About a year ago I adopted a version of the Mediterranean diet for two reasons. First, I wanted to drop 10 lbs that I just could not seem to lose. Second, the diet was cheap!
I usually ate fruit/berries with yogurt for breakfast. Lunch and dinner would be based on pasta or couscous with lots of veggies, beans, and olive oil. I would also have meat/fish/poultry 2-3 times a week.
So, after a year I?m 10 lbs heavier, feeling uncomfortable in my body, and ready to try something different.
Just the other day, I heard an interview on NPR with Gary Taubes concerning his book, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It . (easy to find on Amazon)
His ideas sounded interesting, so I DL?ed the book (it?s a quick read)?. Basically, his thesis is that over eating and resultant obesity are caused by chronically elevated levels of insulin in the body which is, in turn, caused by a high-carb/low-fat diet.
Taube makes a pretty convincing case, and I know from my recent, personal experience, it seems to be true?
He advocates an Atkins style low-carb/high fat and protein diet. He argues that this diet is not nearly as unhealthy as has been characterized and references the recent Stanford A TO Z Diet Study to back his claims?
Here?s a YouTube vid presenting the study results. It is LONG, but it?s interesting and entertaining.
Anyway, I?m giving up my couscous, pasta, and (gasp) beer for a while, to give this low-carb/high fat and protein thing a try?
So, I?m wondering, does anybody here have experience on this sort of diet? Or any informed thoughts/opinions on the science and health effects? _________________ The American political system has become a spectator sport for people too mean-spirited and barbaric to appreciate professional wrestling.
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1000Knives Lonely Rolling Star
Joined: Jul 09, 2011 Age: 21 Posts: 1965
Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 10:07 pm?? ?Post subject:
I can't usually do such a diet consistently because my mom pays for my food, and they're into buying more processed food, so any food for me that's not processed is hard to get her to buy, but it's getting better.
Anyway, I love diets like that. They're awesome. Easy to lean out on them, basically once you lean out, you can introduce some carbs back in. There's no need to be like, a carb nazi or anything like that, and be like "Uh-oh, these meatballs have bread crumbs in them!" or something, but I can say I feel pretty awesome on such diets and can lose weight pretty easily. You do gotta have a fairly high vegetable intake, though. _________________ The world would be such a better place if fish don't have bones. Imagine munching on fish like burgers without having to pin-pick it. - Frank Yang
http://tiny.cc/i2cdgw - Youtube playlist I put together.
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GoonSquad Sentenced to life, without possibility...
Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 10:54 pm?? ?Post subject:
Hmm.... Interesting.
I have never tried to eat this sort of diet before.
However, in my late teens to my late 20s I was a hardcore weight lifter and I did try to eat a high protein/low fat diet....
Thing is, I was getting most of my protein (not counting supplements) from animals so I was getting lots of fat too. To avoid fat I mostly avoided sweets (because that stuff usually has lots of fat too), and things like cheese and eggs....
Looking at the low-carb diet the only things different from my "low fat" diet is that I can eat cheese and eggs and I should not eat beans, rice, and pasta (which I ate in moderate amounts on my low-fat diet). In hindsight, it was probably avoiding all that sugar and eating less wheat flour that really helped me stay lean. _________________ The American political system has become a spectator sport for people too mean-spirited and barbaric to appreciate professional wrestling.
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cathylynn Phoenix
Joined: Aug 25, 2011 Posts: 905 Location: northeastern US
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1000Knives Lonely Rolling Star
Joined: Jul 09, 2011 Age: 21 Posts: 1965
Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 11:07 pm?? ?Post subject:
I find animal fat, as far as energy it gives me, it gives me a much "cleaner" energy curve than carbs, if that makes sense. You could go full out ketosis, and never eat carbs at all, but yeah. It's better to have the animal fat, though, imo. When you see a lot of cultures and go with the argument "well they can't live entirely on meat, that'd cost too much" you gotta keep in mind, a lot of the traditional cultures rely a lot on animal fat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food) Like there's an example. You pretty much just have to think "How did people 70 years ago eat?" And look honestly there. For example, fried chicken wouldn't be anymore prevalent now or back then, but one difference is that fried chicken is always fried in vegetable oil. No veg oil except olive oil, maybe flax seed oil, etc, is actually natural. You can't get soybean and corn oil without chemicals to process it. The human metabolism hasn't really adjusted to veg oils, but it's well adjusted to animal fat. So I think going low carb is good for weight loss, but once you get to a weight you want, you can introduce SOME carbs back, but just don't go having carb based meals.
And you can lose weight on any diet with portion control. http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html That doesn't mean a diet is good. Also, one thing neglected is, in many Mediterranean cultures, there's lots of meat. Look at the Greeks and soulvaki. _________________ The world would be such a better place if fish don't have bones. Imagine munching on fish like burgers without having to pin-pick it. - Frank Yang
http://tiny.cc/i2cdgw - Youtube playlist I put together.
Last edited by 1000Knives on Sat Jul 07, 2012 11:40 pm; edited 1 time in total
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glasstoria Toucan
Joined: Jul 03, 2011 Posts: 280 Location: Missouri USA
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GoonSquad Sentenced to life, without possibility...
Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 11:35 pm?? ?Post subject:
@ 1000Knives
I agree, that looking at how people used to eat as opposed to how they eat now is very important. In his book, Taubes looks at ethnographies of various Native American cultures over many years?
For instance, in the 1840s the Pima Indians lived on wild game and high fiber veggies and they were reported to be lean, healthy, and active. By the early 1900s, after decades on reservations eating government rations of flour, sugar and coffee, the same tribe was described as sluggish, obese, malnourished and unhealthy (many were diabetic).
Another good nutritional ethnography is the ?Inuit Paradox.? It contrasts the traditional Inuit diet of fat and meat with their modern western diets and corresponding changes in disease patterns.
@cathylynn
I?m glad the med diet worked for you. If you have time you should really watch that Stanford video. Their study found that while insulin sensitive types may do well on high-carb/low-fat diets, people who are insulin resistant will do much better with high-fat/low-carbs.
Also, in the study, the people on the Atkins diet had the best (most heart healthy) blood chemistry?
PS
The Stanford Study was conducted by a ?25-year vegetarian? who said, writing a paper that sited the Atkins Diet as being healthy and effective ?was a bitter pill to swallow.?
PPS
@ glasstoria
The guy in the Stanford vid also warns that extremely high protien could be bad for the kidneys...
The interesting thing about the study is that most people could not significantly change their protien intake alone. With all the diets, the real give and take was between fat and carbs. _________________ The American political system has become a spectator sport for people too mean-spirited and barbaric to appreciate professional wrestling.
Last edited by GoonSquad on Sat Jul 07, 2012 11:46 pm; edited 1 time in total
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1000Knives Lonely Rolling Star
Joined: Jul 09, 2011 Age: 21 Posts: 1965
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GoonSquad Sentenced to life, without possibility...
Dr. Davis recounts an experiment he conducted on himself to compare the different impacts of ancient wheat and modern wheat on his blood sugar. He managed to find some einkorn wheat and made bread from it. Two slices of that bread raised his blood sugar from 86 mg/dl to 110. Not bad. Then he made bread from modern whole wheat ? you know, the stuff the USDA says is the key to great health. Two slices raised his blood sugar from 84 mg/dl to 167. That?s diabetes territory. As Dr. Davis writes in another chapter after explaining the specific types of carbohydrates found in wheat:
Wheat products elevate blood sugar levels more than virtually any other carbohydrate, from beans to candy bars.
As the graph I displayed in a previous post showed, the typical American consumes somewhere around 1,000 calories per day in the form of sugars and grains. Our dominant grain by far is wheat ? wheat that was never part of the human diet until 50 years ago.
Wow indeed.
...and I've been eating couscous (literally wheat grain coated in wheat flour) two bowls a day/5 days a week for a year... _________________ The American political system has become a spectator sport for people too mean-spirited and barbaric to appreciate professional wrestling.
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Scottinoz Snowy Owl
Joined: Jun 26, 2012 Age: 28 Posts: 162 Location: Australia
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1000Knives Lonely Rolling Star
Joined: Jul 09, 2011 Age: 21 Posts: 1965
Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2012 1:54 am?? ?Post subject:
Scottinoz wrote:
To be honest losing weight is more then diet, It's about the will to torture yourself and keep going and learning to embrace pain in the beginning where most will fail and can't handle it and keep going and build up and reach a new level each week/month depending on your pace.
For me the beginning killed me and you have to be willing to sweat and be extremly motivated and then begin to enjoy it that's from my personal experiance and never stop and do what you can to get the edge to get results and learn from the best to emulate the best
Uh...well...have fun with that.
I just had to start working out a bit and not eating things that aren't good for my body. Different strokes for different folks I guess. BTW, I lost 40lbs in 3-4 months last year that way, with a bit of calorie restriction. Now that I'm lifting, I can't do as much calorie restriction and still maintain my sanity, so I have to find out what food my body likes and what it doesn't, and the results have been interesting. _________________ The world would be such a better place if fish don't have bones. Imagine munching on fish like burgers without having to pin-pick it. - Frank Yang
http://tiny.cc/i2cdgw - Youtube playlist I put together.
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