Every time i hear about a spectacular health turn-around after a person changes his/her dietary style, the first thing i want to know is, exactly what was changed?
Yep, a Real Home Cooking diet, in which whole foods replace CIAB will make the whole family feel, look and perform better, even if it contains the worst grains and beans in the world. Most plant toxins aren't nearly as nasty as some of the man-made ones which flood the food supplies of modern countries!
I heard the success story of Terry Wahls, and i couldn't be more happy for her! Especially considering her profession, this is a coup for advocates of nutritionally-based medical treatment; she's harder to shrug off than most of us grunts. AND she's very vocal about her situation; :-D ...i do so admire the people who get out there and fight for what i believe in, but into which i am not willing to pour my whole life's-energy. But do i think that her diet is optimal for universal health? No, at least not for me.
The "wow factor" of dietary change frequently depends upon your starting point. Mine has been changing step-wise, and to see how my health has improved i have to search my memory for details that are confounded by (comparative) youth, fitness, etc.
I started out from i categorized above as a Real Home Cooking diet. I grew up eating white bread and corn oil, but at least we always COOKED. Frequent eating-out didn't happen till about twenty years ago, and i had been fighting the battle of the bulge before that. As food-and-supplement fads came and went, i never noticed a significant improvement with ANYTHING until i added systemic enzymes to my daily routine. I suspect i was developing fibromyalgia; i would sit with my feet up and vaguely ache all over. My chronic fatigue i attributed to the hypothyroidism.
So, first enzymes actually promoted some improvement, then my doctor recommended iodine supplementation, and that helped much more. I went on Atkins next, and my general improvement was immensely noticeable. No more morning brain fog, significantly improved allergies, better energy, and weight-loss without constant hunger. I was a FAN.
The biggest reason that low-carbing didn't result in all the weight-loss i could ever have wanted was the temptation to add foods in too soon. One sees all those opportunities to again eat the things the low-fat-me had been denying myself so long.... And, as an enthusiastic cook, i was also hot to adapt old recipes to the new philosophy, and got caught in the carb-creep that is so hard to resist. I screwed up.
I don't remember what led me to Mark's Daily Apple, but it was my portal to the paleo/primal world. I no longer link his site from mine, but it's still one of the first to which i send my paleo-curious friends. Like so many other eating plans, if you go straight to it from the SAD your results will be absolutely stunning: i didn't, so mine were much less noticeable. Not perfect, and nor is the Perfect Health Diet ... for me.
What DID produce jaw-dropping IMPROVEMENT for me was the Personal Paleo Code program, and the Strong Medicine protocol i tried after it. In my case, i found out that health challenges have been all about dietary intolerances and "personal toxins."
So yeah: a veg*n diet will be beneficial ... if you ate absolutely horrible things before. So will Atkins, despite the highly-questionable ingredients in their trademarked products. So will a low-fat diet, if you go from lots of omega-6 oils to almost none (and can stand the hunger).
To eat OPTIMALLY is going to take a lot of n=1 experimentation. Eat only things that are "never" toxic or allergenic for a month, then add things back one at a time, slowly. It's ILLUMINATING.
Showing posts with label Perfect Health Diet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perfect Health Diet. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
when is a fast not a fast?
Hint -- this is like when Peter asked "when is a high-fat diet not a high-fat diet."
When Dr. Atkins prescribed a "fat fast" for people who are extremely resistant to losing weight, it was incredibly low in calories, and he only recommended doing it for a few days at a time. It had enough fat to suppress the appetite, and it forced the burning of body-fat for fuel, because it certainly didn't supply enough protein to convert to a LOT of glucose. I feel sorry for those on it who didn't have the metabolic flexibility or gut-bugs to get ENERGY from fat, and yet had to go about their daily business....
I assumed that the fat-fast was all about getting into ketosis ... until recently. There are a few blogs where isolated posts give hints on why eating like this may promote weight loss by other pathways, too.
In one of Peter's posts, he speaks of intestinal biota which prompt the brain to eat "fiber" and store fat, or to release stored fat for energy (so the host can go out hunting) ... and fat ingestion signals the latter. The use of fatty foods during an intermittent fast (like drinking coffee with cream) is suggested by the Drs. Jaminet as "not counting" as food....
Here, too, is an explanation for the benefit of oil-swilling in the Shangri-La regimen!
Now we have this discovery that eating fat-with-no-carb spurs glp-1 production, which in turn turns off appetite and turns on spontaneous movement. I find this very exciting. In the average human, excessive energy "wasting" -- i.e., going to the gym -- is discouraged by our very beings (see Naturally Engineered); as a result, forcing yourself to exercise when you don't want to is more stressful and less effective. But by this pathway, the urge to move is instinctive rather than a choice. One gets the benefits of movement on the tissues and the mood-enhancing aspect of exercise in the brain -- all with no hunger or nasty cascades of BG and insulin.
So, yeah -- i now see the fat-fast as being a LOT more powerful than i believed possible, just reading Atkins. ...I'll be sure to eat MORE CALORIES of it than he recommended, though!
When Dr. Atkins prescribed a "fat fast" for people who are extremely resistant to losing weight, it was incredibly low in calories, and he only recommended doing it for a few days at a time. It had enough fat to suppress the appetite, and it forced the burning of body-fat for fuel, because it certainly didn't supply enough protein to convert to a LOT of glucose. I feel sorry for those on it who didn't have the metabolic flexibility or gut-bugs to get ENERGY from fat, and yet had to go about their daily business....
I assumed that the fat-fast was all about getting into ketosis ... until recently. There are a few blogs where isolated posts give hints on why eating like this may promote weight loss by other pathways, too.
In one of Peter's posts, he speaks of intestinal biota which prompt the brain to eat "fiber" and store fat, or to release stored fat for energy (so the host can go out hunting) ... and fat ingestion signals the latter. The use of fatty foods during an intermittent fast (like drinking coffee with cream) is suggested by the Drs. Jaminet as "not counting" as food....
Here, too, is an explanation for the benefit of oil-swilling in the Shangri-La regimen!
Now we have this discovery that eating fat-with-no-carb spurs glp-1 production, which in turn turns off appetite and turns on spontaneous movement. I find this very exciting. In the average human, excessive energy "wasting" -- i.e., going to the gym -- is discouraged by our very beings (see Naturally Engineered); as a result, forcing yourself to exercise when you don't want to is more stressful and less effective. But by this pathway, the urge to move is instinctive rather than a choice. One gets the benefits of movement on the tissues and the mood-enhancing aspect of exercise in the brain -- all with no hunger or nasty cascades of BG and insulin.
So, yeah -- i now see the fat-fast as being a LOT more powerful than i believed possible, just reading Atkins. ...I'll be sure to eat MORE CALORIES of it than he recommended, though!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
magical Medicine
Here i go ... getting carried away with my own cleverness, and formulating a Personal Theory -- hear those echo-chamber sound effects! ;-) I've always been opinionated, but i'll try not to fall into the "it works for me so it must be UNIVERSALLY APPLICABLE" trap.
No. NO. I'm too put off by others who think that THEIR dietary path is The Only Path; i would despise myself if my ego let me sink into the same quagmire. Now, where was i?
"The 'magic resetting' aspect of the SMD regimen".... These are just speculations, mind you -- i have none of the credentials which a lot of COMPLETELY MISTAKEN "experts" do. i just enjoy thinking about old ideas in the light of new science, and modern ideas from a vintage point of view.
Dr. Donaldson tells us that 75% of his patients stuck with the weight-reduction instructions he gave them and did a great job (25% are non-compliant from the starting line). He doesn't tell us outright that they all reach their goal weights but he kinda implies it. Nor does he claim that they all maintain their losses afterward, but we know he had an enviable record -- i.e., better than the 2-5% successful dieters these days.
My thoughts about the mechanism of success:
It takes a lot of energy to metabolize protein, and it takes awhile to do it. Add those yummy animal fats, and the situation spells S-A-T-I-A-T-I-O-N (and satiety) in big letters. This is how someone can lose a lot of fat without hunger.
Enthusiasts of the "food reward hypothesis" will say that the limitation of foods bolsters their argument; i contend that it goes much further.
This diet breaks carbohydrate addictions and de-conditions snacking/craving behaviors. More important, it EMPOWERS the person who employs it. You feel you could conquer the world, it's so easy, mindless and effective. Fast, too -- losing more than one plodding pound per week is encouraging. I can't speak for everyone, but MY mood is great on this program. And you don't have to spend hours carefully planning meals, shopping for arcane grocery items, and cooking.
You can easily avoid allergens and toxins on a mostly-meat diet, too -- just choose meats you don't have a problem with! ;-) Duh.
We know that one can get every required nutrient from "fresh fat meat" as Dr. Donaldson repeatedly expressed it ... with the caveat that organ meats are occasionally necessary for certain vitamins and minerals. Therefore, the "Strong Medicine" prescription could easily be resolving nutrient deficiencies that people don't even know they have. As a result the overeating-in-an-attempt-to-become-properly-nourished (well covered in The Perfect Health Diet -- lets call it OIATBPN) is solved -- there is much less temptation to overeat. Your nutritional needs are thoroughly satisfied.
Chronic low-grade malnutrition (and i'd argue that most people in the western world suffer from it) MAY be behind the recidivism problem that dieters have. Going off a low-carb or low-fat or low-calorie diet, one is extremely likely to progress to a diet that is not "perfect" -- people are too eager to be able to eat things they've denied themselves during the weight-loss process! Going from a limited diet to a doubtfully-nutritious one WILL be problematic: one has loosened one's inhibitions, and one will be missing dietary necessities -- how can this NOT be a recipe for OIATBPN?
Yeah -- i'm happy with THIS hypothesis, Strong Medicine works because it's:
hunger-free
simple
effective
empowering
non-toxic
nutritionally replete during weight loss
nutritionally replete after weight loss
=reset fat/weight setpoint
No. NO. I'm too put off by others who think that THEIR dietary path is The Only Path; i would despise myself if my ego let me sink into the same quagmire. Now, where was i?
"The 'magic resetting' aspect of the SMD regimen".... These are just speculations, mind you -- i have none of the credentials which a lot of COMPLETELY MISTAKEN "experts" do. i just enjoy thinking about old ideas in the light of new science, and modern ideas from a vintage point of view.
Dr. Donaldson tells us that 75% of his patients stuck with the weight-reduction instructions he gave them and did a great job (25% are non-compliant from the starting line). He doesn't tell us outright that they all reach their goal weights but he kinda implies it. Nor does he claim that they all maintain their losses afterward, but we know he had an enviable record -- i.e., better than the 2-5% successful dieters these days.
My thoughts about the mechanism of success:
It takes a lot of energy to metabolize protein, and it takes awhile to do it. Add those yummy animal fats, and the situation spells S-A-T-I-A-T-I-O-N (and satiety) in big letters. This is how someone can lose a lot of fat without hunger.
Enthusiasts of the "food reward hypothesis" will say that the limitation of foods bolsters their argument; i contend that it goes much further.
This diet breaks carbohydrate addictions and de-conditions snacking/craving behaviors. More important, it EMPOWERS the person who employs it. You feel you could conquer the world, it's so easy, mindless and effective. Fast, too -- losing more than one plodding pound per week is encouraging. I can't speak for everyone, but MY mood is great on this program. And you don't have to spend hours carefully planning meals, shopping for arcane grocery items, and cooking.
You can easily avoid allergens and toxins on a mostly-meat diet, too -- just choose meats you don't have a problem with! ;-) Duh.
We know that one can get every required nutrient from "fresh fat meat" as Dr. Donaldson repeatedly expressed it ... with the caveat that organ meats are occasionally necessary for certain vitamins and minerals. Therefore, the "Strong Medicine" prescription could easily be resolving nutrient deficiencies that people don't even know they have. As a result the overeating-in-an-attempt-to-become-properly-nourished (well covered in The Perfect Health Diet -- lets call it OIATBPN) is solved -- there is much less temptation to overeat. Your nutritional needs are thoroughly satisfied.
Chronic low-grade malnutrition (and i'd argue that most people in the western world suffer from it) MAY be behind the recidivism problem that dieters have. Going off a low-carb or low-fat or low-calorie diet, one is extremely likely to progress to a diet that is not "perfect" -- people are too eager to be able to eat things they've denied themselves during the weight-loss process! Going from a limited diet to a doubtfully-nutritious one WILL be problematic: one has loosened one's inhibitions, and one will be missing dietary necessities -- how can this NOT be a recipe for OIATBPN?
Yeah -- i'm happy with THIS hypothesis, Strong Medicine works because it's:
hunger-free
simple
effective
empowering
non-toxic
nutritionally replete during weight loss
nutritionally replete after weight loss
=reset fat/weight setpoint
Monday, February 13, 2012
what's working, revisited
I went to bed early last night, and today i feel great! :-) Part of the credit for that, i feel, is the half-dozen raw oysters i had last evening as a first course (the rest of the meal was a lobster tail with butter, roasted okra from the "Paleo Comfort Foods" cookbook, sweetener-free raspberry-orange sorbet and coffee -- yum). We ate comparatively early, which always agrees with me.
I had a few ounces of a good sake with the oysters -- it seemed to call for it! That, or champagne, or vodka.... Now, i haven't added champagne back into my diet yet, as i had "trouble" with chardonnay. On Saturday afternoon i had a short bloody-mary made with a bacon-flavored potato vodka, tomato juice and hot sauce, and i felt draggy the rest of the day. Perhaps even potato-based vodka isn't going to agree with me -- i'll try it again sometime later, in a mixture that doesn't include the nightshades. Sake, though, continues to be comparatively non-toxic.
My discovered "tricks of the trade" may not work with everybody. I strongly suspect that if one's middle-aged body resists weight-loss when all of the "neolithic agents of disease" (NADs) are removed, then low-carb is definitely the way to go. Some people say they've tried it and they felt terrible, but i suspect they weren't eliminating a "sensitive" food that they should have. HOWEVER: i'm not in a position to say they're wrong, either! Not everybody's body functions the same way -- a young, healthy, athletic male body's physiology is entirely different from mine: female, middle-aged, thyroid-challenged, food-sensitivity-ridden, and moderately overweight.
Having discovered, with the help of the Personal Paleo Code, what the worst offenders are against my health and well-being, i can offer this partial list of what helps me most:
I had a few ounces of a good sake with the oysters -- it seemed to call for it! That, or champagne, or vodka.... Now, i haven't added champagne back into my diet yet, as i had "trouble" with chardonnay. On Saturday afternoon i had a short bloody-mary made with a bacon-flavored potato vodka, tomato juice and hot sauce, and i felt draggy the rest of the day. Perhaps even potato-based vodka isn't going to agree with me -- i'll try it again sometime later, in a mixture that doesn't include the nightshades. Sake, though, continues to be comparatively non-toxic.
My discovered "tricks of the trade" may not work with everybody. I strongly suspect that if one's middle-aged body resists weight-loss when all of the "neolithic agents of disease" (NADs) are removed, then low-carb is definitely the way to go. Some people say they've tried it and they felt terrible, but i suspect they weren't eliminating a "sensitive" food that they should have. HOWEVER: i'm not in a position to say they're wrong, either! Not everybody's body functions the same way -- a young, healthy, athletic male body's physiology is entirely different from mine: female, middle-aged, thyroid-challenged, food-sensitivity-ridden, and moderately overweight.
Having discovered, with the help of the Personal Paleo Code, what the worst offenders are against my health and well-being, i can offer this partial list of what helps me most:
- very low carbohydrate diet;
- intermittent fasting;
- sleep! 7-9 hours of it!
- stress control (i use tincture of licorice when feeling overburdened);
- supplements, which are entirely individual, though the Perfect Health Diet website makes some good recommendations;
- high-fat and protein meal early in the day, and any significant amount of carb i allow myself, saved for dinner;
- avoiding EVERYTHING that actively disagrees with me (all the NADs, and more), no matter how much i like it!
- tabata sprints, not too often, and walking, as Mark Sisson says;
- limiting goitrogens;
- not snacking;
- progesterone creme (again, it's individual -- but it helps the thyroid, balances estrogen-dominance, and is NOT CARCINOGENIC, California!)
- ... uh ... i'm sure there's more ... oh yeah, coffee! i think i need another cup.... ;-)
Friday, February 10, 2012
convinced!
<sigh...>
I repeated the "trial of the boxed chardonnay" -- and he's been declared GUILTY. Also, it seems likely that he had accessories to his crimes.
For brunch yesterday, my big bacon-and-egg scramble was accompanied by about a quarter of a cup of grapefruit juice. Then, for dinner, I had a glass of chardonnay with about a half-cup of oven-roasted cauliflower and a few buffalo wings made from the Perfect Health Diet recipe. Coffee with coconut milk, a handful of macadamias, and a square of 70% chocolate comprised the rest of my intake. I woke up this morning with a touch of intestinal gas and bloating, and not only was my bad knee a bit achey, but so was my right shoulder. Stretching and flexing also revealed a bit of all-over discomfort.
I hope that wasn't too much information, but this blog is all about what diet can do to a 56-year-old body....
The bacon and eggs were found not-guilty a month ago, even though the diet police consider that keeping an eye on them is worthwhile. The cauliflower is probably completely responsible for the GI issues, even though i still suspect i have a fructose-absorption complication (but 1/4 cup of grapefruit juice sipped while eating the BES??? no way can i imagine that to be significant). This leaves the wings and the chardonnay....
I had a few of the wings the day before yesterday, when they were fresh out of the oven. Now, bear in mind the minute quantity of rice flour and rice syrup in them -- five pounds of raw wings were tossed with 1/4 cup of rice flour and there was a lot of this left in the shaking-bag, AND one tablespoon of rice syrup was in the sauce that was tossed with the finished wings. I ate about a cupful of rice the night we went out for Mexican food in Houston, and had no perceptible problem with it. Also, several months ago (after i determined that oatmeal bothered my knees) i ate quite a bit of rice without feeling it. Rice flour/syrup also found not guilty!
Boxed chardonnay -- as Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate all the suspects who could not be guilty, whoever is left (however unlikely) HAS to be "it." You are now to be incarcerated in the basement refrigerator unless there's a darned good reason to let you go free. I'm going to get "clean" again, and then try some red wine -- but i have a strong suspicion i'll have a reaction to that, too. ...Maybe i should try potato vodka next, instead...?
I LOVE the Personal Paleo code for how it makes it so simple to figure out what impacts one negatively! Since the first week, my weight loss hasn't been very impressive, but i feel that i'm learning some important things, and that may be far more significant.
I repeated the "trial of the boxed chardonnay" -- and he's been declared GUILTY. Also, it seems likely that he had accessories to his crimes.
For brunch yesterday, my big bacon-and-egg scramble was accompanied by about a quarter of a cup of grapefruit juice. Then, for dinner, I had a glass of chardonnay with about a half-cup of oven-roasted cauliflower and a few buffalo wings made from the Perfect Health Diet recipe. Coffee with coconut milk, a handful of macadamias, and a square of 70% chocolate comprised the rest of my intake. I woke up this morning with a touch of intestinal gas and bloating, and not only was my bad knee a bit achey, but so was my right shoulder. Stretching and flexing also revealed a bit of all-over discomfort.
I hope that wasn't too much information, but this blog is all about what diet can do to a 56-year-old body....
The bacon and eggs were found not-guilty a month ago, even though the diet police consider that keeping an eye on them is worthwhile. The cauliflower is probably completely responsible for the GI issues, even though i still suspect i have a fructose-absorption complication (but 1/4 cup of grapefruit juice sipped while eating the BES??? no way can i imagine that to be significant). This leaves the wings and the chardonnay....
I had a few of the wings the day before yesterday, when they were fresh out of the oven. Now, bear in mind the minute quantity of rice flour and rice syrup in them -- five pounds of raw wings were tossed with 1/4 cup of rice flour and there was a lot of this left in the shaking-bag, AND one tablespoon of rice syrup was in the sauce that was tossed with the finished wings. I ate about a cupful of rice the night we went out for Mexican food in Houston, and had no perceptible problem with it. Also, several months ago (after i determined that oatmeal bothered my knees) i ate quite a bit of rice without feeling it. Rice flour/syrup also found not guilty!
Boxed chardonnay -- as Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate all the suspects who could not be guilty, whoever is left (however unlikely) HAS to be "it." You are now to be incarcerated in the basement refrigerator unless there's a darned good reason to let you go free. I'm going to get "clean" again, and then try some red wine -- but i have a strong suspicion i'll have a reaction to that, too. ...Maybe i should try potato vodka next, instead...?
I LOVE the Personal Paleo code for how it makes it so simple to figure out what impacts one negatively! Since the first week, my weight loss hasn't been very impressive, but i feel that i'm learning some important things, and that may be far more significant.
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