The curtain is pulled back and the great OZ is exposed.
If you want to run faster, jump higher and swim farther, then there’s nothing that replaces planned biological stress that trains muscle memory and invokes hypertrophy. That being said the idea of calories in – calories out doesn’t fail because a “calorie is not a calorie,” but rather because the output isn’t really exercise.
You can’t out-exercise your mouth.
While this became fundamentally important to me years ago, it is only in the last year that I have had the ability to dive in and actually test it. Over the last few months I have had many discussions about metabolism – of course I am intentionally provocative, but the responses just flat out amaze me.
First, I truly remember “believing” the same things. Certainly we all can’t test every truth – you don’t have to be a whale to write Moby Dick. With that said, when there is vast disagreement with our actions, observations and results, it serves everyone equally well to double check.
Oh the Thinks You Can Think!
“If you restrict your calories, your metabolism will fall and you’ll go into starvation mode….” I typically reply, and what? Will my metabolism be ZERO? How much will it go down?
It isn’t unreasonable to ask a few rational questions? Shouldn’t we pause for just a moment to think about what we repeat? What absolutely amazes me is how fervently people can disagree about “opinions on metabolism” who have never measured a single metabolism in their entire life.
Until I started talking about this more, I had no idea that metabolism is right up there with protein, carbohydrate and fat – speak. I had some misconceptions for sure, but I can’t say my opinions weren’t nearly as dogmatic as some encountered. With that said, I was wrong, but learned a valuable lesson about what extent I now allow myself to slip into group-think.
I wouldn’t have debated with someone that was experienced measuring metabolism at that time and I am certain that anyone who spends significant time with an indirect calorimeter will agree – the word metabolism is broken. You might as well be reciting a few lines from Dr. Suess:
“Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! If you try, you can think up a guff going by. And you don’t have to stop. You can think about schlopp. Schlopp. Schlopp. Beautiful schlopp. Beautiful schlopp with a cherry on top.”
Schlopp with calories on top. We learned that resting metabolism rate, or RMR, is really the bottom of what anyone might burn over the next 24 hour period. It doesn’t include the excited phone call when your significant other is late, or the heated debate on mac vs windows, or taking the stairs not the elevator. What RMR represents is an approximate 24 hour projection of what you will burn given the same level of rest. It’s commonly measured after a minimum of 4 hours post meal/exercise and best if done on waking in a fasted, rested state.
Metabolism has two components: the base, average 24 hour number, RMR and the much more important number, the respiratory quotient or RQ. The latter term as you may recall is the ratio of carbon dioxide exhaled to the oxygen consumed. Since the different fuels (e.g. carbohydrates and fats) burn with slightly different chemistry mixtures of oxygen, this ratio gives a real-time measurement of what fuel, or combination of fuels, is burning at any given time. The food you eat and the way you move impacts this ratio. As well, so does training.
For example an endurance athlete’s body learns through volume training that it better start using fat as a fuel early in the race. If not, they will “bonk” and run out of the most common fuel of activity, glycogen, which we learned is a way our body stores glucose for later use. In the next post I will go over some data from Wired article author, Steven Leckart, during few days in my lab last summer.
Hitting the Wall (with my forehead)
For now, let’s discuss this in very general way. In round terms, one of my dismal discoveries during weight loss tactical planning was that a marathon (26.2 miles/42.2km) only burns about 2600 Calories – approximately 100 Cal/mile. The problem is, it get’s even worse. If we compare this number to the amount of glycogen stored in the body ~1500-2000 Cal, we see that this storage can only fuel 58-77% (1500/2600 to 2000/2600) of our race. If we multiply this times the distance of the race, we get: 15-20 miles (24-32 km). This is hitting the wall. It’s caused by insuffcinet utilization of fat during the initial hours to supplement the mostly glycogen fuel of running.
As it turns out, most exercise is simply an activity based in glycogen. We will see this in more detail in part three. What no one seems to tell you is that the “fat burring low-intensity zone” you see on the treadmill or elliptical is based on no fat burning at high intensity. In other words, if you take a full on sprint, your RQ is headed to 1.0 (carbohydrate) pretty fast – you likely will be over 1.0.
I’ve not seen anyone push it hard and stay at RQ = 0.7 (fat). By comparison, sitting in your home or office reading this, you are likely at RQ = .85 (50/50). So “fat burning zone” really refers to more fat burning than none, not more fat burning than when you aren’t exercising. Now, theoretically your lower fat burning crosses a line with increase energy consumption – an exercise sweet spot.
Many of the gym-grade calorimeters (US$3000-12,000 class instruments) use this fixed RQ = .85 “assumption” when calculating your RMR, which is why they are not as useful when trying to get at the details of specifically how your body is reacting minute by minute. Researchers of 100 years ago were using all wet chemistry techniques and as such, were’t burdened with this problem. We’ve known these things for a long time, I am not making it up. It’s only in the last few decades that this lack exercise/activity has become the be-all answer. I see better results from people that are’t moving excessively, but rather focused on enjoyable leisure activities (a dog walk, casual swim, or riding a bike)
Here is what those fat burn charts really mean. You were likely burning at a 50/50 rate when you walked casually into the gym. After beginning to run you’ll not burn much fat at all, because your RQ will go to 1.0 or higher. If you don’t push as hard on that marathon you MIGHT be down as low as RQ = .95 (84%/1%6 carb/fat). In that 2600 Cal/26.2 miles, we are talking about 416 Cal or 3.5 tablespoons of “healthy” olive oil.
Scaling Tall Building
So recently, I decided to put it to a little test. What would happen if I climbed the Westin Tower in downtown Atlanta? At 73 stories, it’s the second tallest hotel in the U.S. and 19th in the world. I haven’t exercised in 2 years as part of an ongoing experiment, but my muscle mass hasn’t changed in any significant way and I am frequently experiencing cold stress.
This was going to be fun, of course when you have a gas mask on, along with a beeping backpack and a camera, it’s probably good to ask security for permission. “I can’t tell you that it’s okay, but I can say there aren’t any cameras and it’s perfectly okay for the guests of the hotel to use the stairs.” said the man with the ear piece – enough said. So my partner in crime, Kevin and I calibrated the US$ 34,000 instrument with standard O2/CO2 gas and we were on our way to the basement.
We had to walk down a few floors so I rested about 30 minutes while he made technical support calls and then we performed a short baseline, rested metabolism. Remember, when you see the number on the treadmill or elliptical, it’s necessary to subtract out the calories that would have been otherwise burned during the same time just by being alive.
Up the stairs we went. 20 mins later, we were at the top. Not bad for a nearly 50 year old, no exercise father of three. I was a little winded, but we made the 1784 linear feet (~1196 stairs) and 700 vertical feet) at a steady pace of 1.4 mph. Not exactly pushing it.
The result? 4 1/2th Oreo cookies. three stinking cookies and I am NOT talking double stuff.
I know that this wasn’t two brutal hours of crossfit, nor was it a good upper body trip to the gym, but where is the truth between 3.5 tablespoons of olive oil and 4 1/2 Oreo cookies? How far off can we be?
We all want to believe that all that sweaty movement is burning a lot of calories. It just SEEMS like a lot of work and in physics work and energy expenditure are two totally different quantities. Sadly, this mindless repetitive movement we call exercise seems to fit neither of these definitions in a significant way. Not only are there few calories burned, but they are mostly glycogen (carbohydrate) calories and result in a lot of metabolic upheaval to replace and repair tissue. A few months after my first cold experiments Segway and overall brilliant engineer, Dean Kamen, told me that he too had calculated the food-for-movement economy when conceiving the segway – he came up 1/3 a chocolate chip for 100 m climb (~30 stories).
We are relatively easy to move around.
Did you hear me say don’t exercise at all? No. Did I say exercise was unhealthy? Well, not yet, but I reserve make that judgement to later. What I am saying is that if you are competing, there’s no way to win without being conditioned through training. In swimming, it’s about technique and muscle memory (streamlining efficiently through the water). In running and cycling, it’s a game of fuel conservation and primarily oxygen utilization (VO2 Max). And in weight lifting, it centers on stressing the muscle and giving it sufficient time to recover and rebuild.
I’m exercise agnostic at the moment as it’s enjoyable to many people, but do want to respectively question the main reason that is offered as a fundamental, unquestionable truth: Are we obese as a society because we don’t move enough? Is it really our lack of activity that has caused this obesity pandemic?
Lose, or Lose Not. There is No Try.
If you are trying to lose fat, exercise is probably not the best place to start. In part three I will give you a few examples why, but there is a LARGE leap from the “lean mass burns more than fat” catch-all phrase to the generally accepted idea of sedentary lifestyle. What that phrase should be is:
In a petri dish when measuring the metabolic activity of equal mass of muscle and adipose tissue, the muscle tissue is more metabolically active and consumes more energy during a given period of time.
Now let me give you a little “Alabama” talk:
A 300 lb fat man burns more calories wallowing around each day than his lean, fit, 180 lb. friend.
It doesn’t matter much how much their tissue is burning per hour if you’re the same “skinny man inside the fat suit” lugging around an extra 120 lbs of fat all day, every day. It reminds me of the childhood riddle: which weighs more, a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?
This is not a metabolism problem, it’s a food problem. The excess bodyfat is due to what we eat, when we eat, and how we eat. That’s all. Exercise has a role in health, but it is not the panacea for health or the explanation for the obesity pandemic.
I have now coached several life long, morbidly obese people through a weight loss process. Nothing makes them feel more miserable than to walk into a gym full of fit people with iPods, and feeling as Daniel once described, “like I was wearing something made by Omar the desert tent maker.” Life is a workout when you are 30, 50, or 100+ lbs overweight. Slow metabolism is not your problem. Oh, You don’t need to eat the storage organ (fat) of a plant or animal to burn fat from your own storage organ. How does this even begin to make sense?
Once we begin down the path of protein, carbohydrate and fat – speak, then sprinkle some metabolism speak and add some missing nutrients, we find the recipe for obesity. In reality, chronic over nutrition is far more prevalent than your situation being a deficiency problem – activity or nutrient alike.
Things are repeated over and over, but I hope we all do a little more critical thinking. Over that last 4 years, I have met so many intelligent people and asked a lot of seemingly obvious questions. It turns out there’s a big difference between 40 years of experience and one year of experieince 40 times.
Oh, and lest you accuse me of being an academic snob, I will say that the debates are sometimes MORE intense with PhDs. The great thing is that I now have a lab and can say, well, tell me what you think is going on and let’s just measure it. I’ve learned a lot just answering questions my children have involving Dad’s mid-life crisis calorimeter. They tend not to be as ill-advised, yet.
So next time we will get into some really interesting comparisons of activity. We will look at Steven’s results and shuffle through to some interesting cold stress experiments touched on in the article along with some other crazy stuff that didn’t make it.
**************
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It is amazing how many people want to tell me the ins and outs of nutrition after I tell them I am just “eating healthier”. Funny, the most adamant are the ones who, like me, can afford to lose more than a few pounds. These same people who haven’t stepped foot in a gym tell me how important it is to exercise and are appalled when I tell them exercise isn’t part of my plan.
I am confident that not feeling like a slave to exercise is a big part of the reason I have been able to continue eating this way. In the past when I exercised, if I missed a day I felt like failure and the old…Oh well I blew it so I may as well eat______ set in. That hasn’t happened this time.
I haven’t been perfect, but when I have fallen down it hasn’t been nearly as far or nearly as difficult to get back up.
Thanks Ray!!
Denise,
You are making a REMARKABLE transformation (for the record – 34 lbs in 52 days, .65 lbs/day). You have setbacks and now make the connection. It is our relationship with food that is broken and since its a pervasive issue, people that mean well derail us all the time. You’ll be able to exercise, if you want, when you get closer to ideal weight. For now, it’s a learning game and you absolutely will succeed this time, because this time all the tricks and shortcuts – things that fail eventually – are gone.
Eating instinctually is actually quite pleasurable and not a sacrifice. I’m working hard to get this plan in place for more people to join in, but for now, you are one of the stars and it’s exciting to be a part of it all!!
Ray
Ray,
During your experiments have you measured the the calorie burn after the exercise, one of the ideas tha gets passed around is certain exercises increase the metobotic rate for hours after. Be interested in what you have found.
I enjoy exercising and see it as a means to first get better, faster, fitter, stronger with a side bonus of assisting to lose weight, which may not be the case. What you are showing is that the mentality I had of ok i’ve done an hour of swimming its ok to smash down a big plate of bacon and eggs and a large flat white….
I have noticed that swimming 2500m twice a week has improved other areas of my life like better flexibility, longer surf sessions.
Keep the posts comming hope its not 2 months until the next one. Any progress on your Forum?
Cheers
BTW 3 days into eating potatoes and veggies again to get the post xmass/easter eating to excess under control. Only put on 2 kgs since last Potaoe feast in November, but still have 10-12kgs to go to reach ~12-15% BF and goal weight of 95Kgs
Yes,
I will cover it next week. All metabolic activity with exercise (running, swimming, and kettle bell) returned to baseline in much faster times than advertised. Mild cold stress had an impact nearly far longer. IF you swim, I am moving the threshold to 60-75F ( I need to do it and ride it out until RMR/RQ return to baseline.
You will see the main thrust of the next post is to expunge the “post exercise metabolic boost” everyone claims. 31 hours of boost after a kettle bell tabata? we’ll see.
Forum is almost done. Programmer got onto another project and I was traveling/speaking on and off (mostly on) for 4 weeks.
Sorry. Won’t be as big a delay. Getting MUCH closer to a self-supporting economy and put a lot of time into a few dozen people that needed help (like my friend, Denise above).
keep us posted.
Ray
No worries looking froward to having a forum to bounce ideas around in.
The water temps you posted are pretty close to what I have here in the ocean 75 degrees (23 deg c) in Summer and 60-65 in Winter (17-18 deg c) I Have a feeling that the big part of minimal weight gain ove rthe last few months has been my daily dose of ocean time, most days I am in the water 2-3 hours surfing, swimming, paddling etc. What I am doing this Autumn is resisting putting a wetsuit on for as long as possible to get the cool water benefits. The pool I swim in is warmer at 26-28 deg C
Cheers Shane
Perfect!!!
Keep in mind for a period of 4 hours or so AFTER the exposure, no calorically dense meals (stick to high fiber/volume, etc) if losing body fat is your goal.
Ray
lose or lose not. There is no try.
Fantastic article Ray. You can consider me your Padawan.
5 or so years back i decided to TRY and lose some weight so i i went on the treadmill. I did 45 mins everyday. After 2 weeks i lost 2 pounds but by the third week my shins hurt i so stopped. In the third week the 2 pounds of hard fought for loss came back. I’ve not done cardio since that day.
As a fellow scientist i decided that there must be a better way. I searched the internet, read loads of books and found some answers in fasting. Again it wasn’t a complete answer as there were still far too many questions unanswered. Everyone you speak to alway think they have it sussed and offer advice like they know what they are talking about but they really don’t!!!
I researched into cold stress and found your website and found someone asking the same questions as me, i can’t thank you enough!!! Let me know if i can take part in any way, i would love it!!!
Thank you
Sarb
It’s getting interestinger and interestinger, Ray. Basically, I think the benefit to exercise is more mental than anything else, both in the feelings of satisfaction and well being, as well as making it more likely one will eat properly.
Well, certainly it’s necessary if one wants to build, tone, or compete. That’s clear. What isn’t so clear to me is whether it is necessary, or even always good for health. Food has a bigger impact and results I have personally witnessed over and over suggest exercise has nothing to do (and perhaps dare I say – interferes) with weight loss (a first step to health).
It may be in fact that exercise actually short circuits the eating process – driving unnecessary rebuild and repair, when all one is trying to do is conserve and live off fat. There are no metabolic plateaus. I don’t believe it at all anymore.
As you have shown – exercise “buzz” is equally strong with a mild cold soak. We weren’t off far with the 50F water. It’s best to be above 60 for most people. It optimize thermal effect with comfort and minimal risk of cold shock/hypothermia.
Thanks Richard!
Ray
Yea, I was going to add that while mine was never more than about 30 minutes twice per week of weights, I’m now down to 20 minutes once per week and sometimes, once ever 2-3 weeks. My version of Doug McGuff’s “Big 5”. I add in deadlifts, so it’s my Big 6, and I do basically only 1-2 sets per exercise.
That’s plenty for muscle tone & conditioning for me.
When I was doing it regularly, I would soak in a 50F pool for over ASN hour with no problem or major discomfort. Is having frequent cold showers just as good as this or is one clearly better than the other?
The biggest issue with long soaks or exposure under 60F water is hypothermia. Walking hypothermia can be insidious, so I’d advise against those temperature. As you approach 60F you need activity – I wouldn’t sit still (but we’ll see next week what 60F sitting still looks like metabolically).
Contrast showers on the other hand have an entirely different role and they are still useful. If you did any one thing from the list – that is the one I’d do. Morning and night best.
Ray
Luckily the other 99.9% of guests in the Westin would never take the stairs. Otherwise, I would have gotten the shock of my life as I watched them handcuff you for terrorism on the 6 o’clock news here in Atlanta.
You’re crazy man. I like you, but you’re crazy.
Looking forward to part 3.
LOL. Yes, that would have been funny. Hey, I asked first and technically, he did not say no.
I’m odd. I’ll take that, but it’s so much more fun challenging the status quo. Some people do it purely to irritate. I love the idea of disruptive technology. With the unbelievable access to affordable equipment and testing, I foresee a not too distant future when there might be a innovation inversion. N = 1 may outstrip the pace of clinical trials. For now, there are a lot of jack-legs selling pills, powders, screenings and procedures, but in time, people that want to pursue this carefully will take root and we’ll see our body open-sourced.
Ray
Ray
More good common sense stuff again! Thank you..I recently went from sunny California to Seattle for about 1 week. I usually do 30 min weight lifting workouts 3 times a week and I’m also vegan. I know that vegan it vegetarian is not synonymous, trust me! But I do stick with mostly starches, plant based stuff. Minimal to non processed foods. However, that week in cold, wet Seattle not exercising at all and walking several blocks to and for everyday to meetings netted me more fat loss (3lbs) than my average of .5lbs/ week..
I was kinda shocked! But the mostly 30-40 degree weather and walking did something. Not sure yet until I repeat this.
I wonder though, have you ever taken a look at hormones during your “mad” scientist testing? Lol
Neal
Good Stuff Neal.
I have sort of dropped the vegan/vegetarian/paleo labels all together. Most of it is ideology and while I don’t care what people believe, the eat meat/don’t eat meat argument isn’t my deal. You don’t need it, but there is probably some level that’s not unhealthy. To each his own, but I live on plants too.
As for hormones, it’s another deep, dark molecular biology hole. It’s part of the 10,000 or so proteins in each of our living cells. I think that chronic over nutrition stresses our biology and causes the issues. Chasing that with even MORE hormones is just pushing a bubble around in a bumper sticker.
That being said, I do have a lot of good anecdotal (but well documented) work with Melatonin. This is an issue that’s created not by food, but by an issue of ubiquitous light and warmth. I KNOW that melatonin has positive and measurable impacts on sleep. I can’t remember if I posted any of that or not, but I will look and post, because it’s a great little tool.
Other than that, I think the hormone balance crowd is right up there with supplement crowd and big pharma. They are all trying to sell goop. The less it does the better. So long as it does no harm, claims (technically disclaims) can be made and they all cash in big time. I chose another route. I think health comes in packages called food. You don’t have to blend it, juice it, or time it. You don’t even need to eat too often and there’s not much you can’t have…in rare occasion.
It’s not the fastest way to wealth, or perhaps a path at all, but I will positively impact 10,000 peoples lives and then who knows how many more. I think it’s pretty amazing to be able to work and write in my home lab, all the while holding textbooks from 1854 (one that came in today!!!). There’s a lot of thought out there and it always seems like a good idea to review history…and not repeat it.
Sometimes amazing ideas simply happen at the wrong time. That doesn’t change the value.
Ray
Ok,
I didn’t post, so take a look at this. Note that the total sleep time, REM, light, deep, and Wake time are similar for these two nights. Since they are only separated by one night, it’s not unexpected. You don’t change basic sleep patterns that soon. Look at each and note that WAKE is identical, but then back up and look at the big picture.
See it? Which night do you think I got the most RESTFUL sleep? Yep, and that uninterrupted sleep was melatonin effect. I think ideally you don’t need it, but it’s a simple bridge and I don’t think it has a negative feedback loop.
Anyway, that’s the totality of my hormone testing, there’s just a lot more of it.
Ray
Thanks
Great information Ray. I was at the Super Human Live Event for your presentation and I talked to you a few times over that weekend. I’ve been using your mild cold program since that weekend and have gotten great results. I’m was only about 15 pounds over the weight I wanted to be at but I had been stuck at that spot for years. Using your program I quickly broke through my plateau and dropped 8 of those pounds. I used the potato diet with the mild cold and the contrast showers. I went to PaleoFX last weekend and ate and partied. I put 4 pounds back on. I went back to the program this week and dropped the 4 pounds in two days. Amazing!!! I feel like I’m in control of my weight with your program. Thanks for your work! I’m a personal trainer and I’m starting a new group of people next week on a weight loss program. I’m going to see if I can get them to use your techniques to lose weight quickly.
Hey Brian!
Yes. We all had a blast there. Liked talking to everyone and its great to hear it worked for you. That was the first time I gave the metabolism talk and I’ve got more info to add…
No doubt cold stress plays a role. Now if I can persuade you try a nutritarian diet for a while 🙂
Ray
Hey Ray,
I’m on board for the nutritarian diet. I focus on vegetables and tubers throughout the week. I have an 8 hour eating window most of the time. I relax some on the weekends and eat more socially.
Great.
You can eat almost anything you want within a single 8 hour window a week and maintain weight. I don’t think health is as forgiving. Tubers are certainly good sources of amino acids, but they also displace a lot of food volume, so if it is more than a transition period (I picked potatoes last June not because they were magic, but because it just screws up both the high glycemic carb and low carb hypothesis with one food.) I never expected it to catch on as much as it’s done and while there are some VERY interesting things going on, it’s sort of fun watching it spread.
Just know that it displaces the volume of cruciferous greens that you MIGHT otherwise be consuming if the tubers weren’t satiating you.
The 8 hour window works well. If you want to do it daily, transition to 6 and then to 4. I want to do a calorimeter experiment with a four hour window to see what happens if I intentionally over consume.
More of that in the future.
Ray
I didn’t see an email address to contact you by, so I’ll ask you here. I would like to give the people in my weight loss program a copy of your “Fuel The Burn” guide. Would that be ok?
Sure. Because you asked. Thanks you. Just make sure you have the latest copy (small frequent meals is crossed out).
Ray
Thanks Ray. I have the latest copy of the guide.
Ray, to realise the protein/fat/carb myth was nothing, compared to realise that excersize impact loosing weigh. For the last 40 days I have loose 25 pounds and went from 171 to 146 lbs just by watching TV and playing with my kid. Loosing fat was never so easy. And now, after I read your blog and understand how body works, I think loosing weight is the easiest thing on earth. I have reached the goal of my life – visible abs. Now I have another goal. This monday I started weight lifting. I will excersize two times a week to put on some muscle mass (this will make me eat more and not so healthy food than I burn). After I reach this goal I will stop excersize forever and eat little and healthy food and enjoy other more important aspects of life. Thank you Ray for your help!
Fantastic! You’ve hung in there and kept tweaking.
In not ready to completely throw exercise under the bus. First, loading the frame for continued bone strength is a good goal. Next, there is probably some good compromise between some
Exercise and cardiovascular fitness – particularly resting heart rate.
As for weight loss, I feel it’s looking pretty solid that exercise significantly slows progress. Your results are far more typical than i would have ever believed Going in.
Thanks for the update!
Ray.
Ray, based on what I’m picking up from your posts and reading Joel Fuhrman, I have seriously reduced my fat intake – to less than 10g daily. I am eating lots of produce and fat-free dairy and learning that hunger is not a dirty word and it won’t kill me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suffering but I now don’t feel the need to eat something every time I get a hunger pang in case I fall into ‘starvation mode’ as I know that my body will happily use my own ‘storage organ’ for energy. It’s only been a week so far but my clothes are feeling looser already. I have at least 50lbs to lose so I’ll keep you posted on how I go.
Thanks again.
There no such think as “low fat dairy” just lose it all together. Even the hormonally active proteins have a role and you simply don’t need this food – especially if you’re losing weight.
Getting in touch with instinctual eating is critical.
Thanks! Keep us posted.
Ray
Ok, I can live with that. What should I be focussing on then – just fruits and vegetables? Also is there a caloric level I should be aiming for? I’m currently eating around 2000 less per day than I was before by my estimate!
Ideally you shouldn’t need to count calories. If you pick the right food then you just eat when hungry, stop when full.
The problem is that we all tend toward food entertainment and that doesn’t always promote weight loss. There are a few things you can do to zero in on maximum weight loss. First is to reduce the window of time you eat every day – this is after all a goal to use body fat not meals for fuel. Next is to stay away from calorie dense foods; excess simple sugars, oils and liquid calories of any source. Finally you have to increase fiber load eat more foods that have prebiotic capacity (I don’t think probiotic is particularly important)
Discipline and patience makes these become automatic, enjoyable and permanent. We are all creatures of habit. Most of us live mainly with bad habits and don’t give our body a break. Always eating and never a break.
Ray
Thanks again for more thought out answers. Over the last year or so I’ve dropped my need for snacks, built up by always having something available for my young kids. Hunger pangs are no longer an emergency. 🙂
For those interested in further science on food and health, may I recommend the summary website http://nutritionfacts.org
While some complain that the science has a plant based diet bias, it seems very clear to me that eating minimally processed plants is healthier in many ways.
As for exercise, mindfulness, form, enjoyment of movement, and avoiding injury are more important than “calories burned”, reps, or time sweating.
Thanks Jason
Michael is a good friend and he’s driven to dig out the things others miss. We exchange a lot of information and I might add there are many negative studies on processed plant based foods (e.g. Sugars, oils and highly refined gains) that he highlights. Many of his videos show a range of benefits and you can see which food is the best.
There are certainly some good arguments against processed food, but by and large I don’t see many studies that suggest adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet is a controversial step. In fact it’s a good place to start so then one must figure out what not to eat to make room for these foods.
This was my path and now issues with cholesterol, blood sugar and reactive hypoglycemia are all gone.
Ray
And for those looking for plant based recipes, and an incremental steps approach to incorporating more fruits, stems, leaves and roots into your meals, this posting and author may inspire you.
“If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to end up where you’re going.”
Ray, what do you mean by refined grains. Bread is refined grain. But is it bad like sugar, salt and oil? I mean bread is made of grain with no vitramins and fibers in it, but does it mean this grain is unhealthy?
In general I avoid breads and most flours. I’m not gluten-phobic (despite mass marketing appeal everyone isn’t a celiac)
There’s a balance and I choose to put my calories elsewhere, so I don’t really pay as much attention to good vs bad in bread. I think the less processed the food (beyond cooking – not a raw everything advocate) the better. For that reason I don’t do “green smoothies,” (or any fruit smoothie) but I did collaborate with Joel Fuhrman and have a grab and go blended vegetable drink (ill post it with other food information in the future).
You’ve found success so stick with it a while so that this weight becomes the new you and get the calories you need to support the body building efforts.
Ray
Alex,
Regarding wheat: when the chaff is removed so is most of the fiber. Then the wheat berry is dried, ground, and possibly bleached. It is now flour, or essentially baby food. Add water, yeast, salt, maybe refined fat, and you have bread. Add eggs or water and you have pasta. But you’re still dealing with baby food essentially.
So, regardless of allergies, when you eat refined grains, you’re eating a calorically dense, easily digested, low fiber food. You can additionally compare the type of starch, amino acid content, micronutrient content in your processed bread to potatoes.
Its almost like comparing a glass of reconstituted orange juice to the orange. Night and day.
Hi Ray,
I was thinking that it could be interesting to do a range of experiments with the calorimeter in relation to your walk up the stairs. It could be interesting to see many calories you burn walking 30min, then adding weight in various forms and ways. I’m thinking something like a backpack, ancle weights, a vest with weights or carrying something.
I’ve read through some of your blog and I’m trying to understand your ‘diet’. Is it correct that you don’t care much about macro ratios and particular food groups to include/avoid but rather focus on eating non-processed/natural foods?
Thank you for sharing the experiments on yourself!
Best regards,
Thomas Hemming
Thanks Thomas!
Yes, there are endless things to do and many of them I’ve been doing in my house – mostly looking at cold stress and response to food. My daughter even did a really interesting science fair project using rice and coconut oil (over 30 hours in a nutrition hood). I will report that in the coming weeks.
On the sequential work you suggest, it becomes difficult to figure out baselines. As I said, RMR is from a rested position and so each time you do that it will slightly bias the next experiment and so on. When I do the food studies (that take 4-6 hours EACH of not moving). It requires many sequential days of inactivity. This is why so little is done today. Firstly, because the data that was collected 125 years ago is SO accurate there’s seemingly no reason to do it over. Secondly, people don’t have a return on investment – health doesn’t make money, it reduces medical costs, prescriptions, treatments, shake sales, supplement sales, etc…
I’m motivated to bust myths and poison group-think.
It’s not a conspiracy, but it is a business. There are very few persons selling supplements that are not keenly aware that most of what they are doing has no effect outside of people talking about great results and making loads of cash. They aren’t evil and will argue even if it were placebo effect (they don’t know one way or the other), results are worth it so ends justify the means.
The problem is the downstream effects and complications. Health does not come in a pill, powder or procedure. There are supplements that have merit, but most of it is more than expensive urine, it is causing hosts of metabolic dysfunction. Read just a few peer-reviewed studies and you’ll see what an infinitesimally small effect these things have and when they do, your bad eating habits will dominate any incremental performance. Our construct of food is fundamentally broken and that has been the thrust of my research and why I don’t post more frequently.
I am beginning with the myths of nutrition, the low hanging fruit as it were, but there are so many other things we can discuss over time once a community is crowd sourcing the work. I hope by now my integrity has come through and I’ve earned people’s trust knowing I care more about getting it right than to push an agenda or product.
So with that, on food, It’s really simple. We need sufficient nutrition, not excessive. We want to achieve this with minimum calorie. I think part of the problem is that much of the blogosphere and even research confuses athletic performance and health. Remember all research has to have a business end game: run faster, treat more, sell more. It’s all connected in some way to an economy. For food, this is nutritionism and this has dominated: drink OJ for vitamin C, eat your bananas for potassium (its about 100th on the sources), and meat for “protein.” It’s simply flawed thinking. Do it and you will eat to much. I don’t need proof, look around.
Of the most researched plans, Dr. Joel Fuhrman gets my vote. He’s not a “vegan” (not that this is a problem, but to distinguish WHY he does it). He really does eat this way – all the time. He’s not varied in weight more than 5 lbs since he was 18. He’s treated thousands and influenced 100s of thousands.
On a ski trip together a few weeks ago, how did we eat? Exactly the same way as I would at home:
We spent $500 for 7 of us and we ate for 4 days. That’s less than $20/day…in TELLURIDE – not the cheapest place to eat. What does the kale section look like in the grocery when you follow Joel:
good luck.
For me, I’ve just kept adding more vegetables to my diet until everything else was gone. Now I prefer this, I don’t sacrifice at all. I’m not an activist. Health is my agenda. I don’t care to convince anyone, but I hope my approach is persuasive. I think anyone can achieve ideal weight and insulate themselves from the most common causes of death. I hope that the some of my researcher colleagues are correct and that we might significantly delay, or even cure, death sometime in MY future.
For now, I don’t let food dominate my daily existence. Even while skiing hard I didn’t eat most days until evening, although I had a lot of water. I tasted some of the things others were eating (not everyone was as fit as Joel – clearly the most fit of ANY of the rest of us.).
SO I think juggling protein, carbohydrate and fat is just a distraction. It really doesn’t matter what I eat, so long as I choose from a certain group. All other foods are in the “dessert” category – rare and appropriate.
Don’t get bent up on what you “can and can’t give up,” this is just addictive behavior. You are human and you can survive on a wide variety of food. Some lights up the pleasure sensors more than others. That’s not why you eat and if that dominates the reason, you will likely be obese and chronically ill. On the other hand, just a small amount of time transitioning out of that mode allows one to eat instinctively and then those pleasure foods are rare and appropriate treats. They don’t give you the total buzz you once received and you won’t be able to eat that way without feeling sick the next day, but not unlike too much tequila, you won’t want to do it every day, week or even month.
Ray
Ray, thanks a lot for the lengthy reply!
I realised after my post how many variables you would have to control for in that type of experiment and, as you say, establish a baseline just to begin with.
I agree with the financial limitations on these studies which is why it’s great to have people like you doing the n=1 experiments. I’m a little surprised that a calorimeter is not more USD 34k but I guess that the gas and maintenance costs run up too. I would have thought that more people or groups would buy this kind of equipment so that they could custom make their own studies. I truly respect and admire the work you and someone like Peter Attia etc. do as I think you have the approach ‘I don’t think a priori that I’m right, but I want to get as close to the truth as possible’.
Taking your argument one step further, I think it’s an even bigger problem with all the pills people are forced to take by way of illness. Not that long ago I heard the CEO of a drug company (which buys old drugs and relaunch them) talk about how statins was a nice little molecule. He did highlight the bad reasons for it being there but the smile on his face and the way he said actually offended me.
Actually I have the problem of being obsesses with food and underweight (well, anorexic). In that sense it was actually good to hear your thoughts about food and nutrition.
I’m really looking forward to the post on your daughter’s experiment.
“He’s not varied in weight more than 5 lbs since he was 18”
I am not impressed by that at all. My brother is the same way and is an adherent to the typical SAD (standard american diet) i.e. lots of junk and nothing anyone would want to emulate, but he has remained thin and weight stable his whole life.
You kind of lose me when you talk about “the fat storage organ” of a freaking vegetable for gawd sake. Animal fat is different than plant fat don’t you agree?
Bryan
Obesity travels with chronic disease, it doesn’t cause it.
For every one example you list, there are dozens that counter it. This is like the assertion of the grandfather that smoked and ate bacon every day and lived to 98.
Statistics say how often and not when.
Genetics, we learned in the last decade, are probabilistic, not deterministic. Environment is a primary influence to these epigenetic modifications and diet is probably the biggest influence (if you’re not bathing in toxic stew at work). All the things that are marketed (GMO, organic, local) are important, but not as important as chronic over nutrition.
My comment on fat – animal or plant sourced – is aimed at people that are at the first step in health, losing weight. The idea that one needs I eat fat to lose it is flawed. Equally flawed is the idea that “sugar turns to fat.” I’ll get more into both of these in detail, but I feel pretty confident the literature will back me up.
Sometimes the guy standing at the burning house with a book of matches didn’t light it. Seems reasonable to assume it, but assumptions built on false premises can lead to all sorts of issues.
My goal is to help people navigate through some waters. I had to take quite a long detour, because the calorie in/out paradigm was broken. It’s not that a calorie isn’t a calorie. It turns out the fundamental, excepted construct of food is broken. The successes paleo and vegan alike can be explained by an underlying least common denominator.
I couldn’t believe what I found, and set out to prove it myself. Time will tell if I got it correct.
Ray
I am pretty much diet agnostic. People have thrived on paleo, vegan and everything in between. Let’s not get into a my anecdote is better than your anecdote debate. The fact that Furhman’s weight has remained within 5lbs his entire adult life doesn’t mean that his diet should be emulated which is what you were implying.
“The successes paleo and vegan alike can be explained by an underlying least common denominator.”
Yeah I think so. It is finding a way to eat that allows a person to get to and maintain a healthy weight with minimal stress, and which can be continued for a lifetime.
It is different for each person IMO.
Some will thrive on paleo, some on atkins, some on high carb, some on low carb, some as vegan.
It boils down to what can a person eat that satisfies their hunger and allows them to maintain a healthy weight.
I say it is different for each individual. I couldn’t do it being vegan but others will thrive being a vegan.
Guys
Don’t beat a dead horse. The vast number of emails I get are for people that want to lose weight. I put Joel’s healthful lifestyle and weight stability as a foil to me that gained 70 lbs. No where have I ever stated that obesity causes illness – it’s a symptom. There are many other benefits to that style of eating.
What he has done is a significant amount of investigation and treatment of many people. I don’t agree that everyone is different in the way you are using it – we aren’t. That’s just another list in the long list of reasons people cannot take responsibility for what they put in their mouth. Science is not democratic or up for vote. There are certain things that won’t be true and much of what we’ve done in the last century – increasing the caloric density of food is incorrect and will be shown so in the. Protein carb and fat speak is broken.
Addictive eating is a luxury and for centuries a luxury of kings and the few wealthy. We made an economic art out of it. Now everyone does it and the pyramid is inverted. It’s more expensive to eat healthy.
You can read super immunity. You can read end of diabetes. If you’re a fasting proponent, then find his 1995 book on fasting – he had a clinic for years. Many times people like this are authors first, healthy second. How many people look like the picture on their book cover?
He’s an example. I’ve been to his house and even on the road – he is true to what he writes. Is he alone? Probably not, but he’s rare and my commitment was to dig in and find a direction. This one is not convenient, but biologically I believe it “works” for everyone.
The rest is a choice, but if anyone is making a decision off a single sentence here, that misses the point. I’m pointing to his work and not plagiarizing as is so often the case in the diet world. A large percentage of the blogs plagiarize and its become accepted and normal. He did his own thing and there are a lot of holes that I find.
That being said, if you don’t feel good and simply rearrange the same diet over and over, it’s likely not going to have any end game effect. We are designed for a world of scarcity. We live in a world of excess.
Food polarizes people. We are a society of one meal that takes breaks to work and sleep. What I’ve called for is to test for yourself, but that doesn’t mean you get to pick and choose parts of messages.
I did a one year experiment. If I had chosen wrong, it would have been self-evident. What keeps me focused is the lions share of the criticisms handed out are simply false – scientifically and in life. Most are excuses to return to habitual, acquired appetite. 100 years ago scientist reported the same results.
I think they were correct. I’ve seen it first hand.
Ray
“Guys
Don’t beat a dead horse.”
I have no dog in this fight. I don’t care to change anyone’s eating habits but your admiration and camaraderie with Furhman appears to me to lead to some biases.
What people choose to eat for themselves is no concern of mine at all.
I am much more interesting in the mild cold stress theory and your experiments on them than on having another guy tell me and everyone else what to eat.
Thanks
I lived this for a year and studied it for an additional year before I met him.
That doesn’t constitute diagnosis bias. I’ve don’t ascribe to food ideology. I’ve done numerous personal experiments and measured results. Not subjective, but with a lot of scientific scrutiny. I’ve been wrong and changed my opinion – only in the face of solid data.
I wonder why you are zeroing on this rather than the thousands of other words I’ve written that directly dispute some more common approaches is interesting. After all the time I’ve put into this, would you really think I made a decision on this one point!
I said a lot of other thinks but you choose to focus on a simple statement meant to only illustrate that he lives the way he recommends.
There are many fat book and blog authors. It doesn’t cause the disease, but its indicative of overall health. I got down to the last 15 lbs and have lost and gained it, purposefully, tracking what happens.
Thanks for the input.
Ray
“I wonder why you are zeroing on this rather than the thousands of other words I’ve written that directly dispute some more common approaches is interesting.”
You got to start somewhere Ray. I could have commented on other things but this is where I started. I said it has the appearance of bias, nothing more nothing less.
Vegans can thrive, paleo’s can thrive, high carbers can thrive, low carbers can thrive there really is no point in the endless macro wars. The macro wars don’t interest me in the least anymore.
I use a little Sisson, a little Jaminet, a little J. Stanton, a little Richard Nicoley. Very little processed food. I eliminated grains which greatly reduced my joint pain so I ain’t going back to that. I try things and see what works for me w/o getting all religious about it.
What do you think about eating raw potato to get some resistant starch and that supposedly improves the gut flora?
The mild cold theory is what holds my attention here we don’t need another eat this don’t eat that website IMO.
Thanks,
Bryan
Ok,
I don’t agree that food is “whatever goes” when it comes to chronic disease and health and you haven’t read much of what I’ve written. I think anyone that has been following me for a while knows I am anything but a player in the macronutrient war. I just spent 3 years reviewing 200 years of literature. There are a lot of issues out there and in time many of them will surface. I get a lot of requests for help when people have failed.
Contrary to what you’ve read elsewhere explaining starch example I launched last summer, resistant starch not the reason it works. While I chose to do this on the heal of microbiome posts, It turns out there is something different is happening and i’ve spent the last six months studying with other researchers. That being said, the more healthy component of the microbiome is clearly boosted (it’s cited elsewhere on this blog) by limiting the fat that serves as the primarily fuel for Enterobacter and other gram negative bacteria. These bacteria also contribute significantly to the endotoxin load and resulting inflammation. This February, Kwashiorkor’s was also shown not to be a “protein” deficiency, but gut microbiomes by studying 317 Malawian twin pairs discordant for the disease. As you may know it was this disease that launched “the great protein fiasco” beginning in 1952 and McLaren’s (74) work at this point has been completely verified with this latest wave of microbiome research.
Food is part of the thermodynamic problem I’ve been working on for for years. It is 100% of the input. Waste heat is 80% of the problem and no one is looking at that portion. What I can say unequivocally is that the diet< ->exercise paradigm is thermodynamically broken. There are many ways, with circus tricks, to obtain a aesthetic range of weight. Avoiding chronic disease takes more of an effort, but the best odds based on all research to date resides with CR.
I have the privilege to work with some of the world’s experts in this area and I’ve decided to make a dent. Call it “yet another macro war” if you’d like, or ignore it, but I think it is important and time will show many people have it wrong.
You’ll love part 3, because it has nothing at all to do with food.
Ray
Cool.
So CR is the shits?
But CR has to be practiced with low density foods? i.e. not fat?
Looking forward to part 3.
Thanks,
Bryan
Ray, I get what you believe. Metabolism is becoming an overused and misunderstood term. Hormones as well. Hopefully you are still open to other ideas or to seeing further pieces of the puzzle. I know scientists can get VERY attached to their personal theories and defend them to the grave, on occasion.
But I have to wonder, are you familiar with the work of Broda Barnes? Do you check body temperature of your subjects?
Also, are you familiar with Matt Stone? He suggests that adequate salt intake is required for proper thyroid health, and that you should “eat for heat” which means that you eat enough salt, starch, sugar, and saturated fat to keep your body temps at a proper level. He also stresses the importance of good sleep. Further, he suggests that excessive fluid intake (and excessive intake of veggies and fruits that are mostly water) can cause thyroid and other hormonal issues, because they cause us to lower mineral concentrations in our bodies. He believes that clear urine is a bad sign (by clear, he means your urine has no yellow color or tint to it).
I’m not here to argue who is right, just checking to see if you are familiar with this information and get your take on it, if you are. If you aren’t, then I look forward to seeing how this potentially integrates into your system and thought processes.
Do any of the folks you work with report cold hands and feet? How are their libidos? Do they have any issues with dry skin?
By the way, in case anyone is wondering, that Avatar is not me. It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger from way back when. Long before his aspirations of being the governator…
well, I was fooled – LOL
Ray
Hi Cody,
If i am losing weight by Rays method and plan to continue to lose more by his methods then surely i am accountable to myself to have a medical before and after to check what is happening to me at a blood level. Any and every diet plans suggests you see the doc before starting a change in your life plan.
I have only had 2 (adult age) blood tests approx.3 years ago for a medical issue due to a laceration and they were checking for blood markers for inflammation. My blood health was pin point very good for everything else.
Now from a evolution stand point when and how did people check temperature, and hormonal issues? They ate non-poisonous food (any source) to satisfy hunger and drunk to satisfy thirst.
What it would seem Ray is doing is have people return to this way or as close as possible/practical in today society/culture of over eating and confusing nutritional ideals.
So if there are any issues with health for any reason then people go to a medical center and get checked accordingly but why would you do that if there is ‘nothing’ wrong? It would be unhealthy to be a hypochondriac and very, very costly. Although it will satisfy some to suggest they are over weight due to health problems.
What is really happening is that people are going to the medical centers 10-100’s lbs overweight and are given pills and potions to keep them ‘feeling’ healthy and their bodies working when in fact they are seriously ill and on the brink of dying.
This method seems to BASELINE all of the problems associated with today’s food culture. My own experience would suggest a resting pulse of 50bpm, a resting blood pressure of 90/60 (was 120/70 – probably a reduction in salt) and a much improved psoriasis condition on my legs (apparently from a strep throat infection late last year).
If you are warm then cool down, if you are cold then warm up. The management of your body temperature is highly regulated so a few degrees up or down and you will definitely need the emergency room!!!
“Now from a evolution stand point when and how did people check temperature, and hormonal issues? They ate non-poisonous food (any source) to satisfy hunger and drunk to satisfy thirst.”
Have you seen the New York Times article on rethinking 98.6?
Low body temperatures are a HUGE problem in the US.
I was hoping for well thought out answers and not knee-jerk, strawman reactions.
If you have cold hands and feet, low sexual function, and dry, scaly skin, then the food you are eating and your lifestyle are problematic.
You don’t need to take temperatures to know this. However, they are a good way the average person can validate whether or not lifestyle changes are impacting your hormones in a positive way.
“(was 120/70 – probably a reduction in salt)”
Seriously? Look at the research on salt and get back to me. I don’t think you know what the heck you are talking about.
Well, I could have gone into a lot of detail, but I didn’t.
I don’t agree that low body temperatures are a huge problem in the U.S. and I have been studying, full time, thermoregulation for the last 4 years. THe idea that chronic over feeding in attempt to create dietary induced thermogenesis and raise body temperature for health, is flawed. THere’s not much difference than throw your body into metabolic syndrome and then treat the result with insulin.
Create screenings, offer prescriptions that change symptoms [repeat]. It’s prevalent and it is big business.
In most places people do that to confuse, obfuscate and sound smart. I don’t care to do this. I am trying to unravel 200 years of backslide.
All of my biomarkers came in line when I began to eat correctly. I am doing some extreme things as well, just to understand the boundaries. Every person I have worked with has the same results. I regularly communicate with some of the top endocrinologist, biologist, chemists and anthropologist and collaborate with some on peer reviewed work.
I don’t want to debate it other than you gave me some information and I considered it, but it’s not persuasive and/or I have heard the arguments before and they don’t hold. That being said, I offered an example (there are many) where a commenter gave me things that changed my world view. Being wrong is called learning. People don’t need to know what “hormones levels are” to be healthy. That is a technique to create patients out of otherwise healthy people. My good friend, Gilbert Welch, wrote a book on it that you can find here: Overdiagnosed.
He also had a fantastic article in NEJM Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence and in particular read the follow up correspondence where each were favorable with the exception of the one from…Society of Breast Imaging and American College of Radiology Commission on Breast Imaging.
Surprised?
The fact is that this is the most studied screening in the history of medicine and the TRUE benefits (assessed from well controlled data sets of 600,000 women) is .4 women saved per 1000 screened. that means 2500 women need to be screened to save just one life. Now, that seems like a no brainer if ANYONE is saved it’s good, right?
Well, no. Because treatment involves side effects and harm. Of the 2499 that were screened and didn’t need treatment between 5-15 women are treated for breast cancer that would have never caused and issue or death. That means breasts removed, chemo…etc… What is worse is that 1000 woman will get false positives and have severe psychological stress – worrying about something that’s never going to happen to them.
I think similar things are happening across the board and the focus is on selling treatment and managing disease. People are worried about “hormones.” I hear it on the radio – your hormones are out of balance and you can’t lose weight? well, maybe its the other way around? Metabolism is up there too with 10 guaranteed metabolism boosting secrets.
So, please don’t rush to judge how serious a good, vegetable rich diet is. How much of the other is necessary? I don’t know, but supplements aren’t designed for plant based eaters, there aren’t enough of them to make a difference in sales. Nutrient poor diets of refined energy sources are the issue and there are many more unhealthy ways to eat than healthy. Weight just happens to be the first indicator.
I have spent days worth of my life in a calibrated, FDA-approved, medical research grade calorimeter and looked at my metabolic response to food. My daughter has more experience (> 30 hours) than many experts in blogosphere – even one of my endocrinologist colleagues was surprised by her science fair results. I work with the manufacturer of this instrument (they also make the Bod Pod) and hear what is going on around the world with their equipment. They tell me no one is taking the time to do what I am doing. This isn’t arrogance, but I.m saying that there are a lot of multi syllable, big word half truths and myths – don’t believe them.
My motivation? look at all of the products I have now. hmmm? I am going to add some and I have been working directly with select clients as time permits, but I largely funded my own research with a small contribution from readers.
In time, there is going to be a large shift in food. I believe energy dense will lose.
Ray
Scientists aren’t the ones that get attached, as much as promoters. For a scientist, we can always says. oops, we were wrong – case in point, my opinion on meal frequency.
Time of day does not really matter. Eating is not an evolutionary emergency. It is an industrial revolution challenge: how do we feed this many people and get them back to work. Once a day is plenty, if you eat the correct foods. Twice is ok and the more frequent after that, you better damn-well be eating absolutely perfect. Take the calorie dense sugar, oil, fats, meats, etc…out of you diet and it really doesn’t matter how much you eat.
We don’t need to eat saturated fat: we make it, just like other animals and some plants. Adipose is a storage system and we don’t have to consume it outside of a few EFA (ALA, EPA, and DHA). The problem with animal sourced versions is they come in packages of (mostly) omega-6.
The body temperature in normal humans exists in a range. Thermoregulation is tightly controlled and with the exception of fever, we don’t impact it much. There was for some time a “rate of living” hypothesis that has been disproven within the longevity field. It was a first attempt to explain ideas of longevity and things like body temperature, which differ for homeotherms like humans and poikilotherms like tortoise) were easy targets. Measuring temperature is an easy and accurate thing to do. This is why our knowledge of food and calorie predates modern nutrition by over 130 years.
“salt” is a general word like “minerals.” I assume you mean sodium? Magnesium? Calcium? or other cation (positively charged portion of the “salt”)? I think again, food manages it and I hope everyone can just take a moment to dig a little deeper.
Think about it, wars were waged over salt in the middle ages…why? because it made food TASTE good. It’s been taxed, profits used to build castles. It’s among the first wealth-building “supplements.”
I have said this before, sugar, fat, and salt. You will see these are the three addictive hits and these are the things juggle. Chasing two of the three, cause you to consume too much energy because of the energy density of the refined product and the third just encourages you to eat more of whatever you put it on.
Cold hands and feet are in two forms. I don’t know all the answers, but its related to poor circulation. In many peoples case it’s a head game. I am sitting in a room that is 61F right now and my hands and feet are cold. It takes me only a few minutes of “thought” and I can warm them up. When I do, my metabolism changes. That’s what I know at this point, but something happens. As well, there are those that suffer from Raynold’s and that has forms from irritation to severe. I would say most people are just complaining, some fall into this, but we are a society that wants to be “diagnosed,” because somehow it just makes it feel better. In some areas, like say, genital warts, it’s not celebrated. Cancer patients aren’t happy, unless they beat it. They are a hero for putting up with it…and so it goes.
I am not making light of illness, just our inability to change basic lifestyle issues and the focus on diagnosis, pills, powders and procedures. In MOST cases, mild cold stress alleviates cold hand/feet. In rare cases it makes it worse. I think contrast (hot/cold) is more useful than cold soaks.
Libido and blood flow (men) increases as you eat a more healthful diet. Remember, after exiting the heart, the aorta splits at the penis. Low blood flow (erections are dilation not constriction) is the first sign of pending trouble. It’s not coincidence that cialis was a medicine designed to treat high blood pressure (i.e. dilate clogged arteries to lower BP). Side effect was more valuable than the intended use. Anyone taking it should just understand that you have the first symptom of likely cardiac issues. Personally, I’d try a nutrition approach first. Eliminate the Calorie Rich And Processed (C.R.A.P.) food.
Dry skin hasn’t been a problem, in fact, no one has every commented on my skin before 2009. It just never happened. Suddenly people said things. I can get the same dry skin as anyone – wind burn or in the dry desert for a visit, but day to day it is simply not a problem. Green vegetables, fruit, beans, starchy vegetables, nuts, seeds, avocados are all foods that support great skin and are loaded with antioxidant and phytochemicals. Skin repairs and builds better when these are all present. In addition, carotenoids also produce healthy, vibrant looking skin.
I think I hit them all?
Ray
You did, and thoroughly.
But I keep coming back to several people I know who all eat as much of whatever they want, don’t exercise, and stay slim.
I know you’ve said before they can’t possibly be eating as much of whatever they want, but they do. I’ve seen it for myself. My younger brother is this way. He used to eat an entire box of cereal at one sitting. And it was the sugary stuff full of dyes. He would drink the sugary sludge out of his bowl afterwards. Skinny as a rail.
And I hate the answer “they won the genetic lottery”. It’s a cop out. I want to hear the scientific explanation as to why their bodies are working differently.
I’m really upping my potato intake, and am even just grabbing a boiled potato with some salt sprinkled on it for a snack (skin and all).
I do have the cold hands and feet, often. When I do, my urine is clear. Very strong correlation. There were times when I was on a strict diet (1000 calorie PSMF), that I felt freezing cold in ambient temps of over 80 degrees. And this was also with cold showers daily and using an ice vest for an hour per day. Maybe it was too much protein? Maybe an all potato diet of 1000 calories per day would work better?
I’ve since taken custody of my emotionally challenged 12 year old daughter, and my stress levels have gone through the roof. To the point where I lost all drive and could hardly get out of bed.
I find a lot of truth in this thyroid stuff. It certainly has matched my personal experiences.
I’m currently eating as much whole food as I can without depriving myself of anything I crave. Obviously, it caused quite a bit of weight gain.
I’m also focusing on getting back to sleeping well and at least 8 hours per night.
I’m getting a handle on my stress, too.
I appreciate everything you wrote above Ray, but my personal experience seems to agree with the Matt Stones of this world. Namely, that lowering calories, increasing stress, and exercising cause the thyroid to slow down significantly. Cold hands and feet, low libido, dry, scaly skin.
And then there is much science that shows that 95% of people who lose weight, gain it all back, and then some.
I know you’ve written that people re-learn to listen to their bodies and their appetites get fixed automatically.
How many people have been on your plan, and kept the weight off for 5+ years? I don’t think any so far, because I understand that you’ve only been doing this for a little while. But those results will tell us for certain whether your are correct or not.
Now, I’m still open to everything you are talking about. I’m open to try your methods and see for myself how they work.
It may be that including carbs in a lower calorie diet prevents the thyroid issues I experienced on an all protein diet. I’m working on keeping an open mind.
Sorry if this was rambling, my melatonin and valerian is kicking in. 🙂
Cody
Ill try to respond more thoroughly later. In fact there are a few upcoming posts that deal with this.
What I’m pretty confident about is you’re simply address a symptom with any attempt at over nutrition. I can jack my metabolic rate up with food, but that doesn’t change much. You never burn more than you eat – the body simply burns some, but not all, of the excess.
Metabolic rate isn’t the main problem and thyroid issue is related to over nutrition. It similar to the idea that T2DM is a liver dysfunction or an insulin deficiency. Intramyocellular lipid – too much energy in the cell – caused the issue and the intervention is a self licking ice cream cone. More insulin fixes it for a while until eventually it causes complete pancreatic shut down and now you’ve made yourself a patient.
I don’t think you’ll solve your problem with caloric excess. If you do temporarily, there’s another hurdle right around the corner. All longevity science points to caloric restriction. Many of the person to person differences point to microbiome issues, not general genetic dysfunction.
Everyone goes for instant feel good. Health doesn’t happen that way. That’s how we’ve ended in a diagnose and manage disease (symptom) model. I think you can treat your situation with proper nutrition and less, not more calories. That being said, from what you’ve said here I’m sure you’ll feel good for a while, but I suspect the dysfunction will move elsewhere in time.
My thoughts for now.
Your daughter deserves that time. That’s a big deal and I know how difficult that can be at times. When I rebooted my life in 2008, I had three goals: be healthy, be a great dad, and figure out my next income/career – in that order. That’s the path I’m on and I’m so glad I have the health part behind me. Each day I think all parents struggle with being the best they can.
Ray
Perfect timing… i was needing something new to think about! thanks 🙂
When you say reduce the eating window, (and I love knowing that hunger is not an emergency) is there a better time of day to eat? Say between 12 pm and 5 pm? (Assuming there is hunger)
Here’s what I have been taught about hormones (please correct me if I have been taught wrong) melatonin is released only when insulin is not being released.. (Or it has cleared from your bloodstream, not sure of the right way to phrase it) Which is about 4 hours after eating.. And then only when there is darkness.. Or at least no light brighter than a campfire. So finishing the last meal by 5 pm and turning off the TV/computer etc by 8 allows the body to produce the maximum amount of melatonin to make sure you get the most restful sleep possible. (Yes, I’m a nana and I get up at stupid o clock for work)
I also remember something about fat burning happening during high quality sleep – especially if you’re trying to warm up because the window is open and you’re wearing gloves and socks but no blankets ;P but I am not sure if I am mixing my sciences together and getting confused.. Have I got this wrong as well?
I’d love to see more of your sleep graphs, and compare them with cognitive function tests.. Except I suspect waking up to tell your phone when you’re awake might cause you some poor quality sleep and increase the time between blogs 😉
Hi Ashryn,
I get very sleepy with a belly full of food (plenty of insulin flying around), in the day (not darkness) and when cool (not warm).
Why is that?
Hi Wayne.. Dunno.. Maybe because melatonin isn’t the only thing that makes you sleepy?
I don’t like talking molecular biology all the time, but let’s try this.
Here is how it works: tryptophan (during day cycle – not ONLY light) is converted to serotonin. That is your life is good hormone and when people suffer from SAD in the winter, it’s often treated with bright light. One can also induce it with mild cold stress.
At night, your circadian biology takes that same serotonin and it becomes melatonin. The role of melatonin is to cause the body to dump heat through the extremities and that in turn allows the brain to drop in temperature so you can fall asleep. You can’t sleep restful when you are too warm. That is why hospitals are cool. During long cold, dark winter nights your body can produce the melatonin to keep asleep and conserve energy.
I the morning, the circadian clock kicks back in and instead of sleepy, you feel refreshed. Many people don’t get quality sleep. If this schedule works for you, it is fine. My body does fine by just turning down the lights in the room. Remember to all those that put lots of emphasis on dark – it is A factor, not THE factor. Just take a flight from wherever you live about 10 time zones away and you will quickly learn that it’s easy to stare at the ceiling in the dark for hours until your biology catches up.
On the occasion when I am restless and it is late, I take a contrast shower. That induces mild cold stress, serotonin is produced, I am in night phase and presto – sleep in inevitable within 10 minutes. Popping melatonin also works.
If you want to test, buy a Zeo. It really gives you great insight and it’s affordable. It’s good enough to see trends and changes.
Ray
Thanks for this concise explanation.. I had forgotten about the role of tryptophan/serotonin. AND I didn’t realise melatonin’s function was to keep you cool during sleep, I thought that was just a side effect. Interesting. The cool is still my favourite thing about your work. I am finding it links to everything. A small part of me (just the tiny masochistic part) is hoping for a restless night so I can test the contrast shower thing for myself…
Ashryn, there are some great apps for smart phones that measure sleep quality based on how much you move in the night.
I doubt they are as accurate as a real sleep study, but they may be accurate enough to get an idea about what is going on. I found one that is supposed to wake you up at the most optimal time (you set a target, and it can wake you up to 30 minutes before that target).
Smart phones are really getting to the point where they can drive and record n=1 tests. I use one on my Nexus 4 (android) to measure my HRV, which is supposed to be an accurate gauge of stress levels.
By the way Ray, in the argument of PC vs Mac (now they are both PCs which is funny as hell), the Answer is obviously Linux!
YES…. Unix rocks and mac is just an example that unix can be made user friendly. Long live the terminal session – that is what I say.
I have used a lot of the apps (including the Jawbone) and compared to the Zeo. I would just start with the Zeo (personal opinion).
Ray
Zeo is out of business. Unless someone picks them up. I love my Zeo as a tool.
This guy has some helpful tips utilizing his zeo (vit d timing, melatonin, etc) as well as how to use the zeo independent of their data gathering website.
http://www.gwern.net/Zeo
Ray
Thanks for posting on the melatonin example. Make sense. I have tried it and it has worked for me along with the other suggestions you have given in the past. I am tired of all these people trying to sell me stuff to support my leptin levels or to increase this or that! I fell if if eat its variety and eat what comes out of the ground I can I will be just fine. I exercise for conditioning and because I like it. My heart gets a good workout and that is important to me. I tell those who work out with me that
I don’t do it for weight loss. I don’t want to work that hard and the returns are poor as you suggested.
I have not found that eating this way is problematic and it has freed me since I don’t think about calories. Ever!! Have not done so in about 2 years! I too fast for about 16 hours a day. It’s pretty easy and I have been more productive at work as well.
How have you managed to get your family on board?
Neal
Dear Ray,
Thank you so much for the huge investment in time that you have made and are making and sharing it with us all. It sure helps my n=1 experiments.
From your blog I have just started testing how I react to hot cold hot showers . I can sense the brain saying “ careful boy, protect yourself”. I also put myself down for a prototype metabolic testing unit – http://breezing.co/ I want to see if I can see the effects of a 3 minute anaerobic exercise as per Doug McGuff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU&feature=youtu.be The objective here is to find a lazy way to increase mitochondria and their effectiveness.
On of the best motivators is to get old(!) but believe that it is possible to hang onto and claw back some wonderful health that young bucks take for granted!
Gee, am I grateful for having the internet around to find people like you and my experience of science and engineering in Australia at a time that encouraged curiosity and collegiateness to appreciate your work.
all the best
john
aust
Wow that breezing looks awesome. Any idea of when its out? Does beat the FDA grade one but at least it’s something! We can start joining in on your experiments Ray! :-p
sorry that’s doesn’t beat the FDA one, stupid iPad.
“As for weight loss, I feel it’s looking pretty solid that exercise significantly slows progress. Your results are far more typical than i would have ever believed Going in. ”
Hi Ray
Would you include swimming as part of the umbrella of exercise? I was about to start a regimen this week – but soley for the purpose of slight cold exposure while not eating that much afterwards
Yes. Swim.
But not high intensity. Shoot for 60-75F and keep it at a relaxed pace. After you exit, don’t jump in the sauna or hot shower. Use the fact that you’re accustomed to the cool and shower accordingly.
And of course no calorie dense food for at least 4 hours afterwards. Stick to greens, etc…
Ray
Hi Ray
Thank you for your response – I am not sure how our local pools are heated. there must be a usual ‘American average’, which I thought was higher – would it still be ok
either way, I will:
1. do it leisurely – slow laps I take it
2. not take hot shower afterwards
3. no calorically dense food afterwards
Perfect plan.
I was on national ANSI residential/pool spa standard writing committees for about 9 years and its typically as follows:
80-81F competitive
84F general population
86F infant classes.
A few degrees makes a big difference in potential hypothermia. If you’re lucky, someone on the committee will be worried about utility bill and cheats it down a bit.
While you are thinking about it, make sure the facility has come in compliance with the Pool and Spa Safety Act. It’s something I put of lot of personal time into and it’s a way to make sure the drains are safe.
Here’s some work I did for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission if you want to save link and send it to the operator of that facility:
http://poolsafely.gov/pool-safely-videos/guidance-compliance-1/
Ray
Great post Ray. In Batman they never mentioned that Bane was using a calorimeter, but it makes sense, he was ripped and only wore one layer in the winter.
Actually, my calorimeter is in the last James Bond movie…he’s wearing the mask and training.
Ray
The BBC has made a Documentary called “The Truth About Food” http://goo.gl/kQchA I watched it a couple of years ago and it was the thing I needed to start loosing weight and keeping it off, and it is quite satisfying to come here and see that Ray pretty much confirms what I learned back then. Some of the shows are available on youtube, but might be country restricted, but the one “How to be Slim” seems to be available for all here http://goo.gl/870A2 It also has some interesting thoughts on dairy calcium that seems to be valid, can’t remember seeing anything about that here so it might be something to look at, and maybe speed up the fat loss a bit more.
I do agree with your statement that “You can’t out-exercise your mouth.” and I know its true because I personally lost 28kg without doing any exercise whatsoever, but I have been wondering about one thing: From what I understand then the body fat is most likely to get burned if you do not exercise, and if you exercise you will burn the glycogen stored in the muscles and liver, but that spend glycogen has to be replaced again, so I figure that when I am resting something has to be done to fill those depots again, and why isn’t that the body fat?
Brilliant and spot on! At least the metabolism portion – haven’t watched food and that’s where some common mistakes are made, even from seasoned endocrinologists. There’s still a lot of myth circulating through medical school – for the 30% or so US medical schools that actually require nutrition practicum (many times only 18 hrs) for physicians.
Metabolism isn’t the problem. That doesn’t mean you can’t do things that raise it, but exercise as you have correctly stated burns the wrong kind of fuel.
So the big filter on most of the sites you read is that if people start claiming “boost your metabolism foods” and even exercise – beware. They are likely just repeating the same thing everyone repeats. Like BMI (a completely useless number that even I have to watch out for) there are many main stream and alternative people alike that generalize to the point of non-information.
I had to learn the hard way and as you’ll see the next time, cold stress is a different beast altogether.
To answer to your other question, we don’t synthesize glycogen from fat; we simply use the fat directly in the mitochondria through one of the energetic pathways (see posts on fat) beta oxidation.
Everyone note. I will get to some other points, but I’m not interested in going down the ketogenic rabbit hole. If you want to read about it or talk about it, type it into google and go hang out there. Not being rude, but that’s a place Brian W and I will agree and I don’t want to debate it here. I have very sound proof that its completely unnecessary.
That being said, I understand how it works and also what happens both thermodynamically and metabolically speaking. After looking at it, especially with calorimetry, I’m convinced its not necessary and I’ve identified a a very specific reason why, which is currently under some detailed academic investigation. You’ll hear about it first, but I can deliver faster results and have no problem controlling blood sugar even in people that were formally T2DM without going into that mode. Have you really solved the glucose problem if you’ve just removed the antagonist?
Great to see this and congratulations. Once you take away the hormonal and metabolic excuses, you’re left with what you eat. Reality sucks sometimes, but it sure is a faster way to a solution than empathetic excuses.
Ray
Done some rereading and looked up a few things cause biology is way over my head but it is kind of fascinating. If I understand the mechanics correctly then the caloric deficit will deny the mitochondria to make energy from the food we eat, and therefore it will have to convert the body fat in storage to maintain its functions, or did I get that wrong?
After reading about the mitochondria functions I realized that it is responsible for a whole lot of energy conversion to many bodily functions, and I was wondering if it is also involved in maintaining the body heat?, my logic tells me it would be somehow, cause that would explain why cold stress will boost fat burn when you are on a caloric deficit diet.
Your biology is correct.
The energy must come from somewhere. As I have stated before (and was shown in the label water experiment in parts 1 & 2 of the videos you recommended), your skinny friend eats less than you. There are things that can be done to get better overall 24 hours results. I am not saying that one’s metabolism can’t be raised – it’s actually easy to do. What I am saying is the vast majority of activity that does this 1) burns the wrong food and 2) drives appetite. So one must first focus on the input.
The mitochondria are your cells power plants. A power plant – interesting term, but after all photosynthesis drives all life. Animals appropriate nutrients and energy, they do not create them. The mitochondria are where the energy (ATP) is created for all of the activity. This is an ~20% efficient activity, but 80% is waste heat.
Wait, not warm enough? Your mitochondria have a plan. They are upregulated by UCP-1α protein and instead of making ATP, they just make heat with the remaining 20%. This is the most efficient way for your body to stay warm. While glucose can and is used for this process (we study it often with labeled glucose), fat is far more energy dense. This is why the mitochondrion-rich Brown Adipose Tissue (See BATgirl 1 & BATgirl 2) are the focus of all the research effort. You might want to also review A New Eye on BAT.
Why is it that I don’t care much about BAT? Because whether you have it or not isn’t that relevant. Metabolism isn’t the issue and raising the metabolism with “BATpills” is simply going to move the line “over there” and you’ll eat your way over that one too. That being said, there are great things to be learned by the research and as we will see in Part 3, it turns out that even if you are missing in the “BATty” department, you are still a-flush with mitochondria that can be harnessed for fat burning activity.
Ray
exercise + recovery + obesity != exercise + recovery + fit
Ray, I’d love to see a hormone post on this topic as well. I’d recently come to the same conclusions after painful self-experimentation with abusive exercise. Know how much weight I lost working out 5 days a week for 2 hours a day? Yep, you do. I gained nearly 15 pounds.
I exercise, I’m starved, I eat. And, as you have well cited, I lost no weight because I didn’t dramatically increase my caloric need, just my mouth hunger (and thus my caloric intake).
But., there’s another very important factor. Fat people aren’t usually hormonally healthy because they are fat. If you look at testosterone levels, recovery times, vascular health, etc. in obese people you’ll see they simply aren’t well equipped to recover from exercise. So, getting on a rigid exercise program, you are now obese, stressed, tired, hungry, and chronically injured. That’s definitely not a cocktail for success.
Jason
I can get to that in time, but let’s take a different route for the moment. I could argue that we screen, treat symptoms, and obfuscate underlying issues all too often. When you want to know what time it is, it’s not always wise to start with checking the accuracy of the crystal. Rather you look at your watch and when it says high noon and it’s dark, well, either you’re at one of the poles, or something is amiss.
Here is what I think everyone should do: look in the mirror. Now, we aren’t ascribing “beauty” and other societal values, but are you overweight? Just imagine what you looked like graduating from High school? Now this works if you are over 30. For my kids generation, they are already obese – a different problem altogether, so let’s come back to that. If you EVERY had a healthy weight without a lot of extra fat hanging around, what did you see? Let’s also not go to extreme aesthetic body sculpting, not against it, but not the point I am making.
If you are overweight, and you are as we have met in person, then I think the first thing to get in control of is the input problem. In doing so, how do we get sufficient (didn’t say excess) nutrients and minimum calories? Now, once we do that for a while all of the regulatory systems in the body eventually catch up.
Solving the problem with quick fixes (chasing symptoms) often creates great short term corrections, but long term stability is not as forgiving.
Ray
Wow – what a fantastic series of posts overall! I’ve been following them for a while now and have been impressed with Ray’s relentless and avid curiosity – not only about the incredible complexity of the human body and its functions, but about reconsidering deeply entrenched “truths” about diet/health (i.e. calories/protein/metabolism, etc.).
In a milieu where food is a commodity for entertainment, politics, diversion, and massive profit, it’s subversive to suggest that eating real (unprocessed), simple, and repetitive meals can result in seismic shifts in health. This isn’t really news. 🙂
Yet it’s also something that most people tend to resist; it’s by no means complicated, and yet the very starkness of the premise is what renders the concept so intimidating. I suspect it’s because it gives people so little room for excuses, and forces them to be accountable for their own choices. Barring congenital conditions or other extenuating circumstances, people are in mediocre health/shape precisely because of what they eat (or don’t eat).
Now that we have the scientific sophistication to measure or approach “facts” in a novel manner, it opens up another dimension entirely when it comes to how the body functions. I think that’s fantastic, and for a non-scientific but inquisitive reader like me, it’s immensely satisfying to benefit through these articles. Thanks for all your hard work, Ray; it’s much appreciated!
Alex: I know that in comments to previous posts you seemed conflicted about which approach to take to your food (meat, all potato, a mix, etc.). It sounds like you’ve hit the sweet spot that has garnered excellent results for you. What did you eventually do?
Cheers,
Grace
I forgot about protein and carbs and stopped exercising.
Thx, Alex. After reading Ray’s articles, I’ve got my head wrapped around the notion of not thinking about real food as macronutrients. I agree that exercise is NOT worth the focus if you want to lose weight/fat; being heavy and doing intense exercise is also very tough on joints/soft tissue.
It seems we’re back to ‘calories matter’ (Atkins/paleo/low carb approaches notwithstanding) when it comes to losing weight, and that you’ve found a way that works for you to significantly limit calories without constant cravings/hunger.
Eating high-satiety foods (tubers and beans) and low-fat (veg, fruit) is the most efficient way of restricting calories for me when I need to. I’m barely 5′ tall and it’s RIDICULOUSLY easy for me to exceed my caloric needs eating calorie-dense foods like oils, meat, cheese, sweets, junk food.
I’m sure you could eat chips once a day and lose weight (the guy who followed the Twinkie Diet lost weight too), but I suspect one would not be particularly satiated or fulfill the need for healthy calories!
The theory why people are calling this a “diet hack” isn’t because of calories. That would just be normal dieting. The reason why potatoes are the chosen food is because they’re basically zero fat and come with high quality protein, something very rare in a vegetarian protein source, and a lot of nutrients. The theory is because your body needs fat to manufacture insulin, if you are eating ZERO fat, it has to pull fat out of storage to manufacture insulin.Because white potatoes are so highly insulogenic and create such a massive, high GI response, it needs A LOT of insulin – which requires a significant portion of fat. Since you aren’t eating fat along with it, it is forced to go to adipose tissue as a source – and needs quite a bit – to make all that insulin.
So when you start combining potatoes with outside sources of protein and fiber – like egg whites, fish or vegetables – you are destroying the”hack.” You are greatly reducing the insulin spike you’re supposed to get, which lessens the immediate fat need from your fat cells to manufacture insulin. The whole point is because potatoes are so massively insulinogenic. If you add stuff, it doesn’t work. It has to be all potatoes.
You could surely do it with white rice too, but it’s not recommended because there’s virtually no protein (certainly no high quality protein) and far less nutrients. Potatoes were chosen because of the very high quality protein, the nutrient density, the high glycemix index and the fact that someone can survive a very long time eating simply potatoes – it is nearly a complete food – you will become ill much faster eating just white rice than eating just white potatoe.
Hi Ray – first post and have been searching for the “stupid simple” reason this works so well.
Could this be it? {this came by way of the thread on MDA and is a quote from Hyperlipid.}
Kudos for all the work you are doing!!
Chris
Thanks Chris!
There are some good points here and obviously, low fat is a big plus using this route. It’s more than a hack, but I will get to that in the future after we are finish with our results. Let’s talk about some of the other points here, so we can begin sifting through the pile of macronutrient-speak that is generally accepted to be true (but in fact not).
Potatoes do score high on a the amino acid (109 – 100 being a perfect score), but rice at 75 is not far behind 90% lean ground beef at only 79.
The truth is that “protein” is a complete red herring in nutrition. It’s not difficult to get (unless you are starving). Amino acids are conserved when ingested in limited quantities (i.e. we recycle instead of burning). It is the building block of life and the only source of “indispensable” amino acids (phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, isoleucine, methionine, leucine, lysine, and histidine) are from…plants. Mammals don’t make them and they all have to ingest them. Plants do through nitrogen fixation (they can’t eat). Eat the plants or eat the animals that ate the plants. Animals appropriate, they don’t create these nutrients or even B-vitamins also thrown out as nutritional red herrings.
Can you get them from meat? absolutely, but they come packaged with lots of calories and there IS an upper limit to protein ingestion, despite no UL being defined. In fact there is a lot of research published on how obsessed with are with “protein” consumption and one needs to keep in mind that amino acids are one of the earliest nutrients identified.
I chose potatoes..and this migrated to MDA (Tim?), precisely because they were 1) high glycemic and 2) considered “bad carbs” and the fact that both of these nutritional notions don’t paint a proper picture. The truth is that our body is very adaptive at pulling out nutrients it needs, overfeeding doesn’t make it any better (in some sense it is worse), and managing “protein, carbs and fat” leads to chronic over nutrition. That they are low fat absolutely is key. One doesn’t need to ingest fat when trying to lose weight – you have plenty to digest. EFAs come from normal food and nutrition and are easily obtained. It can be done, but not using this method.
I don’t believe entire insulin-reasoning is correct and there are many ways to make this work effectively with foods that might seem paradoxical using this line of reasoning. Insulin spikes are not necessary.
Good stuff and thanks for posting. Thanks for putting it out there.
Ray
Ray,
Is there a place on your blog where you have general plan one can follow?
Swimming in a cold pool seems to be the most practical method for me….I have tried cold showers and they suck…baths are worse. How long do you recommend the pool swims?
As for working out….what about the benefits of endorphin releases? That should sway one toward pro-workout instead of agnosticism.
– Chris
No…but I am working on it.
As you can tell from even these comments here, people are all over the place on food. Unfortunately we have to address it, because thermodynamically speaking, it is the largest variable. That being said, people (even me in the past) get really blinded by food choices. It’s become much more that health…it defines values for some.
For that reason, I decided to create an entirely new site. I’m working with a developer to put the tools in place. I still plan to blog here and probably even increase the frequency, but I want to move the prescriptive plan approach off Thermogenex. That way, people won’t feel the need to either promote or defend diet schemes. I don’t think people are as independent and variable as we proclaim. Food works almost universal, with the exception of the statistically rare allergy. What IS highly variable are goals and values. That is what drives someone more, whether they can’t stand the thought of eating meat or believe they can’t live without it.
I don’t want to fight those wars here, actually, or anywhere. I want to empower people to make changes. It is NOT anything goes. Calories do count. So I created a site where I can discuss eating and also the science behind it. I have a lot of work into this now over the last 4 years and the last 3 have been particularly fruitful.
As SOON as it is ready, I promise to announce it. It always takes longer than we think.
As for cold showers…I don’t like them either or extremely cold soaks. Contrast works easiest: 10-20-10x.
Ray
For the uninitiated, I have a question regarding the contrast thermal loading. What does “10-20-10x” mean? My guess would be 10 seconds warm, 20 seconds cold, 10 times. But I’m not sure. Also, that doesn’t tell me the range in temperature.
oops! yes. You got it.
Ray
Ray,
I think I am finally getting it, but I still am confused by the success of the Atkins/Slow Carb/Paleo diets that are full of fat and animal tissue and still cause massive weight loss.
Thanks Michael
For all the reasons listed everywhere. It doesn’t matter how you restrict the calories, they are restricted. How much can one really eat this way? As well, massive weight loss is really an over-statement. What they can do is satiate and control. I have personally seen many examples of people that failed miserably, or got to the final 15-20 and completely stalled. It works, but just because it does, doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways that work even better. I want to ferret those out and I am open to test and try a range of material we call food.
ThatJust because we can doesn’t mean we should – people don’t consider this as often as they should.
I don’t include sugar, oil, or highly refined grains in my definition of “food.” I distinguish between “eating for entertainment” and eating for health and nutrition. They aren’t mutually exclusive and acquired appetite for food can be altered – just look at the range of delicacies world-wide. We adapt. We can do both, but if you eat primarily for entertainment – vegan or paleo alike – you will not achieve optimum health, despite achieving “aesthetically thin” status.
That is why the approach I am taking and with the nutritional analysis is from a thermodynamic perspective (diet agnostic). While I have a preferred method of eating for my own health (have three amazing kids and a family-tree full of heart attacks, bypasses, and open heart surgeries), I can help people “lose weight” any number of ways. I think biomarkers count, to a point, and so it’s wise to look at the overall correlations and try to manage to a certain level with diet. The other extreme, hormone-obessisve, is probably not a good way to use these biomarkers, because simply managing single numbers does’t work well. ANY weight loss program improves for some time things like blood sugar, cholesterol and triglycerides. Some are better than others, but understand that I lost my weight and after I reached my nearly idea level, my issues all came back.
It was that investigation – how do I maintain my weight, eat what I want, and keep these levels in good order that I decided to start testing various modes of eating. I couldn’t do it with that approach. I have since learned that nearly every paper on microbiome is zeroing in on the same problem. Take a look at these in order:
http://youtu.be/p_uy4kfQDkA
http://youtu.be/ttCUWNU9wp0
http://youtu.be/9Pnan0ETlVE
and then take a look at what just published this week in Nature Medicine: Intestinal microbiota metabolism of L-carnitine, a nutrient in red meat, promotes atherosclerosis
So it may be that while everyone is off debating 22 and 7 day studies (and getting it wrong), grass vs corn fed, or trying to explore the food causality of cholesterol (I recently sat through a HORRENDOUS presentation with a guy at Tchol at 300!), I think we have a huge amount of rethinking and hence why this entire line of reasoning of microbiome-induced illness is so important. Until I can control those things, I am happy to manage my levels and really ENJOY the food I eat.
It isn’t ideology for me, but I have never been one that went along with the group, just because.
I will have some more specifics later, but hopefully this at least gives you a different vantage point for your own self-investigation.
Ray
Question: Where do fruits and their fructose fit into all of this? Are they the same as vegetables or should they be limited?
Fructose is important, but fruits are not fruit juice. The issue of fructose…the only issue with fructose…is when one eats it and is glycogen replete and chronically over nourished (BCAA, Trans fats, and alcohol included). Fructose can only be metabolized by the liver and it does in fact drive desires to eat.
Is it the poison we make it out to be? Not when it comes in food. Fructose is “low glycemic” (for people that track that stuff) and the issue we have with it is not the molecule itself, it is our obsessive processing and concentrating it as an energy/flavor enhancer from otherwise naturally occurring, proper food-sources of energy. Everyone LOATHES high fructose corn syrup – just sounds evil, but what about high fructose agave syrup (oh, wait, we just say organic agave)? These, not unlike high fructose honey, are all just ways to “make food taste good.”
It is energy without the food package – concentrated energy. By the same reasoning, adults don’t need to eat “babyhood.” The obsession with taking spinach (okay, but not a stellar green) and combining it with a huge about of fruit and blending it to a “delicious green smoothie,” is not a particularly good way to nourish one’s body. Just try eating the stuff you put in there. Ror example eat 300 Kcal each (not at same time) of apples, apple sauce, and apple juice on an empty stomach for a real “apples to apples” test of food, vs foodstuff.
So while fruit can be over consumed (I’m not a fruitarian advocate), it’s a fantastic portable food and unless you are trying to restrict calories to lose weight, you aren’t really going to over eat it without a lot of effort – unless you process it in some way other than mastication.
Sugar sweetened beverages (HFCS, Agave, Sucrose) are all giant loads of sugars that have been stripped out of the food they came packaged in and as such are a big cause of many issues we have today.
I eat fruit, not every day, but I eat fruit often. I put it aside when I am actively losing weight (like all relatively energy dense foods) or simply eat it as one of those “food entertainment” breaks.
Ray
“but understand that I lost my weight and after I reached my nearly idea level, my issues all came back.”
What were those issues?
High HCRP test? High LDL? Low HDL? Arterial calcification? Bad heart scan or calcium score? etc etc. need some clarification.
This clarification might give some insight into why Furhman’s diet has helped you.
Thanks,
Bryan
Ray,
do you have an ETA on part 3?
Thanks,
Bryan
They all have one thing in common, a caloric deficit. You can eat pretty much whatever you like, as long as you get less energy than you need, you will lose weight
Ray,
You mentioned in an above post that during your trip skiing you ate typically one meal a day or in the evening. Any plans to go into more detail on this. I am interested in IFing (warrior, leangains etc) as over the last year I have noticed that I dont crave breakfast as much and can easily last until mid afternoon until I have to eat. I dont do this all the time and try and let the body drive the eating times but do feel better if I dont eat during the day, its just trying to manage the over eating that sometimes occurs during the evening that I struggle with. A lot of the info on IFing says that the body burns fat during the longer fasting periods. I would be interested in what you have found.
Apologies if you have already covered this in previous posts
cheers
Shane
I do plan to cover it in detail – I am actively pursuing some peer-reviewed work on the subject, but in time I hope that will be out. In general, I don’t subscribe to the idea of “breakfast is key.” I know why it works for some people, but at the same point, it’s simply not proven that it is necessary and I rarely eat before 3-4 pm.
Intermittent fasting (I’ll call it Alternate Day Fasting ADF) is a great way to control appetite, calories and has very good promise in caloric restriction. I have seen unpublished work that supports the notion that “mice” don’t change in CR vs ADF.
We have a lot of people in the healthcare business that are terrified to say “skip a meal.” It’s not that the data overwhelmingly supports this notion along with every known living organism, but “3 meals a day” is a relatively new idea. In my research I have found that the Romans were adamant about only one meal a day and gluttony was not respected.
Ray
In my own experience, exercixe does not affect weight, but activity does; like biking to work, standing up and walking. Because there is something between running and total relaxation on the couch. I try to sit still as little as possible. I run and sweat 1-2 hours per week because it makes me feel good mentally and physically, but I walk and bike at least 1-2 hours every single day because it keeps me lean (and away from the refrigerator).
http://traningslara.se/begreppet-neat-och-varierande-energibehov/ This is a link to a (academic) blog post in Swedish, but it has all the references at the bottom of the text and you could try Google Translate. The post is about NEAT, or the energy expenditure of all the little things we do each day. The author mentions things like walking and gardening. The point is that it varies very much between individuals, even when confined in a lab, and may be another part of the puzzle of weight control. Not for losing a pund per day, but to stay lean or to gain two pounds per year, like a lot of people do.
Furthermore, I think it is important to distinguish between having a low weight and being fit (i.e. staying active and stressing the body to hypertrophy). Personally I have a feeling that exercise makes a lot of difference for the health in the long run. What makes me feel most healthy physically is to stay outdoors all day and to eat vegan; I can eat as much as I want and my body feels great and I sleep well. But there is always the allure of chocolate and steak and the couch…
Excellent and I agree on activity!
Activity is something entirely different and NEAT is a good way to characterize it. Now, I don’t want to anyone to run with the idea that I am AGAINST exercise – I am not and if you want to increase performance, that is the way it will be done. As well, you might enjoy running/biking/weight training – all great things to do for fun and physiological enhancement.
My goal was for us to stop saying diet and exercise as if they are one idea. In fact, there is good evidence that exercise slows down weight loss.
On the ideas of low weight and fit, those too are good points. Lean does not equal healthy. Obesity is a symptom of bad health, not a cause. Likewise, one can be physically lean and completely unhealthy (there are many examples in sports, bodybuilding, etc…).
Thanks for the comments!
Ray
Another point on exercise: I think that it makes an increasing contribution to life as one gets older. At 80-90, even being able to walk up stairs or managing to take a shower on your own requires regular training of muscles and balance. At 60-70 it means that you can actually play with your grandchildren. When we are 30 or 40 we can get away with doing no weight training. But I think it is the right time to build a foundation for an active future with a long life with quality, not just a long life with pains and dependency on others for the last 30 years…
Ray, I have a problem. During the day I am not hungy, but my blood level fall down and I feel dizy. What should I do? I have to eat something high glycemic, but the problem is that I do not feel hunger. What do you suggest to do?
Alex
as you approach low body fat as you have and when you are physically active, it is possible to blast through glycogen and become hypoglycemic. I think that as one gets closer to their ideal fitness, or especially if one is very physically active, there it requires food to keep ahead of it. When you feel this way, you might want to do a glucose test to see the differences in levels (I feel good _____ or I feel bad _____). What you might find is that it’s not blood sugar at all.
It’s one thing to feel this way a day or two transitioning to a diet – ketogenic or otherwise, but it shouldn’t last. If that is the case, likely you are over restricting calories. At some point your body will create the blood sugar you need. Either from ingested/stored carbohydrate or ingested/stored amino acids.
The brain get’s what it needs. Biceps come second.
Ray
Yes you are wright. I am close to my ideal weight and also fisically active, and I need food during the day. But I am not hungry. And the worst is that I cannot escape from hypoglycemia with veggies or fruits, I have to eat something high glycemic thus high calorie.
Yes, well at ideal weight any food is okay. You’re just at the limits of caloric neutrality and dipping into deficits. This is one fallacy (my opinion) in the “ripped body look” it’s not ideal metabolically speaking.
I don’t think you need to worry about glycemic index. Stay away from highly refined grains and simple sugars. Eating fruit – or even having bread – is not a huge issue for you.
The current obsession with gluten is not justified. Some are sensitive, most are not, and celiac is complicated disease to diagnose properly. A recent NEJM article outlining that procedure demonstrates that many who claim or are told they are celiac, aren’t.
You’ve hit your goal and were conscious of how much you ate. Loosen up a bit and eat a lot more volume of those foods and see if that fixes it.
Ray
Alex, what do you mean your “blood level fall down?”
Are you talking about glucose readings? If so, do you have a journal of your glucose readings during your dietary changes? I test 2 hours after a meal (that’s now once a day) at wake up, then whenever I notice a comfort level I associate with my glucose that’s new.
So, if I were feeling dizzy I’d test.
Going on assumptions here, but if you were DM2 and if you test and see glucose levels in the 60s or 70s and were a fat dude before (see how much I’m just talking about me, assuming we share this commonality), we have a word for this: withdrawal.
“Normal” is a lot lower than many doctors suggest is “safe.” 80mg/dL is safe. 100mg/dL is safe, for periods of a day. But, I’ve tested 67mg/dL and went for a walk. Your real normal won’t show up until you spend some time bouncing around the new normal. And, it won’t always feel good.
Now, if you’re a type 1 diabetic forget what I just said. I have no personal experience and am not a doctor though I have opinions on a healthy target for type 1 also. I should keep those to myself.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2306280/Feeling-cold-Why-try-meditating–scientists-prove-use-brain-increase-core-body-temperature.html
I saw this and thought of you lol.
Saw that! Wim Hof does similar work and I played around with it too. I’m trying to confirm some of the results I’ve seen, but they are really exciting.
Thanks!
Ray
I think it works the other way around as well. Cool showers (after a hot one) are the easiest way I know to TRIGGER a deep relaxation state. One or two deep breaths and my body moves in to deep relaxation. I find it much, much easier to reach this state in a cold shower than, say, trying to relax in a warm comfortable room.
agreed, but people have to get over the fear of cold. It’s just a built in reflex that is really unwarranted.
Lots of serotonin produced…and that means melatonin at night!
Ray
Exciting in what way? Stop being a tease Ray! lol. I noticed you mention that Wim hof stuff, hence the link.
On another note i did the potato experiment, do you want me to post the results or have we moved on. I’m a bit late to the party i know. I also hit a plateau so are you saying that it doesn’t exists and it’s just having water retention? I did put loads of salt on potatoes. Will try again without salt.
Thanks
Sarb
The salt is what causes the plateaus. Go again without it and you will be amazed.
Thanks for the reply Carlos, i remember you having the same problem with the stall. The two times i tried it weight loss stopped after a week. Looking forward to trying it about. How is it going for you? What are you numbers without the salt?
Thanks
Sarb
Same exact issue. This time, I started on 4/4 at 216. On 4/14, I am 204. That’s the lowest I can ever remember being and this time diarrhea doesn’t get to take the credit.
Unfortunately I am away from home so I can’t track it better. plain russet potatoes with no salt is all I have eaten. No rice this time.
I have only eaten
Ray,
Any thoughts on menopause and cold stress? Interesting to theorize women that women having hot flashes= gain weight. Rather simplistic assumption, but would cold stress reduce menopausal weight gain?
thanks Ray again.
I think most people are clueless on this subject and let the food and supplement industry tell them the lies they believe. where’s the money in people not consuming their product? With making the Franken food as addictive as possible which the Industry knows and tries to, no wonder there is an obesity problem. I laugh at people at the gym when they are doing cardio to lose weight, it is a waste of time. I do resistance exercise to build muscle in the right areas to look good and let the cold showers do the” cardio” for me. 🙂 I have tracked my calories and found my maintenance to be about 2800 at 189 lbs. Does that sound broken? 🙂 I’m lean now and most likely in single digit fat%, and it’s been really easy to maintain. One of the reasons I believe it’s been easy is when I changed to a more organic whole foods based diet with the most important choice of vegetable juicing. Ray you told me before about vegi’s and when I finally tried juicing everything came together. I feel so much better and I believe the micro-nutrients consumed is keeping my hunger and body in balance. things are going good right now, looking forward to your next post.
Hi Seth,
Can you give me an example of a typical day of eating for you. I am interested in daily meals that people eat to firstly loose weight or maintain. My goal weight with ~10-12% BF will be similar to yours maybe a bit higher, so it would be great to see a typical day of eating/drinking.
cheers
hey Shane,
This is what works for me. in the morning I blend my vegi’s. basically it a couple of handfuls off organic baby kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, carrots, celery. I sometimes use collard greens or chard too. I add a cup of berries an Apple, pear or bananas. about 3 pieces of fruit so it doesn’t taste like grass, and a peeled lime. it blends into over 48oz of liquid. I put it in 2 24oz bottles and have one for breakfast. I don’t eat lunch, and regularly fast, except since juicing in the morning.I workout in the afternoon and on the way home I will have my 2nd drink. I get home and drink lots of water too, to fill me up. I proceed to make chicken burritos. I have it every day. 3 whole grain tortillas(100kcal each) 7 oz of chicken, 1 cup of spanish rice( basically just rice cooked in chicken broth with tomatoes and spices), one tomato, lime, cilantro, curry seasoning and chili powder, tbls coconut oil for cooking oil. I eat that, wait till I feel hungry again. in the microwave I cook up to 2lbs of sweet potatoes and season with just cinnamon. wait till I’m hungry again, than I make something called protein fluff. it’s just casein protein with almond milk and a piece of fruit like a banana and freeze it to slush, and then with a stand mixer I whip it on high for 8 minutes. it’s like whip cream dessert I have every night, it’s awesome. that usually leaves me with up to 500 kcals to play with.I go to bed or snack on little things. mind you I start eating at after 6pm so only a couple hours to actually eat before bed. it works for me. my variety isn’t high, just different fruit or protein powder or different potatoes like regular or yams instead or more rice. I can’t eat oats or beans they mess up my stomach but you could substitute that instead of rice.I sometimes have bread, like Ezekiel bread with honey on it or something instead of bigger portion of yams. it works for me, and I’m satisfied.I usually look at cupcakes and food like that as poison, because I know how I will feel if I eat it, so I don’t. sometimes I eat pizza or go out, as long as most the time I eat what is stated above. I don’t need to lose any and the leaner you are the easier you have to be on yourself with kcals. I just track it on myfitnesspal and see I’m doing well and measure myself once a week to make sure I’m on the right track. good luck, and most of my food is organic if I can and Costco and Sam’s have good selection where I’m at for a decent price.
Thanks Seth,
That’s some pretty clean eating you are doing. Well done. It’s given me a couple of ideas. I am 6 days into eating mainly after 5 pm it’s going well.
Cheers
Seth,
Curious if you’d be willing to drop the chicken and the “protein” powder fluff and see how it goes?
I just was quiet through all of this to listen to where you guys go. Everyone is doing a good job talking food not macronutrients (thanks!).
Just replace those calories with equal calories of rice. If you want to do sweet potatoes in the burritos, they work too.
Since you track it and have a pretty set schedule, I’d be interested in seeing the results.
Ray
Shane, if you are 20-30 lbs overweight, a typical day of eating would be a day without eating. To loose weight, stop exercise and eat once at night. It does not matter what you eat, but you must be in calorie deficit. So you can eat potatoes, or meat, or chips or whatever you like. Once you loose the weight, you can exercise and eat whenever you need only healthy food. I personally think that being on a big calorie deficit with healthy food is far more dificult than with being on it with the food you enjoy.
Alex, Thanks for the reply
I have started doing that again this week, dont eat until the evening, meals are mostly primal/paleo based with more emphasise on veggies, fruit and salads than meats and fats. Tracking Calories sees me at ~ 1800 a day which is 500 below calculated BMR for my height age and weight (6’2″, 105kgs, 44). The last month I ate what ever i liked and kept calories below 2000 but didnt see much weight lose and craved sugar badly. I find the 20/4 fast eat window easier and now trying to concentrate on cleaning my eating up in the 4 hours. This week I am seeing some weight loss (1.5kg for the week)
Intersted in see what other people are eating, typical meals amounts etc
I enjoy my exercise and think the benifts (flexibility, fitness, strength) outway the additional time it may take to loose the last bit of weight.
cheers
often I am not much home so following a diet plan is very hard for me, the days where I leave home at 6am and get back at 7-8pm I useually do like this:
eat a nice big breakfast with 3 eggs, about 100g of ham and half a squash and a slice of high fiber bread, this useualy keeps me full until 2pm. If there is decent food available at lunch time (often there isnt), 2 slices of highfiber bread with about 100g lean meat product and a piece of fruit. For dinner I find some random piece of meat at the super market at about 200g and 350g of steamed green beans/broccoli or whatever I have. that adds up to around 1500kcal give or take a few, and about 700kcal deficet.
If I am home or in places where there is access to decent food, I have a breakfast with about 1dl All Bran cereal and some low fat yogurt, some fruit sometime before lunch. Lunch 2 slices of high fiber bread with ~50g of meat, a piece of fruit during the afternoon if I have it and I feel hungry. At dinner I get 125g random meat, 300g vegs and 125g rice/potatos. adds up to around 1500kcal as well give or take a few hundred
Often I skip a meal for various reasons and if I get to hungry and there is nothing decent to eat, I drink a large glass of water. I still need to loose 10-12kg or so, and the past 3 weeks I haven’t lost any weight, but I had to make the belt a notch smaller and now that is becoming to loose as well.
If I am out driving a lot I take a liter of water and 3-4 bannanas with me, so I dont have to visit a place at the roadside for food if I get to hungry
I don’t do any exercise, but I try to get a 30min walk everyday, and I do some squats in preparation for when the time comes that I can take my bi weekly bikeride in the forrest. I try to remember to use my icepack on the back, but I often forget, so I maybe get to do that 2-3 times a week, cold showers I don’t like so I skip those 🙂
I have been doing this for the past 2 months and it works well for me, the first 5 weeks I lost 5kg, I recon that around july 1. I should be where I want to be more or less, unless something comes up
I find that if you are highly active that paleo or low carb is horrible combination.I have been much more satisfied and happier eating higher carb based foods than high fat/protein. it’s been much easier to lose weight when I switched to a higher carb based whole food diet with a deficit. usually my fat is lower because I don’t see the need for the high fat. I eat starch for the muscle glycogen refill and protein for muscle growth. my problem with eating chips and such foods is that you will over eat it, period. you wouldnt need to lose weight if you could control it, but not many can do that, including me, so I chose to not be addicted to it. I got off the sugar addiction by eating tons of fruit at first no limit til I was off the sugar, next I got off my peanut butter addiction, which happens to be a trigger food for me. I got pb2 to help, and when I chose t. stop eating beans,I lumped pb as the same thing as beans since its a legume. best of luck, I’ll check periodically here if you have more questions.
Whats wrong with beans/legumes? Unless there is an allergy?
there is nothing wrong with beans,I just find that it is hard on my system and I would rather choose other options instead. as for the protein, Ray, I suppose I could, but I am worried slightly with the satiety if I don’t eat fluff concoction since its airy and has a lot of substance when fluffed. I have to look into making sure I get enough protein(I know,I know, you hate the macro nutrient talk) but I am a body builder, and I’m in the process of adding weight and need to make sure I get around 150g of protein. I’ll look into sources of real food that could do that. I have put sweet potato in my burritos as well, it’s pretty good. 🙂
I agree with Ray that being on a deficit with potatoes is much easier than doing so with foods I enjoy like chips and cookies because I am down 40lbsto since trying it his way and it’s been a breeze.
As of today I’m down 38.5 lbs and going forward. Gotta love ’em taters!
I wish Ray had a like button so I could like Carlos’s comment.
Congrats on choosing the simple way. The ‘potato detox’ (my phrase) method is painful for a few days, but on day 11… wow, it’s simple and now pain free. I’m so thankful Ray talked me into trying it out. I’m hooked.
I only find the “potato detox” painful when it bumps up against other people (family) and their need to eat. I’m the cook at home, so going on a “strict” diet, requires some exclusion (for me) and cooperation (don’t make fun). But the excuse that I shouldn’t try to burn through my excess stored fuel quickly is no acceptable.
Ray, could you talk about why you think you regained your excess stored body fuel after your success with Eat to Live? Was it a case of returning to excessive calorie habits? Or do you think your microflora + environment (thermal and food) had a bigger effect.
Because I am a “glutton” for self experiments and generally I don’t trust others to be honest with what they report eating. I found that even I would “fool” myself and unintentionally eat things.
One of the tools I am looking forward to us all using is dosIQ.com. Jason follows us here and he happens to live about an hour from my house. Everyone should give this a try and perhaps we can figure out a way to create a stream for our group (right, jason?).
Really, I know people think I am beating them up when I don’t believe the “I eat perfect” comments, but I know we don’t unless REALLY disciplined. I did absolutely NO animal products for a little over a year. Then I did slow carb after 4HB shipped. Now I do very, very, very infrequent meat/dairy/fish/shellfish and it’s going on 4 years. No issues at all.
I am not using dosIQ yet, but I intend on doing it with some future projects. It is very simple, but a great tool.
Ray
Yep, I watch you guys and I think our tool (dosIQ) could be quite helpful tracking. That was the original idea: make it stupid simple to collect really useful data.
I try to wallflower as much as possible 🙂
Often the advice is to “throw out all of the foods you can’t/shouldn’t eat”. But that only protects you at home. Doesn’t protect you when eating out, or eating at friends and family.
Then again, maybe if social eating is A priority not THE priority, these problems simply don’t occur.
One can enjoy the company of others and pick and choose when and what they want to eat. A real friend isn’t offended and you can have just as much fun without the oral fixation. Does food have to be the center of every activity? probably not. If this is THE problem, a major driver of chronic over nutrition, then what might we evolve to in pursuit of better health?
Look at the extreme levels of evasive medicine – intestinal tract rearrangement, stomach modifications, chests split open, lifetime of medication – these are radical as compared to dietary intervention. It’s easier to give in and people love to be “diagnosed” with something they can wear as a badge of excuse as to why they can’t change. I am looking to change the first 10,000 in thinking. I have many now that have taken valuable steps and they will all tell you that it isn’t easy at first, but each day it becomes easier every day.
Those that want to participate in exaggeration, excuses, or lack of effort can do so and I wish them no ill-will. I just would prefer they first give it some careful consideration. Anyone that has spent time with this site would see clearly that I approach things with careful consideration.
Expand your solution set.
Ray
Hello Ray
Great blog – I’m agog to hear more results about cold exposure. Do you have any thoughts about vitamin A on a plant based diet. I did a low fat vegan diet for 2 years and ended up extremely unwell despite eating a wide variety of unprocessed plant foods. I think I ended up with a vitamin A deficiency (and probably fatty acid problems) – endless infections, extreme exhaustion, yellowish-grey skin, dry cracked heels, exacerbation of MS symptoms, dry eyes. I felt dramatically improved within a few weeks after i added eggs and butter into my diet. I know that in theory the body can make vitaminA from carotene but my body didn’t seem to manage too well. Any thoughts? Also what about the goitrogenic effects of crucifers (as well as their disgustingly horrible taste!) And why do you think so many childrena and adults actively dislike vegetables if they are really our core healthy diet. I find these things puzzling.
Thanks elle…
MY thoughts, I love cruciferous vegetables of all kinds. most people under guess my age by a decade, my hair and nails grow faster/thicker, and I’ve been sick twice in three years despite heavy travel here and abroad. Once was eating at a restaurant – and once was over New Years when a stomach virus was going around locally. No, I don’t worry about goitrogens. I quick look around will show that people over eating broccoli is not the cause for the seeming “rise” in everything thyroid. Part of the issue could be result from chronic over nutrition, since the thyroid plays a critical role in energy homeostasis. As well, over diagnosis is a huge issue. It’s being done everyday with Type 2 Diabetes – another disease that we blame the symptom (high blood sugar) instead of fix the problem, chronic over nutrition.
WHile the blog world is a buzz and business is booming on supplements (after all we can’t get any pharmaceutical to market with a reasonable budget), so let’s just up screening! We can screen for blood, hormones, electrical pulses…screen, test, screen again. I am all for personalized medicine, but even with a relatively good, related degree and access to some first tier academicians, its difficult to wad through the BS.
Cook your cruciferous vegetables. Eat, don’t juice.
The reason so many children dislike vegetables is different from the reason so many adults don’t like them. Children don’t like smoking, alcohol or spicy foods – they are acquired tastes. What and when you eat, as was very eloquently expressed by Hippocrates 2500 years ago, “Something must be conceded to habit, to season, to country and to age.” All children start out with simple taste – sweet – it’s the taste of lactose in mothers milk and at some point, lactose intolerance kicks as an aid to weaning. Our palates expand and they are largely influenced by what those around us eat. Apparently vegetables weren’t stressed in your family; I grew up on a produce farm until 11 and would not have eaten anything many summer nights if I didn’t choose vegetables.
So, let’s turn your question around. IF sugar, flour and cakes are so loved by everyone, how could it be unhealthy? Both of those are obviously flawed reason and a common rehash of a logical fallacy of confirming the antecedent: all dogs have four legs, it has four legs therefore it’s a dog.
As for vitamin A, all animals make vitamin A out of 50 or more carotenoids that are found in plants. The animals you are claiming the source are making it from the plants they are eating. We do too. You had a host of other diseases, have a distain for the healthiest vegetables and so it’s not surprising you had poor results. Oreo cookies are vegan – that’s why I don’t think that label fits very well in a nutrient rich, calorically poor healthy diet.
Finally, we have the microbiome and the the intestinal immunity. As I pointed out in No Guts. No Glory. (Part 2), Th aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) transcription factor is expressed ubiquitously in vertebrate cells. It is ligand-activated by compounds you don’t like and it has been show to me instrumental in the formation of a healthy immune system.
Let me tell you one thing I am not seeing anywhere in the literature in the explosion of microbiome research: excess calorie dense products, animal fats or excessive protein (any source) in the diet is beneficial. WE had the fall of kwashiorkor – the poster child disease of “protein deficiency – fall just six weeks ago, also microbiome related in a study of microbiota from discordant 317 malawain twin pairs.
There are few diseases or ailment caused by increased vegetable and fruit and most of the anecdotal examples like yours can be traced back to someone eating unhealthy and then giving it a label like “vegetarian, paleo, or vegan” – all ideologies for the most part.
Eating or Nutrition isn’t an emergency, and there are all sorts of radical changes in diet that can induce transient “symptoms,” which take care of themselves over time. I agree it is confusing, but most of the dialog is driven by those wise words from Hippocrates:
“Something must be conceded to habit, to season, to country and to age.”
I agree with him and many other things he said.
thanks for the comment.
Ray
Ray,
I’m a big fan, just lost 10 lbs, following your (vague) principles over the past two weeks. Just curious, 1) Why are French fries bad and a baked potato good? 2) Is bread okay? IS bread and butter the same thing?
Similar but I would not put bread and potatoes in the same category. Bread is a highly refined grain. Not the toxic demon made out to be, but typically consumed too easily and with lots of things that aren’t good.
On average potatoes supply about 80 kcal/100g and fried they can be 300-500 kcal. Of course the dehydration allows for more consumption and so chips are even more easy to over eat.
Short summary: French fries, flour and chips are ways that make it easier to shovel in food.
I hope to run a big crowd-sourced comparison soon. Finalizing the details with some academic institutions and it would be great to have 500-1000 people give it a go. Ill let you know when it’s time to promote.
Good job on loss!
Ray.
Hi Ray
I understand your points about why children dislike veggies and that modern calorie dense and nutrient poor foods are terrible. But I don’t agree that the quality or variety of my plant based diet was to blame for my health problems. I pushed down loads of kale, cabbage, broccoli, pak choi, beans, peppers, avocados, tomatos,asparagus carrots, onions and other greens, reds, yellows and purples despite not much liking them! My daily routine was to eat 8-10 portions of colourful veg per day. I ate no processed food – calories came from potatoes, sweet potatoes, barley and beans with moderate fruits, a few nuts and seeds and very small amounts of olive oil (2tsp a day). I got the veg down using liberal quantities of herbs and spices to mask the flavour. I still eat lots of veggies (and totally believe they are good for me) but just feel much better with some animal foods in there too. What if some people just can’t make the conversion to vitamin A? Or maybe I just wasn’t eating enough fat to absorb tne nutrients. My mum would scream at you saying veggies weren’t stressed in my family – she always made sure 1/3 of the dinner plate was veg!!
I like your work on cold – please keep researching and teach us some more!
I think Ellie has a good point Ray. I’ve always read and heard that to absorb the nutrients from veggies properly, you must eat them with fat.
Is this not true?
Whole foods i understand are much more bio-available. So there is an amount of fat or whatever else is required to help absorption naturally occurring. Taking olives for example as a whole food they are great but pressed for just the oil they are not so great. Nature packages these whole foods in a way that makes all the nutrients available in the correct quantities for maximum absorption.
Apparently.
I didn’t say that one should eat a zero-fat diet. What I’ve said as it refers to weight loss is its ridiculous that one needs to eat the storage organ of a plant or animal to use their own storage organ (fat). I do advocate nuts and seeds that contain essential fatty acids, but I don’t recommended liberal use of oils – energy without the food package.
At what rate of inclusion of animal products does one tip the scale? I don’t know, but I do know that it easy (biologically) or anyone to live without animal products of any kind. They aren’t required any more than “sugar” is required in the diet.
The nutritional supplement industry is pretty huge – US$70 billion? Those supplements aren’t designed for people that don’t eat animal products – they are for the loads of people eating calorie rich diets that are devoid of nutrition. All nutrients come from plants or are synthesized in ones body. Caloric energy deficits can be satisfied by a range of food, but I’d hardly call the average person energy starved.
All of the examples given above are the same worn out nutrient stories thrown out to rationalize the choice to eat meat. I don’t care is she does or doesn’t. I don’t want to debate that, because I know the basic stories (like the protein, carbohydrate, fat and metabolism) are not scientifically valid.
What’s interesting is that one can go back in history and find the roots of such things (including peanut butter is “protein”) and its amusing that the stories don’t change despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. Anyone want to say vitamin B12 is a problem too? How about calcium and vitamin D?
Chronic over nutrition is the major cause many long term health issues we see. I’m not hopeful that we will tap dance out with molecular biology. We won’t solve over nutrition with more nutrition.
Ray
Ray,
Can you define “over nutrition”? Wikipedia describes Overnutrition as either leading to obesity (too many calories) or oversupply or undersupply of essential nutrients.
Is there a different definition that you are using which combines the two? I’m trying to think how you’re doing to do that without using the banned words: c**********e, f*t, p******n, etc. 🙂
Yes. Yes.
How about we focus instead on bioenergetics and redox balancing. This overall redox shifting that comes from shoving excess energy into the mitochondrion – think of it as a spring. You load it up with excess nutrients and eventually it has to release. The redox “spring” works for a while, but there is a problem. Stretch it out too much, too often and then you outstrip the spring’s ability to overcome and this causes dysfunction. It’s not that simple, or that permanent until you induce Type 1.5 diabetes by hammering on the pancreas to increase output to overcome this constant overload.
Here is some new thought on bioenergetics based on the redox model (one of my research collaborators reviewed this work). Of course the classic model is that of intramyocellular lipid, but both are two sides of the same mitochondrial dysfunction coin.
Neither issue is helped by excess energy in the diet.
Not only are these two issues important on the energetic level, but we also have good information that vitamin A, E, and others also cause issues in over consumption – not energetic, but heart, cancer, etc. There is more, but I don’t want us to turn into a molecular biology diatribe.
My goal with the macronutrient series was to give enough credibility (or discredit depending on view) that a reasonable person can stop sidetracking on nutritionism and begin to focus on food and what we do know: caloric restriction increases the longevity of every organism tested.
What is a shame is that we can actually make significant progress with just food – sufficient (not excess) nutrients and minimum calories. It won’t fix every problem, but the march of all these calls for excessive over nutrition, doesn’t resonate with basics. People are chasing bubbles in bumper stickers. The macronutrient shuffle is just the beginning. I know I’m swimming upstream, but honestly I think the other fish are headed for a waterfall, despite the easy swim.
chew on that a while.
🙂
Ray
I’ve just discovered the carotene to Vit A conversion is dependent upon thyroid hormone (I’m hypothyroid) – I’m guessing this was probably the reason for the problem.
Actually it doesn’t control the conversion. It controls carotene absorption. Hypothyroidism is yet another side of the same “I want to be diagnosed” issues – right up there with T2DM.
Vitamin A supplementation and folic acid (folate is not folic acid) are two big issues. You might want to google the cochrane review on vitamin A. In 68 randomized trials supplementation with vitamin a showed an average of 16% increased mortality. It’s a 1-2 punch in that vitamin A supplements induce calcium loss in urine.
I’m not surprised by this given your summary of what you enjoy eating. This won’t end well and the path you are on is to become a thyroid patient much like the avoidable, nutrition induced type 2 diabetes patients become permanent type 1.5 medically induced diabetes patients after they hammer their pancreas and shut down the beta cells.
I would reconsider the approach and get more opinions.
Ray
I just wrapped up another 2 weeks of potatoes. This time with no salt. Started 4/4 at 216. Ended today at 198. I was probably 17 the last time I was under 200.
Today I had a big bowl of veggies from the salad bar at Whole Foods. I tried things I’d never eaten before and enjoyed them. After boring potatoes for so long, beets tasted like candy. I find that I don’t have a problem eating veggies with no dressing as long as I mix some fruit in there as well.
I will eat this way and maybe re-introduce some fat free, low sugar processed foods to see if I can maintain or even continue losing at a slower rate.
Good job!!!! You don’t have to be fat free, just limit them to nuts and seeds and keep it on the low side during loss.
Our problem with fat is one of taste and acquired appetite, not of getting enough EFAs. It’s quite easy to do without over indulging on the tasty, but unnecessary sources.
Ray
Well played Carlos, you started around 240 didn’t you? wow. I’m doing my 2.0 attempt now with no Salt. Getting the standard 1 pound per day loss now. Down 12 pounds in total.
Ray, my friend is type one diabetic and he really wants to try it, i told him no way. His counter argument is that he wears a device that measures his blood glucose 24 hours a day so it will let him know if he gets too high or too low. What do you think? Email me if you don’t want the answer to be posted.
Thanks
Sarb
Agreed. Very bad idea and tell him not to do it. On the other hand, he should absolutely get The End of Diabetes by Joel Fuhrman and within a few weeks he will minimize insulin use to the point that it will be no worse than a non diabetic and a full, healthy functional life.
He will need to involve the physician, because this dietary intervention is very effective and hypoglycemia becomes a big risk if they don’t understand that. With today’s technology it’s very easy to Implement.
I got a glucose monitor implant this week. Lots of great self experiments on the way.
Ray.
What have you learned from the glucose monitor implant?
Thanks,
Bryan
It’s coming Bryan. The first lesson is how damn EXPENSIVE this is if it isn’t covered by insurance! It sucks to put a $100 sensor in only to have it fail in less than 24 hours.
good stuff and I’ll get to it soon.
Ray
So, can you see where the problem was in my plant based diet? For two years, I ate daily:
At least 8-10 portions of colourful veggies including crucifers,
some starch each day (barley, oats, potatoes, sweet potatos), some legumes each day, herbs, spices, a couple of fruits daily, some nuts, seeds and avocados, very small amounts of olive oil. No sugar or processed foods. All food cooked at home from fresh. I didn’t lose weight so I know I was eating an appropriate amount of food.
I agree I have some health problems – this is why I tried eating a plant diet (after reading The China Study) to see if it could help me. Instead I felt much worse after a while. I don’t think the plants caused the deterioration (I still eat 8 portions of plants per day) but I think the diet lacked some things which I need. I started out with mild MS, I ended up with a host of other problems on top and these new sympoms resolved within a few weeks of adding butter and eggs into my diet. Just saying, some people might need more than just plants. I now feel at my best eating lots of plants and some high quality animal foods (fish, eggs, butter offal). Others may do well on plant based and that’s great.
Well, the fact that you felt better eating eggs and butter is telling to me. Maybe you were deficient in choline? Egg yolks are a good source of choline. Liver is, too. Butter is a great source of vitamin A, vitamin K2, and a little D. Not to mention, some folks (Ray Peat) believe that saturated fat is anti-inflammatory. Butter is a mix of saturated and monounsaturated fats, If memory serves…
Actually it doesn’t mean that at all. If you are a smoker and quit – one “feels better” when they resume. Alcohol addicts have tons of symptoms when they quit. Feeling better is important, but it doesn’t “tell you” anything.
This is exactly how we end up with all of the anecdotal, summarized wrong information. This is an example of nutritionism at its finest. People discussing technical sounding words with “placeholder” notions of what they mean – 125 years ago it was protein, carbohydrate and fat. That predates vitamins and to this very day most people don’t even understand those three – even people that should know better.
I’m not interested in going there here. If that causes a few people not to come back, its okay. But it’s a case of blind leading the blind and I don’t want to participate.
Elle, there is a way for you to figure out what is going on. Butter an eggs are likely not the only or even best solution. If you care enough to talk about it publicly then care enough to figure out how to make it work – our health destiny is not in the hands of another mammals lactate or ovum.
Challenge status quo a bit and figure out exactly what is happening. So many other variables are in the mix. There are already too many holes in the story that I’m not sure I’m getting the real facts. I’ve personally coached people that have told me “I ate perfect” when in fact they have not.
There are many other issues associated with the solution space you’re working in, but that’s for another time.
Thanks for input. Lets get back to metabolism.
Ray
So you don’t think it’s possible that she was suffering from a choline deficiency???
“Strict vegetarians who consume no milk or eggs may be at risk of inadequate choline intake.” From:
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/othernuts/choline/
Ray, I see you have all of the answers. Your mind is made up. Good for you.
I will ignore this personal attack once. You are the first person to attack anyone that I can recall.
Her issue is not with fatty liver disease, so I doubt very seriously that choline deficiency has anything to do with the problem. That being said, this weeks New England Journal of Medicine (april 25) has a a very good article linking increased dietary phosphatidylcholine with increase levels of TMAO via the microbiome. Administration of antibiotics temporarily eliminates the TMAO levels.
According to the study, dietary choline is acted on by intestinal lipase’s to form a variety of metabolic products. The choline containing nutrients serve as fuel for the microbiota to form TMA, which is oxidize to to TMAO. This TMAO “enhances the accumulation of cholesterol, the accumulation of foam cells in artery walls, and atherosclerosis – all factors are associated with increased risk of hear attack, stroke and death.”
As well it details choline’s oxidation path to betaine in both the liver and kidneys. This dietary betaine can server as substrate for bacteria to form TMA and presumably TMAO.
This shotgun nutritionism can be very dangerous and it’s unfortunate that there is so much partial truth out there by armchair biochemists. I will edit and post a link when it goes live online. I have an advanced copy.
Ray
“Intestinal Microbial Metabolism of Phosphatidylcholine and Cardiovascular Risk,” W.H. Wilson Tang, et. al., NEJM Apr 25, 2013, vol 368, No. 17 pp1575-1584.
Ray, tweo questions:
1. I eat a steak or some kinnd of fat meat let’s say once a week. On this day, in the morning, when I wake up, I always have erection. That mean high level of testosteron. Why is that? And why I don’t have erection on the other days, when I do not eat fat.
2. Let’s say I am at 5 % bodyfat. And I eat bread with veggies. A lot of bread and a lot of veggies. Bread for direct energy and veggies for vitamins and minerals. At that point is it very unhealthy to eat the bread? It is just the energy without the vitamins. But I get the vitamins from the veggies. What happens when I eat this bread. I use it direct for energy and do not store it as a fat, am I wright?
Alex, how do you know it’s testosterone, and not dopamine/sleep related? Testosterone is generated from cholesterol, not from fat. So you might see a difference between eating beef steak versus chicken breast which differ in their amount of fat.
There also several other foods, nutrients, and activities which increase testosterone. See Wikipedia.
Sorry my English. I love your blog. I’m almost your fan. What do you think something about the relationship between force and people living in hot places? I ask because I saw some fighters born in hot places saying it’s more easy win when the opponent coming from cold place. They say that opponents are less strong. Well, that’s seems correct, according your study. The hot places’s fighters basicly not spend calories input with the human thermoregulatory system. Your diet can have less food because he only eat to the obtention of muscular mass and force, without spend calories with the cold.
Jesi,
What might be happening is that the “visiting” fighters are not yet acclimatized to the environmental conditions of where the match is being held.
Olympic athletes often acclimatize to the host city’s climate, altitude, temperature, etc months and weeks before the games. Sometimes in their host country, sometimes at home.
However, in humans mental attitudes may also play a part. Too hot at night? Hard to sleep. Sleep deprived? Strength is not impacted but cognition is, see Wikipedia. And strange food? Digestion issues, brain hormone shifts, causing a “hungover” like state, see Food Drunk.
(Yes, Edison killed someone with experiments with X-rays….)
-Jason
Interesting.
Jesi
Yes. It turns out that many studied this and in fact it is very much measurable. Perhaps not in the way you put it here, but clearly environment and ambient temperature overlaps with our main source of energy loss: waste heat.
One other factor to consider as one moves toward the equator is the increased solar eneggy and the resulting vegetation (calorie). At the earth’s equator (high noon), the solar constant is 137 mW/cm2. The sun moves 23.5 deg above and below the equator from northern to summer solstice. At higher latitudes this results in increased disparity of seasons, but as we move to tropical environments (equatorial) we have vegetation (food) year round.
So while it might not directly explain your observations, there is certainly some suggestive ideas that there is a relationship. The downside of course is that the metabolic system can become “lazy” when not stressed seasonally and this may be one reason for our metabolic challenges.
Thanks and welcome!
Ray
Thank you!
Hi Ray,
Are you involved in Gary Taubes, et al’s Nutition Science Initiative?
“Our strategy is to fund and facilitate rigorously well controlled experimental trials, carried out by independent, sceptical researchers. …. Our hope is that these experiments will be the first steps in answering definitively the question of what causes obesity and help us finally make meaningful progress against it.”
Taubes wrote more at the BMJ but he didn’t specifically call out any of his published hypotheses as lacking evidence.
no…
I heard it too, but there is quite a lot of things in his books that give me pause in objectivity.
I will create my own initiative and there is a pretty great team coming together. I hope to have one of the first calls for data soon.
Ray
Hi Ray
Is there a connection between the time of eating and eliminating waste?
Reason for asking is if you eat constantly does your body not eliminate? Or does it wait for a break in the cycle?
Thanks,
Wayne
Transit time is variable but normal is in about 12-14 hours. I think I talk about it in No Guts. No Glory. Most vegetable heavy eaters have more than one BM a day and as your diet becomes more meat-centric that number goes “down the drain.”
You can do two self assessments. Corn is the easiest – simply add to one meal and watch for elimination. After you spot it you can add to different meals to see what is going on.
A second item is beets. The purple color is easily visible. The typical protocol is to eat 1-2 beets just after your bowel movement and then time how long until it shows up. Like corn you can change the timing if you’re curious. Unlike corn some worry that the extra water in the beet changes the test slightly.
That’s the scoop on poop.
Ray
Great stuff.
Just wondered if seeing as the system is regulating when food is needed does that impact when waste is eliminated.
Seems that the system just eliminates as required in a timely manner according to what it has eaten.
What do you understand of colon plaque? Is this a barrier to the uptake of nutrients or another myth of the detox money spinner. Obviously plant based diets and the increase in fibre types would thoroughly cleanse you inside out!
Its a shit topicbut one that had to be exhausted!!!:-)
I don’t see any foundations for cleanses, detox or other such ideas. Talk to any physician that does regular (but highly unnecessary) colonoscopies and you’ll find there’s nothing in there to cleanse.
Fiber makes you very regular and most importantly feeds the correct bacterial – allowing the microbiome to change from fat loving, endotoxin producing gram negative (like enterobacter) to health promoting strains. Indeed we can transplant obese patient’s bacteria in the gut of sterilized mice and make them fat.
If you’re eating a high plant load, you’ll be fine. The part most don’t fully understand is that its the waste products of all these 100 trillion cells dumping into your absorption organ that is the problem. Feeding them becomes the main focus.
Ray.
Just curious, why is Muscling Your Metabolism part 1 no longer available?
I can see it in the list of pages at the bottom, but it doesn’t show when clicked on “read more” 🙁
no idea…some how it was thrown into “draft” status. I may have done that while editing part 3.
It should be back up!
Ray
Thanks Ray, got it on the mail and it’s back up here too.
Looking forward to part 3. 😉
Hi Ray
I just condensed my eating window, from what I have been reading you are big into crucifers – so I had black coffee and plain green tea during the day – then dinner was 1 pound of steamed brussel sprouts – I just used fresh lemon juice and salt
not awesome, but honestly, not too bad either… considering it was really easy, cheap, low calories, and full of prebiotics – I’ll take it as a win 🙂
Right. If you’re not used to eating that quantity, be careful or you’ll have a painful evening. As you ease into more cuciferous vegetables, you’ll develop more of the correct bacteria to digest. The same is true for beans.
The attitude I think that wins is:
I can do without a little food entertainment for a few weeks and ill be just fine.
In this way you find things that are tasty, but wouldn’t qualify as “dessert” or even special occasion “meals” and just eat. Do something else with your time instead of the obsessive quest to please your taste buds.
Not forever, just for a while. You’ll make far faster progress and create lifelong good habits.
Ray
Hi Ray:
This line of discussion is really perking my interest. It seems that there are now many people making the link between diet, microbiome and health. Based on my limited understanding, I was under the impression that most researchers believe that ‘moving the needle’ on one’s microbiome is extremely difficult. Whereas you are suggesting that one’s microbiome CAN be manipulated through diet and CR (and cold stress?) That is very good news.
Since you are looking in to this area, I was hoping you could comment on the following article excerpt:
“Mady Hornig says: “we need our bugs”, stressing the importance of understanding the role of the gut in many different types of phenomena, including cognitive symptoms and sleep. It turns out that gut bacteria play a crucial role in ensuring good quality sleep. Normally, as we digest a meal in the evening, chemicals produced by gut bacteria enter the blood and help us both get to sleep and stay asleep.”
(from – http://phoenixrising.me/archives/16131)
Do you know specifically what she was talking about? I’ve tried to follow up on this and hit a dead end. I think for many chronic fatigue sufferers, anything that improved sleep quality would be fantastic. All the better if it could be manipulated with diet.
Ian
Thanks for the post and sorry for the delay. It absolutely CAN be changed. It begins to happen in as little as 2 weeks as demonstrated by Zhou (2012) and Zhang (2012) in both animal and human models. It’s a switch from a predominantly gram negative fat-loving microbiome to one that is primarily CHO-based. If you haven’t completely annihilated your microbiome then it should grow back. I have read so many posts following up on the choline/TMA/TMAO connection and it’s clear people don’t get it, because they are trying to justify what they want to eat rather than looking at what the data suggests.
Anyway, I would start here:
Zhang C,Zhang M,Wang S,Han R,Cao Y,Hua W, etal. (2010). Interactions between gut microbiota, host genetics and diet relevant to development of metabolic syndromes in mice. ISME J 4: 232–241.
Fei N, Zhao L. (2012) An opportunistic pathogen isolated from the gut of an obese human causes obesity in germfree mice. ISME J. 2013 Apr;7(4):880-4..
hope that helps.
Ray
Just stumbled over this article:
A Classical Brown Adipose Tissue mRNA Signature Partly Overlaps with Brite in the Supraclavicular Region of Adult Humans http://goo.gl/tmmcr
it was referenced in this article http://goo.gl/BSzn1
apparently they are testing how to manipulate BAT with hormones because being cold is unpleasant.
We want more!
We want more!
We want more!
Hope something is coming soon Ray?
more…
tag. you’re it.
Ray
Excellent article Mr Cronise! Look forward to more. Since reading Penn Jillettes’ book and your articles and putting those concepts into action I have (minus 3 weeks in the middle where I wolfed down SAD food) lost 9.3 Kg since Jan 18 /17! Simply eating veggies/fruit during a window once a day and swimming 5 days a week and throwing in a walk around 6-10 Km once or twice a week.
Thank you!