for comparison. Body Fat percentage, when measured electrically can differ based on one's level of hydration. The important thing to note is that the markers are moving in the right direction - down.

January Results

I should have published this blog at the start of the year, I believe the blog aspect of the year will be an encouragement. Normally, I will update more frequently, but to catch you up to speed...

In the month of January, I went vegetarian. I cooked vegetarian. I ate vegetarian. Some might say I started to act vegetarian. This was setting up to be the easiest challenge ahead of me, I loved it.

Then...I took a spontaneous trip to North Carolina to visit a friend. Could I have maintained my diet of plants while visiting the "Old North State"? Would looking like a California hippie be too much pressure "down south"? Would I reject the offer to eat one of my closest friends favorite foods with him because of a challenge?

Challenge Result: FAILED

Analysis: When I returned home I made excuses for a few days. "I was on vacation, what was I supposed to do?" "It's not really fair, I didn't know I was going on this trip when I started this challenge." "I would have succeeded if I hadn't gone on the trip."

With the help of my roommate Stuntman, I came to realize there are no excuses. I need to be honest with myself and the truth is we all make decisions in life. It was more important to be a ravenous meat eater with my friend than to maintain my challenge. Going to NC and staying vegetarian was the biggest challenge of the month, but I decided to give up. The question I must ask myself is why did I give up? What does that say about me? The challenge?

I had a great time doing it. I learned how to cook many different types of veggies. I prepared dinner for 3 and then a dinner for 5 for the first time in my life, completely vegetarian. I'd even say that since January, my meals at home are much more balanced.