I've been experimenting with higher carb these days because it's harvest season. I haven't been losing weight, but I haven't been gaining either.

I've learned that wheat is off the menu forever. I tasted some zucchini bread I made and was sick for hours. I have added potatoes and legumes and root vegetables back in in limited amounts during my evening meal.

The next step is to give up caffiene. Starting now. After the harvest season, if my weight still doesn't go down, I'll cut out the evening carbs, but fresh autumn vegetables are just too available right now.

Loops, if you try this, don't freak out. Because at first you will probably gain fast. You know when we first go really low-carb, it has a diuretic effect and you can loose 10 pounds in a week. Well when you switch from VLC to moderate carbs, this 10 pounds comes back real quick too.

Patrick

Interestingly, since finding its specific foods for me, I tend to think of it more as allergy type reactions rather than what's wrong with my metabolism - but then again that's just my personal metaphor

I guess my point (that I didn't make very well) is that I think in general, it's specific foods people are reacting too rather than carbs/protein. For example I've known for years that I can't eat pork, because I get major bloating/pain from doing so - however, before I figured that out (and it wasn't inherently obvious - took me some years to figure out) if I'd gone to an all meat (no carb) diet I could indeed gain weight because I'd probably start eating a lot of bacon etc.

Also when I did Atkins years ago and then started eating all the frankenfoods it stopped working. So it's not just not eating carbs/no carbs IMO but what specifically you eat.

Unless I misunderstand, from what you say even the creator of the "Eat High Everything" diet says no fructose etc - that's not high everything then (and wouldn't be high ice cream for example since sugar has fructose), but high everything except these certain foods that are "bad" for you.

LL

Lyle McDonald whom I was reading earlier today said that most diet books insist they are not about counting calories and then give you one of a variant rule-sets all of which, in the end directly or indirectly, lead to people naturally restricting calories. This is his version of why all diets can work I guess. He just doesn't think it's about anything but that in the end (with 'it varies' being the caveat to everything).

When I was 18 I had torn my stomach muscles. (I was in the CCC and refused to give in to the sadist running PT in boot. It would have been so much more fulfilling and less injurious if I had just got up and kicked his ass in front of everybody. Instead I did double-leg-lifts until literally I tore fibers in my stomach muscles. This is when you learn that EVERYTHING goes through the stomach. You can't get a kleenex without using your stomach muscles. It's horrible!) After that, to do something 'easy' while I healed well enough to be able to open a cupboard door without crying out in pain, I briefly had a job at a Winchell's donut house. They had this rule that you could eat everything you wanted free, you just had to ring it up on the register with that button, so the inventory was clear. This was a brilliant policy, and it worked on me like it did on everyone else: I ate myself totally sick for a week and then didn't even want to look at donuts again for the next six months. (They didn't count on the girl down the strip-mall aisle having the same experience with pepperoni pizza that I did with chocolate eclairs and our trading food from then on. ;-))

So I guess I'm wondering if this "eat all you want except ___" philosophy amounts basically to a combination of those two points.

Let's say we remove PUFAs, caffeine and fructose. How severe is that removal? I mean, nearly every veggie with even a little sugar has at least a tiny bit of fructose, though maybe not much.

I tried to use 'corn' (yes I know that's a grain) to see how that would come out. Unfortunately all the online nutritional info for it is bizarre. The USDA site refused repeatedly to come up at all, this forum's tie to USDA for counts had a fiber+'total sugars' count that was nowhere near the total carbs count (showed 'some' fructose but given the numbers didn't add up I wasn't sure how to interpret it), and even this site had 12g fiber, 1g sugars, and 123 carbs (the others are magically... elsewhere than sugars/fibers, it doesn't say). OK so this example didn't work out...

Apparently the rule against low-calorie is "stronger" than the rule against PUFAs and fructose even combined?, since ice cream likely has plenty of both and it's recommended to eat that before letting calories fall.

I'd love to try this eating plan but it sounds so much like the "fantasy football" version of dieting I'm afraid I'd be deluding myself. I can so easily imagine someone like my dad eventually going, "Let me get this straight. You wanted to lose weight, and someone said, "Eat everything you want as long as it doesn't have these three ingredients!" and you thought that would WORK?"

BUT in defense of the idea -- I did just recently buy one of half the supplements in existence out of a similar theory though -- that I may be malnourished to cellular-level and need a sufficient amount of feeding of nutrients for awhile to get the body to be less restrictive on holding onto fat etc. I admit I was thinking "nutrients" not "ice cream" -- or even "anything that doesn't have caffeine/PUFA/fructose" -- but still I suppose it is a similar theory, so I cannot mock his. I'm not sure if my taking a zillion supplements is all that different -- except that it doesn't involve a ton more calories and carbs, obviously! OK. That is TOTALLY different, never mind.

If nearly all natural foods (fruits/veg) have some fructose; all synthetic foods tend to have either that or PUFA or both; most soda, candy, junk food is out as having one of those; ok what's left, seriously? Meat? Eggs? Spinach (maybe if minimal fructose doesn't matter)?

I guess what I'm saying is, if the diet isn't done strenuously then there doesn't seem much point and it doesn't vary from "eat almost anything" and if the diet IS done strenuously then it becomes a low-calorie and possibly low-carb diet just de-facto based on the food choices remaining.

But in the end I bet someone will say: "Eat only until you are satisfied."

Ok. As long as I stick to low-carb protein/fat-based food, that is natural. The minute I ingest any form of grain, soft dairy, or fructose, I can eat pretty much until I run out of time in a day. So I suspect at some point, there's going to be this argument that the plan would work "if only" people ate until "satisfied, not stuffed." But isn't that what EVERY eating plan says, and aren't most eating plans about eating in a way that in a perfect world does NOT make you stuffed and/or that makes you stuffed on less calories (aka lowcarb)?

I will go read the website in detail now that I have mouthed off about it. ;-)

PJ

OK.

1. Nearly everything on the website is a sales teaser, not information. It's like this was planned as a marketing project long before food came into it. (Not saying that affects its validity. Merely a comment. I'm not a sales-teaser fan.)

2. Everything links in to saleable products as in ebook, etc. so you really know jack without money. None of the links have any kind of price.

3. The 'shop' page has a few products -- all without any price listed either. (Each of the three 3-books is $19.95 each it turns out, fwiw. You have to add them to your cart to see this.) There is a 'free membership' which is access to, apparently, materials (such as ezine) to further advertise. ;-)

Given I bought Tom Venuto's ebook and he has 20x the marketing blitz that this guy has -- Tom and his marketing company are astounding -- I thought I would buy this guy's ebook and read it since I can't comment without fairly seeing his perspective. It had better be less 'sales teaser' than the website though!

Here is the #1 comment listed as an endorsement on many website pages:

"Ever since I found [180DegreeHealth] and started eating as much as I want but with mostly animal products and no sugar and processed foods, my body fat has decreased more than I ever thought it would without starving myself."

Huh. ...and yet he has comments in more than one place implying that lowcarb is not any answer, and perhaps it isn't I don't know for sure, but it's pretty hard NOT to eat lower-carb and lower-calorie both when you eat mostly whole-foods and animal products with NO fructose, PUFAs or caffeine!

I mean seriously, low-carb could be called a "whole foods diet" for most people who don't eat frankenfood crap.

Maybe eventually all the whole-foods effort is like Huxley's "Perennial Philosophy" in religion, where everything no matter how seemingly opposite, tracked back to the same fundamentals.

Getting the ebook now.

PJ

I've read a dozen articles on his blog now (the comments take longer than the articles) (he needs a forum obviously).

In general I like the guy -- sugar is his bad guy (you wouldn't know it from the gatorade & ice cream comment) -- though he treats all 'low-carb' as if it means people eating insanely (one person he quoted was eating 349g protein per day; another admitted to eating all kinds of crappy stuff that wasn't typical LC healthy food; another to eating more protein than fat, even; these were people he used as 'examples' literally in blog posts basically dissing LC extensively), rather than what it usually is in my perception.

It creates a straw-man effect. With a comment section full of people waxing on about eating massive quantities of potatoes and white rice, that hardly seems just.

He is a 'young man'. That is clear. He is probably a lot more quick to diss people with a great deal more experience and true learning than he would be otherwise. And of course, what works for him is working for a 'young' 'man' -- who was fairly healthy to begin with -- but he's essentially marketing it to people with 'damaged metabolisms' -- and aside from that health issue that usually (until recently) meant older people as well (eg 30s onward, for 'time' of eating SAD to do that damage).

He's modest, too:

:-)

PJ

I you consume stuff like fructose while eating a fruit, it also comes with the antidote. What fructose does to your liver is alleviated by other stuff that came with the fruit (vitamins, anti-oxidant, etc...) that cleans up the mess. There is no such effect when you consume fructose that was added to other food.


That's right. Of course, if you can abstain from eating this stuff, all the better. The real problem is chronic consumption.


Well, we have observations of humans that have been eating all sorts of different macronutrient ratios and they were all healthy (see Weston A. Price's book). So now that science is finding the real causes for the diseases of civilization, why removing these causal agents should not start the healing process?


No all you have to do is stop the chronic consumption of the causal agents. And anyway, it all comes down to digestion. If you have poor digestion, some elements will be missed by your body and when your body misses something it will slow down and make you ingest more food to try to obtain what is missing. Removing what is causing this digestion problem is the key. Added PUFA, added fructose, caffeine, etc... are the currently identified main bad stuff. But some of us also have other food intolerance and this is becoming worse with every generation. That's why it's also a personal quest.

Just switching your body to an anabolic state will start the healing process. When your digestion is good enough, your hungriness will diminish, because your body is missing less of what it needs and because since you removed the causal agents that resulted in excess fat storage, your fat is now able to be used for energy. This process is well explained in the references I put in the first post.

Patrick

I think you will find some answers in my responses to Rightnow.

It's High All Macronutrients. Not really Everything and what has to be avoided can be very personal because of food intolerance.

Patrick

Yeah I thought the same at first. It is a turnoff. He wanted to make a living of this.

BUT he changed his mind. He thought the information was more important than money, so membership is now free.

Nearly all the info in his eBooks is available in his free excellent eZines.

Patrick

Actually, his blog is the place to go. It's all there.

http://www.180degreehealth.blogspot.com/

He certainly requires some getting used to and he brandishes sarcasm profusely. A bit young too, yes. But nonetheless, a very intelligent fellow and full of really great information. His eZines are real gems.

Anyway, it's extremely easy to misquote him out of context and make him out to be a lunatic. That's why people should go to the source. He is not saying he has all the answers, but that this is an ongoing quest where we don't reject any science because it doesn't fit our WOE.

Patrick

By the way this is conversation... we are on the same page here so I'm not arguing in annoyance, just debating in casual conversation. ;-)


I don't disagree with that, not at all. I'm just saying that he is hardly novel in suggesting it -- not much of a novel eating plan in that regard -- I would hazard a guess that the majority of people on this forum ALREADY avoid non-fruit fructose, PUFAs and in at least some cases caffeine.

That would be, the people here on an eating plan that he's made such sincere effort to publicly diss, replete with providing LC examples of people who in many cases even our locals here would be rolling at their eyes at and definitely NOT considering good LC examples. Aside from zero-carb which is its own movement not LC, and induction which is supposed to be *temporary*, his pyramid of grudge against LC appears to be based on mostly things good LC is not even responsible for doing or expecting.

This would not be relevant except for his marketing approach. What he is proposing all over is essentially, to paraphrase summarize as I interpret it, "My way is totally different, even opposite, of everyone else's ways except a few I mention, and those who are low-cal (and especially low-carb! Ptttoooey!) people are just health risks!"

And then he writes several posts that could be found indistinguishable from several lowcarb blogs and his "180 degree different" diet turns out to be nearly identical in many respects to the diets of the people whose person or plans he is publicly dissing.

So yeah, sure, ditch fructose and PUFAs by all means, but this doesn't constitute anything remotely novel as an eating plan and is part of the plans he seems to like least. If he were not so young-male-indiscriminate about his mouthiness against things/people/diets that it turns out aren't so different from his own after all, it'd be less noticeable.

The things different about his plan from those he picks on such as lowcarb are things like:

1 - Eat all the calories you want. That is like some lowcarb theorists, definitely not all or even most. Not usually an issue for most people at first, who do. Usually those already fairly lean or who've already lost a good deal of weight, run into this.

2 - Eat all the white-rice/potatoes/pasta you want. OK that's different. By the way in separate posts he makes it clear he understands insulin and blood sugar and actually recommends NOT raising it hard or making it go crazy, but in other places his suggestions lead to exactly the opposite, and his comments section is filled with people bragging about living on potatoes and white rice.

I might note that regardless of what he recommends in various places, he himself is on a constant 'experimental' segment, which means he may at any given moment be recommending you eat stuff that he himself is not eating. I am not against experimenting but since he is marketing specifically to people who already have damaged metabolisms -- health problems -- and he is not a doctor or scientist, if he's really just experimenting and basing his best advice on the experience of himself (a young man no less) and ideas he likes, I think his marketing approach ought to be a great deal more geared to "this is experimental, see what works for you" and not "this is a great plan, eat everything except". You can tell by the blog comments what his presentation invokes in much of the public.

3 - If you feel like crap and you're gaining weight it only means something good is actually happening and you just need to keep the faith and keep on keeping on. OK that's different. Most eating plans actually do, after a BRIEF period of detox or adjustment, have a known and visible set of 'marker' improvements one can use to measure that they have joined an eating plan, not a cult, and have some idea of when to cut losses and say something isn't working for them and do something else. Except severe vegetarianism which has the same religious-trust-me-don't-mind-your-teeth-falling-out-or-your-ass-tripling-in-size sort of approach.

I might add that he could solve the two issues just above with a little more effort in that direction, and in doing so, improve his entire presentation.

PJ

That's fine, he has his own charm, and most people recognize youth and give it some flex.


I've read more of his blog posts now and I agree that he is a bright fellow.


I think in your sincere interest, you misunderstand that situation. Quoting him about diet is neither misquoting nor out of context. When he sounds like a lunatic, it is because what he is saying at that point and the way he says it is fairly loony--without context, I agree with you there. However the problem is not that people are for example, taking an overall "contextual" article and taking half a sentence that provides some totally opposite impression of his meaning. That is not the case I don't feel.

It is that he lacks some maturity and a good deal of consistency in his writing at different times/posts/sources. So you can read one article where he is kinda fruitcake (gatorade and ice cream if needed! he feels so much better on cheap crappy pizza than grass fed meat and veggies!) and then another article (such as his post on fructose) that is very well done and totally rational.

This happens repeatedly, I observe -- where literally "which post" you read of him could lead you to some dramatically different interpretations of his message both overall and specific (and his person).

For example he has one post directed at lowcarb's interest in managing blood sugar that essentially scorns it, and then a different post that uses as reasoning control of blood sugar -- as if it's not only reasonable but a no-brainer. Hello, who are you and what have you done with Mr. Stone?! What sympathetic readers like yourself see is, "He does understand this. He has other points, some controversial, he is trying to make, it's not always clear, but it's in good intent and a flexible context." What less sympathetic readers see depends entirely on which post(s) they happen to read.

So when you refer to "in context" concerning Matt Stone, what you really mean I think (without thinking about it too hard) is something like, "If you read a whole bunch of his materials and/or carefully selected ones perhaps, you will see the bigger picture of his understanding which is really quite developed, and then all his brash impetuous he oughtta-have-a-sanity-check-before-posting sort of blogging would interpreted with a lot more flex, humor, understanding of a bigger picture of him and his ideas, etc. When you merely hear what he actually says someplace, like quoting him, why that makes him sound ... inconsistent, or poorly thought out."

I agree with all of that. But this latter part is because sometimes he is. I am not saying that makes his ideas bad or his person bad either -- I actually kinda like both to be honest, in many ways. I'm simply acknowledging this is a cross he has to bear until he improves that aspect of his "public marketing persona and materials" and one you have to bear when presenting his stuff. Especially on the forum of an eating plan he has so repeatedly and publicly insulted.

I am still getting to the ebook, have been mostly going through the public materials for now. I did leave a comment on his carb wars II post.

Best,
PJ

I'm with him on that (and that's with a dairy allergy).

Since eliminating all vegetables (except tubers) from my diet recently, my energy is through the roof and my mood is the best it's been.

I agree with a lot of what he says regarding caffeine, alcohol, veg oils etc but I just let my appetite dictate how I eat. Sometimes I eat more, sometimes less.

Wow PJ, you've got both Matt and myself covered in your two previous posts. I agree with pretty much everything you said.

These two quotes here sums it all up.


The "in a flexible context" is what I like the most.

Anyway reading the eZines from January 2009 to now really is an eye opener. It's all there. Gary Taubes, Weston A. Price, etc... Truly great stuff.

Patrick