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white flour white sugarBy Matt Stone

The slow trickle of books in an increasing number of formats continues. That latest is the revised version (put out in September)?of the original Diet Recovery now in paperback. You can order that on Amazon HERE. It’s also available as an audiobook in case you missed that announcement as well. Click HERE to listen.

I originally wrote Diet Recovery with a belief that a diet containing refined foods stripped of their nutrients, namely white flour and sweeteners like white sugar and high-fructose corn syrup even more so, was inherently unhealthy. I thought these substances were the primary cause of health problems in the world, and their removal from the diet absolutely mandatory to improve one’s health.

At the same time, my research was leading me towards the incredible physiological significance of metabolic rate. That research, and knowing how vital it was from a metabolic standpoint,’to:

  1. Not restrict any macronutrient groups (carbs, fats, protein)
  2. Eat an adequate amount of calories for optimal metabolic rate

…I was left feeling like people needed to stuff themselves silly exclusively with unrefined food. It was not unlike the Whole 30 concept in the book It Starts with Food, only with extra emphasis on carbohydrates and calories.

But as time progressed, and I communicated with more and more people, I began to separate the wheat from the chaff. In other words, the stuff that actively worked to increase metabolic rate and trigger the improvement or disappearance of many health problems that often accompanies a rise in metabolic rate, simply didn’t require much emphasis on the fine details of diet. In fact, trying to eat only “whole foods” was often too boring/mundane or too hard on a weakened person’s digestion to allow a person to eat enough calories to trigger the increase in metabolic rate.

Moreover, as an author of health books with a health website, those who have found me haven’t been the Slurpee and fast food types. People eating a truly low-grade Western swill diet, believe it or not (sarcasm), weren’t spending their time scouring the internet in search for health information. Rather, it was the health obsessives that were landing on my site and picking up my books. The last thing this crowd needed to hear was more bad information on sugar, gluten, or preservatives. They needed to lighten the hell up and have a damn slice of pizza to climb out of their frigid, starved, state. And the focus of my information really shifted to meet the needs of the audience I had attracted.

Thus, Diet Recovery 2 was born–a book less about what is and is not a healthy food and moving beyond the intellectual micromanagement of one’s diet completely.The book was about?returning to normalcy and rediscovering hobbies, interests, and?pastimes that have nothing to do with food, exercise, or any other health practices. For health reasons!

Anyway, I thought today was a good day to just?do a little recapping and reminiscing. Half the?visits I get on each article I write are by people who are visiting the site for the first time.How the hell do they make sense of anything without knowing the backstory? Only those along for the ride since the beginning seem to understand each new stage that this site has undergone over the years. And those?multi-year lurkers out there are few, because?if you’ve followed? along for all those years, you should have moved on to bigger and better things than’the constant hunt for the perfect diet or perfect health by now!

Fun 004And it’s timely I’d say. It has been almost exactly 7 years since?I?published my first blog post online (not too long after this?photo was taken of me eating something weird. Not sure what.).I didn’t even have a?Facebook account?when I started! I hadn’t even heard of Twitter. Little did I know what an adventure I would be in for. Thanks to all you old birds who have’stuck around, and welcome newbies. Please share?your stories in the comments below…

How did you find me? What phase was the site going through when you arrived??How nuts did you think I was at first? How nuts do you think I am now??What?do you think about when you see the word “nuts” used in three consecutive sentences? Is it distracting? And, after all your experiences and study, would you say that white sugar and white flour and other processed foods are bad for you personally? Or has it been a blessing to loosen the f$#% up?

Matt Stone author picMatt Stone is an independent health researcher, author of more than 15 books, and founder of 180DegreeHealth. He is best known for his research on metabolic rate and its central role in many health conditions as well as his criticisms of extreme dieting. You can read more of his work in over 500 free articles on the site or in his books HERE.