Archives for June 2012

It’s been nearly two years now since we took a trip internationally. Far too long. It’s not in the making this summer—so far, anyway—so I thought I’d review the last trip, July 2010. It’s for myself to relive it a bit, but also for those readers who weren’t around at that time, perhaps to inspire and encourage to get out there and see the world a bit.

The story of how this particular trip came about starts in the summer of 2006, when Beatrice and I headed off for a 3-week tour of Europe by car, no hotel reservations. We touched down in Paris, got the car, stayed the night, then headed south towards Barcelona. From there, we hugged the Med all the way up through Spain, across France, down into Italy, all the way to Pizza. After a couple of days in Firenze (Florence), we headed north, passed through Switzerland and just a bit of Germany, then west back to Paris for the flight home. In all, about 6,000 km. Each afternoon, we’d stop in a place we couldn’t not stop at, I’d drop Beatrice on the waterfront, and she’d go from hotel to hotel until someone could show her a nice room with a view she liked; she’d ring me on the phone, and we’d have a place.

I’ve travelled this way—no reservations—a number of times and it’s my preferred method of vacation/touring travel. So much better when you can see the whole context and decide accordingly. Those wanting to follow along with our Eurotrek 2006, posts begin July 3, 2006 in the archives, and run through July 26.

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This is actually my favorite sort of post to do; more so, even, than the rants here and there. I find it interesting to get two or more perspectives on some issue or controversy, then synthesize them into what I always hope will be a broader context of understanding and in particular, highly accessible to those less interested in the nitty-gritty of the science.

It’s a dialectic of sorts, but in this case, doesn’t involve any material antithesis. Here, it’s actually two pretty compatible theses: one put forth by Anthony Colpo (quantitative); the other by Dr. Stephan Guyenet (quantitative and qualitative). This is a follow-on to my post of yesterday, JAMA: Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance (access the full text of the study here).

I do find this study highly fascinating. I suppose because it has a number of elements that are ripe for debate, and open debate tends to get more people more closer to more truth. I read the thing from start to finish a couple of times, including all the figures and tables. Something just didn’t add up for me. I quote from the Comment section (emphasis mine):

The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity.

OK, but then there’s this from the Results section (emphasis mine):

Body weight did not differ significantly among the 3 diets.

So I popped off an email to David Ludwig, MD, PhD, one of the researchers. Here’s the relevant part:

I was interested in the study just published yesterday […]

However, I have a glaring question I have been unable to answer after reading the study and looking at the figures and tables:

Where did the 300 calories go LC vs. LF? As I understand it, participants ate isocalorically in crossover fashion, so the only change was the macro ratios. It’s also stated that physical activity did not change. So if they ate the same calories, had the same physical activity, maintained the same weight loss throughout, then how are the 300 daily calories accounted for if not in additional weight loss beyond the initial loss?

Perhaps I could learn more from the eMethods supplement as cited in the article. However, the link to the PDF is broken. If you have that PDF I’d appreciate it, and of course any light you could shed on my question so I can pass it on to my readers and commenters.

Anticipating that the answer might be something like: increased bodily metabolism (higher heart rate, respiration, etc, etc), then my follow on question might be what’s the point, the advantage?

I got back a very quick response.

The point is that 4 weeks isn’t long enough to translate a 300 kcal/d difference into statistically significant weight change, especially when one considers that body weight normally fluctuates by a kilogram or two through the course of a week, based on differences in hydration status, the time of the last bowel movement, etc. We’d need 6 months to reliably see this effect. Nevertheless, there was a slight, and not statistically significant difference in the hypothesized direction, with body weight highest on the low fat diet (data included in the results section).

I’ve informed the journal about the web site problem with the eMethods. Hopefully they will correct that soon.

OK, now here’s the two posts by Guyenet and Colpo.

• New Study: Is a Calorie a Calorie? (Guyenet)
• Finally, a Study that Proves a Low-Carb Metabolic Advantage? Yeah, Right… (Colpo)

Hmmm…now comes the hard part, which is where to begin, what to highlight, what to say about it (actually, I worked that latter part all out in the shower this morning). Suffice to say that I like both of these posts for their mutual injection of sanity into what seemed initially to be a lot of attaboys, high-fives, etc., amongst ardent fans of carbohydrate restriction (I count myself a circumspect fan of LC) leading to metabolic advantage (eat as much as you want LC, no problem—I’m not a fan).

Let’s begin with what I’d characterize as a strictly quantitative analysis from Anthony. In the first part of his post, Anthony takes time to review the fact that every single metabolic ward study going back to 1935—every single one—fails to find a statistically significant difference in weight loss amongst different sorts of diet compositions (including LC). In other words, weight loss always comes from caloric restriction. He goes into great detail on every single one of these studies in his book, The Fat Loss Bible. He then goes on to address this particular study; kinda doing so with one arm tied behind his back, because he doesn’t make a lot of fuss about it not being a metabolic ward study, and thus tightly controlled (for my take, the team did appear to use an impressive array of state of art methods and incentives to motivate decent compliance and record data). An excerpt from the post.

Bodyweight was virtually identical during all three isocaloric diet phases which to me, as a rational indvidual whose head has never been embedded in his culo, quickly refutes the famous low-carb claim that greater weight loss will occur on a low-carb diet at a given caloric intake. At the caloric level calculated by the researchers to maintain weight, the low-carb diet did exactly what the other diets did – it maintained weight. It did not magically produce further weight loss while the other diets simply maintained the status quo.

I could by all rights end the discussion there, but the interesting thing about this study is that the lack of difference in weight status during the 3 diets is being roundly ignored by the very same low-carb advocates who are parading this study as proof of a metabolic weight loss advantage.

Instead, they are wanking on and on about an allegedly greater increase in resting energy expenditure and total energy expenditure experienced by the participants during the low-carb phase. This increase in REE and TEE, they are claiming, is proof that low-carb diets produce greater weight loss – even though the low-carb diet didn’t produce any weight loss at all.

Got that?

Let me attempt a different way of conveying the essential point Anthony is making in hopes of getting just one or two more otherwise breathless LC metabolic advantage fans to take a breath.

Here goes, y’ready? …

All 21 participants did lose a significant 13% average body weight over 12 weeks on a calorie restricted diet equal to 60% of daily energy requirements.

Did that escape everyone’s attention, or only the fact that everybody didn’t lose any weight regardless of dietary composition over a separate 12 weeks? And just as the first 12 weeks was designed to lose weight (via caloric/energy imbalance), the second 12 weeks was designed to maintain weight (via caloric/energy balance). Everything went according to plan, so is there really any meaningful news here beyond a curiosity that may merit further investigation?

Let me put it a different way, hopefully getting a few more breathless to take a breath:

Researchers gave 12 people free food, prepared it for them, and promised to pay them $500 if they could stand a 40% caloric deficit for 12 weeks. Additionally, they gave them another 12 weeks of free, prepared food, and promised to pay them another $2,000 if they would eat it and come to the hospital for 9 days of tests.

Again, everything went according to plan.

Another thing Anthony points out is important especially on the basis of what has already happened in the media and some blogs: ‘300 calorie per day metabolic advantage for low carb; step right up and get your metabolic advantage.’

On the TEE graph, 8 of 21 subjects experienced greater declines in TEE on the low-carb diet when compared to the low-GI diet, and four of these folks experienced similar or greater declines in TEE than they did on the low-fat diet.

So you can see that the true story is a little more complicated and somewhat different to the one low-carb shills are trying to portray. Rather than a clear-cut case of reduced drops in REE and TEE during a low-carb diet, the indvidual results are in fact much more haphazard, with some subjects in fact showing markedly greater drops in REE and TEE during the low-carb diet.

Meaning that if you adopt a low-carb diet expecting an increase in metabolism, based on the results of this study, there’s a very strong possibility you’ll be sorely disappointed.

Colpo goes on to address some of the hormonal markers and such, but I’ll set that aside and focus just on the weight loss.

So let’s move on to Stephan Guyenet who, while addressing some of these quantitative weight loss issues, also includes a qualitative angle, and it’s just this sort of thing that makes for a good synthesis. Stephan summarizes the entire dispute in three points.

1. Calories don’t matter at all, only diet composition matters.
2. Calories are the only thing that matters, and diet composition is irrelevant.
3. Calories matter, but diet composition may also play a role.

The first one is an odd position that is not very well populated. The second one has a lot of adherents in the research world, and there’s enough evidence to make a good case for it. It’s represented by the phrase ‘a calorie is a calorie’, i.e. all calories are equally fattening. #1 and #2 are both extreme positions, and as such they get a lot of attention. But the third group, although less vocal, may be closest to the truth.

Sounds like he might be talking about real food, eh? He continues. You can check the post for his references.

Some people have suggested that the type of food we eat, not just the amount, influences energy expenditure, and in particular that this is related to the diet’s carbohydrate content. In people who are not trying to lose weight (4, 5), or who are being overfed (6, 7), the carbohydrate:fat ratio in the diet has little or no detectable impact on energy expenditure, and if anything it favors carbohydrate, but could this be different during fat loss in people who start off overweight? This idea has been called the ‘metabolic advantage’, most notably attributed to the low-carbohydrate diet. The idea here is that you can lose fat eating the same number of calories if carbohydrate is kept low.

I’ve never really weighed in on this because it’s a topic of heated debate, and in any case it’s a fairly academic question. Why is it academic? Because previous weight loss studies have shown that if a metabolic advantage exists at all, it’s quite small, because the effect is undetectable in most studies (8, 9, 10). People who are not associated with the low-carbohydrate community tend to conclude that there’s no metabolic advantage when they review the literature (11), although I haven’t reviewed it closely myself. It’s clear that where fat loss is concerned, calorie intake is much more important than the amount of fat or carbohydrate in the diet. What previous studies have suggested is that low-carbohydrate diets suppress appetite — often resulting in lower calorie intake (12, 13). The reason for this remains a topic of speculation.

So we begin to come full circle with what Anthony said. To put my take on it, Anthony says it’s dumb to believe in any metabolic advantage, while Stephan says it’s pointless, because either it doesn’t exist or is too small to matter.

At which point, I remind you:

All 21 participants did lose a significant 13% average body weight over 12 weeks on a calorie restricted diet equal to 60% of daily energy requirements.

Now enter the qualitative angle. Stephan again.

That being said, I’m actually quite open to the idea that food quality in addition to quantity can influence body fatness, and I would encourage people to think outside the macronutrient box: there are probably many different dietary factors that can have such an effect. Although this idea hasn’t received much support in the human literature so far, there’s quite a bit of evidence for it in the animal literature.

…Like, real food: meat, fish, fowl, vegetables and fruit, like we evolved to eat? Animals? You mean like all those animals in the wild that maintain body compositions exactly as they’re supposed to, when able to eat what they’re supposed to eat? And we’re not even talking about health, yet. Is an animal going to generally fair healthier on a diet provided by nature, or industrial crap in a bag/box?

OK, so if there’s anything that could be termed an antithesis from Guyenet contra Colpo’s thesis in this regard, here it is—but it’s certainly on no such level that all you have to do is eat zero carbs and you’ll lose weight:

Does this support the idea that there is a ‘metabolic advantage’ to low-carbohydrate diets? Well, sort of. It doesn’t change the previous findings that the carbohydrate:fat ratio has little or no impact on energy expenditure during overfeeding, in weight stable people, or during weight loss, but it does suggest that a VLC dietary pattern has a metabolic advantage over a LF diet specifically in the context of weight maintenance after weight loss. It also suggests that a LGI diet has a smaller but still meaningful metabolic advantage in this setting, and that a LF diet are not very effective in this regard. It also opens a whole new can of worms for the research world, investigating the effects of diet quality on energy expenditure.

…It’s that last phrase I’m most interested in: “investigating the effects of diet quality on energy expenditure.” If that were actually to happen, what would that mean for fans of paleo and WAPF, allied most specifically because of their advocacy of real, whole foods from all the available sources (sorry, veg*ns, no soup for you!)?

Here’s an idea: eat real food first. If I can play loose with the term “metabolic advantage,” I’d say that in the end, I think calories count, but that food quality matters. Low to moderate carbohydrate diets—when done right—tend to push out crap food for much better food. Much better food means improved satisfaction, satiation…a greater chance of being in control of appetite, cravings, and so on. Inasmuch as appetite, hunger and satiation are related to metabolism, loosely stated, there’s your metabolic advantage, right there.

If this was recognized above all, perhaps we could get off macronutrient ratios and focus on real, quality food. In so doing—unless you’re just going to eat tubers all day—you’re likely going to be eating a pretty moderate carbohydrate load anyway, and even if that includes potatoes, a pretty low glycemic load (that’s index, with over time thrown in because, y’know, time passes by).

The takeaway: Eat. Real. Food. Move. Around. If you need to lose weight: Eat. Less. Real. Food. Move. Around. More.

[As an endnote, I was already well into this post when I learned that Evelyn at Carb Sane also weighed in. We’ve had our differences, but fair is fair and she raises some of the same questions and issues: A Modest Proposal for Peer Review Research. Check it out.]

Well I’d intended to get up this morning and write a run of the mill rant about the stupid article accompanying an interview the other day on NPR Morning Edition with my buddy John Durant. Here’s the link to the thing, along with 7 minutes of audio that’s substantially better than the article. There’s now 441 comments. When last I scanned through them, around 360 of them or something, it was about the most idiotic comment thread I’ve ever seen.

OK, so no rant this time.

I got wind of this study this morning via a link to Glenn Reynlds from a friend of mine, then chasing down rabbit holes. This appears to be the full text: Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance. I haven’t scrupulously picked through it but figured why not let everyone who want to go through it just like I will.

Here’s a couple of media reports for those wanting just a summary.

• USA Today: Low-carb diet burns the most calories in small study
• The New York Times: Which Diet Works?

And from the Abstract of the actual study:

Objective To examine the effects of 3 diets differing widely in macronutrient composition and glycemic load on energy expenditure following weight loss.

Design, Setting, and Participants A controlled 3-way crossover design involving 21 overweight and obese young adults conducted at Children’s Hospital Boston and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, between June 16, 2006, and June 21, 2010, with recruitment by newspaper advertisements and postings.

Intervention After achieving 10% to 15% weight loss while consuming a run-in diet, participants consumed an isocaloric low-fat diet (60% of energy from carbohydrate, 20% from fat, 20% from protein; high glycemic load), low–glycemic index diet (40% from carbohydrate, 40% from fat, and 20% from protein; moderate glycemic load), and very low-carbohydrate diet (10% from carbohydrate, 60% from fat, and 30% from protein; low glycemic load) in random order, each for 4 weeks.

Main Outcome Measures Primary outcome was resting energy expenditure (REE), with secondary outcomes of total energy expenditure (TEE), hormone levels, and metabolic syndrome components.

[…]

Conclusion Among overweight and obese young adults compared with pre–weight-loss energy expenditure, isocaloric feeding following 10% to 15% weight loss resulted in decreases in REE and TEE that were greatest with the low-fat diet, intermediate with the low–glycemic index diet, and least with the very low-carbohydrate diet.

~~~

Alright, here’s some of my initial, off the cuff thoughts having just skimmed through. I believe I saw somewhere that the participants were eating food prepared for them by the research team; if so, that does add a bit of credibility. Also, if REE and TEE (resting and total energy expenditure) was less with the LF diet compared to the LC diet it seems more plausible to me that the LF, high-carb diet would generally be prone to more cheating, hence more caloric intake, hence an even more curious result if that were the case.

Here’s a blurb from the comments I found interesting:

The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity.

The physiological basis for the differences in REE and TEE remains subject to speculation. Triiodothyronine was lowest with the very low-carbohydrate diet, consistent with previously reported effects of carbohydrate restriction23 ; thus, changes in thyroid hormone concentration cannot account for the higher energy expenditure on this diet. The thermic effect of food (the increase in energy expenditure arising from digestive and metabolic processes) dissipates in the late postprandial period and would not affect REE measured in the fasting state. Because the thermic effect of food tends to be greater for carbohydrate than fat,24 – 25 it would also not explain the lower TEE on the low-fat diet. Although protein has a high thermic effect of food,16 the content of this macronutrient was the same for the low-fat and low–glycemic index diets and contributed only 10% more to total energy intake with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the other 2 diets. Furthermore, physical activity as assessed by accelerometry did not change throughout the study. Alternative explanations for the observed differences in REE and TEE may involve intrinsic effects of dietary composition on the availability of metabolic fuels13 – 14 or metabolic efficiency, changes in hormones (other than thyroid) or autonomic tone affecting catabolic or anabolic pathways, and (for TEE) skeletal muscle efficiency as regulated by leptin.26 – 29 Regarding the last possibility, the ratio of energy expenditure to leptin concentration has been proposed as a measure of leptin sensitivity,30 and this ratio varied as expected in our study among the 3 diets (very low carbohydrate>low glycemic index>low fat).

Maybe I’m missing something here, but if the participants were eating isocaloric diets (just the different macro ratios), they were in weight maintenance (no participants gaining or losing), yet the LC participants had total energy expenditure 300 kcal per day greater than the LF participants, and…“Furthermore, physical activity as assessed by accelerometry did not change throughout the study”...then what’s the point?

What am I missing?

OK, perhaps I’ll put up an addendum or another post once I’ve gone through this more, but don’t let that stop any of your science, metabolism or science geeks in comments.

Update: Synthesis: Guyenet, Colpo, Calories Count, Food Quality Matters, Macronutrient Ratios are Qualitative (my extensive follow-up post on the matter)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
— Elizabeth Barret Browning.

Who amoung you who really cares, can’t relate a good set of deadlifts to all of that?

…It’s a long history but I eventually worked myself up to 325# for 5 reps, back almost a year and a half ago. Here’s a video of 305# for 4. Somewhere along the way, I got an injury—a cervical herniation—that put me down like nothing else, ever. Here’s the this and that of all of that:

• This is One Big Ass Pain in the Neck!
• Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS): Can Your Mind Really Heal Your Back, Neck, Shoulder, Butt, and Leg Pain?

I must mention both Dr. kurt harris and Dr. Doug McGuff. Early on, they both tuned me into Dr. John Sarno. Essentially, if the pain is so intense, chronic and constant, 24×7, for weeks and months…to the point you begin plotting suicide—and how not to make a display or show of it for family members—then perhaps it’s time to look at the mind. Additionally, Kurt (a radiologist) graciously looked at my MRI imaging and confirmed the physical side of things.

Interesting thing is, it worked—and totally without fucking woo bullshit. It’s physiological. For whatever reason you should not care about, your mind decides to fuck with you by restricting oxygen at a cellular/muscular level to isolated places, and it causes oxygen deprivation and excruciating pain, which can persist for years—while a broken femur heals from pain in two weeks (hint hint). The solution? Tell your brain to fuck off. Seriously. Explicitly. In the mirror. You don’t need to “work out your problems.” Tell yourself to fuck off. Mean it. Done. It does take some weeks of such self therapy, so’s that you know you really mean it: in the mirror. Face to same face.

More direct: laugh at the pain and the pain becomes a laughing stock.

All that was a while back. I laid off heavy workouts for a good while, gained fat, bla bla bla. About this time last year I went back to the gym and dived into DLs once again. On the first day I pulled 255 for reps with no problem. I did that a few times in a few weeks. Then, we took a trip to the cabin and in getting ready to turn our vacation home into a vacation rental, I worked for a solid day with my arms above my head cleaning ceilings, light fixtures, etc….and the very next day the same pain was back with a vengeance.

What was the real cause???

It was just as powerful and debilitating as before. I had no idea what was in store and at the time, I was slated for both The 21 Convention in Orlando and AHS at UCLA. I contemplated canceling both. I continued to nurse my woulds, gain fat, and wax miserable. Then, I took note of something. The pain went away, and it did so without me doing much in the way of Sarno-esque, “Fuck you, Richard,” affirmations in the mirror. It was about 2-3 weeks. Gone. I suspect it had something to do with no longer having any fear or trepidation in the matter and I kinda just dismissed the pain much of the time in spite of the intensity.

So, I ended up doing my deals: The 21 Conv and AHS. I didn’t look good at all, but made the best of it and was well received.

Since then, I have been very gun-shy about the whole thing in terms of heavy lifting. I essentially didn’t work out for months. A few months back, I got kettlebells. I really didn’t treat them as formal workouts. Rather, it was 5 minutes here, 5 there, maybe a couple of times per day, or none at all some days. I really like that informality and it will continue. However, whatever it was I did—probably with the 45 pounder—the whole deal came back. But and but: way, way less than before. It was only annoying, and it didn’t really affect sleep and such. Zero suicidal thoughts. It went away in a couple of weeks or so, and it’s been a couple of weeks since I haven’t had a single symptom.

…And so, yesterday was: how-do-I-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways day. It wasn’t planned. Beatrice and I just decided to head to the swim club around 4:30 and I said to myself: I’m going to fucking do dead lifts.

135# x 10. Kittens could do that, and so did the kitten in me. OK, let’s load 25 per side, for 185# total. Whoa. That’s easy. I took it to 5 reps, rested a bit, did another 5. There’s no wind in the gym, so caution sticks around. After a good rest, I thought that 205# would be doable. So I loaded it up and did 5 more reps; pretty damn easy. I put a cherry on top with 400# on the leg press. Two sets for 10 reps each. Piece of cake. Then I went in the pool, the 13ft side for 40 minutes, legs crossed, treading water, arms only (very easy for me: all my life).

Here’s the thing: all reps were done double overhand grip. This, I owe to Clifton Harski. I had a great steak and salad lunch with him in Los Gatos after AHS last fall…talked about my troubles, my injury, and he immediately nodded his head. He’d seen this before. His advice was something that would likely have not dawned on me ever, because I’m simply not deep into the details of physical training. He said: do only double overhand on deadlifts, and lock your arms “outwards.”

When you think of it, the evolutionary logic makes sense. We’re a system. We evolved in such a way that muscle groups are in concert. Or: our arms can do things our legs can’t; our feet can do things our hands can’t…and all which ways around the mulberry bush.

It seemed like a sensible thing to me, since my forearms and hands, and arms, ultimately, are the endpoint on the bar: to not let the far more massive muscles of my glutes, back and legs injure my far more tender assets—but also far more brainy assets.

It’s a simple concept:

The weakest link in your system is your limit.

In deadlift, that’s your grip. Yea, a reverse grip gets the job done, but it’s interesting to see where all competitors in this deal lift comp failed. Many got into the 400s, some into the 500s, but every single one failed eventually on grip, not on what their butt, back and legs could do.

And so, with an abundance of caution I go forth. I still want to pull a 500# deadlift in my lifetime. I’m 51, and I want to be able to pull 500# when I’m 60, and I’m willing to take it slow and easy. But, when, and if, I do, it will be double overhand.

The way I look at it, my ability to grip is the weakest link, and as such, is what just might keep the rest of my body safe to progress for as long as it takes for my grip to strengthen over time. Moreover, I think that realization has a lot of application in the entire workout and lifting industry.

Don’t shortcut the weak link.

I almost wrote a post last evening just so I could write something for fun. But I was a bit sapped—which continues into today—so I ate a big bowl of my father-in-law’s caldo de res instead. Now, finally, the editors get it back for a couple days before it reverts to me.

What’s Version 2.0? Well, first of all I’m trying to beef it up quite a bit at the level of each chapter—just make it a bit better in my eyes, but still simple and basic for the beginner. A quick summary:

• Deemphasis of low carbohydrate as necessarily any part of paleo, while acknowledging its usefulness to many for weight loss an certain health issues.
• Calories count.
• Potatoes are nutritious.
• Lots of additional sections in a number of chapters, but one I recall explicitly (my brain is in a fog) is a section on the ethics of eating animals.
• New Chapter: Cold Water Therapy or “Thermogenesis” (though I’m not sure I care for that term).
• New Chapter: Moderate Carbs.
• New Chapter: paleo Kids.
• New Chapter: Barefooting

Well, that’s about it for now. Should be out around the end of the month.

Here’s the post that kicked it all off. This is chapter 5 of 12, to give interested readers the chance to take on the free ebook chapter by chapter over the weekend, debate it amongst themselves, or even challenge the author who’s keeping tabs.

~~~

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.

by Greg Swann

Chapter 5. The greatest love of all.

When the subject of love and sex come up, our friends in the lab coats have a field day. For one thing, gibbons and other critters pair-bond for life, so they’re “just like us.” And for another, when you’re in the thrall of your best-beloved, your brain is all but drowning in pheromones and oxytocin and a mad obsession to rut yourself raw, so you’re no different from a house-cat in heat. Everything they have to say about you omits the inconvenient fact of Fathertongue, which makes their comparisons specious and invalid. However, as a consolation to deluded butterfly collectors everywhere, a genetic Homo sapiens without Fathertongue really is just like a poorly-adapted animal.

But since no mere animal can think in Fathertongue, no members of the animal kingdom bother to study the dating and mating habits of professors and graduate students – a fact that might raise a question in the minds of those assiduous researchers, if they were of a mind to question their contra-factual prejudices. A plausible meta-goal of reductionist science, arguably unknown to the scientists but presumably very well understood by modern philosophers, is to reduce everything to nothing – to trivialize everything in order to trivialize the human mind.

…

Read More

A few more to add to the collection.

~ Mike shares.

I’m 47 years old and have been yo-yoing with my weight since my parents got divorced when I was seven. I had to go to my grandmother’s house after school and being the typical grandma, fed me all the sweets and ice cream and sugar and cinnamon rolls etc. that any young kid would want. So by the time I was 10 I was an obese kid.

When I went to Jr High I played football and wrestled and by the time I was a freshman, I had started to lean out and thought it was all good. I mostly maintained a healthy weight all the way until my Junior year in college.

From there, life took over once again. You can guess the rest, so at the age of 32, Im 5’9″ and 232 lbs. I joined a gym near work, ate a low fat diet, 5 meals a day, got back down to 185 lbs and all was going well. But even at that weight I was still real smooth, but I was happy to be where I was. Then the owner of the gym died of cancer and, the gym closed and I didnt really look into joining anywhere else—so I just gave up and this is the time the real weight gain started.

So fast forward 10 years later. I had been drinking 10-12 beers a day for at least the last 8, eating shit, and my pant size had crept up to the point where I went from size 34 pants, blew past 36, to 38. My wife bought me 2 pairs of jeans for Christmas in 2010 and I couldnt wear them. I had to sneak out and buy 40s because I was embarrased to tell her they wouldn’t fit, so I hid the 38s in the back of my closet. In January of 2011, I dropped myself from our family health plan and started to go to the VA for my health care. At my first appointment I weighed 262 lbs. I was demolished.

I started eating less and by April, I was down to 250, but after that I still kept on drinking the beer.

When my father died on Nov 9, 2011, I realized that I didnt have anything to wear to the memorial, so I took my son and myself to get us suits for the ceremony. I was measured at a 42 waist, a size 50 coat, and a 23 inch neck for the shirt. This was the start of the embarrasement.

After the ceremony we went to a relative’s house for dinner and my nephew—whom I hadn’t seen for about 6 months—came in, and I noticed that he was incredibly smaller than the last time I’d seen him. I asked him what he’d been doing. He told me his Dad put him on a paleo diet. So naturally I sought out my ex brother-in-law, who it turns out is a certified trainer and puts all his clients on some form of paleo diet.

I scoured the internet (must have wasted 80 hours of work time) gathering as much info as possible, and decided to give it a go on Nov 29th.

Your website and Marks Daily Apple have been a great source of information and motivation. So 5 weeks in, I’m down to 227 lbs, have been going back to the gym and using the information on your site about the Leangains approach for a workout, and feeling great. Iwas able to pull the jeans I had hidden from my wife and wear them, and just this weekend, bought 2 pairs of 36 that actually fit.

I know I have a long way to go, but I am enjoying this and no longer crave beer which is the biggest blessing so far.

Well, that was the beginning of January, and as of a couple of weeks ago, I have an update in the form of pictures.

From 2010 to May, 2012

And how about another?

From December, 2010 to June, 2012

~ Kim shares:

I’m writing because I have a bit of a success story to share, though I’m still on the journey towards the optimal. As of today, however, I have lost 50 pounds since April of 2010, when I began my path to wellness.

My story actually starts well before that, however. Fuck, let’s just start at the beginning (hope you have a few minutes). I was an athletic kid, played on tons of sports teams, lived in the type of neighborhood where you played outside for hours after school and all day every day in the summers, had two older brothers that enjoyed kicking the shit out of me, etc. Our family ate the very definition of the Standard American Diet, however. Breakfast was plain sugary cereal (didn’t like milk) and OJ. Lunch was a sandwich, sugary yogurt or whatever the school cafeteria was serving up. Dinner was some meat (lots of ham and chicken), a canned vegetable (which I usually fed to the dog) and loads of grains. We had “pizza night” once a week and my mom made casseroles every week as well. Due to my high activity level at time, my poor diet seemingly had little effect on my body composition/health.

A couple of years into high school, I found myself exploring interests other than sports. I joined services organizations and began doing theater. As a result of lessened physical activity, coupled with my continuation of the SAD diet, I started gaining weight. […]

Ever since, I’ve been battling overweight, following the same old “eat less, exercise more” bullshit advice that encumbers the mainstream. For the next 10 or so years, I would bounce anywhere from 160lbs – 200lbs, depending on my situation at the time (stress levels, ability to work out, etc.). At one point, in about 2003, I resorted to using ephedra (Stacker) to loose weight. It worked and I dropped to about 160, maybe a little lower. […]

In 2008, I worked hard to get into shape, because I wanted to begin conceiving a child. I weighed 170lbs when I got pregnant in early 2009. Stupidly, for a good deal of my pregnancy, I followed the same bullshit pregnancy advice and pretty much “gave into cravings” and ate whatever the hell I wanted. At some point in my pregnancy, I watched Food, Inc. and read Nina Plank’s Real Food. This started me on what I now call my “Wellness Adventure.” I started drinking raw milk and eating grassfed meat. I dropped my obstetrician, and started seeing a midwife.

Even with these changes, though, I managed to gain a whopping 70lbs. during my pregnancy. Prior to giving birth to my amazing son in December of 2009, I weighed in at 240lbs. Yikes! Not long after, in April of 2010, I weighed 197 pounds and decided I really needed to do something about my weight. I stumbled onto the Whole Health Source blog, as I was looking more into traditional foods. The first post I read was about Stephen being on jimmy moore‘s Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show. I listened to that podcast, and down the rabbit hole I went. From there, I found your blog, Robb Wolf’s podcast/blog, Mark Sisson’s blog, among the multitudes.

Just by going “low carb,” I lost 20 pounds by the end of that summer. In addition to the lost weight, my skin had cleared up (I had constant acne), my allergies were nearly gone (we used to say I was always … “leaking”), and I had a ton of energy (not bad for a new mother who wasn’t getting a hell of a lot of sleep). Since I was reading all of these Paleo/Primal blogs, I learned about the dangers of grains and industrial seed oils (never liked legumes, so they were already nixed from the diet – easiest food group to give up EVER). So, I started eating a primal diet (still haven’t been able to kick the cheese habit, though it’s no longer the main source of protein as it had been in my old diet). I stopped eating pretty much all processed food, sugar and all grains. Once my son turned one, and had less nursing needs, I slowly added intermittent fasting into my routine, as well (your Leangains posts were great motivation to give this a go).

As a result, I now have lost 50 total pounds since April, 2010, and I feel amazing. I have boundless energy to play with my toddler son, who loves to wrestle (great workout!). I exercise now because I like the way it feels to move and challenge my body (not because I have to work off that extra slice of pizza). My skin and allergies have improved even more. My mental clarity is better. My lipid profile has vastly improved (lower trigs and higher HDL). I’m happier (less of the monthly mood swings, so the husband is happier too – lol). A primal life is a good life!

Anyway, as I said at the beginning of this email, I still feel I have a way to go. I weigh 147 as of this morning. My ideal weight for my height is probably closer to 130. I’m positive I’m going to get there (I constantly tell people how amazing it is to know you are on the right path and to have no concern that you aren’t going to meet your goals). […] I’m happy to share my story with you, and am so appreciative of what you do.

~ Dan loses a huge amount of weight on a low carb approach.

The sudden death of my wife of 37 years prompted a lifestyle change that has led to a weight loss of 143 pounds in the last 20 months. After researching diet and nutrition. I’ve adopted a low carb/Paleo lifestyle.

I tell my story on my blog at: http://danmoffett.blogspot.com/

340 & 52″ Waist to 183

~ Here’s Lauren with a “facelift” transformation.

I enjoy your blog and have seen you mention several times the idea that a person’s face changes when they switch to paleo. I don’t really call myself paleo as I read and admire MDA, your blog, and archevore equally. Regardless I eat the diet that you all basically promote and my face is quite different now. The first two photos were taken directly following the birth of my first baby. Two and a half years later, I had another baby. The two after photos were taken following the second child. The difference is quite strong, I think. I won’t bore you with a big long story, the photos speak for themselves. I will say that I was a vegetarian for 13 years and that celiac runs in my family. I did one pregnancy as a vegetarian and one as a carnivore.

Facelift

~ Jim gets motivated.

My name is Jim, and I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I enjoy your blog. I think I first stumbled upon it the day I also found Mark’s Daily Apple…someone on that forum had linked to a post of yours I believe. For quite some time I had been looking for both the method and the motivation for losing some of my extra weight. I was an all-American thrower in college, but had lost control in the past few years and at my heaviest was 335lbs. On a 6′ 7″ frame it’s not the worst, but I remember how I felt physically at that point, and I hated it, but couldn’t seem to do anything about it. In the couple of years after that I was able to get down to about 310, but no further.

Anyhow, Mark’s Daily Apple helped show me the method I was looking for, but it was your “New Year’s Resolutions Are Bullshit” post that really gave me the motivation to get after it. Specifically, the picture with the caption “Fuck you”. That day, I remember looking in the mirror and saying “Fuck you!” to what I saw – since that time (October 1, 2011), I’ve lost almost 30lbs and am exercising much more effectively. In addition, I’m taking more of a “follow your instinct” approach to almost everything. In short, my whole attitude has changed, and it really feels like I’ve figured a lot of things out.

Wow, all of these people figuring out all of this on their own, with “Bad and Incomplete Science.” But there’s nuthin’ to see here. It’s all anecdotal. Just more bad science.

Yes, there was the interview. That was the morning after these photos, that Beatrice snapped candidly over dinner. I myself was so absorbed, that I didn’t even know about them until I updated her computer shit this afternoon and found them on her iPhone.

Listen J, Points Come Together.

J…VAGINAS…Come Together!

Whaaaat?

Here, J, Eat More Meat. You’ll Get it.

Alright. OK, You’re Right.

…Can We Talk About Vaginas, Now?

Mr. J. Stanton is the perfect guest.

Here’s the post that kicked it all off. This is chapter 4 of 12, to give interested readers the chance to take on the free ebook chapter by chapter over the weekend, debate it amongst themselves, or even challenge the author who’s keeping tabs.

~~~

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.

by Greg Swann

Chapter 4. The greatest invention in the history of humanity.

That chapter heading is really just a tease. What’s the most important invention ever devised by the mind of man?

Fathertongue, of course. All other inventions flow from it. Without it, we are badly-adapted hairless apes, ultimately doomed to an ignominious extinction. With it, human beings danced on the Moon.

In the last chapter, I raised the idea of your being stranded on a desert island. That’s a hugely unlikely scenario, but it’s interesting to think about because everything that is true of you, as a type of entity, is true of you in isolation. You’re in this all alone, recall, and there is no factual statement that we can make about your nature as a human being that is not true of you even – especially! – when you are isolated from all other people.

In later chapters, we will take up the implications of your fundamental ontological solitude. For now I want to focus on the existential solitude of being stranded. Is there anyone for you to talk to? To cuddle up to? To fight against or to make love with? No. You possess everything you were able to recover from your plane crash or your shipwreck, but there is no one else with you, and anything else you might want you will have to provide for yourself – if you can – or else do without.

…

Read More

As I posted a few days back, we’ve been spending the week up here in the mountains. It’s been fun, not the least of which is that yesterday afternoon, J. Stanton of Gnolls.org took a drive over Ebbetts pass at 8,730 ft., from Lake Tahoe to join us in Arnold—at a mere 4,000 ft—for an evening of chat, visiting, grilling meat.

Grilling Meat

J. brought one steak to share that he’d cut himself, in a butchering class. Guess which one. But before doing all that, drinking port wine after dinner that he’d also brought, and staying up until about 2am talking about spotted hyenas and the individual and social behavior of many other animals—as well as the evolutionary clues we can speculate about—we had recorded about 30-40 minutes of video discussing various topics out on the deck.

Only…the video camera stopped recording at 2 gigs of data without a courtesy notice. At the HD setting it was on, that came out to a mere 8 minutes of our interview/discussion. Alright, lemonade time. That was rehearsal!

So we got it done this morning.

J.Stanton

We talked about a lot of stuff and I have a lot of video to mash up, from two different angles—the one on the tripod and the clips Beatrice was shooting at different random angles.

So here’s the 1 minute teaser.

I’ll have a full interview up in a day or so, so, don’t touch that dial!

Update: The full interview is now posted: The Very Gnollish J. Stanton Interview on Everything

The following is a guest post by Stefani Ruper of Paleo For Women, lending her unique perspective on the differences between the sexes.

[For an update, please see: Lemons to Lemonade Documentary – Ed]

Preface

Mark’s Daily Apple receives between 250,000 and 300,000 unique visitors to its homepage every month. This means that MDA has approximately 300,000 regular followers. With this many followers, MDA blows the rest of the paleosphere out of the water, beating out spot #2 at 55,000 followers (thepaleodiet.com) by more than 500 percent.*

Which doesn’t mean much, other than the fact that having an ear to the ground at MDA yields a pretty good idea of what’s trending hot in the paleosphere.

In August of 2010,** Mark posted an article, “Is Intermittent Fasting Healthy?” and said this:

A recent article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition gives a great overview of these benefits which include decreases in blood pressure, reduction in oxidative damage to lipids, protein and DNA, improvement in insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake, as well as decreases in fat mass.

He goes on: “How can you argue with results like these?”

Easily.

The recent article link leads to a review of intermittent fasting studies performed in 2007. It contains the following passages:

Heilbronn et al. found that, after 3 weeks of alternate day fasting, insulin response to a test meal was reduced, which implied improved insulin sensitivity. It is interesting that this effect on insulin sensitivity occurred only in male subjects.

And also:

Another diabetes risk factor that has shown a sex-specific effect is glucose tolerance. After 3 weeks of alternate day fasting, women but not men had an increase in the area under the glucose curve. This unfavorable effect on glucose tolerance in women, accompanied by an apparent lack of an effect on insulin sensitivity, suggests that short-term ADF may be more beneficial in men than in women in reducing type 2 diabetes risk.

Following through to the research linked to by the review demonstrates that the sex differences are real.

This fact went unnoticed by Mark Sisson—certainly an innocent oversight rather than some sort of malicious chauvinism—and he is not alone in that. Sex differences in response to different food and lifestyle choices are largely ignored by the paleosphere. A paleosphere which we generally regard as presumably, hopefully, perhaps some day in the future, more egalitarian, data-oriented, and smart about diet and lifestyle than it’s conventional counterparts.

So far in this regard it is not. The world is largely ignorant of the differences between male and female diet and behavioral needs. The majority of medical studies are performed on men, and when they are performed on women, they are almost always menopausal women, in order to eliminate the presumed variable complications that hormonal fluctuations introduce into a testing environment. So even when paleo blogging gurus refer to the most unbiased research in the medical world, they are referring to studies designed to work around rather than through the needs of reproductive women.

The Problem: Perfectionism and it’s Tango with Social Norms

paleo dieters are obsessed with being hot. Much as we might like to conflate our desire for optimum sex appeal with our desire for optimal health—and much as that may be a legitimate act, since health and physical attractiveness are in some ways significantly correlated—the fact remains that we very much prize the tangled duo of perfect health and perfect hotness. The degree to which we prioritize these pursuits varies, but it is very much worth asking the question of each of us: we might say we are in pursuit of the “healthy,” but is that what we honestly mean? Do we instead not mean “impressive”? Or “perfect”? Or “attractive”? Capable of strutting our superior life choices around haters? Or inspiring people? Are we using paleo ‘health’ as a way to cover up our real need, our need to be validated and accepted and sexy and loved?

Maybe. The question is not super relevant, other than for the fact that much of what we do is in pursuit of this dual hot-healthy goal. And that’s great, except for the fact that we are total extremists about it. If you are in doubt of this fact I invite you to go to Paleohacks, or to the MDA forums, which are the two largest online paleo communities. They are full of quotes such as this one:

I have never starved myself and your generalization that fasting for 40 days causes starvation is incorrect.

paleo dieters often are by our very nature perfectionists. We seek optimal health, optimal performance, optimal looks, optimal life hacks. Optimal macronutrient ratios, optimal micronutrient intake…. the list is long. The whole point being that a diet that promises perfect health (literally), and that often delivers something very close, naturally attracts people who chase perfection. The diet, lifestyle, and community structure provide myriads of ways for us to do that. Even those of us who were not perfectionists to begin with get sucked into the fervor. The paleosphere is a culture of optimality-seeking, through and through.

Psychological problems aside, isn’t that all well and good? Doesn’t that lead us to better health in the end?

For men, yes? For women, no?

There are two ways in which this pursuit of optimality—specifically with respect to this dual hot-healthy pursuit—has the potential to derail health. First is the end goal, and secondly are the methods we often use to reach those goals.

Perhaps the most obvious problem with pursuing attractiveness through diet and lifestyle is that attractiveness by social standards is not necessarily aligned with evolutionary health. This we know well, but it bears repeating. Standards of attractiveness are conditioned just as strongly, if not more strongly, by social standards rather than by base physiological drives. This is evidenced by simple tropes: it is now attractive to be tan rather than pale, for example, since upper classes have more leisure time to spend outside. And it is now more attractive to be thin rather than plump, since only upper classes have access to gym memberships and CSAs, etc.

Unfortunately, the paleosphere’s vigor for bucking social norms does not appear to extend to body image. The Western world’s ideal woman is a thin woman. The paleosphere is not immune to social conditioning by this monster. Sure, the paleosphere might say that it values strength and fitness moreso than conventional counterparts, but even for those of us who believe that, this notion is almost a matter of perfectionism again, pushing ourselves to incorporate as many things into our bodies that make us attractive as possible: not just skinny, but also strong. Not just thin, but also muscled. The typical perfect paleo body is lithe, fit, and rippling. Curvy, perhaps, but never insofar as it might encroach upon a woman’s hard abs. Bear in mind, also, that even without the muscles, even without this specifically paleo ideal, thousands of paleo dieters are in it for dropping pounds.

This would be all well and good if a thin woman were actually the most optimally healthy woman.

She is not.

For reference, a model or an athlete on TV may be around 17-18 percent body fat. (For men, around 10.) Women begin dying around 12 percent body fat, and they stop menstruating at a wide variety of lower body fat levels, depending on the woman. Typically, menstruation drops off by around 18 percent, though many women stop menstruating at 20 or even 22 or 23 percent body fat, depending on her development and the strength of her metabolism and her ovaries, etc. Some women are naturally stickly thin. Most are not. Trying to jam women adjusted to 20 or 22 percent body fat bodies into 18 percent body fat bodies is practically a crime. Those last few percentage points that come off of a woman are those stored around her buttocks, hips, and thighs. This fat is specifically female fat, and it is significantly associated with a woman’s well-being.

Why do women have this fat, and what does it do?

Aside from protecting women against starvation more strongly than men, as well as assuring that a woman will have enough energy and nutrients to carry offspring, this fat is also largely responsible for partitioning DHA (the “good” omega 3) fat to a woman’s offspring. Children born of mothers with more of this DHA-heavy fat tend to be smarter than those without (PDF). Those are all important things, evolutionarily, imho.

Science agrees. The most fertile woman is not the thinnest or the most buff woman. Instead, the most fertile woman is above 22 percent body fat. Many studies even argue that women between BMIs of 25-29—often considered by our culture as “overweight”—fare better in longevity and long term health (PDF) than lower weight women. Below the healthy range of > 20 percent body fat women often begin experiencing cravings, anxiety, depression, insomnia, loss of libido, brittle hair and nails, hypothyrodism and infertility. The bottom line being that a woman’s fat around her hips, buttocks, and thighs—that which prevents her from looking like something on the cover of Shape magazine—is in many cases crucial for health, mental well-being, and reproductive function.

So that’s one thing. We fail to take into account sex-specific needs for body fat and for health, and we allow our desire for attractiveness to mangle them like a meat grinder.

The second is health and weight loss method.

As optimality-seekers, we paleo dieters thrive off of evolutionary tricks that can be used to achieve health and weight loss goals. These include but are not limited to cold therapy, carb cycling, ketosis, high intensity interval training, calorie restriction, and intermittent fasting. What is wrong with all of these practices is not their intrinsic natures, necessarily, but is instead the vigorous extent to which we pursue them, and the recklessness we have with regards to sex differences.

Enter the MDA preface. Fasting is enormously popular in the paleosphere today. But it is a stressor, through and through. Couple our vigorous pursuit of optimality with ignorance of sex-specificity, and we land in a heaping pile of female health threats.

As my analysis of fasting points to, and as study after study after study on calorie restriction indicates, men can undergo metabolic stressors relatively painlessly, and in fact usually emerge in good health and fitness. Women, on the other hand, do not. The female body is designed first and foremost to guard its fertility, and for that reason the body strongly resists and is hurt by metabolic stress.

In many cases, both anecdotally and in the literature, women on restrictive diets—whether fasts or calorie-restricted diets, fat-restricted or carbohydrate-restricted diets, typically healthy diets by paleo standards—or unhealthy diets experience hindered mental health, energy, sleep quality, insulin and leptin signalling, thyroid activity, and HPA axis function. Moreover, because the body is detecting metabolic stress and wants to defend itself, restricted women sometimes actually gain weight. I have met, in fact, several women who undertake one to three day fasts and gain a couple of pounds. The dubious nature of these restrictive diets relative to women’s health includes the effects of excessive exercise, particularly over-done HIIT.

This isn’t to say that women shouldn’t reduce calories from time to time, or certainly that they shouldn’t engage in HIIT. We should. But female bodies cannot—straight up, they cannot—handle these stressors as well as men do. And even when they do experience benefits—which is often! especially for obese women—it is a sure bet that it occurs by a physiological mechanism unique to a man. In all metabolic influences—in energy intake, expenditure, type of energy utilized, amount of body fat on the person—women require more and different safeguarding than men in order to maintain optimal health. This is the truth of science and of evolution.

All of which is to say:

We paleo dieters are conditioned by Western norms. We want to be attractive. We are driven by promises of optimality and perfection. We pursue these things with vigor. It appears that in many ways, especially as women, we are fucking ourselves.

The solution

One common solution people pose to the body image/feminism problem is an overhaul of society. I agree, to an extent. That would help us a lot. What modern media are doing to contemporary women (and men) is insidious. Malicious. Demonic. For this reason, there are more than a few influential sorts I look forward to meeting on the fiery precipice of hell.

But that is an act of asking—or of forcing—other people to change. Not only does that cause my libertarian roots to twitch in discomforted individualistic alarm, but it also a) constrains my liberation and empowerment by the wills of other people, and who the fuck would ever want to wait around for that? and b) does a disservice to my personal strength and the strength of love in the individuals around me.

The solution then is not to attack the paleo masses. Nor is it to attack the people at the top, those who are calling the shots. It’s not to attack Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain, or any of the other several male paleo bloggers who dominate the blogging scene. They are not doing anything wrong. They want women to be as healthy as women want to be healthy. In fact, while they do not necessarily trumpet women’s health issues, I’d assert pretty confidently that they do a better job loving and advocating natural female bodies than women do.

The simple fact is, however, that it’s not their job to walk the walk.

It is ours.

Our job is to stand up. Our job is to take ownership of womanhood and to live by healthy, empowered example. It is to be real and honest with ourselves as women, and to come to terms with our own desires and natures. Womanhood will never change if women are not owning and loving the right stuff themselves. We have to get over our baggage. I don’t care if we get more attention when we are skinny; I don’t care if any of us grew up with towering professional ballerinas squeezing our hips and telling us to go stand in the corner while the real dancers danced. I don’t care if we have mommy issues or daddy issues or if we grew up in a world in which being thin or exercising or meeting any of the ridiculous Western notions of womanhood were the only ways we could achieve psychological peace. That’s over, now.

I do care. I’m sorry. I care so much I spend several hours each week producing a podcast about that effort. It’s hard. More than hard. These issues are frightening. But we are never going to get over them if we do not start standing. Start refusing to listen to the insidious chatter of the outside world. Start ignoring the self-flagellation in our heads. Start walking with our chins up and our eyes ahead.

We have the power to say no to norms, and yes to our health. We have the ability to pay attention to our physiological needs ourselves. We can rise up, and be proud of our evolutionary bodies, and love our bodies as we see fit. We don’t need to ask others to do it for us. We don’t have the luxury to wait for society to catch up. We have the tools; we have the knowledge; we have each other. This goes for understanding unique physiological and reproductive needs as well as for embracing natural bodies. Now is the time for us to refuse to be caged, and to say fuck it to external pressures, and to exalt in the glory of real, natural, nourished womanhood.

The truth of evolution and a paleolithic perspective encourages this notion. When we use evolutionary science rather than norms to guide our lifestyles and our choices, it helps us break free of social norms. It helps us see what true health looks like, and it helps us embrace our natural bodies. An honest paleo perspective demands natural womanhood. It demands that a woman prioritize her health, and that she nourish herself above all other things. And then with her well-nourished body, a woman is enabled to work productively, to sleep peacefully, to live fiercely, to laugh freely. This goes for women and for men, both. Paying attention to a body’s evolutionary needs–and then meeting them–gives it the tools necessary to provide a smooth-running platform off of which the individual can spring, off of which she can live.

The paleosphere cannot help but be weighed down by the intrinsic patriarchy of Western civilization. It is trying to break free—and hats off to the men and women out there making it happen—but it will be some time before it can completely throw off those chains. And we paleo dieters cannot help but pursue perfect bodies and practices with vigor. We cannot be blamed for wanting to be perceived as sexy, healthy, empowered, strong, beautiful, lovable.

However. We cannot ask others to do this for us. Nor can we achieve these things by conventional, gender-neutral, restrictive means. Real health demands something else. Real health asks that we take the knowledge we have ourselves and act on it. And own it. And strut it. And love it. And be embodied, real, self-loving and self-nourishing human beings. That makes us sexy. It makes us powerful. And it makes us real, kick-ass, revolutionary women, in the most beautiful and inspiring senses of the word.

——————–

*The paleo Diet has 55,000. Robb Wolf, 35,000. Everyday paleo (the blog of women as mothers), around 25,000. Whole9, 20,000. Free the Animal, 15,000. jimmy moore, 15,000. Melissa McEwen’s blog, 8000. Balanced bites, 8000. Cavegirleats, 2000. For benchmarks.

[Note: According to Google Analytics, Free the Animal receives 55,000 – 60,000 Unique Visitors per month. – Ed]

**This hasn’t changed. The more recent series on fasting, which occurred in April 2012, refers to the same batch of articles and leaves sex differences unmentioned.

——————–

My website, Paleo for Women, is a place at which I explore female specific health problems as well as female specific responses to general health issues such as diabetes or weight loss. It is, more importantly, however, a place for women to find passion and inspiration and community. I invite you to join us.

[For an update, please see: Lemons to Lemonade Documentary – Ed]

It’s Monday evening, up at the cabin.

Beatrice and I left town Saturday morning. We drove to Sacramento, checked into a hotel, and went over to Jorge’s home—one that takes its foundation in an old neighborhood. It’s this side of humble, but cool—a superlative, old growth tree neighborhood that he was happy with; and, he  paid off that house about 10 years ago.

When I first saw it many years prior, I loved it on more of an ethical level than anything; by which I mean, the ethic of it was gravy. I knew he’d likely live his whole life there. It was a wise choice on levels and tranches of the wisdom he was all about. He was already in touch with that so long ago. It was a cool place with much potential. He attained most of that over the years in little improvements here and there, making it more and more about him, and his own.

…It was for a celebration of his truncated life that we were there for the whole afternoon. Dozens upon dozens of people from all over the world in attendance (the number of friends he collected over time a space…). My own entry. Dozens of people spoke, relating their stories of him…from sea to shining sea, and Cal Berkley.

Jorge’s Humble Abode

Switching gears, now, Beatrice just finished her 29th or 30th year of teaching kids. When school ends at about 2:30 every afternoon, she almost never gets home before 5:30 or so. Sometimes much later. 7:30 is not uncommon.

It annoys me, sometimes. …That’s only until I tell myself to fuck off.

When I do that, it’s not long after that I contemplate her lifelong devotion to actually focusing on her kids, and never being an active member of the California Teacher’s Association Union. …Caring over and over and over and only and only and only about those kids that she faces every day, with no real thought of “contracts.”

Live, Says Jorge

I’ve been with her for about 15 years. The word “Union” has never come out of her mouth once. Ever. Not one pathetic pay-me-or-hired-gun’s-ll-force-you pussy shit. She doesn’t give a shit, unlike her inferiors. But what do I know? Perhaps Union agitation is just all the bomb and I’m just a clueless idiot. Well, I’ll bed down in ignorance, then.

I fixed her a meal tonight. I think she liked it. I hope.

No Union Members were harmed, or were their contacts cut or threatened, or did any union member get the slightest whiff of a hint that they would not get to, nonetheless, get to collect an unearned living in the cooking of this meal.

Pork Steaks

I grilled the pork steaks on the barbie. In the meantime, I sauteed lots of shallot and mushroom in butter, reduced white wine, and then reduced a full 2 quarts of chicken stock to get a full flavorful and non thickened sauce (yea, I strained out the sauce in the end).

I hate my wife, dontacha know?

And here’s this evening’s music selection. R.E.M. Everybody Hurts. Came to me in that last second, here. It’s the way things roll with me, now and then. And I always roll with it when it does.

In addition to all these stories already logged, let me take a look through some saved emails and see what I can come up with. Keep in mind that these people might be working off so-called bad or incomplete science (LC, fear of fructose, obsessions about “clean eating” and so on) and apparently, it’s more important to get the “science right” than to get the results right in spite of the science.

~ Rosemary emailed me some time ago to show off her “paleo Facelift.””

From red & inflamed to normal

~ Ron emailed in quite sometime back with an emphasis more on overall health improvements rather than just fat loss.

I have watched your Success Videos on weight loss and believe they provide inspiration for many of your readers. I have a suggestion, however. While weight loss is certainly the primary concern for many people, others, such as myself came to paleo to hopefully resolve heath issues. Weight was not my primary focus. …

My story isn’t as dramatic as someone that has reversed diabetes or cured heart disease, but it is nevertheless, interesting. And I think parts of my story will hit home with many people.

Here’s a brief synopsis of my health issues 6 ½ years ago: Chronic asthma, Chronic/acute sinus and ear infections, Chronic/acute bronchitis, High blood pressure, Terrible blood cholesterol – low HDL/high LDL and triglycerides, Horrible digestive pain, Allergies to just about everything.

On top of all that, I was about 40lbs over weight plus tired and sick all the time. I caught every virus that came along. I had 4 sinus surgeries over the previous 15-year period to clean everything out and remove polyps. The polyps kept growing back every few years. I was on anti-biotics and prednisone every 3 to 4 months like clockwork along with a daily regimen of various asthma medications.

I was absolutely miserable. My family doctor was ready to put me on a statin and high blood pressure medication. Mainstream medicine was really doing nothing except treating my symptoms. I went to see my chiropractor. He had some alternative medicine approaches that quickly turned me down the paleo road. I found Art DeVany on the Internet about 6 years ago and the rest is history.

Bottom line, at age 52, I no longer have any of those health issues (mostly). I haven’t had a cold in 6 ½ years. My blood lipids and pressure are great, yada yada yada. Oh, and I lost the extra 40lbs.

~ I’ve received a few emails from Timothy here and there. Here’s the first one from last October

I love your blog. You reeled me in last year because, just like me, you were once a big fat slob who turned his life around on a dime via paleo. Your take-no-prisoners critiques of statism and other mass delusions are outstanding and make me want to jump out of my chair and hoist the black flag. You are the only blogger I know with these credentials and I have been fascinated and inspired by your prolific writing. Count me as a lifelong fan.

I used to be a blithering idiot about health. Fast food every day, glued to CRTs and LCDs, my entire life an abuse of human heritage. Of course this caught up with me and I developed more health problems than I care to remember. It’s a miracle I survived adolescence. Somehow I convinced the most beautiful woman I ever met to marry me when I was fat and broke and proceeded to drag her down with me.

We finally conceived a child after years of adverse outcomes. Something inside me snapped then and I knew I had to fix myself. I started running everywhere and eating Subway. As I said, blithering idiot.

Then I stumbled across Mark’s Daily Apple. His concise writing style penetrated even my thick skull. Well, of course our bodies are designed to live as our ancestors did! How extremely stupid not to have thought of that. And I was an anthropology major. My glacial cognitive dissonance melted away overnight.

I changed everything. How I ate, slept, trained, played, thought. My body responded instantly and I never looked back. I changed so drastically that I could no longer comprehend my former self. I resolved to make amends and build myself into a man that my distant ancestors would be proud of. This was in January 2010. I was 33 years old.

I went from overweight to skinny. Then muscle started growing. I wrote Mark Sisson and he published my success story. Everything seemed possible. Unfortunately, I was still afflicted with residual idiocy. I overtrained and underate. Other people were amazed at my progress but what did they know? I didn’t want to be slim, I wanted to be strong. As strong as my genes could possibly allow. A man for the first time ever, not an overgrown boy. My improvised sledgehammer training took me part of the way but no further.

This is where your blog saved the day for me. I never even knew what a deadlift was until I saw you lifting 305 in that video. And I thought, holy fucking shit, that’s the intensity I’m missing. I had read Leangains before, but it didn’t really sink in. Your experiences with Martin fascinated me and I read the articles multiple times over, including the comments. So this is how to lift… and this is how to squat… and this is how to eat. I began a Leangains regimen that very week, using your numbers from November 2010 as my first goal. As iron sharpens iron, man sharpens man. I am now in week 20 and for the first time, I am pretty pleased with my progress.

I still have years to go before I’m ready to face my ancestors. But I cautiously surmise that I am mostly on the right path.

Here are pictures:

“Bad and Incomplete Science” Exhibit

I’ve come along a bit more since that last picture was taken, in no small part thanks to grass-fed beef liver (again, credit to your article for teaching me what I already should have known). I took a few more pics today in advance of a body fat test tomorrow but the RIM disaster prevents me from sharing them with you just now.

Beyond freeing my own animal, I’ve had an unshakeable urge to share the riches with others who remain locked in the oubliette of modern life. I honestly feel that everyone would live primally if only they knew. My efforts in this direction have mostly been a spectacular failure. But not completely. I was recently honored with an invitation to present at PrimalCon 2012 alongside giants like Erwan Le Corre and Barefoot Ted. Mark even featured me in his recent fitness book which just came out.

In any case, thanks for hearing me out. If nothing else I hope I’ve given you a bit of encouragement to keep doing what you do best. You are changing the world. Don’t ever stop.

Nah. I just peddle bad and incomplete science and give too many people too many passes for not managing to get everything 100% right. Besides, this is all just anecdotal.

By the way, Timothy also blogged about his experiences with far more detail than in the above, outlining some of his methods. And here’s a video of him doing a 345# deadlift, complete with primal scream.

OK, I guess three is enough today. I’m sure I have enough material for a few more parts to the series. I’m out of town for the week and so this is a real good way to manage my limited time.

Listen closely from a minute or so in, now.

Nighty night. I’m pretty much down with the sun, tonight.

…Oh, in case you want to hear a sweet, sweet studio version from Rock & Roll Animal. Don’t forget the name.

Here’s the post that kicked it all off. This is chapter 3 of 12, to give interested readers the chance to take on the free ebook chapter by chapter over the weekend, debate it amongst themselves, or even challenge the author who’s keeping tabs.

~~~

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.

by Greg Swann

Chapter 3. Speaking in tongues.

I told you I use the words “human being” as a term of art. Here is why: Because there is a valid and valuable distinction to be made between a genetic Homo sapiens (the surviving issue of the recombination of genes) and a human being (a genetic Homo sapiens within whom has been cultivated the gift of mind). A genetic Homo sapiens can have the potential to become a human being – although this capacity or its existential realization can have been damaged or destroyed by disease, injury or birth defect. But until the mind has been cultivated within a particular genetic Homo sapiens, that entity will not be a human being.

A human life is an artifact, a man-made thing. The existence of a genetic Homo sapiens is a manifestation of nature, just as with any tree or reptile or kitten. But the existence of your life as a human being is a consequence of a vast number of conceptually-conscious choices made by your parents and other human beings when you were just a baby. Had they failed to cultivate the gift of mind within you, you might have survived as a genetic Homo sapiens, but you would never have become a human being. You owe your biological life to nature, but you owe your life as a human being to choices made by other human beings.

…

Read More

I always agree to interviews, in podcast or written when asked, so long as the site has some audience or is otherwise relevant or a Paleo/Primal podcaster or writer is trying to do some good and build some content. I always love doing the podcasts, but sometimes the written interviews are a chore and a bit tedious.

In this case, Henley Wing struck exactly the right chord with his questions and I pounded out my answers with relative pleasure and joy. It’s not very long, but here it is: Primal Living Advice from Richard Nikoley.

Here’s the questions he asked:

1. Briefly tell us how you discovered paleo, and how your book ‘Free the Animal’ is unique from other paleo books.
2. For beginners, would you recommend people dive into paleo with a strict, disciplined approach, or ease into it (giving up non paleo foods gradually)?
3. Are the rules different for someone who needs to lose weight? Do they still need to count calories, or limit their fruit intake?
4. While eating paleo might be beneficial individually, do you think it would sustainable if the entire world ate paleo? A side benefit of having an agricultural economy is that it can feed lots more people.
5. Do you apply “Primal living” to other areas of your lives, besides eating paleo and exercise? For instance, socially and work-wise, working with a small group vs a huge corporation, living in a small community, etc.
6. Do you view social networks like Facebook as a net benefit to humanity? On one hand, it’s great for keeping in touch. On the other, a lot of people spend way too much time on it, which can be used doing physical activity, or face to face socializing.
7. Any big plans in store for the future, such as a new book or project?

To see my short answers, click here. Here’s a brief excerpt from question #5.

I go barefoot a lot in public, like walking the dogs & stuff. I never use substances on my skin like soap, shampoo, lotions and such—water only. My skin is soft and my hair flawless.

Socially, I’m an anarchist who doesn’t vote, and I admonish people to not waste their time either. Why spend so much life capital agitating over a 1/300,000,000th say in your own affairs? We evolved to account for the values and actions of perhaps about 50 other people and in that social context, every individual had real potential to influence the entire society. People today behave in political activism as though they have that power now, when in reality it’s totally masturbatory.

Really, what it all comes down to is that I got to use the word “masturbatory” in an interview.