Happiness and Weight Loss

Posted December 29th, 2012 – 83 Comments

By Julia Gumm I was in a wedding once. The bride was a pushy sort, not exactly a “bridezilla”, but she wanted all the details of her special day to be in order as soon as possible. Among other things, that meant that I had to be fitted for my bridesmaid’s dress about a year before the ceremony. Now, I’m not one of those people who walks the earth taking up the same precise amount of space from season to season, year to year, know what I mean? The bride, knowing this as well as I did, hissed at me between gritted teeth “Now don’t you go losing a bunch of weight or something!” Well, when the anticipated date arrived, I found that there was a lot more dress to… Read more »

Intestinal Bacteria and Obesity

Posted December 26th, 2012 – 136 Comments

Before we jump into a very fascinating topic, I must first mention that my latest bestselling book (#1 of 22,000 listings in Nutrition on Amazon), Eat for Heat: The Metabolic Approach to Food and Drink, is currently available at a heavily-discounted price. If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet, now’s the time to get it – and tell your friends about it too. Buying it, pressing the “like” button, and writing a short 1-paragraph review while you’re there would be a big help in moving it ahead of all the constipation-inducing, sex-drive killing, and otherwise metabolically-suppressive diet books currently ranked above it. If you’ve already purchased it, consider giving a 99-cent “donation” by scooping it up on Amazon, or buying it for a friend or family member perhaps. … Read more »

The Paleo Guide to Christmas

Posted December 24th, 2012 – 34 Comments

By Hunter Gavera aka ‘The Paleophile’ Hey guys, this is Hunter here- you probably remember me from my wildly successful blog post where I introduced the world to a brand new way of eating called ‘Paleo’. Since the article was published I have received literally tonnes of email (or as I like to call it ‘emaileo’ LOL!) and recently I have been getting lots of questions about the forthcoming Christmas period. I have decided to publish some of my responses so that you can all benefit from my extensive knowledge and remain Primal throughout the holiday period. ‘Hey Hunter, I’m loving the Paleo lifestyle but Christmas is approaching and I’m worried about how easy it will be for me to remain authentically Paleo during this difficult time. I’m particularly worried… Read more »

Benefits of Strength Training for Women

Posted December 22nd, 2012 – 115 Comments

By Amber Rogers (Go Kaleo) I started strength training 4 years ago because my doctor told me that it can help improve function for people with osteoarthritis of the knee. At 36, I’d recently dislocated my kneecap, which exacerbated the arthritis I’d already developed from carrying around 80 extra pounds for 25 years. I was dealing with chronic pain, stiffness and reduced mobility and couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs like a normal healthy adult. I was desperate, so even though I’d hated exercise all my life I decided to give it a shot. My results far exceeded my expectations. Over the next few years my knee mobility improved and my pain started to subside, my strength and functionality returned, and I started seeing health improvements in areas I’d never… Read more »

Creativity vs. Consumption

Posted December 20th, 2012 – 38 Comments

By Rob Archangel, 180DegreeHealth.com staff writer The other day, Matt wrote about the difference between expertise and credentials. Expertise, he points out, comes from the process of being engaged over long stretches in a particular pursuit, and it’s enhanced dramatically when that pursuit is self-directed and borne of one’s own inclinations and predispositions. It brought to mind an insight I’ve come to over the last couple of years: purpose and satisfaction comes more from creation than consumption. Relatedly, community and intimacy comes from co-creation more than co-consumption. If you’re not happy with your life, incorporating more creation relative to consumption can help you re-balance. I cribbed this idea from Charles Eisenstein, philosopher and author. Some of you may know him from The Yoga of Eating or Transformational Weight Loss. I like him… Read more »

New Starter Kit

Posted December 18th, 2012 – 28 Comments

Hey everybody. Don’t be concerned if you are on the 180D mailing list and have recently received (or soon receive) a message out of the blue requesting that you confirm your email subscription. By SPAM laws this must be done. There have been horrendous problems with our old and outdated email service provider (Hell, I don’t even receive the email updates I send out to the list!), and we have just upgraded to AWeber, which is considered to be the most reliable. Apologies for everyone who has been trying to access the Starter Kit recently with no luck. I just updated it with some new info. at the end, with 5 very basic yet very effective tips for increasing metabolic rate. This is great for those who don’t have the time… Read more »

Credentials vs. Expertise

Posted December 17th, 2012 – 104 Comments

By Matt Stone On Friday I received the following review on my new book Eat for Heat… “It alarms me that the author of this book has no credentials at all. He seems to just search out other peoples research and then puts it together into what he believes to be true. Perhaps if he were to somehow get a study funded into his nutritional beliefs it might be better then just printing a book which anyone can do.” Grammar and punctuation errors aside, this brings up an extremely important erroneous belief that many people in the modern world simply cannot think their way beyond. Credentials are almost completely meaningless. Anyone with mediocre intellect, some spare time, and some money (or student loans) can obtain credentials. Credentials are mostly obtained… Read more »

The Peat Whisperer Whispers Paleo

Posted December 15th, 2012 – 249 Comments

By: Danny Roddy; author of The Peat Whisperer Matt Stone and I have a lot in common: we both hate that sleepy-eyed bozo from Coldplay, we both had a crush on Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes from TLC, and we both agree that not since Wiene’s ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ has there been a film as important as Bay’s ‘Transformers II: Revenge of The Fallen.’ In addition to the above, we were both convinced early on that the metabolic rate (as defined by body temperature and pulse) was a compelling factor in health. Well, Matt was convinced before I was, and Dude probably saved my life by introducing me to the potato, but I digress. I credit Matt for turning me onto the relationship between the metabolic rate, the thyroid… Read more »

The Gluten-Free Diet Craze

Posted December 13th, 2012 – 194 Comments

No this isn’t going to be a technical post about immunoglobulins or whatever they call those things. Not even going to mention Th1 and Th2 responses. No antibodies, no autoimmunity, not even leaky gut. Rather, this is about looking at the big picture when it comes to the global “wheat hunt.” And, as always, this will be a presentation of a new way of looking at things that most people don’t take into consideration. Diets that eliminate wheat and other grains containing gluten are without question the most popular current diet trend. Diet trends come and go, and are usually cyclical with phases of hysteria followed by dormancy followed by hysteria followed by dormancy ad infinitum. These cycles are probably fueled by human nature itself, which tends to flow back… Read more »

Eat for Heat on Homegrown Health

Posted December 12th, 2012 – 77 Comments

Tune in at 3pm eastern time to hear my interview with Joni Cox of Homegrown Health on Natural News Radio. If you don’t tune in on time, you can find it in the Homegrown Health archives and listen to it later. On the show we talk about some of the basic ideas in Eat for Heat, and discuss Joni’s 2-day elimination of migraines that had plagued her for 2 years – all by stopping her ridiculous habit of forcing down water beyond physiological thirst in an attempt to be healthy. You know, that Water Cure crap by Dr. Batmandumphuck. Enjoy. And I apologize in advance for not rapping at the end, and beat-boxing per Joni’s request. I’m a wuss. It’s true.

Your Body is Mostly Water? Not Exactly

Posted December 10th, 2012 – 82 Comments

“Your blood is like a soup that needs to be seasoned just right. [Eat for Heat] helps to teach you what to watch for so you don’t screw up your “soup” by drinking too many fluids (which waters it down) or not seasoning it enough (with things like carbohydrates and salt).” ~Dr. Garrett Smith; Review of Eat for Heat: The Metabolic Approach to Food and Drink We often hear that our bodies are “mostly water.” The rough approximation is that an average person with a relatively average amount of body fat will be composed of about 60% water. Over the course of the lifespan, the percentage of body water gradually decreases. This is often used as justification of drinking lots and lots of pure water as if doing so will… Read more »

BMI Bulimia

Posted December 8th, 2012 – 175 Comments

By: Julia Gumm When I was but a wee lass, at the dewey age of sweet sixteen, I went to see my doctor. Nothing was the matter, I was perfectly healthy, I just needed to get a physical for my driver’s license. The exam was moving along just fine until I got onto the scale. At 5’4″, I weighed in at 136 pounds, a result that yielded an unsurprised yawn from me. With the exception of that one zany summer when I decided that subsisting on a single sleeve of Saltines per week was a good idea, my post-pubescent weight had hovered steadily around the 140 mark, and I was pretty sure I looked fine.* I was very active. My family was piss-poor so there was no computer or video… Read more »

180DegreeHealth Infiltrates Amazon

Posted December 6th, 2012 – 44 Comments

It’s been 6 days since Eat for Heat debuted, and the response has been overwhelming. It has already moved up into the top 20 Nutrition eBooks list on Kindle (got as high as #15, currentlY HERE as it quickly catches up to the likes of Joel Fuhrman, T. Colin Campbell, Mark Sisson, Gary Taubes, and others encouraging unecessary restriction and paranoia. This sudden burst of action was highly unexpected, but these kinds of opportunities don’t come along very often. Please take a moment to push the like button on the Eat for Heat Amazon page HERE, and if you purchase it please take just a short moment to review it. Even one simple sentence, like “Matt Stone is a total douchebag” is great. You don’t have to get “Jibby” with it and write a literary masterpiece, or… Read more »

How to Strengthen Bones and Teeth with White Sugar

Posted December 3rd, 2012 – 190 Comments

Strengthen bones and teeth with white sugar? What am I crazy? If you don’t know much about me, you would say yes. Stick around long enough and you might find I’m surprisingly sane. I have no interest in perpetuating dogma or saying the same thing everyone else says and thinking like everyone else thinks. The bottom line is that I and several others I communicate with have noticed a tremendous loss of tooth sensitivity as our teeth have become stronger. That much is indisputable fact. No one could convince me that my teeth haven’t become significantly less sensitive over the past year, because they have, and it’s obvious. What I want to know is why. This post is about exploring the potential mechanisms behind the increase in tooth strength I… Read more »

Nutrition in Three Words

Posted December 3rd, 2012 – 37 Comments

By Rob Archangel, 180DegreeHealth.com staff writer Happy Monday, everyone! Only eighteen days left ’til the solstice and the end of the Mayan Calendar. Whooo-daddy! Who knows what’s gonna happen? Haha. Anyway, I’ve been rabbit riding across the web, spreading glad tidings and 180D cheer, and I bring you a gift today: a lovely little piece from our inestimable Mateo, entitled Nutrition in Three Words. It’s published over at Exterminating Angel Press Magazine; this Winter 2012 issue is themed: Words, Words, Words. No peeking- can anyone guess which three words nutrition is all about? Thanks to Tod Davies for the feature.

Eat for Heat

Posted November 29th, 2012 – 166 Comments

It’s HERE Also available on Amazon Kindle HERE

Death by Health – The Luke McGuire Incident

Posted November 29th, 2012 – 24 Comments

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Over Thanksgiving I was asked “What do you do for a living?” After poorly trying to explain exactly what it is that I do, how my information differs from others, and so on – I managed to come up with a pretty decent summary. I told the guy, “I specialize in helping people who became extremely unhealthy trying to be really healthy get healthy again.” I felt good about this summary because it’s the tragedy of trying so hard to be healthy and failing so miserably that I find to be most moving. In my 20’s I was extremely inspired to live a life free of disease, conquer some of my own ailments, and have a level of health that I thought was only accessible to our primitive ancestors. And… Read more »

Overcoming Psychological and Emotional Stress

Posted November 19th, 2012 – 38 Comments

In reading more than 300 books on the subject of health, perusing thousands of articles, websites, and studies, and communicating with thousands of people all over the world for the last 6 years on the subject… I have been funneled increasingly in one universal direction. Like it has for many others, stress has emerged as a repetitive theme in the causation of all kinds of illnesses. Until now, I’ve stayed away from the psychological and emotional triggers of stress because the purely physiological side is greatly underappreciated. I mean, just say the word “stress” and people naturally think about work stress, divorces, family deaths, and other things that everyone considers stress. Very few think of lack of sleep, attempts at dietary purity, pregnancy, fatty acids, or inflammation as forms of… Read more »

Barbie… The Truth Behind the Beauty

Posted November 13th, 2012 – 51 Comments

I was perusing the kid aisles at Target today with a 7-year old. She loves Barbie. We strolled down the aisle, just the two of us. She mentioned her love of Barbie. I asked her if she wanted to know a little secret about Barbie. She said yes. I told her Barbie makes herself throw up after everything she eats and that her teeth fell out from all the barf acid. It went way over her head, like most things I say. I didn’t really say it for her amusement anyway. There was a decent looking girl within earshot. But the experience reminded me of all the inside information that I have about Barbie that few others possess. Today… I tell all. Yes it’s true. Barbie’s teeth were worn down… Read more »

Postpartum Hormonal Changes

Posted November 5th, 2012 – 74 Comments

I decided to take on this topic today for several reasons. One reason is that I am currently working with many women who are in the postpartum period, and I’m sure there are many more out there that will read this post – both now and in the future. Another reason is that changes in hormones are often brushed aside like some kind of “excuse” in the minds of your typical average Joe. But the postpartum period is a powerful reminder that the hormones are in charge of us, not the other way around. We need more than a good “pep talk” to overcome the power of hormonal influences upon our bodies and brains. Lastly, one postpartum mom I have been speaking with has lost 35 pounds in 12 weeks… Read more »