Changing Diets..........

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About a year ago I adopted a version of the Mediterranean diet for two reasons. First, I wanted to drop 10 lbs that I just could not seem to lose. Second, the diet was cheap!

I usually ate fruit/berries with yogurt for breakfast. Lunch and dinner would be based on pasta or couscous with lots of veggies, beans, and olive oil. I would also have meat/fish/poultry 2-3 times a week.

So, after a year I’m 10 lbs heavier, feeling uncomfortable in my body, and ready to try something different.

Just the other day, I heard an interview on NPR with Gary Taubes concerning his book, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It . (easy to find on Amazon)

His ideas sounded interesting, so I DL’ed the book (it’s a quick read)…. Basically, his thesis is that over eating and resultant obesity are caused by chronically elevated levels of insulin in the body which is, in turn, caused by a high-carb/low-fat diet.

Taube makes a pretty convincing case, and I know from my recent, personal experience, it seems to be true…

He advocates an Atkins style low-carb/high fat and protein diet. He argues that this diet is not nearly as unhealthy as has been characterized and references the recent Stanford A TO Z Diet Study to back his claims…

Here’s a YouTube vid presenting the study results. It is LONG, but it’s interesting and entertaining.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo[/youtube]

Anyway, I’m giving up my couscous, pasta, and (gasp) beer for a while, to give this low-carb/high fat and protein thing a try…

So, I’m wondering, does anybody here have experience on this sort of diet? Or any informed thoughts/opinions on the science and health effects?

I can't usually do such a diet consistently because my mom pays for my food, and they're into buying more processed food, so any food for me that's not processed is hard to get her to buy, but it's getting better.

Anyway, I love diets like that. They're awesome. Easy to lean out on them, basically once you lean out, you can introduce some carbs back in. There's no need to be like, a carb nazi or anything like that, and be like "Uh-oh, these meatballs have bread crumbs in them!" or something, but I can say I feel pretty awesome on such diets and can lose weight pretty easily. You do gotta have a fairly high vegetable intake, though.

Hmm.... Interesting.

I have never tried to eat this sort of diet before.

However, in my late teens to my late 20s I was a hardcore weight lifter and I did try to eat a high protein/low fat diet....

Thing is, I was getting most of my protein (not counting supplements) from animals so I was getting lots of fat too. To avoid fat I mostly avoided sweets (because that stuff usually has lots of fat too), and things like cheese and eggs....

Looking at the low-carb diet the only things different from my "low fat" diet is that I can eat cheese and eggs and I should not eat beans, rice, and pasta (which I ate in moderate amounts on my low-fat diet). In hindsight, it was probably avoiding all that sugar and eating less wheat flour that really helped me stay lean.

the mediteranean diet is heart-healthy. high protein-high fat diets have been linked to heart disease. i lost weight eating mediteranean with PORTION CONTROL.

I find animal fat, as far as energy it gives me, it gives me a much "cleaner" energy curve than carbs, if that makes sense. You could go full out ketosis, and never eat carbs at all, but yeah. It's better to have the animal fat, though, imo. When you see a lot of cultures and go with the argument "well they can't live entirely on meat, that'd cost too much" you gotta keep in mind, a lot of the traditional cultures rely a lot on animal fat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food) Like there's an example. You pretty much just have to think "How did people 70 years ago eat?" And look honestly there. For example, fried chicken wouldn't be anymore prevalent now or back then, but one difference is that fried chicken is always fried in vegetable oil. No veg oil except olive oil, maybe flax seed oil, etc, is actually natural. You can't get soybean and corn oil without chemicals to process it. The human metabolism hasn't really adjusted to veg oils, but it's well adjusted to animal fat. So I think going low carb is good for weight loss, but once you get to a weight you want, you can introduce SOME carbs back, but just don't go having carb based meals.

And you can lose weight on any diet with portion control. http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/tw ... index.html That doesn't mean a diet is good. Also, one thing neglected is, in many Mediterranean cultures, there's lots of meat. Look at the Greeks and soulvaki.

Last edited by 1000Knives on 07 Jul 2012, 10:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The diet style I can recommend from my personal experience is along the lines of the Wheat Belly book by Dr. Davis. Although he advocates eating cheese, and I don't eat cheese or milk because they disagree with my digestion. So far, I've lost over 20 pounds and am not a serious exerciser (I do water aerobics twice a week), and I am happy with my choices of what to eat.

I think he agrees with what G Taubes says about insulin levels, however I do not think he advocates too much animal protein. I am not sure how they are different in other ways.

I have heard though that too much of the diet of animal protein and no carbs is very hard on your kidneys. Wheat Belly has a facebook group and a facebook group for recipes if you want to look at it.

@ 1000Knives

I agree, that looking at how people used to eat as opposed to how they eat now is very important. In his book, Taubes looks at ethnographies of various Native American cultures over many years…

For instance, in the 1840s the Pima Indians lived on wild game and high fiber veggies and they were reported to be lean, healthy, and active. By the early 1900s, after decades on reservations eating government rations of flour, sugar and coffee, the same tribe was described as sluggish, obese, malnourished and unhealthy (many were diabetic).

Another good nutritional ethnography is the “Inuit Paradox.” It contrasts the traditional Inuit diet of fat and meat with their modern western diets and corresponding changes in disease patterns.


@cathylynn

I’m glad the med diet worked for you. If you have time you should really watch that Stanford video. Their study found that while insulin sensitive types may do well on high-carb/low-fat diets, people who are insulin resistant will do much better with high-fat/low-carbs.

Also, in the study, the people on the Atkins diet had the best (most heart healthy) blood chemistry…

PS

The Stanford Study was conducted by a “25-year vegetarian” who said, writing a paper that sited the Atkins Diet as being healthy and effective “was a bitter pill to swallow.”

PPS

@ glasstoria

The guy in the Stanford vid also warns that extremely high protien could be bad for the kidneys...

The interesting thing about the study is that most people could not significantly change their protien intake alone. With all the diets, the real give and take was between fat and carbs.

Last edited by GoonSquad on 07 Jul 2012, 10:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/ ... eat-belly/

Wow...

Wow indeed.

...and I've been eating couscous (literally wheat grain coated in wheat flour) two bowls a day/5 days a week for a year...

To be honest losing weight is more then diet, It's about the will to torture yourself and keep going and learning to embrace pain in the beginning where most will fail and can't handle it and keep going and build up and reach a new level each week/month depending on your pace.

For me the beginning killed me and you have to be willing to sweat and be extremly motivated and then begin to enjoy it that's from my personal experiance and never stop and do what you can to get the edge to get results and learn from the best to emulate the best

Uh...well...have fun with that.

I just had to start working out a bit and not eating things that aren't good for my body. Different strokes for different folks I guess. BTW, I lost 40lbs in 3-4 months last year that way, with a bit of calorie restriction. Now that I'm lifting, I can't do as much calorie restriction and still maintain my sanity, so I have to find out what food my body likes and what it doesn't, and the results have been interesting.

Only when the sources are animal products, as opposed to plant-based.

As well it should be, since consumption of animal products is considered by the nutritional community to be directly related to increased risks of the same dietary-related diseases which are the top killers of Americans.

Now, the low carb philosophy as espoused originally by Atkins, when separated from the protein-equals-animal-products myth, is supported by pretty much every study ever done on the relationship between insulin and weight. The fact that to this day there are would-be dieters who eat processed carbs and starches constantly ("whole wheat, though!" ) despite decades of data is testament to how obsessed with wheat and sugar the Western food culture really is.

"Atkins" (if we want to call it that) is extremely healthy, when the protein and fat sources are things like nuts, seeds, and legumes, as opposed to dairy, flesh, and eggs. The fact that all these things are high in protein is, in the same sense that a donut cannot be compared to an apple on no more a basis than their being starchy, quite irrelevant, nutritionally, in their effects on the human body.

I think so, but within the thread's context of weight loss, I think it's just important to remember that the low carb/high protein diet needn't be coupled with the health risks normally associated with it (due to Western false equivocation of protein with animal products).

You needn't eat totally vegan to follow an Atkins-themed diet redesigned toward more plant sources.

Animals are good eatin'. I can have respect for a vegan diet to a point, it's the standard of monasticism in my religion, so that says something there. But for me, everytime I've tried them, it pretty much didn't work.

Also, I found out meat helps me personally, as I'm more Type II muscle fiber dominated. Type I muscle fiber is fed by glucose and is more meant for endurance, but Type II is meant for short bursts of energy, sports like shotput, weightlifting, high jumps, etc. Type II on the other hand is fueled by creatine. Where do you get creatine? Meat.



So for me, I need to eat those animals to like...not hate my life. And lift heavy things up and put them down on a regular basis.

Really? Considering there are vegan athletes at all levels of competition, and there aren't any magical nutrients provided only in animal products (unless you know something the field of human nutrition doesn't) that seems somewhat silly.



Even sillier:
I didn't even bring up vegan diets as necessary for fitness- merely that low carb/high protein diet when used for such needn't be associated with increased risk for diseases like heart disease just because Atkins is.