Archives for September 2008

Mark Sisson dissects "The Zone," and precisely so. I respect Barry Sears, and certainly, his prescriptions are far better than, say, those of the attention grabbing low-fat fat-face Ornish (I emphasize: huge understatement).

I tried that diet (Zone) for a couple of months back in the mid-90's when the original book came out. I soon knew it would never work for me. Mark's section on "hunger" is really the essential point.

In the end, it suffers from the same deficit as I think the paleo diet does. Fat is king. It's more than twice as efficient by volume than either protein or carbohydrate, and it's what really makes the difference in dietary success, and I'm thoroughly convinced of that. Fat (animal, coconut –avoid vegetable oils) is what makes the difference between giving in and dialing Pizza Hut, setting off a cascade of diminished-self-image failure, and going in and fixing a cheese omelet cooked in butter.

At least it was for me.

I said "was." Funny thing is, and you may have noticed: I don't blog nearly as much about the wonders of fats. That's because I don't eat nearly as much, anymore. And it was completely natural. Once I reset my genes, over months and months, I've come to now eat far more "normally." I'd call it something, like: "The Intermittent Diet." The key is intermittency in obsession or excess, and moderation. In a sense, scarfing down loads of fat seems, to me, just about as compulsive and unnatural, in the end, as eating an extremely stupid low-fat diet. But sometimes I eat extremely low fat — over a period of some hours. Just the other night around the campfire, for instance: there were some carrots. So, I munched on carrots to the exclusion of all else. Sometimes I gorge on fruit. Sometimes I gorge on fat. But I don't do any one thing chronically. It can be meal-to-meal, or even day-to-day, but never longer than a few days in a row. And the shift is natural. Once you discover the wonder of Real Food and get out of the processed food crack-house, everything changes (but it takes months). The point is that you can be a true "foodie," as am I, and yet become highly indifferent to any particular dish or any particular meal. You simply look at the whole thing differently, which, I understand mystifies lots of skinny people and gets knowing nods from lots of fat people.

This is key to the whole approach: Primitive man had zero control over the environment. He generally had primary control only over locomotion, which is why they moved around a lot. That's fundamental; and so we have, by modern convenience, removed the most fundamental aspect of primal existence from our quotidian motivation: most of us can easily live in one spot our entire lives. I really wouldn't want it any other way, but the point is that our genes don't know or understand the difference. They are either active (expressed), or dormant. The good news is that we can simulate the stressors and expressers through intermittency. I think that eating in the whole range, from extreme low fat to extreme high fat, within the confines of Real Food, is really the way to go. The constraint implies that the diet is usually going to be of a rather low carb nature (in calories or relatively), and certainly free of most grains, wheat in particular. But the real point is that by switching it up, you fool your genes into "thinking" that you're migrating, experiencing varying bounty along the way. And then they do their job, like they were evolved to do.

In the end, Dr. Sears misnamed his diet. It's far too restrictive, prescriptive as to have the concept of a "zone" applied. "The Range Diet" would have been more apropos, implying a linear range. A diet proscribed by a fully spacial geometry (zone) would of necessity be one of intermittency in multi-variable macro-nutrients, probably with a big edge for animal fats, given their high-value energy efficiency.

I had occasion just a bit ago to reference a couple of of posts from the past concerning some unconventional treatments for cancer. Given that there are so many new readers and that this information is so important, I'd thought to highlight those posts.

The first has to do with an ancient idea with and even more ancient basis. We didn't evolve side-by-side with refrigerators and freezers. In other words, food was often scarce, so we went hungry sometimes. And, even if food was plentiful, if we're anything like modern carnivores or omnivores, we probably get a pretty good hunger going before bothering to get food. After all, if plentiful, success was assured, so why sweat it? Incidentally, this is now my mode of operation. I never care that much about any particular meal. Hunger is relative, and not very important. Indeed, it's even sometimes enjoyable. Anyway, it turns out that normal cells insulate themselves against stress when you're fasting. However, cancer cells can't do that. The result: fasting protects healthy cells against the ravages of chemotherapy, thereby tipping the balance in the war of attrition that is chemo.

Next up concerns the simple logic of macro-nutrient composition applied to the fact of the feeding behavior of cancer cells. Short version: cancer cells are very inefficient sugar hogs. Get it? Be sure to read all the links. It's astounding; and no, there's none of the typical cancer quackery.

Later: Ha! Lets' tantilze, shall we? Not going to actually read all the links? Well, this quote come from one of them:

A mouse model of human breast cancer demonstrated that tumors are sensitive to blood-glucose levels. Sixty-eight mice were injected with an aggressive strain of breast cancer, then fed diets to induce either high blood-sugar (hyperglycemia), normoglycemia or low blood-sugar (hypoglycemia). There was a dose-dependent response in which the lower the blood glucose, the greater the survival rate. After 70 days, 8 of 24 hyperglycemic mice survived compared to 16 of 24 normoglycemic and 19 of 20 hypoglycemic.10 This suggests that regulating sugar intake is key to slowing breast tumor growth.

I'm headed off soon for the weekend, no WiFi. So, this may be the last entry until Sunday night. So, let's make it a food pic, eh?

Polish Sausage (uncured), green & red cabbage, onion. Super simple. Maybe 10-15 minutes total, 5 or so in the Wok. This was a while back, so I'm not sure exactly what fat I cooked it in, but I'd say coconut would be just fine.

For those who took the survey (thanks), answered question #8 in the affirmative, and for whom it may not have been strictly hypothetical, please feel free to email me for discussions. No obligations, of course.

As I said, you'll not be contacted — in fact, I have no way of knowing identities anyhoo — but please do contact me if interested in participating.

Well, I can assure you that I had no idea that was out there when I chose the new name for the blog.

How, after all these years, does the godfather of fitness do it? By balancing the brain with the beast…

Yep, pretty much. Yet, I rather like to think of it as a full embrace of your animal nature and a full embrace of your rational mind. 100% and 100%; 1+1=3. Balance implies dichotomy, and there is none. You are fully, 100% animal biologically and to the extent that you compromise that in any way, you'll suffer (and your mind along with).

But I'm sure I know what Jack means.

(HT: Mike OD at The IF Life)

Sometime last evening, this blog surpassed the 500,000 mark for lifetime page views.

So, thanks for viewing.

Here's a theme on what I generally say to people who extoll the goodness and health of fruit juices. Would you eat two dozen oranges in a sitting? I've been known to eat two, but the couple dozen required to make a large glass of OJ? Nope, and this is the problem with highly processed foods: concentration.

Go over and see Regina Wilshire's 1000-word picture.

Grilled swordfish with lemon garnish. Green beans, carrots, yellow squash and a bit of sweet potato (all previously cut up, uncooked leftovers from a seafood Thai curry the other night) stir fried in coconut oil, then finished with a couple of dashes of toasted sesame seed oil and whole seeds.

15 minutes, start to finish.

How badly some people treat their pets. Some are actually ignorant and arrogant enough to feed dogs a vegetarian diet. I’ve seen it. It often makes them fat, immobile, flatulent snorting machines. Then they die young, often of heart failure.

Here’s our two beasts during a hike behind our cabin in Arnold, CA. American Rat Terriers. Nanuka (“Nuke”) in the foreground is a 3-yr-old champion female. Rotor, in the background, a 9-yr-old male in pristine health.

There’s three things we do that keeps them as fit as they are.

1. Lots of play.
2. Lots of walks, including off-leash; not so much so they can run as that they can sprint, all out.
3. Ultra-high protein, ultra low carb. No grains or HFCS: EVER!

Now, if you have the time, money and attention, then maybe BARF is for you. But while I’m interested to try it out on the munchkins, I just don’t see how it could improve things. Anyway, for better than a year, now, they’ve been fed exclusively EVO. For snacks, they get the dried chicken and duck meat…ingredients: chicken; duck. The end.

It’s pretty easy to obtain, but go to all the stores in your area that carry it. Some have better stock than others. The dry comes in red meat and chicken / turkey. Canned comes in (all 95%) venison, rabbit, duck, beef, and chicken / turkey. I rotate off on the dry, and then get the three more exotic canned meats. Needless to say: they love ’em, especially in the morning when they each get a teaspoon of lard mixed in. 

Curiously, they will often spontaneously fast and let their bowls sit there untouched until the evening. I never worry about it. I’ve thought of fasting them every now and then in order to simulate natural pressures. But I don’t think I could take those perplexed, sad eyes glaring at me. And, since they seem to fast on their own intermittently, it relieves me of the chore.

A few weeks back, I'd guess. It's a pack of frozen Seafood Medley from Trader Joe's (shrimp, scallops, calamari), along with celery broccoli, and maybe a thing or two other I can't recall. It's fried in the wok in coconut oil, of course, then sprinkled with paprika and black pepper.

I plan to do this once per quarter, as I think it's a very worthwhile project.

KIVA.ORG

Now, you can lend as little as $25 to real micro entrepreneurs in developing countries around the world. You're lending to small business people so they can grow, prosper, and lift their communities.

If you're like me, perhaps you have a distaste for most charitable endeavors. Typically, if I like them at all, they'd be something close to home or involve some affinity (such as firefighters across the country giving to the families of 911 firefighter victims). That's cool.

But when was the last time someone offered to pay you back, and actually did it? Really, it's only marginally charitable at all. The borrower actually pays interest. You forego interest, which helps to fund the whole endeavor. Pretty slick, if you ask me.

In 2 1/2 year, Kiva has accumulated 340,000 lenders who have lent out a total of $50 million in 62,000 loans. Loans average $500 each, and the historical repayment rate is 98%. Good job, I say.

I currently have $250 I lend out, which will recycle as payments come in. I plan to add $250 per quarter. I hope you can join me in this worthy endeavor.

Now with a somewhat ironic metaphorical title for her blog, Diana Hsieh has it nailed. If you have time for the — now — 85 comments, you'll see how she has really educated herself quite deeply. No surprise for a professional philosopher — particularly one used to operating from a set of general, reality based principles.

It's a small world. I knew of Diana from USENET way years back, like '94ish. Also, her now husband, Paul. She didn't know until I replied that I was one of those muckrakers on the Objectivist philosophy newsgroups, as I posted under a pseudonym at the time.

How surprised I was last night to get an email from Diana out of the blue, also addressed to Art De Vany and Mark Sisson, thanking us all for the help we've been. I'm no match for those guys (yet, I hope), but Beatrice is always telling me that I'm helping more people than I even know.

It really is quite a reward to see increasing numbers of people benefit from this knowledge.

Last week I blogged about my brother's taking of a big mule-deer buck in Utah. Now, here's what it looks like on the table.

He writes:

I cooked the Venison in Ghee, instead of the traditional flour coating and bacon grease. I sautéed the shitake mushroom in the Ghee and the vegetables in the coconut oil. On a side note, I discovered that cauliflower is absolutely delicious in the coconut oil. The Tomatoes are Heirloom, with fresh mozzarella, onion, and little olive oil and balsamic. I added a little more Ghee to the pan after cooking to deglaze and then poured over the meat, and it was excellent.

Do you have eight minutes to spare, to acquire every essential you need in the quest to Free the Animal? Thanks to commenter Ricado in a recent hunting post for providing it. I disagree with him on the ethics issue. Provided animals are dealt with in a humane and rational fashion, and the purpose is consumption as food, it passes ethical muster for me. However, there are differing levels of respect for me. Bow hunters get more than rifle hunters. But no one compares to these guys. This is the Gold Standard of hunting.

See how many principals you can take from this. The essential one is that this is why you walk the Earth, today. At some point, our primitive ancestors noted that consuming high-energy density animal flesh was a far better strategy for survival, allowing for lots of languid free time and rest. Herbivores spend all their days foraging. Observe gorillas a bit. A dead end, evolutionarily. They simply have no time to do anything but munch on pounds and pounds of fibrous vegetable matter. No time at all to get themselves in the sorts of jams that natural selection feeds on.

Of particular note: grasp how our three primary adaptive advantages are exploited. First is the efficiency of bi-pedal over quadra-pedal locomotion. Next, we sweat onto bare skin. We carry a tremendous radiator, like a car. Finally, we have means of carrying along supplemental coolant.

Note also: only one guy goes off on the final long chase. So, while some level of endurance is certainly called for, this suggests that perhaps H-Gs engaged in division-of-labor specialization. I still don't think it's justification for spending much time on the treadmill.

What I'd have liked to see is the after kill activities. I'd speculate that the successful hunter began to dress the animal while the others caught up. Then they would have to section it and haul it back to camp, potentially hours of additional strenuous activity after the kill.

For this reason, I always work out hungry, at least 12 hours, usually more. After the workout (the hunt), I go at least two hours, sometimes six before eating.

Hot out of the email inbox.

Last time I went from 2XL to XL. Today, I went from XL to L.

Since I eliminated most of my diet soda consumption, and really
monitored alchohol intake during fasts — like none — I have broken through my latest plateau — around 232 — down from 255 — looking to go
back to 2-3 lbs per week.

I am ready to do what do what it takes to go down to target 210-212 or
10% body fat – your last post with your picture illustrations pushed me
over – it is time to stop f***ing around and get serious. Your post was
great motivation to me and I am sure many others.

Also: I have cut out all "gym aerobics" — have absolutely no need for
any class or mindless activity.

It's yours, for the taking. And it's only natural, Animal. Fun. One you learn to Free it.

Good honest science is first approached by collecting observational data, analyzing for certain relationships, and finally forming hypotheses around the data. But that's just the beginning. The good scientist then does his level best to disprove the hypotheses suggested by the data. To the extent he tries and fails, the hypotheses gain more acceptance. Then, other good scientists set about to disprove, and to the extent they try and fail, the hypotheses become to be "established science." The underlying methodology is one of falsifiability in scientific propositions. Put another way, a scientific proposition must be formed in a way that methodologically makes room for a negative result. Here's my favorite illustration, from the late Carl Sagan in his book, The Demon Haunted World. "A Fire-Breathing Dragon Lives in My Garage."

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

If you pay attention, that's how it almost never goes in the world of diet studies, intervention trials, and the like. Most everything is designed to attempt to confirm certain hypotheses, particularly about supposed links between dietary fat, cholesterol, and heart disease. How it goes is that if even the most tenuous link in the desired results can be stated, that's what gets stated. Other potential — even more significant and life threatening – relationships are often ignored, and if the sought after relationship doesn't exist at all, or is even suggested to be disproved, then it's chalked up to an aberration and the press releases often don't find their way out of the organization. Dr. Briffa has a recent post that illustrates.

While studies do indeed show that raised cholesterol levels are associated with an increased risk of heart disease, it does make sense to take a wider view if at all possible. Recently I have reported on a couple of studies which link lower cholesterol levels with an increased risk of cancer. One of these studies found lower cholesterol levels were associated with an increased risk of death too. You can read about there studies here and here. The bottom line is that focusing only on heart disease can give us a somewhat skewed impression of the association between cholesterol and health.

[…] However, lower cholesterol levels were found to be associated with an increased risk of bleeding into the brain (intracranial haemhorrage). Here are some other findings from this study: “A serum cholesterol level less than 4.14 mmol/L (less than 160 mg/dL) was also associated with a significantly increased risk of death from cancer of the liver and pancreas; digestive diseases, particularly hepatic cirrhosis; suicide; and alcohol dependence syndrome. In addition, significant inverse graded associations were found between serum cholesterol level and cancers of the lung, lymphatic, and hematopoietic systems, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

So, according to this data, the low cholesterol levels are associated with increased risk of, among other things, several forms of cancer. The authors of this week’s JAMA article were also authors of this study revealing the apparent hazards of low cholesterol. But this week’s JAMA article makes no mention of these findings.

So, how low of a cholesterol do you want, and why in the world, with something so complex, would anyone want to just look at a single health consequence? The bottom line:

The result? The interventions did not bring a statistically significant reduction in risk of death from heart disease nor overall risk of death either. This dismal result was not mentioned in this week’s JAMA paper either. We can’t judge from this study whether taking dietary steps to reduce cholesterol is worthwhile or not, because of multifactorial nature of this trial. However, one thing is for certain: the results of the original MR FIT study in no way support the notion that reducing fat and cholesterol is beneficial to health.

Now let's turn to another aspect of this same tired old behavior. This one is from Doc Eades (again). This goes back a few years, but is essentially quite a joke. Some researchers get together, including one who promotes his own obscure, "high fiber diet," then they plug macro and micronutrient data into a computer program they damn well knew in advance would spit out the usual conclusions, so they could then "confirm" the soundness of the sorts of diets they recommend in the first place.

When these authors looked at saturated fat, evil incarnate in the minds of the lipophobes, they found both Atkins and Protein Power to be full of the stuff. Especially Atkins. And we all know that saturated fat increases cholesterol, don’t we? Well, don’t we? Maybe the readers of this blog don’t know that. But the authors of this study along with fellow lipophobes Mensink and Katan know it. The latter know it so well that they’ve created equations predicting how much dietary saturated fat will raise cholesterol. And if we look at the graph below, we can see just how high the cholesterol levels are predicted to be in the blood of the followers of the various diets.

Apparently cholesterol will be way up in followers of Protein Power and off the charts in those following Atkins. But, remember, these are just their predictions. They aren’t reality.

Indeed. Now, I'm not going to take the space to outline the procedures. You can get that from Eades' post. In brief, he secured the services of an independent statistician to analyze results from his own patients over years of observation on low-carb, high-fat diets. In pictures.

Of course, none of this is surprising to me, my wife, or others who've recently had blood work done.

It's because they do not integrate evolutionary thinking. This leads to the eating of highly processed and packaged foods, the eating of non-foods, the eating of anti-nutrients and toxins we didn't evolve to eat (like grains — chiefly wheat and corn), puts us in chronic caloric depravation, ignores gene expression pathways critical to optimal health, overtrains us, focusses on weight loss instead of fat loss and lean gain, and on and on.

So, why is an evolutionary approach so essential?

From Loren Cordain's free Paleo Diet Update.

The graph below illustrates the magnitudes of the time our ancestors ate a Hunters and Gatherers' (H-G) Diet versus when our ancestors consumed a Mass-Agriculture Diet. The specific times used in this graph are 2,000,000 for the H-G Diet and 10,000 years for the geologically recent Mass-Agriculture Diet. Although exact dates and amounts can be argued, and would change some among different ethnic groups and regional histories, the graph would always look very much the same – because regardless of the specific dates you utilize, it always would very definitively involve magnitudes of change difference.

Bar graph illustrating a ratio of geologic time: 2,000,000 years vs. 10,000 years. These times are good representations of the magnitude of time of the Paleolithic Era foodstuffs of our ancestors as compared to the time our ancestral lineages have been on a Mass-Agriculture Diet.
It is startling to see the Mass-Agriculture Diet as a nearly flat, non-existent bar. In a mathematical sense one could almost say it is approaching the inverse of infinity … or that it is "infinitesimally small" in comparison to our earlier foodstuffs. It is more than a full 2 magnitudes smaller. As a decimal ratio of 2,000,000: it is .005.

While we can continue to debate (and we should) the exact amounts and rates of change in human physiology and the dietary amount of animal products vs. fruits/vegetables, etc. – an obvious fact is that the amount of time we and our ancestors have had mass agriculture and industrial era food is incredibly small indeed … and not debatable.

When we talk about "evolutionary discordance" in regard to our modern diet vs. the paleo Diet, this is what it means in one very real sense. A diet based on the way humans ate for a couple million years will lead to optimimum health and reduce the risk of degenerative disease.

One thing I should always mention about my results like I posted yesterday is that in addition to the real food and intermittent fasting, my workouts consist of only two 30-minute sessions per week, both of which I always do hungry, i.e., at least 12 hours since last food intake, and sometimes as much as 24-30 hours (I'm still in fat-loss mode). And regardless of how long it was that I hadn't eaten, I don't eat immediately after the workout either, for at least two hours.

If that seems totally crazy to you, does that sense come from actual experience, first-hand knowledge, or are you doing what so many do, which is to just run with the crowd? As I've come to learn being around the gym, trainers, and cardioholics: the fitness industry is dominated by a herd mentality. It's very faddish, and if you watch closely you'll begin to notice all sorts of contradictory diet, exercise, nutritional and supplement advice.

But stop to consider this: do mammals typically hunt in a fed or a hungry (fasted) state? If the latter, doesn't it seem logical, and also, doesn't it make sense that evolved physiology would be highly adapted to such behavior? Remember, we didn't evolve with refrigerators, so food storage was rather difficult.

And I do no cardio. I walk every weekday morning (low level aerobic), and now and then I do all out sprints, 3-6 at 30-40 seconds with a couple of minutes rest in-between.

I've been going trough all my past EvFit posts over the last year and a half and am re-categorizing for better granularity. But I came across something I wanted to highlight. Remember Mark Sisson? Who is he?

I excelled at cross-country and distance track events in high school and at Williams College, where I was a pre-med candidate and received my degree in Biology.

In fact, the running was going so well after college that I decided to forgo medical school for a few years (it’s at 31 years now) and concentrate on a running career. I trained seriously as a marathoner for another five years, racking up well over 100 miles each week in training. The effort culminated in a top 5 finish in the 1980 US National Marathon Championships and a qualifying spot for the 1980 US Olympic Trials. Unfortunately, by then the inhuman amount of training and weekly racing was taking its toll and I found myself constantly sick or injured. (Note to self: too much exercise is not a good thing). In fact, in my last year of competition, as a world class, extremely “fit” athlete, I experienced eight upper respiratory infections! Clearly I was ruining my immune system and my joints doing too much exercise. That’s when I started exploring nutrition and supplementation as a way to enhance my performance and to support my damaged body and bolster my immune system.

The running injuries – osteoarthritis and tendonitis – precluded ever racing at a high level again, but that was just about the time that the new sport of Triathlon was starting to emerge, and I was immediately hooked. While I couldn’t run much anymore, I could certainly cycle and swim to my heart’s content…and I did. I spent a few more years racing triathlons, including finishing 4th place at the Hawaii Ironman, the biggest in the world at the time.

I finally retired from competition in 1988 and decided I would do whatever I could to help others avoid making the kinds of health mistakes that I had made. I figured I could use my pre-medical background, my degree in biology and an intense desire to unlock the health secrets that I knew were out there – answers to questions about health, wellness, anti-aging, safe weight-loss, nutrition and supplementation – to find the natural ways of achieving good health.

I wrote several books, including Maximum Results, The Fat Control System, The Anti-aging Report and The Lean Lifestyle Program (over 400,000 copies distributed). I edited the Optimum Health national health newsletter (circ. 90,000) from 1994 through 1996.

Now, take a look at him at 54.

If anyone ought to know about the ill effects of chronic cardio, Mark should. See this post, and this one.

And rejoice! You don't need to do slow, boring "cardio" to get awesome results.

And why wouldn’t anyone want to hear that real exercise doesn’t mean endless hours on that torturously boring treadmill? News like this is like sunlight bursting in, choirs of children singing, shackles collapsing open and crashing to the ground. Hordes of celebratory folk parade through the gym, penny whistles and fiddles playing, ale mugs in hand, goats and cows in the merry mix. Get off that treadmill and join us, for the love!