Currently viewing the tag: "macronutrients"

No Guts. No Glory. (Part 1)

By On · 45 Comments

I hope that everyone feels a little more enlightened on macronutrients and I’ll try to refrain from using the “protein, carbohydrate, and fat” dietary jabberwocky  unless there is a biological/technical reason for pointing it out. If you SEE those words, please note that I am not describing food  groups (like meat or potatoes).

I really believe everyone’s health would be greatly improved if you simply didn’t use these three words in any way in making food choices.  It may seem trivial, but it’s not. Our image of these words and the cascading, general inadequate explanations of what happens when these are ingested cause a major distortion of reality.

We need to cover one more area to wrap up the macronutrient misdirection.

There is absolutely no question that macronutrients come in packages called “food” and after these last two posts, you should understand why it is futile to try to balance these in some mythical ratios. If you do, don’t be surprised if you end up with the same results of the last 40 years.  I want to challenge another notion and that concerns our evolutionarily power-hungry brain.  The computer analogy says that the brain is the CPU – it controls and makes all the decisions.

It has the master plan; but wait, I thought the big revolution of the last decade was solving our genome – the blueprint for life?

It turns out that the computer analogy, while being ‘good enough,” sort of fails when compared to reality. Every single cell has your blueprint. We were all once just a single cell and then two..and four…and fingers, toes, and nose. Much of it before the brain seized intellectual control. My daughter is 16 and I don’t think hers has taken over yet. Sometimes I wonder about mine.

The point of discussing this is many of our daily maintenance functions happen at the cellular level without the brain’s interaction. More importantly some of these functions TELL the brain what to do not the other way around.

Enter Addiction

Let’s do a simple test. I want you to vividly imagine that you are walking into a movie theater. You give your ticket to the attendant and  suddenly it hits you. That smell. Do you smell it? Popcorn, buttered popcorn, salted butter popcorn – large bucket.  As you walk over to the counter the lizard brian take over and, BAM, you plop $20 down for popcorn and a drink. Now scoop up that first bite in your hand to find it warm, greasy and it smells delicious – Are you with me? It goes into your mouth only to realize that your over zealous hand grabbed a little too much and you stuff that in there too… Can you imagine it? Can you taste it? Can you smell it?

salt. fat. sweet. Nature’s survival flavors.

Most people can make their mouth water just thinking about this scenario. So, maybe we aren’t in as much control as we like to believe. Our brain is certainly involved in all of those decisions, but there is something else at play if we dig a little deeper.  Our gut. You see, before your brain ever “learned” that these were good things, you were imprinted through your digestive system. Sweet is one of the first things and happens in the very early days of life through nursing and breast milk. Put a little sugar on a newborn’s pacifier, give it to them while standing close staring, and  you’ve made a an instant friend. It doesn’t end there and digestive system, from chewing to defecation, is important.

I want to argue that there is something much more important going on in your battle of the bulge. I believe over the next decade we’ll see that it is at the root of our surge in chronic disease and obesity. It’s our digestive system.  It’s extremely complex with a lot left to be understood.  In The Second Brain (Gershon, 1999), he lays out an incredible story of the control between the brain<–>gut. What is fascinating is it is a two-way control system.

NASA KC-135 aka - The Vomit Comet

I saw some of this first hand. When I flew on NASA’s Zero-G plane (aka the vomit comet) for a decade, I was one of the fortunate that never got sick (if you are ever with me in person, remind me to tell you about the “teacher flight” – I’d rather not write about it). For those not familiar, we take a large plane and fly a roller-coaster like flight, which basically drops you 10,000 ft.  You feel weightless for 20-30 seconds.  It was a lot of fun.  Eventually, with my business partners, we commercialized it  (gozerog.com) but, we created a flight profile that cause very few to get sick (many “lost their cookies” on the NASA flights).  The root of sickness is in the conflict between your inner ear and eyes. Your eyes see one thing, your ears tell you there’s no up and down and blahhhh in the bag (hopefully you don’t miss).

Govt-issued puke bag

The interest here is that the body somehow interprets dizzy as an evolutionary sign of eating something poisonous and invokes the “empty the stomach” command. Once people were imprinted with that experience, just the smell of the plane was enough to start them on the path over the edge.  Similarly, think about when you are sick – do you feel hungry? In fact, don’t  you nearly always lose your appetite?

All of this is a complex, two way path between your gut and brain and what we are learning is that the gut is not just a sensory organ, but in fact send signals and the brain obeys.  How have the relatively recent advances of transportation and refrigeration changed what we eat in week, a day or even a meal? Do we think our evolutionary past was really as diverse as it is today?  All of this is only how our own digestive processes impact food.  It get’s even more complex enter:

Trillions and Trillions of Bacteria

It’s always interesting to learn something that just doesn’t fit our world view or is hard to comprehend.  I was drawn to space exploration by thinking about the magnitude and grandeure of the universe – you know, Sagans “billions of stars” (he never really said it, but it stuck).  Well here is a new thing to consider: There are 100 trillion microbes in and on your body, but “you” are composed of only 10 trillion cells. That’s right, “you” are only about 1/10th the cells moving around in your mass – the rest is THEM.

The gut is one of the places these microbes reside. Without them, you would die.  In fact, our microbiome, as it is called, is one of the next great mysteries to unravel. The Human Microbiome Project was launched by the NIH to identify and characterize the microbiomes that exist in various parts of the body. Each of us has a different microbiota, or bacterial gut make up, and this profoundly influences how you process food. The microbiome is the total genetic “fingerprint” of these microorganisms.

Understand we have to “feed” the organisms that reside in the gut and the exact balance can be related to diet. For example, Researchers at the Copenhagen University Hospital recently identified a correlation between antibiotics given in the first 6 months to infants and being overweight by the age of seven (1). When you take antibiotics you kill the good bacteria with the bad.

Thinking about just taking a “probiotic” to fix the problem?  These contain 4, 5, maybe 10 types. You likely have 500-1000 species and some estimates are ranging up to 35,000.  In April 2011, researchers defined three enterotypes, or clustered ratios of Bacteroides, Prevotella, or Ruminococcus species. Looking at individuals from Europe, Japan and Unites states, these enterotypes not only cross international and continental borders, but also race, ethnicity, age, and sex.

Beside the general information found on the HMP page of the NIH, one of the best open-source papers I found is this 2010 review article in Physiological Reviews. It’s long, but if this subject interests you, there is a lot of information. In terms of your microbiota influence on you, the authors point out:

“Nutrient metabolism by resident microbes is not carried out strictly for the host’s benefit; part of the energy extracted from luminal nutrients is designated for the microbiota itself, to maintain its numbers and fitness. It has been shown that members of the gut microbiota are able to adapt their metabolism to the conditions of the intestine, responding to substrate availability.” (3)

Of course these populations of little metabolisms all have their own byproducts, some good, some bad and we have to live with what they do. This is where food could provide a very key role in molding your microbiota make up.   While this research is expanding exponentially, one has to rethink the old saying – YOU are what you eat. What about them?

The Scoop on Poop

This is a part that edges on TMI, but unfortunately, there’s a lot of information lurking in this not so fun subject, so here it goes.  I used to love reading “The Holes in Your Nose,” The Gas We Pass” and “Everyone Poops”  to my kids. The truth is despite the stink and embarrassment of letting one go in a silent room, this is all vital to a properly functioning body. Your poop matters. In fact, it’s a great sign of what is going on inside you every day.  How long does it take to get through (transit time)? How is it shaped? Color? Smell? it all actually matters and can be a sign of healthy or not so healthy microbiota and diet.

I don’t want to get into this too much (I guess technically that would put me in deep-shit), but I do want to at least draw your attention to the daily bathroom visit. At the very minimum and I am probably going to regret writing this so don’t give me shit, but corn is a GREAT tracer particle if you want to figure out transit time from mouth to toilet.  Pick your favorite meal and swallow a tablespoon of corn, midway through. Wait and eventually there it is.

It’s sort of interesting to note that that time changes depending on meal size, frequency of eating and even hydration.  As well, it changes SIGNIFICANTLY with diet. When diet changes, for example when I began eating a mostly-vegan diet, I saw significant changes for about 6 weeks. On the other hand, if I occasionally have chicken wings or ribs, bam, it can change dramatically with one meal.

In one direction meat->vegan, gas was TERRIBLE for a time.  This is because the make up of my intestinal tract allowed a lot of undigestible oligosaccharides (remember our carbohydrate posts?) pass through the small intestine.  These saccharides are more complex than simple sugars, but less than a starch. When not broken down in the small intestine,  they make perfect food for some of the critters living in the colon and fuel these gassy tagalongs.  These are often referred to as prebiotics – including digestive resistant starch and fermentable fiber.

It is now believe these are all helpful in forming B vitamins along with short chain fatty acids. They can even promote calcium and magnesium absorption.  In the next (AND FINAL) post on the intestines, we can look at the various intestinal sections and the feed forward response.  I think you’ll see why a change in diet can really have an interesting side effect. Note that these changes need to be long enough for the beasts inside to fight among themselves and come to a new equilibrium.  For example meat/fat microbiota can be thought of as looking different than starch/zucchini.

It’s not that simple, but suffice it to say that it DOES matter. So much so, that (I’m not making this up) fecal transplants are now being looked at to control type 2 diabetes (4)!  So eat right or get a transplant – you decide what’s more pleasant: Calorie Rich And Processed (CRAP) food or taking a donation from Aunt Catherine?

All crap-jokes aside, we are only beginning to understand the implications of just how important these symbiotic beasts are in our health.  What is more important is that you will see that much more is going on than one might think, and how one digests foods is critically important to health and weight loss success.

Maybe we should be saying THEY are what we eat.

…to be continued.

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Do you like these blogs and want to help me? Please take a minute to scroll up on the right side of the screen to consider making a monthly donation to this program. You can also make a one time donation here:

Thanks!
Ray
(1) Childhood overweight after establishment of the gut microbiota: the role of delivery mode, pre-pregnancy weight and early administration of antibiotics, International Journal of Obesity (2011) 35, 522–529; 
(2) Enterotypes of the human gut microbiome, Manimozhiyan Arumugam, et al., Nature 473, 174–180 (12 May 2011)
(3) Gut Microbiota in Health and Disease, Inna Sekirov, et al., Physiol Rev July 1, 2010 vol. 90 no. 3;
(4) The therapeutic potential of manipulating gut microbiota in obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus, R. S. Kootte1, et al., Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism Volume 14, Issue 2, pages 112–120, February 2012 

 

Pass the Protein (roots) – Part 2

By On · 41 Comments

After 4 months we are finally nearing the end of our dietary journey.  We discussed the basic context of Macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, and fat) as “fuel.” We learned that there is a group of Micronutrients – vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that all constitute “service” or biological maintenance.  We understand that fat has more energy density (2x) than protein or carbohydrate.

Our body uses primary fuel glucose/glycogen through the TCA or krebs cycle to obtain energy (brain biggest single user, followed closely by liver and muscle)  and the body stores a glycogen (a special muscle protein with a carbohydrate shell) and fat (adipose tissue) for rainy day “reserves.”

If you are REALLY starving, or consume an excess, protein is (inefficiently) converted to be used in the sugar cycle through gluconeogenesis (creating new glucose from protein).  The body protects protein a bit, because there’s no sense in digesting the muscle tissue when there is plenty of fat or glycogen around to tap into. Fat on the other hand goes through a different pathway from protein/carbohydrate to derive energy (beta oxidation), but after that are dumped into the same krebs cycle.

Proteins DO NOT = Flesh. There are many very important proteins from enzymes like insulin to blood proteins like hemoglobin, which are recycled and recreated every day.  Proteins are macromolecules, unique sequences of amino acids that are defined by our genes. New proteins are created every second in your body and others are eliminated.  Protein is NOT a food group that you need to “manage.”

You should now recognize that when we break down the bonds of a starch (a carbohydrate) into glucose (a simple sugar) it happens through an enzyme (e.g. amylase created by the AMY1 gene) and we don’t have the enzyme to break down fiber (cellulose). Remember that both starch and cellulose are long chains of glucose – only one is digestible by Humans. Termites and cows eat cellulose in wood and grass to obtain glucose.  Similarly, agave and corn syrups are both high fructose (a 5 carbon sugar) syrups and one is squeezed from corn, the other from Agave plants. Fructose is fructose and I’m not a big fan of simple sugars of any kind as a main dietary source of energy.

We discussed fat as a storage container for energy and it’s necessary role in the diet. We touched on cholesterol – the bold blood biomarker advertised as an indicator of health – and its role as a basis for Vitamin D and all cell walls. We know that to lose weight we MUST go on a naturally high-fat diet (consuming our own).

Finally we figured out that proteins have a bit of an identity crisis in that they CAN be digested for energy, but what we actually need from them is the 10 essential (indispensable) amino acids that our body can’t synthesize. This causes the protein conundrum and is what sends everyone into a “pass the protein” muscle-head mindset.  Ultimately our body needs energy and amino acids to repair or build muscle that has been biologically stressed from a workout. “Protein” does not have to be the source of both the energy and the amino acid. It’s only required for half of the 20 amino acids (the 10 essential/indispensable).

To be clear about our need for amino acids, I want to dig deep, to the very OTHER end of this dialog, because it will be far easier for you to let go and follow along.  So please, set aside your bias and what you may believe about “protein” and let’s look at it from a very different perspective.

Roots

Roots - A California Redwood is a MASSIVE living organism full of "protein"

Let’s take a trip back to grammar school science class. The plants use chlorophyll and CO2 (carbon dioxide) along with energy from the sun for photosynthesis (photo – light + synthesis – putting together) .  Plants make sugars – sugar cane? Fruits? Tubers/rice starches (poly sugar)? All from carbon dioxide and sunlight. When you see the giant redwoods in California we KNOW they didn’t eat anything at all to grow that big. they absorbed a little carbon dioxide (okay a LOT) from the air, sprinkled sunshine, and presto.

These are MASSIVE living organisms with complex biochemistry and structure. They are full of all sorts of regulatory proteins and cells. Trees create cellulose (remember – long chains of glucose with beta amylase bond) to reach enormous heights. How about all the chlorophyll protein in the leaves? More massive and more protein in one of these single trees than your biggest meat-head on Venice Beach – don’t you think? In fact, did you know scientist are devising new ways to classify trees based on Phylogenic analysis – looking at  molecular structures of  DNA, RNA and protein to group closely related organisms (like trees)?

Where do they get the protein?

Nitrogen Cycle: source - wiki commons

The roots. They form these amino acids (remember Nitrogen?) from the “fertilizer” we put on the ground around them. Farmers often refer to the fertilizer as nitrogen or nitrates and while there are a few more things they get, understand that the nitrogen is critical for both protein and DNA/RNA.  They need these same building blocks, but can’t seem to get the “perfect protein” of an egg into their system.

Guess what – Plants can synthesize ALL 20 amino acids. A potato has every single amino acid. So does rice, but wait, aren’t these “carbs?” Not only that, you’ll remain in POSITIVE nitrogen balance  even if that’s all you eat [Nitrogen Balance is a measure excreted excess nitrogen from protein not needed in urine/feces]. I’m not suggesting an all potato diet, but if this is true, how does that impact how you think about food?

Where do you get your protein?

Even venus flytraps  and other carnivorous plants derive some of their nitrogen from fertilizer and ALL of their energy from the sun. They shun protein as a fuel.

The nitrogen cycle is well known and there’s no need to go into in in great detail, but  just understand we can eat animals that eat plants or we can eat plants.  We can get complete, sufficient compliment of the 10 amino acids that we don’t make either way. There’s no debate. Everything else is simply ideological arguments and I gave up politics when I retired from my government job.  Everyone can debate it, but the science isn’t going to change.

Tie Me Dinosaur Down, Sport.

Herbivores eat plants (maybe not redwoods) and they get essential amino acids and energy from grasses, leaves, and even fruits.  We are talking about some of the largest animals on the planet and even herbivore dinosaurs out numbered carnivorous dinosaurs.  We have discussed that a “grass fed” cow that has “complete protein” (amino acid profile) and gets its protein from…grass. If we ingest the beef, we get the amino acids (synthesized by the plants) use some for repair and burn the rest.  We don’t store amino acids, we just use them.

Potato - Vitamins, minerals and protein - OH MY! There are many foods with protein that we unwisely categorize by the dominant macronutrient (e.g. potato = carbohydrate). This is a mistake. source: http://www.potato2008.org/

I would have to say my “beef” with all the protein double-talk is that it’s not hard to understand. Why do we complicated it? Why don’t we talk about foods to eat instead of vilifying/praising the macronutrient de jour.  I don’t want to convert anyone and I don’t want to be converted. I just want to understand a pattern of eating and how it fits in with basic caloric and nutrient needs.

This is really not difficult science and yet everyone pauses at a vegetarian or vegan diet with an incredulous question, “where do you get your protein?”  By now, hopefully that is sounding pretty ridiculous to everyone.  It’s not difficult to eat complete amino acid profiles or sufficient quantities. You don’t have to mix and match sources.  The fact is that we are flooded with a massive excess of protein/amino acids every day and most of them are inefficiently burned as fuel putting loads on our other organs to screen, sift and sort.

This is NOT an appeal to get you to “switch” a diet. It’s simply a basis for a rational understanding of what you eat and why.  It’s a foundation of information and review of things we know to be true so that you may then ask yourself a basic question: why would anyone educated to any advanced level be recommending or suggesting that “protein” is a necessary “something” you actually have to manage day to day?

This kind of thinking isn’t limited to protein pandering by diet gurus, physicians, and nutritionists. Remember, the sun once rose in the east and set in the west and that was PROOF that the sun revolved around the Earth – can’t you see it right there every day, you idiot? So democracy doesn’t win in science, at least not for long.

This protein argument is not much different and it’s most likely rooted in economy of agriculture, ideology, and cultural bias.  I can’t believe how I have been attacked for just EXPERIMENTING with a vegan diet.  It’s a “label” – oh, so you are a VEGAN? NO, I am not a vegan.  No one  should have to bow to such social labels, but we all know it happens on all sides of the debates.

I don’t want to engage in this debate of a pragmatic vegetarian (for health) vs an ideologic vegetarian (don’t eat animals), because it has all sorts of dimension, but none of the debate needs to be about protein, carbohydrates or fats.  Food doesn’t need to be described that way and everyone seems to have an ideology that drives their view of the science, rather then letting the data speak for itself.

If you want to deal in ideologic vegetarian arguments, I heard the most persuasive argument against eating animals (carnism) in my life recently by Dr. Melanie Joy and she does make some good points. I wan’t persuaded for those reasons, but it was the most compelling argument I’ve heard to date.   This is not my mission, but then again, I don’t see the difference between eating your house cat, a salmon or a cow in terms of basic food macronutrients. They would all provide fat/amino acids with a few fat soluble vitamins from a strictly scientific perspective. When you pause to think about it, other than fish and perhaps the seals eaten by Inuitsboost meat consumed is from herbivoires. Generally speaking, we don’t farm carnivores and I think for good reason.  These are all available from plants as well. These are not mutually exclusive arguments.

Kathy Freston - The Veganist

I’m not advocating eating cats or avacados right now, just making a point. We all have some sort of ideology that is brought to the table to justify what we do and reject what we “believe” is wrong. Kathy Freston (the veganist) talks about “leaning into” a vegan diet in her new book, The Lean. Her husband eats meat. She does not, but she can tell you all sorts of reasons (like her personal ideology and ridding herself of life-long acne).  She and I have discussed this and we both have to laugh, because her book or cause isn’t a discussion about protein.

On the other side of the table, there are many “Vegans” that parade unproven health benefits to disguise ideological arguments.  That is no more correct than the USDA misrepresenting food calories (like fat) on labels using a ridiculous per weight reporting system combined with recommended daily values of nutrients described per calorie. Of the two issues (vegan health or food labels), the latter is probably more responsible for deleterious health of the world.

So, to everyone reading – I am openly experimenting (with good results) with a nutrient dense, calorically restricted diet and I have been working on limiting protein consumption and biosimilar macromolecules by eating a vegan diet. I get plenty of protein.

I needed to understand how to burn fat quickly and eventually it challenged everything I knew about food.  I learned that when you cut down to a “naturally high-fat diet” of love handles, beer bellies and thunder thighs, it’s amazing how well it goes.  Sprinkle a little micronutrient on there and get your game on. Adding thermal loading takes it to an entirely different level.

Got Milk?

Finally, how much amino acid  (protein) do we need? I decided to do a little research to look at protein, carbohydrate and fats in various milks.  I mean, would anyone argue that a growing baby isn’t best fed by its mother’s milk for at least some period of life? This is not by any means the final word, but it certainly might give us some clues; although sometimes I feel like I’m living in the nutritional equivalent of National Treasure. I found sources everywhere and put them into a giant spreadsheet so I could plot protein, lactose (carbohydrate), and fat.

I won’t do a lot of interpretation, but instead let you take a look. How do Human infants stack up to other species? We learned last year (BATgirl 1 & 2)  that human infants are born with more fat and BAT than nearly any other species. We know that there are many factors in determining the “perfect food,” but one would think that good ole Mother Nature might get something right. So how does it look?

[Click to Enlarge]

Percent Protein in various species of animal milk © Ray Cronise

Percent Protein in various species of animal milk © Ray Cronise

Percent Fat in various species of animal milk © Ray Cronise

I think right away you should recognize species of arctic or aquatic environments as having a lot of energy and “leaning” on fat (sorry Kathy, damn that’s a good term). Then there are the fast growers, like rats, that have enormously high protein requirements.  I haven’t plotted some of the other things I have in the table like “time to sexual maturity” (do men ever get there?), but there is a lot to learn.

Also, I’m not suggesting that this is the holy grail of diets – you all know that I believe balancing protein, carbohydrates and fats is not only futile, but is exactly how we created this entire mess in the first place.  I just want to point out a few obvious confused facts in the diet lore that abounds. Is goat milk REALLY a closer to Human milk than cow milk? I’ve heard that before.  What species matches ours most closely and if we are to consume milk past weaning, why don’t we drink THAT? Am I sounding like an Ass? Wait, what about the fat?

Marketing is way ahead of knowledge and I too stayed in the dark for WAY too long.

We are basically starchivoires. It’s how we derived our calorie needs for millennium and it really helped us evolve this tremendously energy-hungry brain. Underground storage organs, Tubers, corms, rhizomes, and bulbs, are available year round in the areas where Humans are shown to evolve (my ancestors: maternal – Haplogroup J1b and Paternal – Haplogroup R1b1b2a1a2 as I had my genotype analyzed along the way). With that said, we can eat other things too and they may prove to be better in the long run, but starches are not “evil” and I’ve seen direct proof of diabetes reversal on a starch-based diet.

I think you’ll see the work of Dr Nathaniel Dominy move ahead of Dr. Loren Cordain in the future and yet both have something to important to contribute to evolutionary biology foundation.  I have absolutely no doubt that meat has played a significant role in our evolutionary past and feel equally certain that excessive dairy consumption has been part of the energetic demise.

Many Paleo and Vegan proponents agree on the deleterious health effects of milk, but is it the protein, carbohydrate, or fat that’s the reason? What about other biomimetics (biosimilar compounds) in dairy (let’s lump cheese, yogurt,  ice-cream in while we ware whipping) and what role do they play? Is it an immune response to whey are casein that is similar as the oh-so-popular evil wheat-gluten protein? We just aren’t sure and yet there are THOUSANDS of good, peer-reviewed papers on the negative effects of dairy consumption and none of it ends up on the “got milk” posters in the school cafeterias.

We know, for example, that bovine (cow) insulin is only different by three amino acids (out of 51) from human insulin. If you believe that human infants get very important enzymes and protective hormones from ingesting their mother’s breast milk, can you at the same time reject that you might be getting harmful ones by drinking the milk of another species decades after you would have been naturally weaned? What health impacts occur due to these biologically active compounds? What if we package it up as “solids” and feed it to our kids three times a day as cheese? Why is it so damn hard to walk away from eating it???

Did I mention how much I LOVE to eat cheese and yogurt? Well, I do and I still do even after not eating it regularly for nearly three years. I’m guilty, but I have that evolutionary big brain and I want to use it to inch my health along.

There are plenty of successful groups of people (like the inuits) that have moved into more energy demanding environments (like cold) and have been able to adapt the diet to eating higher levels of fat to make up energy deficits. The same is true of the original mediterranean studied in the late 50s (now the basis of the olive-oil craze).  We can eat energy dense foods when we NEED the calories. Are they really more important?

I know that calories count. The discrepancy is in the counting and labeling.

I hope this has been informative. Again, the take home is that when we are trying to run a calorie deficit, don’t fall for all of the little tricks – you’ll have to get over the addiction to calories one way or another whether they originate as ingested carbohydrate or fat.  No one knows for certain what the “real answer” will be, but I hope all of you feel a little more well-equiped and begin talking about FOOD not protein, carbohydrate or fats. What I’ve learned first hand through mild cold stress is that the Human body is amazingly adaptive. You can’t fool it easily and there’s no need to do it.

Note on comments – Let’s not diminish this to a vegan-paleo debate, nor talk about co-founding variables in the china study. What I am more interested in help is in the foundation of FOOD and food groups in lieu of protein, carbohydrate and fat.  I want you to see that food is typically a mixture of two or all and that we end up in traps by the “majority macronutrient” classification scheme.

I will touch on the feed forward response, satiety and absorption next and then we’ll return to the regularly scheduled program on mild cold stress – already in progress. Thanks to EVERYONE for support (paypal) and acting so incredibly civilized.  I think this blog is starting to take root over in the paleo and vegan worlds, let’s hope they all remain as respectful as everyone has here. I really appreciate it and apologize that we had to veer off mild cold stress for foundational material. It will be necessary information for the next step in thermal loading.

And last, but not least, having just spent a week with Wim Hof over at his home in Amsterdam planning our next chapter, take a few minutes to look at these hysterically funny commercials by Columbia Sportswear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Pc85ypazE

You can see them all at:  Columbia Sportswear Omini Heat

and let’s NOT forget our very own Andrew Stemler at Crossfit London:

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Do you like these blogs and want to help me? Please take a minute to scroll up on the right side of the screen to consider making a monthly donation to this program. You can also make a one time donation here:

Thanks!
Ray

 

Fat – Part 2

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the facts on Fat and weight loss. In Fat – Part 1 I explained some details about our body’s use of lipids (fat) and the role it plays in both survival and diet.  The most important concept to take away is that you MUST go on a naturally “high-fat diet,” digesting your OWN adipose tissue, to lose weight.  This may seem so incredibly obvious, but if you take a few minutes each day to think about it, I believe it will have profound impact on your results.

Why? because every calorie you put into your mouth will fuel your body and that will result in the part you WANT to lose remaining safely in place – the rainy day fund. You can juggle macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) to your heart’s desire and still it will not make any difference unless you run a caloric deficit.  No matter how frequently you pay your credit card bills, if you keep spending, you’ll never reduce the balance.

There is a yin yang to carbohydrate and fat and that is why they are presented as the evil sisters of the macronutrient triplets: protein carbohydrate and fat.

As we learned in the Carbohydrate posts, these starchy foods (natural starches – not french fries and chips) are not evil things to be “completely avoided.”  Glycemic index has a role, but it’s far from absolute. Fat is much the same.  It got its bad wrap in the 80s and became synonymous with weight gain.  When we look back in 100 years to the chronic obesity epidemic created at the end of the 21st century, the focus on fat in the 1980s will be shown to have started the health decline and launch us into record chronic illness. It will be our amazing mastery of calorie (food) that will be shown to have caused a decline in health after millions of years of battling starvation.

In fact, once fitness experts, media, and even physicians became obsessed with a “low-fat diet,” the food industry surged with advertisements: FAT FREE, low FAT, reduced FAT, no trans-FAT, saturated FAT-free and the list goes on and on. Of course you and I were lead to believe that fat-free = healthy, but all the food industry did was load up our food chain with simple sugar (high fuctose corn syrup, honey, sucrose, agave, etc…) and processed starches (flour, corn meal, wheat flour, etc).

Voilà, we began stuffing our mouths with healthy, low-fat “carbs” and now here we are 2 decades later and suddenly the new enemy is the carbohydrate. Can you sense the pattern here? It’s incredible to think our body’s entire energy economy is based on blood-sugar and yet the “new and improved” diet experts are now telling us our primary energy source is bad for you.

The Lizard Brain

You see, all of these concentrated energy foods give us that “lizard-brain” hit.  Simple sugars, processed starch, and fats (even OLIVE OIL) are all nothing more that concentrated energy with very little nutrient value. Ok, stop right there with the Omega-3 “good fats” thoughts.  Sure, we need omega-3s and we NEED fat (and carbohydrate) in our diet. The problem comes when it’s over processed, think concentrated and readily available.

If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning (if not, start here), you should start to recognize a pattern and it doesn’t matter if you are paleolithic, vegan, body for life, The Zone, Atkins, Mediterranean or Ornish. No matter WHAT diet you decide to go on, the way you lose will be a caloric deficit.  It was clear to me after a few months of blogging on “boosting” your weight loss with mild cold stress that there was no way to boost, if everyone was confused about the primary issue at hand – burning ones own body fat as fuel.

So let’s think just a little more about fat and compare it to simple sugar.  In both cases you have something that is relatively unavailable in nature in it’s pure form. Rather, you find it in nature combined with other micronutrient your body needs.  Just try eating 250 lbs a year of sugar by gnawing on sugar cane – knock yourself out.

Your body needs more than energy and perhaps it’s seeking the plant-derived minerals, amino acids vitamins and other phytonutrients (light produced nutrients such as antioxidants) or maybe the amino acids found in meat.  Either way you will note that ENERGY (fuel) is ALWAYS packaged in nature with micronutrients or fiber – it just doesn’t exist in its pure form of simple sugars or fat.

We can go ahead and throw out the Inuit now as the exception that survived on seal and whale blubber. I might point out, selfishly, that they also had an ENORMOUS thermal load on their body, which called for extreme caloric intake (in excess of 5000 cal/day); they are not the healthiest culture despite their popularity to justify excessive fat consumption.

Low-carb and low fat diets are one in the same. Both limit ENERGY (fuel) and attempt to maintain the flow of micronutrients (maintenance) your body needs to function and repair while simultaneously living off your fat stores.

If it’s really that easy,  then why is it so difficult to resist?

It’s that damn lizard brain. Eat. Survive. Store. I don’t know when I might get a chance to drive through McDonalds again. WTF? That is the problem.  Your body is the result of millions of years of evolutionary starvation and we have been thrust into a world of plentiful, no EXCESSIVE calorie.

You know what is even worse than this excessive calorie? You are intelligent and you WANT to listen to all the experts that tell you it is okay to eat __________ and still lose weight. Here is what we can all be absolutely certain of: unless you begin to live off of the fat in the stomach, thighs, buttocks, or hips that you so desperately want to part ways with, no amount of macronutrient “juggling” will work.

Oh, and you can’t out-exercise your mouth.

If it Jiggles and Wiggles – Eat It.

So rather going into yet another scheme to juggle good fat from bad fat or good carb from bad carb, just know that simple sugars, processed carbs, and extracted fat/oils (including meats and excessive nuts) all contain a ton of energy (fuel) and will slow down the rate of loss. Its YOU and YOUR FAT that you want to digest. Don’t screw it up with olive oil and bacon. They might taste good and really give you that lizard brain hit, but it is only short lived. It’s only lasts as long as you are eating.

The reason I enjoy a vegan diet is that I  LOVE to eat and eating stops after you swallow.  I can simply eat a tremendous volume of food and not have to worry. Unlike most “vegans” (I use it as an adjective, not a noun), I don’t use oils (gasp – even olive oil) or  excess simple sugars, because I am focused on the maximum micronutrients with minimum calories and the MOST food I can joyfully stuff into my mouth (sorry – it’s true, I love to cook and eat). Besides, there are a lot of fat vegans and vegetarians. Just because it doesn’t have eyes or a mother, doesn’t make it automatically healthy.

For others you might still be addicted to simple sugars, or fat and so The Zone, BFL, paleo approach or Mediterranean might appeal. Just understand that if you tinker too much with fat (or simple sugars and processed carbs) you can easily over consume calories. If you do, your body will not be teased into burning “stomach, hips and thighs.”

So Fats, are necessary for good health, skin, nails, and brain function, but they contain a lot of calories per serving. What is worse is that one can EASILY hide an entire Snickers bar in the dressing on your salad…or cheese sauce on your broccoli…or the butter/sour cream on your baked potato without you even knowing it. Compounding this are the dopamine hits your lizard brain will get from these calorie-dense foods that did not exist when it evolved; eat more. eat more. eat more…thunder thighs.

Don’t kid yourself, sucking down loads of refined oils – even plant oils – are not going to help you in your battles. Afterall it was the vegetable oil and margarine surge of the 60s and 70s that lead to the 1980s “low fat” products that put us on the fast track to obesity.  Refined oils and fats and simple refined carbohydrates and highly processed starches (breads, crackers, chips, and milled grains) are both at the heart of the obesity surge and chronic illness we face today. The french fry, donut or potato chip are iconic images for me – fat-fried (even the “good fat” – LOL), sugar (oh yes, agave – the new, trendy “high-fuctose syrup”) and processed  starches. 

Is the answer protein? well, we will see about that in the next post.

Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for an amazing year in 2011!

Ray

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Carbohydrates – Part 2

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carbohydrates, like potatoes need not be your enemy. These can be good sources of nutritionIn Part 1, we began the process of distinguishing the difference between a food group and a macronutrient. Carbohydrates (Carbs) are probably the most vilified of the macronutrients. This is probably due to the ubiquitous availability of starch foods throughout human history. For the most part, oils, fats, and meats were the food of the rich. Everyone else ate beans, rice and potatoes.

If we listed the many staple foods: grains, rice, beans, squash, quinoa, potatoes and corn we see a high amount of starch. Remember, starch is simply a long chain of glucose. We all need glucose to live and our primary energy is derived from glucose and stored glycogen or fat (more later).

I want you to know that a carbohydrate need not be fattening, nor lead to diabetes.  In fact, Carbohydrates can be very satiating (1) for 4-5 hours after meals. What seems to be the big diversion, where the “bad carbs” come in, is the processing (blending, frying, flouring, pasting, etc) of carbohydrate.  When we break down starch too much in the food preparation process, it leads to lots of simple sugars. These are both easy to overeat and can have other deleterious health effects.

Starch digestion begins in the mouth with the amylase in the saliva. The starch begins to break down to glucose.  A great way to experience this first hand is to take a unsalted cracker and just hold it in your mouth. You will begin to generate a lot of saliva and as you hold it there, begin to taste sweetness as the glucose is formed. Remember, a termite can do exactly the same thing with cellulose in wood.

From an evolutionary biology perspective, the AMY1 gene that is responsible for making amylase is so important  that you have as many as 12 copies of it (2).  It was extremely important to our hunter-gather predecessors. While there’s been much put forward on the “hunting” side of the equation, some of the most recent anthropology suggest that the “gathering” side dominated.  Underground storage organs (USOs – tubers, bulbs, corms, and rhizomes) played a significant role in our energy management of times past.

Men like the idea of beating their chest and running through the woods hunting and they write a lot of the stories, but gathering is actually a better (less sexy) explanation of our survival. It even allows the elderly to participate productively in the group, even grandmothers would have a significant role in the earliest tribes. Anyone can dig up a potato, they aren’t very fast, and they grow in predicable places.

The naked mole rat is found with archeology of hominid population explosions and points to USOs as a gathered food source. click photo for NPR Story

Many of the early tools used to process USOs were probably made of wood and didn’t survive in the archeological records, but the early Hominid starch crystals in teeth have. Also there are also fossilized populations of mole rats that surge with every human population expansion (3). We’ll also learn that the mole rat has some FASCINATING genetics that impacts thermal loading.

I don’t want to get into the Paleolithic debate. What I want everyone to see is that starch IS an important evolutionary part of your fuel system, but at the same time recognize french fries are NOT the starch I am talking about.  Your view of carbohydrate has been jaded since the beginning of diets. In the earliest of diets (Banting) it was simple breads combined with butter/sugar that caused the excess energy to creep in. Processed starch (sugars) of all kinds can lead to excess caloric intake; it’s just easy to digest and pleasurable to overeat, especially when combined with salt and fat.

For today, understand that primary complex carbohydrates: squash, legumes, onions, carrots, whole corn, whole rice, and potato are all good bases of energy. They are satiating ways to make up for caloric deficit, but don’t confuse those items, “items your great grandmother would recognize as food,” Michael Pollan might say, with the “carbs” served at school lunch.

Most importantly understand that many of these “starchy” foods also contain significant proteins with complete compliment of the essential amino acids your body will use to synthesize your own protein. These complex carbohydrates are broken down by amylase to glucose: the fuel for your brain and many cells in the body.  If they aren’t consumed with excessive alternate energy sources (like excessive fat or simple sugar), your body will tap into it’s own fat reserves.  If too much pre-processing is performed, then you might see increased problems managing blood sugar.

Eating carbohydrate is convenient and pleasurable, and know there is room for “carbs” in your diet if you make the correct choices.

So, when we are putting this all together and I say carbohydrate, I want you to think about these whole, starchy food items that enter YOUR kitchen/cooking reasonably resembling how they came out of the ground or off the plant. Sugar, raw, brown…whatever, is refined. I challenge you to eat the 250 lbs of sugar a year  gnawing on sugarcane, however; you might be able to do it with grapes or beets.

Others have commented on fructose, a simple sugar in fruit, and I think there is merit to the issues that come from too many simple sugars, especially highly processed. This likely includes high fructose corn syrup, apple juice, sucrose, agave nectar, etc…).  Fruits are not found in nature year round, but USOs are. Similarly, think about what is easily stored (beans vs beets).  It’s amazing to hear people rave about “natural agave nectar” (inulin/fructose squeezed from agave) and then begin to lambast the food industry for high fructose corn syrup (fructose squeezed from corn). Yes there are some differences, but we’ll debate it in 5-10 years.  It’s all simple sugar  to me and best avoided.

These simple sugars are energy without the fiber or micronutrients. Others, like Robert Lustig, have covered the issue of fructose in far better detail than I will, but likely our problem as a nation is probably more related to drinking, for example, too much apple juice, rather than eating too many apples. The same is true of french fries vs potatoes. The larger group health statistics just don’t separate the issues (e.g. apples vs apple juice or fries vs potato) with enough granularity and it is all complicated with saturated fats and other compounding, synergistic concoctions we now call food.

Many energy dense foods are now available year round (like fruits or avocados) and so we must be careful with these foods.  We’ll see a similar trend with fats, oils, and nuts.

Starch is a wonderful molecule and has been around for millions of years. Starch is just one bond different from wood.  You are designed to eat starch, with back ups systems in place (AMY1).  We can identify paleolitic starch in teeth, even knowing the plants that produced it, and so there is nothing wrong with carbohydrate as a food – it highly processing it and combining with other energy-rich processed product that causes much of the issues.

You will inevitably hear more about the amazing work anthropologist, Nathaniel Dominy is doing with starch and USOs.  I personally believe the depth and thoroughness of his work will have an impact on what many, like Loren Cordain, believe to absolute. Nate has a very uncanny ability to see past the obvious. For the record, he’s a meat eater, despite what he’s uncovered in the last few years about starch in anthropology.

In terms of the thermodynamics, most natural starches come with a compliment of other micronutrients that are beneficial.  These are “energy foods” and so we absolutely CAN lose weight by eliminating them from your diet.  I am not suggesting diets higher in fat or protein (atkins, paleolithic, slow carb) cannot be used to lose weight – I am diet agnostic. What I can explain is on whole the overall management of energy, heat (not temperature), that is responsible for your success.

If we stop isolating these foods based on our perceived/suggested notations of macronutrient content and return to simple food, A calorie will be a calorie.  Once you learn to recognize what you are consuming at every meal (and snack) you’ll see the results you’ve been after. It doesn’t even take discipline once you understand the underlying principles.

Gauging on the comments/questions, I might dig in a little more (Part 3) on carbohydrate. Eventually I will post the overall biochemistry and some have written asking me to explain the TCA cycle (that complex part in the middle of a Lustig presentation if you’ve seen one).  Otherwise, I will move onto fat and catch sugars in the wrap up.

Next week is TEDMED in San Diego. It’s hard to believe a year has past.  I’ll probably have at least one update on what I learn there, but will *try* to write two posts on fat before I leave so they can post next week.

(1)  Carbohydrates and human appetite, Blundell, JE, et al.,Am J Clin Nutr 1994;59(suppl):728S-34S.

(2) Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation, Perry, G.H., et al., Nature Genetics 39, 1256 – 1260 (2007)

(3) Communication/presentation with Dr Nathaniel Dominy, Dartmouth University Dept of Anthropology

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Ray

The Chain Gang

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chains of energy. Carbohydrates, protein, fat are all the building blocks of energy. The picture says it all. We are going to talk about chains, not of steel, but of the basic energy units that keeps your body going and make you fat.  I hope it is a new beginning, a bridge to a new way of thinking. Once you understand how the body processes food, it’ll take away mystery and magic.

The reality is actually far more simple than all of the crazy schemes you’ve followed in the past; the beauty is every one of them can be easily explained – with no contradictions.

The beginning of the story actually starts at the end. It is an interesting circle. You are here primarily because you have fat to lose.  That fat is stored, in the form of Triacylglycerols (fancy term don’t worry about it) in the adipose cells.  These “fat cells” are a place so this high-energy can be stored for “later use.” As we learned last week, our problem is that later never comes before we return to the gas station. You know the rest of the story.

Other animals, and even plants, store slightly different forms of energy for the exact same reason; it’s stored for later use. This is energy to sustain life when fuel (food/light) is not around to keep the animal/plant functioning. We’ll learn of some other special types of storage in addition to fats, glycogen and starch, and how it fits into the  puzzle.  When we are done, you will see ALL food with a new view – from ingestion to use or from ingestion to storage. I want you to FORGET about the association of carbohydrates, protein and fat with particular foods (e.g potatoes = carbs) – most (real) food has all three sources of macronutrients.

The Evolutionary Shuffle

So here is the picture that should be etched in your head:  Stumble around, find food, eat as much as you can, starve for a while living off of reserves, and find food again.  That is how it worked for nearly 7 million years. Even in the last 10,000 years, when Humans became far more useful with respect to their hunting and gathering, we still mostly starved.  If we go back to the first recorded agriculture (5000-6000 years ago) we are still talking a mere blip on the evolutionary scale.  Genetically speaking, we are still programmed to stumble, eat, starve and eat again.

Genetically speaking, we haven’t changed that much in the last 5000-6000 years.  To put that into evolutionary perspective if all hominid development of 7 million years was represented by a mile, our dominion over agriculture was the last 4 feet – barely a step.  You are  genetically programmed to store energy for times of famine. So are your skinny friends.

The problem? Famine never comes.

So when we eat animal or plant fat, we take that stored energy and either convert it to useful energy or extract the energy from it and store it ourselves. The same goes for carbohydrates. We use the energy directly or just convert the excess to fat for later.  Proteins, we’ll see, are  just a little different. We can break them down and use the nutrients (amino acids) to build other proteins (e.g. insulin, enzymes, antibodies, or hair) or we can burn them and use the energy or store it in fat for later use.

In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t say MUSCLE in that list, because we’re over focused on the muscle/protein connection – both on intake and body nutrient use. It keeps you from really digesting these concepts. Put it away for now.

Each of these macromolecules: Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats contain smaller “packages” of energy, but are stored like the links on the chain.  As we dive into the each of the individual chains, you will see the similarities, and differences, but right now the BIGGEST obstacle to understanding this is to stop associating proteins, carbohydrates, and fats with specific foods.  These are not food group labels like meat, dairy, or vegetables. These are basic collections of molecules of similar chemistry and function and the vast majority of unrefined food has all three.

To define a particular food by what macronutrient it has “most of” or to reject it because it’s a macronutrient that you believe you should consume less/more of is THE problem.  It starts a chain of events and you end up inextricably linked to the latest fad diet. They make money; you stay fat.  These macronutrient-based diet schemes all invoke an enormous amount of generality and in doing so, well, the results speak for themselves the world is getting fatter despite record spending on diet/fitness.

We have excess energy not bad genes. Can anyone argue with this logic? can you possibly get fat if you don’t eat?

Think Different

Steve Jobs, an extraordinary man that challenged status quo - all the time.

This photo takes you to the 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech - please take 14 minutes to watch it.

So, in memory of Steve Jobs, I want you to THINK DIFFERENT beginning today. Steve taught us in his amazing 2005 Stanford commencement speech, “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”  You CAN understand this in a way that you will no longer be trapped by dogma. I’ll take the time to explain the difference between protein and meat or potatoes and carbohydrate, if you’ll keep an open attitude.

Why am I splitting hairs on this? Because you can’t recognize or even taste a protein and yet, you’re probably convinced you need more. It’s not limited to protein, Harvard professors (1), even an outrageous story on NPR YESTERDAY, can’t seem to differentiate between a potato and a french fry and therefore group them together with the resulting blame for childhood obesity going to the poor potato. A food that has been around in some form for millions of years is now THE problem de jour. It doesn’t stop there as the USDA is probably the worst place for information.

When you get to the end of the news report note that the kid get’s it right: who wants to eat a dry potato just for the fun of it? The answer: your starving ancestors did. They were hungry and you’re fat. But until you get past that it has nothing to do with carbs, glycemic index or fat, you’ll stay stuck in the yo-yo cycle. That continues to fuel another jiggleflex sale, a deal a plate, or a bypass surgery. Everybody wins, right?

I will stop ranting now.

Today, make a step in the right direction. Forget food for a moment. We are going to dive into the three macronutrients. We are going to understand the difference between starch and cellulose – why cows can eat grass and termites can eat wood. Does your current idea of food explain where the cows get protein or how termites digest and get energy from undigestable fiber  Probably not, but once you truly understand carbohydrates, proteins and fats, you can rebuild from the ground up and construct a different, a RADICALLY DIFFERENT, basis for what and why you put stuff in your mouth.

I’ll even leave room for creme brûlée.

After we are finished, what I hope you’ll never do again is to try to pick your food groups based on macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins or fats.  I hope you realize that rice, for example, has enough available protein (and a full complement of amino acids) to sustain you (2). I want you to understand why birds and wild cats aren’t fat and how an elephant can grow so much muscle mass without a single protein shake.

You see, we once understood how to survive and, ironically, didn’t even think about it. We stumbled through the world and ate what we could find. Today, with all of our macronutrient diet schemes, eat for blood type, 21 days to fight belly fat, or super secret supplement goop, we’ve lost the way. It’s unbeliveable that we have never know MORE about food and yet it’s never been more difficult to understand what to do.

Steve Jobs took everything we knew about computers, music, and computer programs and turned it into an incredible assembly of tools that…just worked.  I am suggesting that we do the same with nutrition.  I say for the group following this blog – stop debating and let’s just break this down and see what makes sense.

I’m willing to go against the mass market. I believe people are intelligent enough to figure this out. I know that I was wrong for most of my adult life – even with advanced education and a deep interest/motivation to understand it (I was FAT).  The difference, perhaps, is that when I found the contradictions – michael phelps eats 12,000 cal/day and termites eat wood – I took the time to reflect on the world and set aside my bias.

But like ts eliot observed: I’ve arrived where I started, and know the place for the very first time. I think you will too.

We’ll start with carbohydrates on the next post. See you there!

 

1) Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Women and Men,  Mozaffarian D et al. N Engl J Med 2011;364:2392-2404.

2) Nitrogen retention of young men fed rice with or without supplementary chicken, Lee CJ, et al., Am J Clin Nutr. 1971 Mar;24(3):318-23.

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Meet You at the (Gas) Station

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Proteins, carbs, and fats are your body's fuel. Indiscriminate trips back to the tank can lead to obesity. IN Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body, Scientist Ray Cronise teaches how you can use thermal loading to lose weight It’s been a crazy couple of months of travel, research, and writing for me, but I’ve learned some incredible new things. Over the last three years of personal transformation, an amazing clarity of overall energy balance of Human metabolism has emerged. T S Eliot wrote in the Gidding:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

I believe I have arrived where I started and I’ve never known it better. One of the difficulties in discussing a more unified approach is just how unbelievably misinformed we all are about the basic words involved in the discussion. The diet industry has bantered about protein, carbohydrate, fat, calorie, and many other terms to such a wide-extent that my revelation was simply going back to the basics.

In simple terms, it was necessary to purge the mental construct I had grown to rely on in the past when discussing weight gain/weight loss.

I really doubt that this confusion is driven by mass corporate conspiracy.  I also believe that most who write diet books really believe their assertions and are motivated largely, because they want to help people. Everyone wants to profit and so I don’t condemn the large corporations for giving us what we demand/buy (salt, sugar and fat) nor the diet industry for rearranging the same message ad nausem to help you resist the three.

I will say the medical community, and in the United States, the USDA and NIH, on the other hand are probably more deserving of criticism. School lunch/breakfast programs begin misinforming our children at an early age and the net result has followed us all into adulthood to create a nation full of obesity. Now, this obesity trend is being exported to the rest of the world.  Physicians are able to get a medical degree without a class in nutrition and when they do study it’s the USDA Food pyramid scheme.

I certainly appreciate the efforts of Dr. John McDougall  and others for passing California SB 380 that mandates continuing education in lifestyle and nutrition in the management of chronic illness.  Rather than mindlessly attack, I’d like to pick back up from last March and present a new foundation of the calorie and in particular, its relationship to  the  macronutrients, protein, carbohydrate and fat, so that we can all at least share a common language.

During this exploration of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, I will ask that you temporarily put aside what you believe at the moment and to the extent possible, suppress the diagnosis bias.  I know that what I am going to discuss over the next few weeks is definitely contrary to what I was taught in undergraduate/graduate biochemistry class and what I believed to be true when I started my transformation; I also am confident that it is COMPLETELY consistent with the underlying science that was the foundation for nutrition.

Today, Seth Godin had an insightful blog entry that everyone should read. He’s amazing in both his deep insight to Human motivation, but most important to me, in his phenomenal ability to simply observe. These two sentences really pique my interest:

“You are welcome to believe that aqua metals will improve your sports performance and that z-rays will cure your arthritis, but only until it collides with things that are actually true. Placebos are a good thing, and everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but they’re not entitled to their own science.”

And that seems to be the issue we have and it’s probably why you haven’t met your goals.  He goes on to say,

“The trend I’m concerned with is the notion that we’re entitled to get upset when the truth doesn’t match our point of view.”

I’m both guilty of this and I have been the recipient of it from the other end.  Fortunately, I am not motivated by politics, popularity, nor dogma, and so I am perfectly willing to change my opinion in the face of sound new data that is contrary to the data I based my previous opinion.

What is interesting is that when one takes a thermodynamic view of calorie, nutrition, and weight loss, it all becomes very obvious how the system works. It also opens the possibilities of alternate ways to view “food” and in particular what is going on in the very complex interplay of Macro vs Micro nutrients.  Once  you look through this new pair of glasses, it won’t be necessary to understand how the watch works to tell time.

For today, let’s just start with a very basic understanding of nutrition and I will invoke the much overused car analogy.

The Drive-Thru

To keep your car running you need two things: fuel and routine maintenance. The body is no different. The fuel can be in the form of Protein, Carbohydrate, or Fat and the maintenance is provided by vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidant capacities of food along with routine cardiovascular and strength conditioning.  I don’t think anyone would disagree with that (long) sentence.

So, we have to routinely top-off the tank at the gas station and we also need to perform routine maintenance: change the oil, rotate the tires, check the timing belt, etc…  So what happens if you show up to the gas station three times a week, whether or not you need gas?  What if it became the center of business or social meetings, “hey, would you like to meet at the Exxon at 6 o’clock for a fill-up? or,  Wow, it’s about time for some gas, I haven’t filled up for hours?

Thermal Loading provides a method of losing weight at maximum rate.

How do we KNOW we need fuel? Now where's the gas gauge again?

Ok, these days you would go broke, but think about it. If you show up to “socially” or habitually fill up, where does it all go? Eventually the tank is full, so you put in in a can in the trunk. Then the the trunk is full and now we put it in the back seat – eventually strapping it on the roof. I mean, we are going on a LONG trip and have no idea where the next station is…

Get the picture?

Ah, but true to life, it’s far more complicated. We’ve just described macronutrients (fuel), but what about micronutrients (maintenance)? If it weren’t for the pesky maintenance side, we could just stop eating and hopefully by thanksgiving (or pick your favorite holiday – they ALL seem to involve food) we would have reached our goal in time for pumpkin pie.

Can we just take micronutrients in a pill and fast? Again, it’s just not that easy. Starvation (caloric restriction) does appear to lengthen life according to studies. Then again, I am told it is so miserable you just THINK life is longer. HCG/Starvation is one form of popular “severe” restriction diet. If you don’t eat you WILL lose weight. If you are not losing weight then you MUST be eating too much. NO exceptions.

This is the duplicity in the problem. We can’t just give up food like like other out of control habits with out all sorts of problems. When we forego calories, we ALL certainly lose weight. We need micronutrients (maintenance) and many of them come in macronutrient (fuel) wrappers. So an optimal plan would involve restricting macronutrient calories, while getting the maximum micronutrients.

What many diets suggest is simply limit calories without regard to all the micronutrients and since it is only for a short period, there is no long term impact. Still others try to promote supplements or enriched shakes to bridge the gap. These are all short-term solutions and probably the reason so many regain the weight.

So in the next few posts, we’ll take a look at the three macronutrients (fuel): protein, carbohydrates, and fat and begin to unravel this evolutionary mystery.  I’ll attempt to reframe them as fuel and give you a good way to think about not just how they the body “burns” them, but more importantly, how this ties back into the overall thermodynamic balance your body must maintain.

Fat or thin, fit or unhealthy, your body stays within a degree or so of it’s set point.  It does so by managing HEAT not TEMPERATURE and we’ll see that a lot of the issues with perceived contradictions of the calorie come back to misapplication of macronutrient  connections and an too much generalization about what your body really needs.