This is a good point in general. It seems to be a trap for many.

On another board, the "guru" will chastise unsuccessful people for not being willing to eat only BEEF and WATER. Even eating pork or eggs is a reason for the diet not working. If you are still not successful, he recommends PEMMICAN and WATER only. One guy got a little ruffled by a pemmican comment and stated "I am not a fur trader!"

It seems that one of the traps is that if a particular diet works for some, people think it should work for everyone. It's a fine line though. I also read many posts about people being unwilling to give up AS desserts, going out to eat etc. and then bemoaning that they can't lose weight. Certainly if we were all dropped on an island, "Survivor" style, we would lose weight. There seems to be some disingenuousness on both extremes.

It would be wise to step back and realize that there is no one diet that is perfect and that many of us fool ourselves about how much we are really willing to do to lose weight.

Incredibly insightful comment ! Part of your post should be put on the front page of every nutrition related website.

I'm here to learn all I need to know to make this work for me. IMHO all diet plans needs to be tweaked for your own reality in order to make it optimal for yourself.

Patrick

yes!
i once told my kids that i wanted to move to the Bahamas, get a plantation, and eat off my land of mango's, bananas, avocado's, papayas, and live off what comes out of the ocean.. and i was dead serious!

Yes, totally agree, although on a survivor island I guess calories would be restricted.....

Beef and water sounds expensive - unless of course you are only eating a large steak once a day like some of the peeps I've seen doing, which would eventually spell metabolic disaster IMO - which is just my opinion and nothing more.

Still it beats the breatharians - maybe they'd do better on Survivor Island?

Most simply go with ground beef because it's easier to intake more fat this way and it's cheaper.

Patrick

Loops, yes, it can be depressing but here is where ratios come into play. I find reduced calorie much more tolerable when it is high fat. Not Optimal high, but about 60%, with 30% protein. It seems my body doesn't feel the effects of a reduced calorie diet when fats are sufficent. Now low fat, low calorie is miserable but when you keep the calories the same but change the ratios, bingo! For me, weight loss is the same if it is high fat or low fat. But I feel much better on high fat. I have been following this thread for quite a while and tried the Optimal ratios for about 3 days! For me, it was too much fat and not enough substance, such as protein.I was hungery even with upping my calories to 1800-2100. But that is me and I know this works for many people. Definitely a YMMV thing.

Clearly there cannot be one eating plan that is "the way, the truth, and the life", considering the variety of human nature and experience. Which is what makes it frustrating for those of us who seem unable to lose below a certain point no matter *what* plan we follow - yet watch other people serenely dropping pounds and getting down to goal - yes even many of those who use AS and go out to eat a lot!

I mentioned in one of the other numerous JK threads that my son is following the 180degreehealth.com eating plan - which actually is very similar to JK's.

As Matt Stone, creator of 180degreehealth, says:
Many people have mentioned Kwasniewski’s work to me, as we apparently have come to near identical conclusions on what is more or less the optimal diet for healing the majority of illnesses facing humanity. Kwasniewski, like myself, is a strong proponent for a diet that contains adequate but not excessive protein, few carbohydrates, and a proportionally large quantity of fat – ideally from animal sources.

And Matt Stone has the advantage of writing in *English*, though apparently you have to PAY to use the support boards and other features of his website.

In his post which I quoted from above at: http://180degreehealth.blogspot.com...n%20Kwasniewski he talks about how CBS news did a hatchet job on JK, and concludes about their report: "The end result, is that Kwasniewski becomes the punchline of another dumb Polack joke, and Americans are left thinking that the best thing they have available to them is The South Beach Diet, a mediocre, somewhat unhealthy starvation diet that few people stick to long term.

That’s why I don’t watch the news. Almost every health-oriented news report that I’ve seen is that pitifully false, manipulated, biased, and absurd. I have no reason to believe the same doesn’t hold true for topics that I’m less educated about. I’d much rather be uneducated, than de-educated. Not knowing that 2+2 = 4 is a far better place to be than thinking 2+2 = 37. We were far better off not knowing anything about nutrition and health than we are now – thinking that saturated fat is unhealthy, that protein powder with splenda is a health food, that fiber is a beneficial substance for treating digestive disorders, and that kids need to eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grain cereals with skim milk."

But what I find especially interesting are all the comments, 90 of them to this point, which tie in quite well to Valtor's comment above. So many of the commenters have their own ideas about what the "ideal" diet is - with comments like:

Simple meals are the easiest to digest, like 1 or 2 foods. If you can't eat food by itself, why eat it at all? A mono-diet or duo-diet can be immensely beneficial. Alfred Pennington and Melvin Anchell both advocated a duo-diet.

or:

I don't think you have to "micro-manage" every meal like this[for JK-like Optimal ratios]. You should be able to eat without a calculator and a slide rule and a food guide, IMO.

Or:

The carbs aren't to blame for all of the obesity or chronic disease, despite propaganda by Taubes & others. Matt has punched holes in those theories, like the fact that McCarrison found Indians eating 90% white rice who had no tooth decay. That punches a hole through Weston Price's theories and the propaganda by Taubes and Charles.

Or:

Low-carb diets can help people do this sometimes, by keeping insulin down, and overall is probably the best strategy for healing, but so can eating a vegan diet with 80% carbs like that recommended by Joel Fuhrman or Doug Graham.

Or:
If you really want to heal your carbohydrate intolerance, I suggest eating nothing but carbohydrates for an entire week once every month or two (like many 'cleanses' recommend).

Or:
I've known people who have overcome type II [diabetes] on a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables exclusively. I do believe there are more tools out there than just "don't eat carbs" for an overweight diabetic or prediabetic.

Or:
I do agree that there are any number of diets humans can flourish on as long as they don't include crap. Nutrient content doesn't appear to be that important as long as you're hitting reasonable minimums.

Anyway, lots of interesting reading about *lots* of different ways of eating! Though all the commenters seem to keep ragging on someone named "Charles". But that is a name that does not appear high on my own personal radar map and I have no idea who they mean. If anyone knows and can put me out of my misery I'd appreciate it.

And last, this one comment in particular gave me a laugh-out-loud moment. I may have to adopt it as part of my sigline.

I don't care what you guys say about Kwasniewski. He is one sexy beast!

Debbie,

Charles Washington is the person they are referring to (and also the BEEF and WATER only person to whom I was referring).

He has his own website www.zerocarbage.com and has quite a large and loyal following. They follow a zero carb approach, mostly eating meat and water but some there also eat VLC with some eggs and cheese and such. They are completely against artificial sweeteners and "frankenfoods" and have a zero tolerance approach to whiners. Some have lost weight this way but many on the board are stalled or even gain weight. If anyone tries to address this, WATCH OUT! It's a one size fits all approach if there ever was one.

I have an account on Charles' ZC forum and I post there sometimes.

Patrick

I bought Matt Stone's e-book although there was nothing in there that I haven't read elsewhere already. He basically recommends a Schwarzbein approach with an even bigger emphasis on fat. If I remember correctly he recommends one doesn't go lower than 70g carb, all from starch like potatoes. I don't recall him advising to limit protein though. He specifically warns about going 'zero carb' but does say it CAN be healthy but there are many pitfalls, or something like that.

70g is too much for some people, although to start off with it is probably a good idea not to go too low and a lot of people coming from a high carb diet will probably succeed with this amount! How many times have I seen people get used to VLC and then it is near impossible to add carbs back in without stalling or actually gaining? There has to be something wrong there....

Interesting article about the subject of not following 100% of a diet.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/8020...iple/#more-4038


Patrick

Actually I have his e-book too, and am referring to it right now. As there is no way I could ever trust my *memory*.

This is not exactly how he puts it, but it seems pretty close. His words are "think of carbohydrates as something that you need a dosage of. 20-35 grams per meal, in the form of starch, usually lands people right in the perfect 'zone'."

He does seem to emphasis starchier carbs - with carbs coming from things like small potatoes, small servings of rice, grits, toast, corn tortillas, corn-on-the-cob, turnips.. though he has small servings of veggies as well - again this is very much in line with Dr. JK.



Well, what he is saying right here on the protein front is: "Most people require about 1g of protein for every kg of bodyweight...Don't get neurotic about getting your portions perfect. Use your appetite as a guide, assuming you really are using fats to fill up on...The younger and more active you are, the more protein you require. That doesn't mean double or triple, just a little more with each meal."

About the 'zero carb' thing he says:
"It's not actually unhealthy to eat a meat-only diet" but does indicate you can suffer constipation, digestive issues, if you jump right into it.

So the basic protein requirement - 1g per kg of bodyweight - seems the same as Dr. JK's. He doesn't actually seem to stress here that he means *lean* body weight, not current weight, though I think he does on his blog. And lean body weight is the value JK uses.

I think what a lot of people find confusing about the Optimal Diet is the fact that it isn't as rigid as it first appears. The sort of leeway that Patrick describes is already built in. It could be presented like this:

According to JK, the "recommended" foods are the best foods, and they're the only ones we need. We can live very well off them alone. The greater the proportion of them you eat, the better. Other foods are not very well-suited for our bodies. Therefore, eat 80% "recommended" foods.

Of the "not-so-good" foods, some are just mediocre, but others are actually harmful for our bodies. For the best health, we should really avoid the harmful foods entirely. Therefore, within the 20% "non-recommended" foods, eat 80% "acceptable" foods.

That way, you'd end up with only 4% of your foods being "inedible" by Optimal standards. I think JK would agree that this would be a very reasonable amount, as long as you didn't go by weight and add, say, 4% salt to everything.

Of course, you can't do it so mathematically in real life. And, more to the point, JK doesn't want people to have a slavish mentality. ("Bread is for slaves" is one of his mottoes.) He wants them to keep an open mind, learn the basic principles of Optimal Nutrition, and give it a try out of genuine interest. He's confident that they'll be successful, and wish to continue on this way of eating out of their own free will, not because of an external voice telling them what to do. For people in this situation, there's no question of "cheating." They've fully internalized the rules of the diet -- just like any other set of values -- and they can use their own judgment about whether or not to make an exception in a particular case. (Despite his kooky and apparently heretical views -- e.g., about original sin being caused by the apple itself -- JK still has a very Catholic way of thinking. )

Anyway, all the talk about grinding your own sausage, etc., is kind of a red herring. If someone chooses to disregard the food lists, believing that they're basically irrelevant (and that JK was only right about the ratios, and wrong about most other things), then it's quite apparent that they aren't following the diet 99.5%, or even 80%. At best, they're doing it 50%, and they might see some minor benefits. At worst, they could actually be doing themselves harm in the long term -- in particular, because the low protein recommendations and P:F ratio were never intended to apply to vegetable proteins.

When I first joined the Dr. K threads, it seemed as if people weren't aware of the importance of basing the Optimal Diet heavily on high-quality animal fats and proteins, as they hadn't read the books, and found the web information hard to follow. All they had to go by were the P:F:C ratios, and there was a lot of confusion even about those. Now, there are several of us who have the books ... and some posters who've been on the diet for years (much longer than me) ... and Debbie is turning into a pro with the Polish/English translation engines. So there's a great deal more information available, for those who are willing to take the time to read it. For some people, this information contradicts certain assumptions that they'd made earlier, and it doesn't necessarily suit their desires. This is too bad, but it doesn't make anyone else into an "extremist" for trying to clarify the actual principles of the diet.

And now, I have to go make some cake.

Cordain even acknowledges this and says to strive for 85% or better compliance in one of his newsletters. I think Protein Power has this idea built into it with the various levels of Hedonism -> Purist.

When you think about it, probably 99.5% of the foods I eat are paleo or optimal by volume and/or calories. I do think there's room in the .5% for foods or drinks that are terribad, I mean, look how little gluten it takes to really mess me up. But that's what trial eliminations are for, so you can see if something you're eating has an effect on your health.

Oh hey... who was it Allison that recommended the "False Fat" book? I just got it. Haven't started reading it yet but it sure looks interesting.