Total cholesterol: 189 Triglycerides: 290 (high) HDL cholesterol: 34 (flagged as low since the value range is >39) VLDL: 58 (high) LDL cholesterol calc: 97 This is while on Lipitor. On the bright side, at least I'm getting a triglyceride value. When I was drinking, triglycerides were so high, they couldn't assign a value.
To parallel, I doubt many people here are constantly engaged in only healthy intellectual pursuits. Or does the very most they can for the environment. Or subsumes their entire life for their art -- we all shave corners in places, it's just incumbent upon us that the final shape is still something other than a useless lump. My point, I guess, is that Einstein and Jimi Hendrix didn't eat paleo, and I'm pretty ok with that.
Yes, but that's not it exactly. There is a sliding scale from 1-100, 0-40% being Honey Boo Boo Child, 50% being really unhealthy 60% being unhealthy, 70% needing improvement, 80% being healthy, and 100% being super fit/healthy. Most people talking Paleo/Crossfit/Weight lifters/Olympians working in that 100% range, but that's a lifestyle people just aren't going to get to because around 90% you start inconveniencing yourself and its a lifestyle/hobby/identity. The issue is we need to get people up to 80% and we aren't doing that. NO CARBS OR DEATH is how the 100% people react to the 80% people who eat a burger once in awhile and that's an overreaction.
Dude, none of us are trying to push everyone to go paleo, or to nix all the carbohydrates they eat, just to be mindful that the vast majority of fat people would benefit greatly by eating less carbohydrates and more protein and fat. Shit, I'd be happy if I could get people that eat every meal at McDonalds to just ditch the fries with each meal and double up on the meat.
Of course you're not pushing anything or trying to get anyone to do anything. Those fat people need a ton of education, great ways to cook vegetables and treadmills. But why is it that people who are on paleo care so much about what other people are eating? The fatties don't care about your eating. Maybe its Darwin at work. Also, I'm really not accusing you of trying to indoctrinate people into paleo. It is just you have to think of the reason why people are NOT eating paleo first. And if they are the people to do it. Those people you're talking about have WAY more problems in their lives than their diets also. Seriously though, some bread is okay, that shit is fucking delicious. If it wasn't for bread, animals would be extinct or the population be half of what it is. Read your history books people. Its a moderation + working out = winning.
It's not that I care so much about what other people are eating, it just enrages me that when someone legitimately wants to put in the effort to lose weight, if they seek help from conventional sources they're told to eat whole grains, avoid red meat and do other harmful shit to themselves. I guess it's personal for me since I'm trying to get my mom to give something like paleo a shot to save her life, but she won't do it because her doctors tell her she needs whole grains and that too much red meat is bad. Instead she's trying to get by on boneless chicken breast, whole wheat pasta and diet soda. I mean seriously, how many people really understand that a heavily marbled steak with a sweet potato packed with butter and cinnamon is a significantly better dietary choice than a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread with hummus and tabouleh? I understand that most people won't go full paleo because it's really fucking hard, but there are a lot of people who are scared of all the saturated fat (see above) people on paleo eat because of bullshit research. Then they eat a bagel and give up. Some people can do bread, it fucks me up though so I avoid it like the plague, but I don't think anyone is suggesting 100% adherence, that would be crazy. I eat corn, rice and ice cream every once in a while, so do the guys like Robb Wolf that make a living on this shit. I think the thing is people don't know what proper moderation is, I mean we're prescribed no more than 3 ounces of red meat a week, I probably average 160+. And a moderate amount of grains would be 1-2 serving a week, not fucking 6-8 a day. Edit: Now that I think of it, maybe paleo is just way more embraced where you are? I mean the GF is the only person in real life I know that eats paleo, everyone else I talk about it with is terrified by the idea and thinks there's no way it can be healthy.
This is an excellent question. It really made me think about WHY this kind of discussion gets me worked up. I think the answer is, once you start researching food, how it's produced and the effect it can have on the body you can't go back. You can't un-know about the horror that the food chain is becoming. Knowing that, it's tempting to spread the word, as it were. The logic being if people knew how bad it was, they wouldn't ignore it either. I don't know too many people who can watch Food, Inc. or some other such documentary and view nutrition quite the same afterward. This is exactly the problem. Is bread really that delicious? No, it's not. Read Wheat Belly. Wheat actually triggers the same sensors in the brain that heroin and morphine trigger. You may think you love the taste, when in reality you love the 'high' that you get. Did it always used to be this way? No. In the last 50 years crops have been modified to the point where they are unrecognizable from the ancient grains they started out as. The killer is that the genetic modification (that allows for easy harvest, hardy travel, resistance to weather and bugs, etc) is evolving faster than our digestive systems, which is why you're seeing a spike in Celliac Disease. I don't think enough weight has been given to this little gem: "Unhealthy" foods are being created in laboratories to be as appealing and addictive as possible, just like cigarettes. Don't believe me? Like I said, read a book that examines grain crops and their genetic structure and how our brains and bodies digest them. Wheat Belly is as good a book as any to start with.
See, this is exactly what Parker was talking about. Apparently reading the suggestion that wheat could be part of a sensible diet in moderation and that maybe people eat things like bagels because they like bagels and think bagels are tasty makes you apoplectic. So many paleo people become so enthusiastic about the diet that they think "your subjective preferences about foods are wrong. The reason you eat things that humans have been eating for thousands of years is laboratories" is a serious and persuasive argument. To anyone who isn't paleo, it sounds like a food cult. Is the idea that maybe people think pasta, pizza, bagels, etc. taste good that inconceivable to you?
Now, to preface this, I'm not attacking paleo. I'm about to grill up some eggs, bacon and steamed veggies right now. With that said. Frank - Yeah people lazy. That is 80% of the problem. I live in Chicago. There is everything here. Chicago is in the middle of a food revolution. Restaurants are beginning to be known for their chefs. Crossfit has arrived within in the last two years, along with Yoga, and Pilates taking over. I have a friend that does Paleo and had a boss that lives outside of Boston that was going for the same thing + Crossfit for both of them. Talking to her about food became unbearable, because kinda how Shimmered is talking, she wasn't talking healthy, talking "super duper, I want to go to crossfit competitions and compete" healthy. Dcc001. I'm sorry, I'm going to go ahead and say fuck both of those books with and that general idea with two words. The Amish. You have 1,500 of them in Canada, seek them out, eat their bread. The Amish are the people stuck WAY BACK IN THE DAY (with very few exceptions). They churn their unpasteurized butter, shun technology, live off the land, don't use pesticides, and they are 100% whole, organic, healthy, pure. I've had their bread. That's where they grew the wheat, milled it, kneaded it (love that word knead) and baked it in most likely was a wood fire oven. NOTHING from a factory. That bread was better than anything I've ever had in a restaurant or bought in a store. That bread is/was fucking delicious. They Amish have taken to occasionally opening up temporary stores in downtown Chicago where they bring their baked goods. Their ingredient lists top out at 6, all of them home grown. Ooooo child that was godly on my taste buds and NOT manufactured in a Unilever or Proctor or Gamble lab. For the record, as of two months ago, I drastically reduced carbs. Monday-Friday, breakfast and lunch are bread carb free. Dinner might be a bun around meat, fries, or brown rice. Saturday and Sunday is a little less loose, but I still won't go balls to the wall. Now when I go back to bread, I bloat slightly, but meh. It's a small trigger for me, not a life devastator. I know a Bulgarian girl who lives on bread (mostly sandwiches) and soup. She looks pretty damn good, doesn't work out, except for grinding into dudes at the club and salsa dancing. 5'4, maybe 115-120? Why isn't she blowing up? Fucking genetics. Oh and you're talking to a guy who read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle while eating a burger. I can go and eat all of that due to what I posted before. How much is it actually killing me? If every burger and piece of laboratory bread was taking months off my life, sure. There have been people that have eaten shit and lived to 90+. There have been people who were fit as a fiddle, ate well, and took their last nap at 65 with it being natural causes. It's easy, you have one life to live, there is no evidence that this food is taking years off my life, and I'll eat a salad for the next few nights and balance it out. I honestly eat like that guy on Man vs. Food/Anthony Bourdain and die at 65-70, then eat healthily and live until 80. That and thank god people are in labs making food taste better to my brain. I can get high without paying for coke and going to jail? Sweet. Diet pop (fuck you, I'm from Chicago, its pop) is probably the most villainous drink of all time, we can all agree on that right? I've never seen anyone put down more pop than diet drinkers. It's absolutely ridiculous. That shit needs to go, people who cut that out always report stories of dropping weight like taking off old sweatpants.
I'm going to preface my response by saying that I am not one to try to push anyone into anything - CrossFit, WBB, Paleo, whatever. I coach so people can live better lives. End of story. If, by coming into my gym, people leave feeling better...then I've done my job. I don't force anyone to do anything. I don't guilt them. I simply tell them how I see it, and let them make a choice. I love beer. I love cupcakes. I love beer AND cupcakes. I'll never NOT drink beer nor will I never NOT eat cupcakes. But I partake knowing how my brain, body, and hormones will respond to those things. My choice is educated, and my level of give a fuck because of my overall wellness is exceptionally low. All of that said: HFCS is not food. "Natural flavors" are not food. Malitol, sorbitol, palm kernel oil, are not food. Soy is not food. Manufactured food products are not food, and should not be passed off as such. I, ultimately, think a mostly gluten free lifestyle is best, along with low sugar etc., but I also recognize that lifestyle isn't for everyone. I'd rather fight the fight of having people NOT eat like retards. Hamburger Helper, breaded and bagged chicken, carageenan (sp?), are not food. If our government would stop allowing them to be presented as such, and the FDA would stop allowing GMO and created pseudo-foods to be put on tables, we'd improve so quickly our heads would spin. For those who say it doesn't taste as good...of COURSE it doesn't...real food isn't hyped and manufactured to produce a super response when eaten. Your body is expecting TASTE and only gets taste.
There's a stack of good information in this thread, but JWags' comment hit home for me, because those are (some of) the changes I made when I was first starting to eat healthier. I also dropped the amount and frequency with which I eat the things listed above, but lunch today for example is a roast beef & salad sandwich on multigrain bread, and I'll probably have the same thing for dinner because it's easy. So, my questions are: would people consider 4 (to 6) slices of bread in a day excessive? Also, is multigrain better than white? This thread is the first time I've seen it suggested that whitebread is better than wheatbread, ever. Shimmered, I'd be very curious to know what you eat for breakfast. I tend to eat rolled oats with a banana because, even though it's carb heavy, it's the lowest fat/sugar option I've found that provides satiety until lunch. Put another way: for the healthy living people in this thread, can you point me to any resources that summarize this stuff, and potentially prioritize the various concerns (e.g. if you want to lose weight, don't eat bread ever, especially after midnight, or you will disappear in a cloud of carbon dioxide and a thousand evil twins will spawn and devour your town?)
Yes, BUT- if you're obese, as most of this country is, wellness priority #1 should be getting un-obese. So before we jump into the whole "eat like a caveman no HCFS red meat erryday", let's start by giving people a basic understanding of calories, and train them on how to estimate how much they're eating. You put a bowl of cereal in front of the average person and ask them how many calories are in it - I bet the vast majority of the country couldn't tell you. (About 400, figuring 1.5 cups cereal and 1.5 cups 1% milk.) I was never clinically obese, but I went on a misguided bulk and ended up somewhere around 28% body fat about 4 months ago. Have since lost 26 lbs and am hovering around 16%.
Dallas and Melissa Hartwig - It Starts With Food. Informative but not painful to read. Breakfast - 4 shot pasture raised whole milk latte with 1 tsp of condensed milk, 2 tbsp of heavy cream along with either eggs bacon and sweet potatoes or sweet potatoes with ham/onions/sundried tomatoes/whatever else I grab thrown in with them, along with some scrambled eggs. The second is more satisfying than the first. I also dig ghee in my coffee when I do vietnamese styles. Meat and vegetables for other meals. I eat hummus. I eat black beans. I eat onions. I eat corn (sometimes). I eat guacamole. I eat the hell out of some eggs. And bacon. And ham. And steak. And buffalo. And pork chops. Though I freely admit - there are days my intake is subpar. I NEED to be more diligent with my nutrition. That's this month. Just saw your question re: bread... Here's my thing on bread...it's just not worth it. To be edible/"good" for you, it has to be enriched. So why bother?
Assuming the average American can even comprehend what a real "serving size" is. Why is it unreasonable to simply NOT EAT THE PSEUDO FOOD? I'm not saying don't eat dairy. I'm not even saying don't eat rice and beans. I'm saying stop eating "foods" with wrappers and cardboard. Stop eating food that never had a face. Stop eating food with ingredient lists. Better yet, not even consider those things FOOD.
Because that's avoiding a real understanding of the problem here. Because sometimes you just want a slice of cheesecake, and you need to know that it won't kill you, but also how much is too much. Designating certain foods as "bad" is just a way to avoid learning about your own health.
You can make cheesecake with real food ingredients. I'm not saying never eat cheesecake again. I'm saying spend the majority of your meals eating real food. if you want a slice of cheesecake, have a slice. but eat REAL cheesecake. Why does hfcs, any of the fillers, soybean oil, etc. even have to be allowed as food? Of course education should be among our first priority, but given the way certain foods cause our bodies to respond, that's the same as saying meth is legal, and educating people will make them not do it.
Guuuuhll come on mmmmaaayyn don't you know we are only living longer because big phrama has bought off congress to force feed us cutting edge medicine that extends our lives much longer than nature ever intended? GAWD. I think it kind of a strange thing that I can read most of the paleo thread and enjoy learning the knowledge everyone is sharing. Then I can this thread and see red just reading arguments, dreaming of a stuffed crust meat lovers pizza. Paleo people suffer from that air of superiority that makes most movements insufferable (think vegans). 'Uhh you don't actually like bread it's just your brain addicted to heroin impulses, read a book.' (I know she wasn't trying to be that condescending but it does come off like it). Parroting a lot of other people, it might help educating people by transitioning from their terrible diets, to moderation exercise etc, then eventually to a more paleo diet.
Because it's necessary to introduce different points of view. Although I will say I switched to Ezekiel bread a while back and that shit is delicious. But of course today I bought a slice of cheesecake from the supermarket OH DEAR GOD HALP
While I'm asking things: can someone clear up the whole diet soda is poison thing for me? The research I've seen, which isn't that much, is pretty inconclusive. As far as I understand it, the problem with diet sodas is that the use of no-calorie sweeteners promotes a preference for sweeter-tasting foods, rather than the diet soda itself. Thoughts?