[OzarkTom]

Insulin is also one of the fastest aging agents in our bodies.  To age less slowly, keep your diet so that no sugar spikes occur. No sugar spikes, your pancreas makes less insulin. My wife's Woman's Prevention magazine even had this story last year.

Owsley "Bear" Stanley, the soundman of the Grateful Dead went no carb for over 40 years until he died in a car wreck last year in Australia during a storm. "Bear" was 76 years old, but had the skin of a 30 year old. He argued that the Paleo man never ate any carbs, or he became lunch for the lion.

This is "Bears" story.

http://zerocarbpath.blogspot.com/

Another subject to look up on the net is Syndrome X. That is another phrase for insulin resistance. Syndrome X can lead to cancer, diabetes, arthritis, alzheimers, and heart disease. Some of my fellow classmates has suffered three or more of the ailments.

Baby boomers now have the distniction of being the first generation in American history that is not going to outlive their parents. And some specialists say that 75-90% of this is all due to our diets.

[Tyson]

Fish oil and ginger and turmeric (and all the rest) will not fix a grain and sugar based diet.  It's like putting a band aid on a bullet wound.

[sts9fan]

You make it sound black and white. It's not.

[OzarkTom]

You make it sound black and white. It's not.

Did you read that Dr. Lindell article? He performed over 5000 heart surgeries and he makes it sound black and white.

[Tyson]

You make it sound black and white. It's not.

Agreed, it's not always black and white.  But I will say this - before you can start to heal or recover, you have to "remove the insult" as doctors put it.  Grains and sugar plus sedentary behavior are the "insult", and not much progress can be made without addressing them first.

[sts9fan]

Totally agree.

[Tyson]

BTW, I have an update on my own fitness levels, they are steadily increasing and so is the level of daily energy and focus I have.  When I started I could only do 1 pullup and 8 pushups.  I progressed for a while, but sorta got stuck at 7 pullups and 20 pushups.  Recently that sticking point has been passed and I'm now at 9 pullups and 28 pushups.  My goal is 10 and 30, and I'm sort of amazed I'm so close!

The funny thing is I'm eating MORE now, but I'm still losing fat.  That's pretty cool.  I think it goes to the idea the for most people, the issue with fat gain/loss is more hormonal than caloric.  Do things that address the hormones and the rest just falls into place.  Cut out the grains/sugar/alcohol/vegetable oils, walk every day, and do resistance exercise once or twice a week.  Pretty simple.  Luckily it seems to be very effective too. 

Liver, pancreas, thyroid, adrenals - these are the organs that a grain based diet and resultant sedentary behavior screw up.  For most people, I think just stopping the grains and sugar plus a bit of exercise will heal these organs.  But for some people it will be a good first step but not enough.  Many people are almost as sensitive to dairy as they are to grains, so stopping dairy is a good idea if the first step isn't enough.  Also, there's other stuff to do for each organ that might be having problems:

 - Liver - load up on eggs (choline is highly protective of the liver), lime water (helps clear fat from the liver, and a fatty liver is the primary result of grains/sugar/alcohol). 

- Pancreas - dial down the starches and other high glycemic foods.  Give your pancrease and insulin receptors a break.  Also, eat large meals and do not snack.  This also gives the pancreas (and your entire digestive track) a much needed break.

 - Thyroid - load up on the seafood and other foods with good levels of iodine and selenium.  Shrimp, mussels, salmon, tuna, sardines, scallops, etc....

 - Adrenals - cut out any source of caffeine in your diet - coffee, tea, chocolate. 

For the people that cannot lose weight from just grain/sugar/alcohol/veggie oil restriction plus exercise, giving up stuff like dairy, coffee, tea, chocolate or going low starch is a good temporary "kick start", but not something you have to do for ever, just until the weight/fat starts moving in the right direction.  Once you are near your ideal weight, then you can probably ad them back in without issue.

But grains/sugar/alcohol/veggie oils are best avoided for life.

[sts9fan]

Chances of avoiding alcohol 0.0%

[Tyson]

Haha, I hear you.  Maybe just make that the very, very last step, and only considered if all the other steps fail   Unfortunately for me, it seems that moderation with regard to alcohol is all but impossible, so I'm best off just abstaining. 

[OzarkTom]

Johnny Cash died from autonomic neuropathy that is associated with diabetes. He drank too much.

[wushuliu]

A little update: It's been about 5 weeks and I've lost ~10lbs after switching to low/no carbs. Basically paleo. The first week was tough w/ carb cravings but then it tapered off quickly (note: do NOT hit up the Black Bear Diner 3x before starting a diet!). It was strictly meat and veggies and lots of butter (icelandic, yummy goodness). After about 3 weeks my body said okay buddy time to get some carbs in so I now incorporate sweet potatoes, black beans, plantain chips as a snack. And lots of walking in the hills near me. Unfortunately the heat wave has me home-bound the last week or so, but I bought 10lb weights on Amazon and have been doing cardio at home.

My regimen is more or less 3 eggs in the morning or bacon and vegetables, cashews or plantain chips for snacks (not 'true' paleo but there isn't really any such thing anyway), Bay Harbor sardines/herring with or without veggies or organic grassfed hot dogs from TJs with mustard and sauer kraut, then for dinner fish and veggies (I have added a little brown basmati rice now) or soup or steak and veggies, you get the idea. For snacks cashews, plantain chips, reduced sodium turkey w/ mustard and sauerkraut, hot dogs.

Notice a lack of fruit. I like the idea of fruit, but they tend not sit well with my stomach except for a few like cherries and bananas. However I have found mineral water and slices of lemon helps me beat the heatwave.

I get as much meat as possible from US Wellness. All grassfed/organic meats. Their bacon is incredible and the prices are very good (there is a minimum order though).

The big eye opener has been how less hungry I am with a primarily meat, veggie, fat diet. Or if I do get hungry it's a slow burn; it's not the MUST EAT NOW that I always had prior. I realize now just how much carbs I was eating: tons of rice and breads that come with sandwiches, because I have a lot of muscle and when I got hungry, I got HUNGRY due to carb craving. I would eat a whole pizza knowing that it would burn off relatively quickly (but still leave some fat behind clearly). But I love meat and vegetables and have been wanting to drop all wheats/grains/sugars for a long time.

Not that I haven't indulged here and there: Of course after starting the diet I discovered dairy/gluten-free chocolate ice cream at Trader Joe's. It is incredibly good. It's the first ice cream I've been able to eat in years without weird reaction to all the sugar/crap ingredients, which is also a bonus. I have a cup once a week. The hardest food for me to ignore is pizza. Man do I love a good pizza. Luckily, it's hard to get good NY style pizza in Los Angeles - but I did have a couple slices from a great place this week. That's okay, I burnt it all off dancing for 3 hours at a concert the same day along with 3 beers and chicken wings. More interesting is that I had only 3 slices and had zero desire for more. For me that is nothing short of a miracle.

So I am very happy. Blood pressure is still a little higher than I would like, but I am hoping it will continue to fall as I lose more pounds and eat healthy. The diet fits so naturally I know it's not a diet - it's a lifestyle change. One of the challenges for me now is losing some muscle. It's really easy for me to get beefed up and my 248lbs is mostly muscle. Hilariously there's very little info on losing muscle effectively (that's like trying to find a penile de-hancer). Might as well ask how to look like a wimp.

Next up: yoga. *groan*

[OzarkTom]

This youtube video was posted on Dr. Mercola's website today.

Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. Richard Johnson About The Fat Switch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W2zSN0JOa8&feature=player_embedded

This is the website of Mercola talking about the fat switch.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/08/18/fructose-and-the-fat-switch.aspx?e_cid=20120818_DNL_artNew_1

[DaveC113]

A little update: It's been about 5 weeks and I've lost ~10lbs after switching to low/no carbs.

Congrats!

I have lost 19 lbs since this winter... down to 187lbs!

Basically, I just made adjustments to my diet, cutting out both high caloric items and sugars and carbs. I don't drink soda, but was drinking too much orange juice and milk, my weight loss accelerated quite a bit when I cut down on those. I have always been pretty active, I did not increase the amount of exercise I'm doing.

I have also pretty much got past carb cravings, but I'll still down a whole pint of Ben and Jerry's if I'm not careful. Luckily, I don't keep stuff like that around too much.

Also, I have noticed that sugar consumption is ok if you need it during exercise and I think your body just uses it quickly instead of converting it to fat. So, I do eat sugar and simple carbs on a long mt bike ride, but not while watching a movie... Most people do not find fats and protein to be appetizing during heavy exercise, especially if its hot out.

If I'm not exercising, I can get through an entire day on a fruit smoothie with full-fat greek yogurt and hemp protein added. I can feel it when it runs out and I get hungry 3-4 hours later, but I can just have a small snack and make it through to dinner. This cuts out a pretty large amount of calories and forces my body to regulate blood sugar / appetite without a constant addition of sugars and carbs, which i think is very important. Regular exercise also help with this too.

And yoga is good, I do Bikram yoga a couple times a week, but skip it for a few months during the summer. Be careful though, a lot of people hurt themselves by pushing too hard too fast before their body gets used to it.

[DaveC113]

This youtube video was posted on Dr. Mercola's website today.

Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. Richard Johnson About The Fat Switch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W2zSN0JOa8&feature=player_embedded

This is the website of Mercola talking about the fat switch.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/08/18/fructose-and-the-fat-switch.aspx?e_cid=20120818_DNL_artNew_1

I have always liked fruit and never believed it to be bad, like drinking a Coke filled with corn syrup. I have a fruit smoothie (with full fat yogurt and hemp protein) every morning and I still lost a lot of weight quite rapidly. I am happy to see Dr Mercola agrees, I read a lot of stuff saying fruit is as bad as a candy bar, but I never bought it. Fruit does not spike your blood sugar like corn syrup or refined sugars.

"In my original book, The Sugar Fix, I was quite concerned about that, because it was another source of fructose. And we can show that fructose does a lot of bad things. But the good news is we’ve done subsequent studies, and we’ve been able to show that natural fruits, although there’s some fructose there… there are so many wonderful things in natural fruits like vitamin C, antioxidants, resveratrol, flavonols, quercetin, and all these things that actually neutralize some of the effects of fructose. Because of that, natural fruits do not seem to carry the same degree of risk.”

[Tyson]

Saw that.  It's not a book by Mercola, its by a research scientist Dr. Richard Johnson.  Like how it ties together fructose metabolism, evolutionary biology, insulin resistance, leptin resistance, hunger disregulation, metabolic syndrome and consistency of the pattern in other animal models.  Glucose is not the enemy, fructose is.  But even fructose in fruit is not so bad, it's the refined stuff that really trips the switch to send us into these metabolic changes.

I also like how he points out that "metabolic syndrome" is not unique to humans.  Every animal that is preparing for times of famine (like hibernating bears, or birds about to fly south for the winter), all have a very similar pattern of lethargy, large appetite, weight gain, loss of insulin sensitivity, and loss of leptin sensitivity.  So it's not a "disease", it's simply a mechanism that mammals have developed to help them survive extended food shortages.

So what flips on that switch in humans?  Per Dr. Johnson it's sugar.  Specifically the fructose.  Which aligns perfectly with what Dr. Lustig out of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine has been saying for a few years now, based on his experience with treating childhood obesity and doing primary research on fructose metabolism in humans.

Cutting out the sugar and the grains is probably the biggest thing one can do to improve health.  Donuts and bagels and low fat milk and cola drinks and fruit juice and cookies and cake are what are killing us, not carrots or potatoes or rice or bananas or steak or chicken or fish or butter or avocados or eggs. 

[django11]

 " In 2000, each American consumed an average 152 pounds of caloric sweeteners".  (USDA)  They give about a 40 % wastage figure so that brings actual consumption down to about 100 lbs on average.  "sugar is the number one food additive. It turns up in some unlikely places, such as pizza, bread,hot dogs, boxed mixed rice, soup, crackers,spaghetti sauce, lunch meat,canned vegetables, fruit drinks, flavored yogurt,ketchup, salad dressing, mayonnaise,and some peanut butter."

Here is a graph of historical consumption

[OzarkTom]

According to the Dr. Johnson video, the #1 reason for low consumption of sugar in the 1800's was the high sugar tax. As the sugar tax was lowered, consumption increased as the chart above indicates.

There is talk about taxing sugar again, but HFCS should be included. I am sure that would not set well with a lot of companies, especially the soda industry.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/higher-tax-on-sugar-sweetened-beverages-prevent-obesity-study-says_n_1197801.html

[2bigears]

    never heard that term before ...'Lethargy'  .. I think as animals it does and of course play in when we were hunters.    Today it's simply food is in front of our noses ever where we turn .. and of course, this cheap food is not good food.. And as a population,most people over eat for comfort.  The psychology of the nation is showing in out belt sizes .....
     What does a person do if your pants fit tight ?? Cut back and hit the gym..Or go buy bigger pants .... 

[wushuliu]

   never heard that term before ...'Lethargy'  .. I think as animals it does and of course play in when we were hunters.    Today it's simply food is in front of our noses ever where we turn .. and of course, this cheap food is not good food.. And as a population,most people over eat for comfort.  The psychology of the nation is showing in out belt sizes .....
     What does a person do if your pants fit tight ?? Cut back and hit the gym..Or go buy bigger pants .... 

But they don't overeat for comfort. That's the problem. They overeat because what they eat triggers hunger and is also addictive. It's a vicious cycle.

[OzarkTom]

But they don't overeat for comfort. That's the problem. They overeat because what they eat triggers hunger and is also addictive. It's a vicious cycle.

It has been proven by reasearch, sugar and HFCS is as addictive as cocaine.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-02/news/31276928_1_high-fructose-corn-syrup-sugar-consumption-table-sugar