It's a four-part documentary airing now that examines the entire obesity epidemic in America. Obviously I haven't seen the whole thing; half-way through the second episode now. What blew me away were all the leading experts who say that obesity is genetic, and that the current epidemic is based in the biology. Now, I have no medical training whatsoever - I doubt I could effectively administer CPR - but from an engineering standpoint, the answer is self evident. If the obesity rates were consistent decade after decade, then in less than 20 years skyrocketed, that does not mean our genes have changed. Something has obviously changed drastically, and our genes can't change that quickly. To me, it's the food chain. Food is being ruined - how it's grown, harvested and processed. If the food was more natural, we wouldn't weigh so much. Add in the genetic modifications that have changed [whatever food] drastically from what it spent thousands of years evolving to be, and that's the answer. Obviously, this documentary is not focusing on fringe diets, which is ironic given how much success nutrient therapy gets and how important what everything you put in your mouth is. Mya, wanna try this again? I'll do it with you if you want. The Whole30 thing. Not, you know, IT.
So here's a question, why would anyone give a rat's ass what a doctor in medicine thinks about nutrition? Seriously, think about it. People always spout off phrases like "I'm not a doctor, but..." assuming that doctors are experts on fields other than medicine. They are not gods, not even close, they are just people with a better understanding of drugs than the average person, that's it. If you're eating paleo you really need to understand this because your doctor will probably tell you this diet is going to kill you while complimenting you on recent bloodwork that "can't be because of your diet." Not trying to pick on you at all dcc, you just happened to post two things in a row that got me thinking.
Here's an awesome iced tea if you want: DCC's Iced Tea - 2 litres hot water - 2 teabags of choice - I use a ginger citrus tea - 1 lemon, but without the peel (peel has a bunch of toxins and filth on it from handling) - 3 tbsp organic honey
I don't expect just any doctor to know about nutrition, but it kind of surprised me that the endocrinologist that heads Harvard's Obesity Program and is giving an interview to HBO would say such things. Why is the food chain - not people's lifestyle, but the actual food chain - not the smoking gun culprit?
I looked at my calendar and I have a lot of "eating" events coming up, so I have a feeling I will go down even worse than I did this time. I hate to go into something knowing I am going to cheat on several separate occasions, but I also don't want to be the crazy guest who is picking apart the menu at an event. Maybe I will start a journal over at instrength and we can try to stick with paleo without doing the crazy restrictive Whole30 thing. Probably a cop out, but it will keep me honest without making me crazy.
I think it has to be whatever works. There's no sense in doing a challenge, only to complete it and resume habits you don't want. Let me know if you want a buddy for anything.
Accountability buddy? I will start a food/fitness log over there. If I write it down where people can see it, I'll do better to stay on track. I think my goal will just be try to limit processed as much as possible. I think it was Frank that said it is best to make all of your own condiments, an area where I was a little lax. A couple areas where paleo and I may part ways, I am going to continue to have cream (I do get the Shatto stuff) in my coffee, but other dairy is limited. And I will still use Stevia.
I imagine ignore me since I won't know what I am talking about and take girly gym classes instead of crossfit. Off to start my food blog today, on what is probably my most boring day of eating ever.
If you want a little trick to help you out while shopping for food, don't go down any aisles. Just follow the square around the edge of the store. In 99% of the grocery stores, the outer square is all of the spoilage food. Meats/breads/dairy/veggies etc. Keeping your shopping restricted to the outer edge will almost ensure you won't run into anything with hidden sugar or hydraprocessedseperatedcondensed whatever the fuck they stick in things. The only time I go down an aisle is to pick up oil or some one off item that I can't readily get fresh. Thanks for sharing that excel spreadsheet Frank. I haven't done any tracking of my meals, but I wanted to start and that is perfect. Reading through some of your comments is pretty entertaining.
I know there's some health related issues related to using microwaves, but more importantly I just despise the way food tastes coming out of them, so I got this bad boy for the office. Just reheated a meal I was nuking the past two days, the microwave was definitely doing my food a disservice. You can probably get good ones for cheaper, but I've come to trust Breville so I went with them.
I've been mostly adhering to this way of eating and have had a wonderful side effect: my blood pressure is normal. It has been high as long as I can remember, my doctor has been threatening to put me on medication for it for a year now. I have had two visits now where my pressure wasn't in the Hypertension range, my doctor can't believe it. I've also dropped 23 lbs since I started. Thank you for talking about this, TIB, it has improved my health.
This caught my eye as well. The Weight of the Nation documentary had soooo many 'obesity experts' (name the discipline: nutritionist, endochronologist, MD, medical researcher, etc.) that were grossly overweight themselves. Why is there such a disconnect? And why can people see results with their own eyes, and then go back to preaching the system that clearly isn't working? It's at a level that extend beyond just mere politics. If it was just political, then who believed what would be greatly divided. Instead, it seems to be a universal consensus to preach what we've preached and not actually do/pay attention to methods that we'll really work. Any thoughts as to why this is so?
At least from my experience when I was studying nutrition in college, the vast majority of what they were concerned with is avoiding catastrophe, not optimal health. They didn't really touch on what you would want to do to lose fat or gain muscle, only what you would want to do to stabilize (not really even reverse) your health if you have a serious condition like diabetes or cancer, and for whatever reason they spent a good amount of time talking about how astronauts have to worry about bone density when returning to Earth. The few times weight loss did come up, the science went right out the window* and they basically just pushed a mostly conventional low fat/high fiber diet while addressing the concept that reducing grains may help. But they mostly chalked up being overweight to bad genetics and at the end of the day were happy with being healthy enough to stay alive. *For everything else, they showed us biochemical models to back up what they were saying, when it came to fat loss they never just winged it and only brought up insulin levels when talking about a morbidly obese type 2 diabetic.
Has anyone else felt significant hormonal changes from switching to Paleo? Over the last few weeks, I've noticed that I feel more, well...manly. I have much, much more aggression than I did 6 weeks ago. Not wild, uncontrollable aggression, but the kind that enables me to kick things into 5th gear when I need to, like when I'm at the gym squeezing out those last couple of reps. I also have (forgive me for being so forthcoming) very positive sexual side effects from all of this. Lady R4B and I are both content with that. I can't say I'm too surprised by these findings, but has anyone else experienced other changes? I almost feel like a completely different person from how I felt in March, and I've yet to experience any downsides to Paleo thus far. Other things I've seen previously mentioned in this thread - improved sleep, clearer skin, less bloating, fewer headaches, more body tone - all check out as well. Also, I'm curious about how the 'no soy' policy applies to women: doesn't soy promote estrogen production? And isn't estrogen in women considered a good thing? I haven't delved too deeply into soy during my research because it didn't take too much convincing for me to stop drinking soy milk, but I'm wondering why the ladies don't get a free pass with that.
I've been reading this thread with a lot of interest. I did the low carb, basically meats and green vegis about 9 years ago, lost 150lbs and generally felt great. This would be pretty similar and seems to make a lot of sense. Especially since I went back to school, got an office job, and gained about 70 lbs back. I'm back to watching my diet, and I'm back down about 20, but from what I'm reading here I think this might be the way to go. Thanks for all the posts, I'm going to do some research and read back through this thread for tips.
My libido went up a bit too and while I still don't exercise much or push myself that hard I find myself with a NEED to workout. Not necessarily lift weights, but I literally cannot go more than a day without some sort of physical activity (even if it's just walking) and remain sane now. And I spent about 6 full months on my ass making excuses before going paleo. Biggest thing I've noticed so far is I remember reading one of those stupid coming of age lists and seeing "I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least a little tired" and it really resonated with me. I've always had issues sleeping and ever since the beginning of my last year of college I've always been a little drowsy, at the time I chalked it up to too much drinking and recent weight gain. Fast forward a few years and I just accepted it as a byproduct of bad sleep and being overweight. When I started Ferris' diet I noticed drastic improvements in how awake I felt pretty much right away before any weight loss, and this was still with relatively bad sleep, though that started to improve as well. Now I feel almost super charged throughout the day, while I'm not as lean, active or in shape as I was 10 years ago, I genuinely feel more awake and alert than I remember feeling then and I'm still quite a bit overweight. This plus the lack of mental fog to me has been the golden ticket of paleo, there are much easier weight loss diets that are just as effective, but nothing I've done has ever replicated this feeling. Side note, when I got back from Asia I spent a full week battling jet lag and thought to myself "shit, this is how I use to feel ALL THE TIME."