?Sigh? says Matt Stone as he listens to an interview between Gary Taubes and Jimmy Moore on filing a class-action lawsuit on the government?
Yeah, I was just listening to a Taubes interview done by Jimmy Moore of ?Livin? la Vida Low Carb? lore. It was painful. It’s like, I love Gary Taubes so much. He makes the most sound and sophisticated arguments challenging the weight loss mantra of the modern world. He sucks you in. He talks about refined carbohydrates and their ?guilty until proven innocent? relationship to human health problems. He talks about the lack of causal relationship between eating a lot of calories and accumulating excess body fat. He relies upon legendary health greats like T.L. Cleave as he throws massive punches at the outdated way to think about saturated fat and heart disease.
And then he takes this giant pile of genius and comes to the conclusion that a ketogenic diet is the best weight loss diet for the human organism. He actually believes that the carbohydrate is inherently fattening ? that the ingestion of carbohydrates magically triggers insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.
It’s a black fly in your chardonnay. It’s a death row pardon, two minutes too late. It’s like meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife, or you know, something like that.
Because Gary, here I am, stuffing myself with food, eating like a friggin? madman, and losing a half pound a day ? and I ain’t got much to lose. I engulf 600 grams of carbohydrates like it’s nothing, then wake up the next day lighter than the last. For Pete sake, one of my meals this week included 3 pears, 3 whole wheat bagels, and a huge bowl of steel-cut oats with 3 lil? bananas. That’s over 300 grams of carbs in one sitting.
Monkeys eating bananas, birds eating grain, and horses eating grass till their heart’s content causes a rise in blood sugar and insulin in them too ? but do they get fat? Not so much.
The most carb-loving societies on earth also happen to be amongst the leanest. How could Gary read T.L. Cleave’s books, which he sites so profusely in Good Calories, Bad Calories, without taking close note of the impeccably lean and healthy rural Zulus and their 90% carbohydrate diet? Gary needs to go on a trip to Asia. He needs to eat like they do. Maybe the hoarseness in his voice, a symptom of a low metabolism that he has induced by eating ultra low-carb for several years, will clear up a bit (Watch Gary give a lecture here).
Not to pick on the poor fella, but the ultimate conclusion of his 7-year research saga is off. I just don’t see how a guy can be so close yet so far. It’s as if he booked the boat ride, received his tickets in the mail, found the port, saw the boat coming in, walked all the way down to the end of the dock, tied the boat to the dock, got it on with the captain’s mistress, beat some stowaways in a heated game of Uno? And then still missed the boat!
Anyway, that rant aside, I have in fact lost 5.5 pounds in 11 days (most of it as fat). My fasting glucose is precisely 80 mg/dl. And day after day, post after post, interview after interview ? people are losing weight on diets that denounce Taubes such as Fuhrman’s http://www.diseaseproof.com/. I’m not saying you can’t lose weight on low-carb. You can, and many do. Most do. Figuring out why that is and abandoning the useless calorie-centered approach to weight loss is a MASSIVE step in the right direction. I’m also not saying that fat and meat phobes aren’t equally blind to Taubes. In fact, they are typically far more blind, stubborn, ignorant, and intellectually feeble than Mr. Taubes.
But isn’t there someone, anyone, that dares to NOT demonize fat, protein, carbs, calories, or some other natural constituent to the food humans have been eating for millennia without obesity problems?
Ugh.
Tried low-fat, carb heavy thing once. Lost weight, but found impossible to maintain this type of eating. Need some fat and meat to feel nourished and sated, then this inevitably lead to increased fat/meat, thus throwing the original protocol out the window.
No doubt some eat low-fat, high carb and then have cheat snacks. Then cheat meals, then cheat days, then…
Matt, the problem is, you are still eating real food. Pears? Bananas? How do you expect to gain fat?!
I hereby command you to eat muffins, donuts, Frosted Flakes, french fries, potato chips, pizza, and plenty of Coke Classic every day for a month.
Then we'll talk about Taubes' carbohydrate hypothesis.
Have you measured your blood glucose in half hour or hour increments after one of your 300 gram carb meals to see what the curve is like?
Hey Matt, I'm coming off a low calorie zero-carb diet and am going to try this to get my glucose tolerance and hopefully metabolism up. I'm in thailand right now so how do you feel about coconut milk and rice etc? I've read that coconut oil is metabolized like carbs (without being esterified or something like that). What would you recommend I eat?
Sunshine,
Don't feel so lonely. I have been on this for a few years now. There are a few of us floating around, though most are silent.
Michael
Nutrition and Physical Regeneration
kirk said…
Hey Matt, I'm coming off a low calorie zero-carb diet and am going to try this to get my glucose tolerance and hopefully metabolism up. I'm in thailand right now so how do you feel about coconut milk and rice etc? I've read that coconut oil is metabolized like carbs (without being esterified or something like that). What would you recommend I eat?
When in Rome……..
GK said…
I hereby command you to eat muffins, donuts, Frosted Flakes, french fries, potato chips, pizza, and plenty of Coke Classic every day for a month.
Then we'll talk about Taubes' carbohydrate hypothesis.
When it comes to refined carbs Taubes is right on. That is not the issue.
Michael
Nutrition and Physical Regeneration
Matt,
This is really off topic. I may just email you later, but what is your take on supplementing your diet with protein? How about Creatine? Just curious on your thoughts.
Best,
Mike C
I have always been slender. I am 5'7 and 117 to 120lbs. Being of Sicilian/American, I have eaten pasta and carbs all my life and they never made me fat.
I never ate fruit as a child…it was a texture/taste thing. We had an abundance of fruit and it was frustrating to my parents that I wouldn't eat it. As an adult, I started liking some apple desserts…and now eat/drink some fruits…but not loads and loads…and only raw in blended fruit drinks and homemade desserts. I do like to bake. I also make all our breads…sourdough.
My maternal grandmother and great aunt were twins who married two brothers. They each had 3 kids. In my great aunt's family, all the kids became morbidly obese…in my mother's family they weren't. My grandfather was firm but loving. His brother was firm but angry, mean, and abusive. Otherwise, their childhood diets were very similar…they always lived next door or near each other. (my grandfather died of lung cancer at 49…before I met him his brother out lived him by 35 yrs or so.)
Was is that they found more comfort in sweet carbs…soda etc., in my great aunt's family? Genetically, they should have been pretty similar.
We've increased our meat and fat consumption and my husband has lost about 12 lbs in a month 5'8" 182…down to 169/170. He has cut carbs somewhat as he has increased his fats….I couldn't cut carbs myself as I thought I'd lose weight and I don't want to lose any.
I am confused…I think that cutting down on the carbs is helping speed his weight loss. I'd like to think that he can resume carbs and not gain his weight back. It probably helps that he's cut out his junk food snacking….doritos type stuff…and going out to breakfast where they use tons of crappy veg oils.
Lucy
Michael said, "When it comes to refined carbs Taubes is right on. That is not the issue."
Well, if that's not the issue, I don't know what Matt is trying to prove.
By the way, Taubes message is not, "carbs make you fat". That is a simplification. What his hypothesis about obesity is (and people always miss this) that it's a dysregulation of fat metabolism, not of gluttony and sloth.
Matt is a healthy boy. Eating real food carbs is not going to fatten him. His metabolism is fine. He could probably eat junk and still be fine. For a while.
Now, if you want to be an average American and eat 150lbs of sugar a year for a few years, you may just break your glucose metabolism. Then see what carbs will do to you.
I followed a prudent diet for most of my adult life and managed to remain slim, at 5'11" 155lbs. After going Paleo, I dropped 10 lbs in six months, and have kept it off for over two years now. I added lots of fat too, and just involuntarily eat less, and remain lean.
So if Matt is showing that carbs don't make you fat, and I'm showing that fat doesn't make you fat, what are we to think?
GK,
We are to think that neither carbs nor fats nor protein nor calories make us fat. That is the truth. All else defies logic.
Anyone could lose weight eating a vegan diet with 5% calories coming from fat. It's next to impossible not to.
Lucy,
Just don't let him become carb phobic. It is the removal of junk that is most beneficial about the low-carb diet, but you don't have to go low-carb to remove junk. He would've done just as well doing what I'm doing now – but I would've also said, "don't let him become too fat or meat phobic, as both of those components are important essentials in the long-run."
Kirk –
Just eat that shit up. Go nuts. Be free and enjoy it. You'll start feeling better in short order and overcome carbophobia.
JT – I do hope to do some post-meal testing on Saturday vs. Aurora. Should be interesting. On Sunday the two of us plan to eat the same mixed meal, pizza, and report on post-prandial glucose levels.
Gary's problem is that he can see clearly through his research that refined carbs, not carbs in general are the problem. Then he concludes that we should eat a ketogenic diet for health. That is the wrong conclusion. Simply eating a mixed diet without any trace of refined ingredients, without any restriction on any natural component of food, is enough to heal most people's health problems over time. The rest need complementary therapies in addition to such nutritional therapy.
If the glucose mechanism is broken, why not try to fix it? GK assumes that once it's broken it can't be repaired, and one must eat a restricted Paleo diet for the rest of one's life to maintain what little health they've got left. That's also bullshit, and the trap that most low-carbers fall into as low-carb diets worsen glucose metabolism.
Taubes needs to test the "metabolism hypothesis." The carbohydrate hypothesis is just as wrong as the fat hypothesis and the animal protein hypothesis.
Mike C,
I wouldn't bother with supplements. I'm wary of white powders no matter what benefits are supposedly attached to them.
Sorry, that comment got broken up strangely. The 3 paragraphs about Gary Taubes belong at the top with my response to GK.
Haha; just want to commend Matt(um, Sunshine) on your comments. Niiiice!
If you eat a food and it spikes your insulin and shoots your blood sugar through the roof, that's a good reason to avoid that food.
I was against Atkins type diets until after 4 decades of eating lowfat and sugary foods, I became pre-diabetic.
Can't reason away a broken insulin/glucagon system. If only I had stuck to natural carbs all those years, I probably wouldn't be in this boat! There's a valuable lesson of youth in your post :)
True Rachel, but I'm in search of dietary strategies that can make a person respond to foods differently. If a healthy person eats 2 slices of pizza and glucose levels top at 110 mg/dl, another person's glucose goes to 160 mg/dl on the same meal, and a type 2 diabetic's go to 340 mg/dl on the 2 slices, clearly the pizza isn't the only variable. The ultimate goal would be for a diabetic to eat the same meal after healing and have blood glucose levels peak at 110 mg/dl like a healthy person's instead of 340. That's the ultimate goal, and I don't want to sell dietary and lifestyle strategies short by assuming such a thing is impossible.
No problem Chloe. I'll give a good public endorsement to you and Harper's site once this dietary fiasco of mine is over. It's awesome… sniffle, sniffle.
Let the rabbits where glasses Sunshine! These FUDA posts are excellent.
I am one month into the 180 / schwarzbein combo, gained 5lbs so far, digestion is starting to come around (betaine HCL helps), basal temp seems to have responded by .3F so far. I definitely think I have adrenals that are worn down, so this lifestyle should help.
One nagging issues I have right now is waking up at 4am every night, I go to bed at 10pm. This is a common adrenal issues symptom, can't wait for this too pass… as it is hard to get rest when your wide awake at fargin 4am!
I agree that Taubes is too focused on carbs, but just to give him a little defense his book was crucial in helping those of us who were committed to the conventional wisdom. His conclusions about fat and cholesterol are very well written, and useful to those of us who would otherwise have never read anything by Price or the other authors you recommend. In my nutritional education in college, the truth of the badness of fat and cholesterol was accepted as given, and most of us had no reason to investigate things further . Overweight? You ate too much and didn't exercise enough. Who ever thought that your body wanted to be fat?!
aw gee thanks there (:
undertow,
I used to wake up that early. It sucked. But it got a lot better for me somewhere along the line eventually (i forget how long it took), so I hope you can see improvement!
What gets me about all of this is how deeply the low carb hypothesis has sunk into the psyche in places where it shouldn't have much of a grip at all – like among many of the followers of Weston Price. Talking to some of them you would think that Price wrote a manual on low carb nutrition.
Michael
Nutrition and Physical Regeneration
Reverend Maynard,
I woke up too early on low-carb too. Seems like adding in more carbs helps sleep, especially in those early morning hours – not that I can say much, I haven't slept past 7am in over a year.
Paleo,
You're absolutely right about Taubes. I don't waste time bashing those that I don't respect. Read my review of GCBC and you'll see that I clearly haven't forgotten the gifts he's given to the mainstream…
http://180degreehealth.com/uploads/eZines/January_eZine%5B1%5D.pdf
In fact, everyone who hasn't read my review of Taubes's book should check that out.
Totally Michael, and it's tough to see so many Price followers go on to be grain bashers as well.
Thank you, Matt! That means alot to us that you like our blog.
Ya I started added more carbs to my snack before hitting the sack. Waking up at 4am no fun, when my 2yr like to wake up a 6am…
On my 9month VLC, before I started added back in the carbs, sleep was actually good and deep, again hoping this won't last too long, thanks for sharing on that too ChlOe.
Sort of on topic, some great tool lyrics:
—
And the angel of the lord came unto me, snatching me up from my place of slumber. And took me on high, and higher still until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself. And he brought me into a vast farmlands of our own midwest. And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil. One thousand, nay a million voices full of fear. And terror possesed me then. And I begged, "Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?" And the angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust." And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared, "Hear me now, I have seen the light! They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers!" Can I get an amen? Can I get a hallelujah? Thank you Jesus.
This is necessary.
Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on……..
Thanks Reverend,
It's true, I am slaying many a carrot on this diet – over 100 since day 1 in fact between a huge veggie soup and the wee lil' carrots from my garden that I brutally murdered.
Matt:
I suppose the postprandial measurements won’t show anything surprising. Aurora’s blood glucose should be somewhat higher than yours. If you want to make a point you should take your postprandials after a high carb/no fat menu. That would spike Auroras blood glucose quite high while yours should be subdued.
The more fat you eat with your carbs the lower the blood glucose spike will be and the longer it will take. After a HC/NF-meal the highest reading will most likely be measured after 30 min to 1 hour. When your carbs are accompanied by a boat load of fat the highest reading could take as long as 4 hours.
I have done my share of blood glucose testing. It’s quite interesting but somewhat expensive.
LOL at Uno reference.
I went to see a staged version of The Importance of Being Ernest the other night. I hadn't eaten dinner so I realized how completely food obsessed Wilde was. The Oscar Wilde diet: caffeine, sugar, booze, refined carbs and cigarettes. I had two glasses of champagne after the play then spiraled down into all out tea fest yesterday and became devoted to bread and butter sandwiches on *gasp, white bread. Body temp lowest today since I started following your blog also my gums started bleeding this morning for the first time in months. After two days on TOWD the moral of the story is: Drugs are baaaaaaad. Go back to disgustingly unaesthetic healthy living immediately.
I might add that I also had some fried food after the play (why stay partway on the wagon, I reasoned) which is something which Algy, Jack/Ernest, Gwendolyn and Cicely never would have done while they were scarfing muffins and swilling tea and champers like it was going out of style. So you know, epic fail when it comes to isolating variables.
Thanks Sven. We're going to do 2 postprandial tests – one on our experimental diets and one with a mixed meal: pizza tomorrow night has been the chosen food. My glucose should rise faster on a nonfat meal, but it's the peak that interests me. Someone with excellent glucose metabolism can consume any number of carbs and the glucose level shouldn't go that high as insulin effectively stores away all of the glucose in the blood.
I have no doubt that I'll win on the mixed meal. I have better glucose metabolism than she does. There's no question about that.