Don’t tell people what to eat. Or how to exercise. Or what supplements to take. It just leads to embarrassment in the end. Unless you like embarrassing yourself. I admit that I have always kind of liked embarrassing myself. When friends came over in my teenage years I would almost always reach for the totally ridiculous and humiliating childhood breakdancing videos. 7-year old white kid in Addidas shoes, knee high?Addidas socks, a crop top?mesh football jersey,?and short shorts attempting to break dance, even moonwalk, on a carpeted floor. Rough stuff. My friends ate it up, and those home videos became the stuff of legend.
Seriously though, health evangelism is a surefire way to convince ALL of your family and friends that you have lost your mind. Plus, it’s just annoying. In the end, if they do follow your instructions to cleanse, or cut the carbs, or check for parasites, or start some high-intensity interval training, or drink Kangen water, or drive an hour to get raw milk, or start testing the pH of their urine, eventually they will fail to follow through with it, or the program you so thoroughly believed was the answer to all of mankind’s woes will fail them. Or?it will fail you, you’ll tell them’to stop doing what they are doing, and they’ll get super confused. In every scenario’someone’s getting humiliated in this process.
Seriously, I don’t know anyone in the health and nutrition world who hasn’t?humiliated themselves?multiple times. I understand the desire. We think we’ve found a great secret to health and want to share it with our friends and family. Totally understandable.I’ve been there myself many times. At first it was vegetarianism. Everyone I knew?HAD to try this vegetarian shit.
“What, you want heart disease man? The number one killer of Americans? Don’t you know how they treat animals in factories man? They beat veal daily with a sledgehammer’to’tenderize it man.”
Then low-carb.
“Fat is the best thing ever?you guys. And guess what, it doesn’t… cause… heart disease. It’s all been a lie perpetrated by evil corporate-government conspiracies! You see, there’s this hormone called insulin. You know, like diabetics inject (which is totally effed up, we’ll get to that in a second)…”
And a ton of others. Doing “cleanses” with my mom was up there, although I did test her urine once. We also drove around browsing for farm property where we could have our dairy herd and stuff. Yeah, see ya there.Some close calls for sure.
A little off topic, but I always thought it was hilarious how bad my own timing was. When I was a vegetarian I worked in restaurants serving foie gras and Colorado lamb. As a low-carber I lived in Hawaii and had fruit trees in my yard I never touched. Then I moved from Hawaii so I could get raw milk, then ditched the milk and now eat as much tropical fruit as I can. Classic.
Telling people what to eat or how to exercise or what to believe or how to live in a passionate, evangelical way, is a sure sign of intellectual immaturity. Do yourself, your friends, and your family members a favor. Be a lot more TENTATIVE about you conclusions regarding anything, downplay whatever it is you are excited about, and seek out conflicting ideas to whatever you are currently going psycho about. Stay calm, take a deep breath, and stop being a guru.
Share the things you’ve been thinking about yes. Answer questions openly with your current opinions and conclusions about things. But don’t be so sure about everything. Use a lot of words like “maybe, perhaps, potentially, and could.”? Use a lot of phrases like “for me, for you, not sure, don’t know, who knows,?you might, and I think.”
The more you learn, the more you experience, the more you ponder – the less sure you should get about pretty much anything. To be 100% convinced about anything requires brainwashing and no knowledge of any other points of view. You shouldn’t be sure. You shouldn’t have strong opinions or beliefs. You should be able to relate to and take in multiple viewpoints and be able to see strong and weak points in what everyone has to say about anything. At the end of it all, you should feel too confused to give explicit directions to anyone about anything. That’s good. To be confused about complex topics means to have thought deeply in multiple dimensions about something.
Please share your embarrassing health evangelism stories below.I predict there will be?many repetitive statements made?like:
- Thankfully my mom never listens to me and thinks I’m crazy.
- I wish I hadn’t told my?family about?Paleo. Now when I go home to visit the food sucks.
- I haven’t been a vegetarian in?8 years and my family still thinks I am.
I was totally a health evangelizer, and then when I kept learning more and changing my mind, or it didn’t work for long, I figured out to just keep my mouth shut and let people fend for themselves. It’s nicer, really.
First again!
Not lol. By chance I stumbled upon articles in their infancy. It was worth a shot! :P
Sorry Omnomnom, but how about you can be 1.B.
:)
I’ll take it!
Yeah, I tried being a guru, I sucked at it!! ;)
I was totally a health evangelizer, then I started to ‘eat the food’ and flt kinda embarrased about the advice I had given in the past. The worst of which when you go about telling people cooked food is toxic.
i learned my lesson on this after Paleo and a few healthy doses of reading Nassim Taleb . . . and the fact that after eating all that Paleo meat my serrum ferritin was 333 and i now give blood every 2 months – of course, assuming it wasn’t something else that raised my iron.
Would be interesting to see ferritin levels of the average paleo eater. If it keeps raising in a majority it would show that this diet is unsustainable(due to increasing iron stores).
I’ve always been confused. But I do miss my cows.
I think one trouble is, people who presume certainty are much more compelling and charismatic. Tentative, tepid statements don’t inspire, generally. It’s not sexy to be hesitant to draw conclusions.
So there’s an adaptive reason some people become evangelical; you find the acclaim you’d like. You find admiration and respect and fall in favor with them, at least for a little while. Of course you might embarrass yourself down the road, but maybe you just move on and find a new audience not yet jaded toward you.
I wonder how much television and media culture plays into this. Jerry Mander talks about how we speed up our nervous system when we habituate it to the rhythms of TV. Since quiet contemplative moments are hard to depict and not engaging, we only show the action. Over time, we start to become quick to react and anticipate (and create) a faster pace than might otherwise exist.
If we lived in a culture of slowness, and also didn’t have the option of just moving on to the next mark looking for a quick fix, maybe we wouldn’t get so swept up in these fads.
I dunno, but I do wonder.
Disassociation helps to a certain degree. I just moved to India and even though I’ve only been here 6 weeks, I’m still in a bit of withdrawal from all of my usual habits and crutches. People here have different ideas about beauty and health and eating and living. It definitely helps me see more clearly my habitual thinking and patterns, both good and bad. Pace of life is much slower. I’m sinking into it, but I did have withdrawal from the productivity-hyper-stimulated life in the U.S.
Wow this is definitely something to ponder!
Excellent comment, Rob. I find this to be true even outside the area of health and nutrition. I participate in a political forum, and I notice that some of the most successful posters are those who brand themselves with an extreme point of view. Their belief in their rightness, coupled with a willingness to ridicule people who disagree, creates a compelling aura of confidence.
I actually think that this fact might explain the popularity of certain political positions (and also of positions in nutrition). Straightforward explanations, which require no nuance, make it easier to display confidence–and they also require very little work. Black-and-white thinking makes it easier to attract followers.
People crave certainty
What’s crazy is that if you were able to travel back into the webs of a person’s mind, you’d find that the things that they have chosen to identify themselves with can be traced back to really superficial things. Most people have the same religion and political party affiliations as their parents. And then those things sort of become their favorite “teams.” Not at all unlike how the Chicago Cubs became my favorite baseball team because that’s who was playing on tv when I was a kid.
“I think one trouble is, people who presume certainty are much more compelling and charismatic. Tentative, tepid statements don’t inspire, generally. It’s not sexy to be hesitant to draw conclusions.”
There is an entire chapter in the book “The Invisible Gorilla” that covers the illusion of confidence. In any field, confidence is nowhere near correlated with competence. However, that’s not the problem. The issue arises when we associate confidence with competence. It’s not really the fault of the one who presumes confidence; it’s really the fault of those who favor them over the more hesitant, cautious, honest, and humble counterparts.
I ‘ve totally annoyed my family and friends with my diets and ideals. I was vegetarian for 16 years, 2 of those I was vegan. I ended up with hypoglycemia and a doctor told me to go low carb. That was a hard blow to my ethics. Low carb mixed with poor digestion is a recipe for failure. I had a hard time going back on carbs after the 4 months of feeling like the living dead. I was put on thyroid meds from all the damage the crazy diets have done. Then I found your site, read your books, and started eating for heat (at first it was just allowing forbidden foods back into my life). My family almost died when they saw “the health nut” eating Captain Crunch. After eating like this for a couple months I guess my thyroid started working again because I ended up in urgent care with hyperthyroid test results and went completely off my thyroid meds. Yay! Oh, and in between all this craziness I’ve tried to ph balance my body (gave myself a kidney infection), ate almost no fat, went 90% raw, and many more brilliant experiments.
In 1995, a few days after receiving 2,000 self published 1st edition copies of NeanderThin (then the only paleo diet book in print) from the printer, two Jehovah Witnesses knocked on my door. “Do you know the Bible?” they asked. “Know it?” I replied,” I just wrote a book about the first rule in the Bible. Did you know, that if you obey the first rule, it is impossible to be overweight?” Grabbing a nearby copy, I showed them the first page which contains only Genesis 2:17. As they were both fat, I sold them two copies!
LOLZ thought you made that up, but no. Hilarious. :)
Wow! Is that really you Ray? Neanderthin was the first book to get me away from raw veganism (alas, I went back to it oh too many times) way back in my 20s. Did you move on to incorporate neolithic foods back in your diet, or are you still following the principles you lay out in your book?
I feel like you read my mind before writing this post. I was so sure that wap was the way to go & of course I told everyone. I would look at other people who were overweight & think if only they ate the wap way they would get their health back. What a dope! I haven’t abandoned it, just eased up some. I thought I was healthy until I gained back all the weight I lost. Now I am trying to figure it all out. Sort of gave up for the summer trying to fix my metabolism. Anyway, now I wouldn’t tell anyone what they should eat because it really is too confusing.
It was done to me when I was very young, that’s my excuse, and now I’m going to forward this article with an apology to everyone I know.
Earlier this year I was on a pub crawl and ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a couple years. She was like, “What’re you doing drinking beer?! It’s not Paleo!” I’m also recalling the time I posted on Facebook that refined oils & carbs were the root of all chronic health problems, end of story. Oy vey. I most certainly have matured intellectually with regards to food beliefs and find myself constantly saying things like “well, it depends” and “your mileage may vary”, but I also avoid letting myself get cornered into nutrition discussions in the first place.
hey Matt,
I;ve been a fan for a while and def resonate with this. I am not vegetarian or vegan or low carb, though I have dabbled in them in the past. I will though, that I tried your health book, as I got all excited about it, and truth be told I had no positive reaction, in fact my health went to absolute shit. I still recommend your material as another idea, another input, but don’t recommend anyone following it, or anything else. I do my own thing now.
I convinced my friend that the mostly raw vegan program I was following was the only thing that could save her from her life of horrendous allergies. After 3 days of drinking the 2 quarts of carrot juice per day like I was doing she ended up in the emergency room tinted slightly orange and covered in hives. The ER doctor heard what she was doing and acted as if I’d suggested she drink gasoline. She spread the tale far and wide, and still tells anyone who will listen that “juicing” is the most dangerous thing I ever talked her into doing. Yeah. That’s not embarrassing at all.
Oh that’s good. In my own personal life, the worst for me was telling my friend who had a heart attack that he really needed to “get his insulin under control” by avoiding carbs almost completely. Shortly after he developed a bad case of gout.
I wish it was that simple. Carrot juice is perhaps the most delicious substance on earth as far as I’m concerned. If I could just subsist off of it I think I would.
Did you tell her and the doctor she was just detoxing?
I had no access to the doctor, but I told her that…you bet I did. I rolled my eyes, put my hand on my hip and tapped my foot. What a wimp! Hang on through that herxheimer reaction, you pussy! I made it through mine because I wasn’t a sissy who ran to the ER for a big ol’ shot of steroids!
I’m not proud of those days. I do still love a good glass of carrot juice, though :)
Hahaha. xD I love this.
I wrinkled my nose whenever my mom made me fresh vegetable juice as a kid, but carrot was preferred over celery-spinach-apple-kale-squash, or whatever she’d use.
My boyfriend showed me this yesterday: http://youtu.be/hmCqgGpR2YI Time to juice! Juice! Juice! Juice!
That video is AWESOME!! How the heck have I never seen that before? Behold, the beauty of the juice weasel! ha ha ha ha ha
Carrot-apple is really tasty, and goes well with just about any (real) meal. I need to dust off my juicer…
I should dust off my juicer, but I probably won’t.
I can enjoy just about anything juiced as long as there is pineapple and ginger involved to mask yucky flavors. However, I am a carrot juice purist. I think it’s because the program I followed didn’t allow any additions to the carrot, so I got used to it’s thick sweetness and don’t like anything messing it up. Really good carrot juice reminds me of chocolate milk. Mmmmm.
Yeah, I refuse to put anything in carrot juice too. Can’t improve perfection.
For me a little apple and ginger make carrot juice drinkable.I am going let the dust stay on the juicer for a little while though.
I know that this technically counts as putting something in carrot juice, but rice cooked in carrot juice is pretty awesome. And presumably it would increase the carb-density of the rice. So, win-win.
I totally agree. Every once in a while I try add something else, but it always subtracts. Good chocolate milk analogy too! or more specifically, it’s like the old nestle quick commercial… can’t drink it slow. Once I start drinking it I can hardly stop myself from downing the whole thing in one draught. The one thing I’ve been wanting to try, but haven’t yet is adding coconut milk, because it sometimes tastes a little like coconut. maybe I’ll try that today and report back.
A funny thing. I’ve always been slightly disappointed in my home grown carrot juice. I think it’s because long storage either develops, or concentrates, the sugars. The homegrown stuff is always more watery, regardless of the age of the carrots.
The carrot juice with coconut milk was amusing, but I’m not sure I’d say it was an improvement. However, coconut milk, carrot juice and sugar frozen into a popcicle was pretty awesome! It reminded me a little bit of green tea ice cream. Judging from this experiment, I think carrot ice cream would probably be pretty awesome.
That is too good! LOL!
I tried the Ray Peat thing as well……was disappointed that my health, as I stated went to absolute hell, absolute hell. the symptoms that 180 claims to help with, were exactly the symptoms I developped. So like everything else I took on board the advice that worked for me and left the rest of it. When I went back to doing what I was doing, I improved and regained my mental sanity.
Jireh, how are you doing now, how look your diet?
the following statement could be interpreted a few different ways, all of which would apply:
if you want to tell a good lie, the only person you have to convince that it’s true is yourself.
like matt, i’ve tried every diet out there.
i wrote a how to on lifestyle but shelved it until i’m really old and actually know something.
i’m 50 and it is still shelved.
i have felt the burn over and over and i think that matt has good advice for us here. i’m sorry world for giving advice that hasn’t stood the test of time for me.
these are the tenets that have stood the test of time for me (sorry matt i just can’t stop!)
-women should chart their cycles to help with birth control and trouble-shooting.
-people should sleep in complete darkness and get outdoors in the sunshine each day
-vitamin D is wicked important and probably the other fat solubles are too, just as WAP says
-the balanced traditional meal has wisdom and general applicability (ie, sure you are a special snowflake… but not that special) crowd-pleasing home-made comfort foods rock.
-people are omnivores
-modern vegetable oils aren’t good
-more nutrition comes from higher quality soil/and letting animals graze
-eat and drink what you crave and as much as you crave
-be afraid of doctors and dentists. learn home cures for day-to-day and chronic ills. chicken broth really is a heal-all
-the agricultural animals and plants and herbs that have been passed down to us are amazing symboints, truly gifts of the gods, our best tools and deserve our best effort
-there are chemicals and drugs out there you want to avoid
-people who don’t have excellent digestion and diet shouldn’t have a baby yet
-smile when you feel down and your body makes feel-good hormones
-foods from the sea are necessary to health
All solid advice but sorry to burst your bubble; I have the worst digestion in the history of the universe and I have two strong healthy children who are never sick. If people that don’t have an excellent diet didn’t have children this planet would be practically extinct! =)
that is interesting! i suppose you must be actually digesting pretty well (even though you maybe have pain or whatever symptoms?)
i think the result may be different, say for a celiac or some such in which their gut is so inflammed that litte is getting through. i have a young friend with crohns for example, has had it since a child–and he didn’t grow properly because he wasn’t getting enough building blocks.
i assume your children did not inherit the problems? because they do say that children inherit the flora of the mom.
well, i’ve seen the benefit of the good start and the detriment of the bad start and really it is nothing to sneeze at. neighbor raised two kids pre-wapf and one kid after. first two came out with rotting teeth. third is a world-class gymnast, built like a trucker with a wide face. and this woman was already eating better than the standard american diet when she changed over to wapf.
getting pregnant with no goal for excellent diet is like getting pregnant without a goal to breast feed. really, get a pet.
oh, no one tells you this but your body will rob your nutrients to build the child if they aren’t there via digestion. my friend turned out 5 beautiful strong healthy children but between child 4 and 5 came the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.
it was an old saw in bygone days that a woman lost a tooth with each child.
i will agree the downside to “a goal of excellent diet” puts you in a vulnerable spot of being open to evangelizing!
Just curious: are the kids all from the same father?
yes, same dad.
i’d like to add my own story: i followed the book “what to expect when you are expecting” basically to the letter. (had not read wap yet) i had heart burn but no vomiting or bad digestion issues. my kids were vaginal births and breast fed for 9 months. my kids have crooked teeth.
kid one had horrible digestion from birth-colic and inability to sleep. i blame this on working full time (no sunshine) and eating lots of cafeteria foods and antibiotic use during preg. kid one’s digestion problems seemed to be solved by daily full fat yogurt at age 1.
kid two i was home much more during the preg and cooking for myself and getting sunshine and also eating yogurt along with kid one. kid two had better digestion and could sleep.
i would like to put an idea out there: that women may crave and need more fat than men (especially in the child-bearing years) and they need high quality fat like butter, tallow etc.
“jack sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean–twixt them both they cleared the plate and licked the platter clean”
I had been eating strictly according to WAPF guidelines for 3 years before I got pregnant, as was my husband. Our baby still had colic, which was doubly devastating since I thought it couldn’t possibly happen to us. None of my subsequent elimination diets helped, either. That pretty much killed my faith in dietary perfection.
The benefits of breastfeeding are highly overemphasized, when in reality they are negligible. It’s elitist comments like that that make mothers feel guilty if they can’t/don’t want to breastfeed for their own personal reasons.
ha!
black is white etc.
motherhood for mammals means giving milk. that is why we are called: MAMmals
if a person knows in advance that she will not be able to enter the beautiful milking relationship with her new child, then maybe she might want to re-think the idea of having a child, put it off or etc. each child deserves this–milking relationship. it is his or her right as a mammal.
if elitist means “embraces truth” then you can call me it all day long.
i do feel bad for women who CAN’T nurse. they shouldn’t feel guilty and if they do it is their own emotional issue and has nothing to do with the real truth of the situation. there are recipes available for those issues, and also tubing that can be run down the breast so that the whole impact of the nursing relationship can be simulated.
are you also going to say that purchased formula is just as good as breast or home made?
black is white!
While some of your original tidbits on what you claim to have learned over the past 50 years are probably pretty solid advice, I think you need to re-read Matt’s post a few times. Your comments in this section are pretty much the epitomy of health evangelism.
No it’s not all solid advice.
which of the items do you disagree with, jdubs?
Just nit picking. Nothing major ;)
After trying tons of health regimens and mostly failing to thrive long term on any of them; I’ve become a picker and chooser of what I consider the most important for my own health. I’m starting to see some results with my custom plan so I give myself a break for being wrong so many times. Plus I feel that all that studying is a great hobby in and of itself. I am so glad during my Paleo/low carb months that I never said anything to my friends who let their kid eat nothing but fruit and wheat products. Keeping my mouth shut was a wise move there, lol!
I like most of your health tenets. The baby one is problematic only because I think everything depends on your age and overall health which is so individual. If a prospective mom/dad knows they have a health problem it may be good to attempt to get as healthy as possible b4 pregnancy but shouldn’t be a barrier to going forward having a kid. Imo:)
I disagree with a lot of this. Don’t avoid doctors if you need them. Sure don’t follow their diet advice, but they’re not all evil. All ‘home cures’ got me when I had a UTI was a kidney infection. I’ve found that the majority of natural remedies just don’t work.
I guess my baby is destined to be terribly unhealthy with horrible teeth and digestion since I got pregnant during ED recovery…but we’ll see since it’s still incubating. My mother ate a standard American diet with my sisters and I and we were all strong, healthy kids, always 90% on growth charts and none of us have ever had a cavity. My sister was also a gymnast and was probably one of the strongest kids I’ve ever seen.
Yes a lot of that list is pretty sophomoric. Chicken soup is a heal all? Try that for some syphillis :)
Plus how many world class athletes from America came from the hood, where good prenatal nutrition is not the norm. Some even had crackheads and alcoholics for mothers. And baby formula was a key component in women gaining more freedom and independence during the rise of the feminism and equal rights in America. Sure I believe breastfeeding is probably better by some degree but the idea that anyone should feel bad about breastfeeding and that there children will somehow suffer a horribly unhealthy life are ludicrous.
I meant bad about not breastfeeding.
Waaay back before low carb, Paleo, gluten free, etc., there was Adele Davis and Dr. Lendon Smith and others. Compared to today’s food fads, they weren’t all that bad, but my brother still insists (35+ years later) that I ruined my mom’s cooking with my no refined sugar or flour zeal.
Dr. Lendon Smith was actually my pediatrician way before he was famous, in 1953. He’d only been in practice about a year. My mother couldn’t nurse so he put me on soy formula. Nuff said.
Adele Davis was a huge fan of PUFA oils. I read her books when I was a kid even though they were old. She recommended ingesting lots of PUFA oils straight from the spoon. She died of cancer at the age of 70. Seventy is not very impressive for a health nut.
One other health nut Andreas Moritz died in his 70’s. No body said a word about why. He was mostly vegan along with butter. Thought eggs and meat are toxic.
Almost all health gurus die young. I’ve made jokes about that in the past, saying, “Well, I write stuff about nutrition, so I probably won’t live long enough to find out.”
The way I’ve lived my life I’ll take living to 70 any day. Of course my opinion may change in the future ;)
i think mainly this is because people who feel great don’t have as much inclination to try something new.
Is it funny that when I read about these sorts of stories on here, I think that my garden-variety eating disorder sounds pretty boring? I think the farthest I went was giving people tips on how to keep their calories lower with strategies like switching out fattening ingredients and brushing teeth after dinner. I knew most of what I did to maintain the ED was crazy so I definitely wasn’t handing out advice on it!
I did tell my parents a few years ago to switch to whole milk and eat organic/local as much as possible. The only advice I give people now is tune into and listen to your body, eat mostly real food, get over food guilt issues and don’t go crazy, eat 3 balanced square meals a day (but if someone would rather eat 5 smaller meals, whatever), minimize refined veg oils, etc. Minus the veg oils, it’s pretty much exactly what I learned during ED recovery, and guess what, it works. I hope there are few downsides to this advice.
The Real Amy- If you don’t mind sharing.. What’s your ED story? I’m kind of curious, as I’ve seen you post a few things here and there from time to time.. But if you don’t feel like delving into it, I totally understand. It’s a sensitive subject.
No worries, happy to share. It’s pretty run-of-the-mill. Basically starved myself for a few years and was pretty underweight, and then when I finally allowed myself to eat a bit more, my body wanted to binge (naturally), and the whole thing morphed into what can best be described as exercise bulimia, although it was a mixed bag. I would starve myself, binge at some point, and then exercise constantly. And we’re not just talking the gym. I would do things like stay home and run in place in front of the TV instead of going out, commute to work by walking an hour instead of taking the subway. I didn’t usually purge, more than anything because I have a weak gag reflex and it didn’t work that well. I think I also knew I would cross a line if I went into that. My approved meals were pretty much all vegetable-based and some fruit with a small amount of pasta or meat or whatnot, and I recorded every bite in a journal. I would binge on other stuff, and even healthier things like yogurt. I was definitely orthorexic in my food choices, though it would often go to crap during binges. I would generally binge at night, and then the starvation cycle would begin the next morning.
I knew I had a huge issue, but lived in denial for a long time. Finally got help at 27, and it was only because I felt totally out of control and was such an emotional mess. I thought I was a binge eater – while being underweight, ha I was crazy. My official diagnosis, was “Eating Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified.” I remember having arguments with my nutritionist, insisting, “I restrict because I binge,” and she would say, “no, you binge because you restrict.” Every pound I gained felt like total failure. I was convinced that if I didn’t restrict I would balloon up to 300 lbs. It felt like there was this tiny thin line holding me away from morbid obesity, just from sheer willpower alone.
I got a therapist, who put the focus on my emotional issues that led to the ED in the first place, and then the nutritionist who helped with the food choices. The main thing was getting on a good schedule of 3 balanced meals/day and 1-2 snacks, no matter what. Even if I binged at night, I was to eat a proper breakfast the next morning. I also had to eat more at meals and incorporate some “treats”, usually as a snack, to stop thinking of foods as “good” and “bad” and start eating normal amounts of the treats. I also had to tune into my hunger levels and start thinking about why I was eating. So, it would be ok to binge, but I had to acknowledge it and think about what was going on instead of just mindlessly stuffing in the food. In this way, I noticed that sometimes I was hungry, and other times it was a way just to avoid my emotions, and what I really needed to do was nap or call a friend or something.
As my eating normalized, the binges stopped. I put on weight, and more than anything looked “puffy” for awhile. Then it leveled out and went down a bit again (not to underweight, though) and I looked pretty good again. No puffiness. I did have a couple of relapses, so all in all it look about 4 years to totally recover. At the end of the last relapse, I found the whole WAPF/low-carb community, and after a very mild stint of carb restriction (thankfully mostly because of my ED history, I knew I could not cut out food groups completely), I found Matt Stone and this site and my eating got even better.
I think the main keys to my recovery were the balanced meals and regular eating schedules, but also dealing with my emotional and self-esteem issues that led me to starve myself to begin with. I had a really unhappy childhood and grew up with non-existent self-esteem, and dealing with all of that has been really tough, but I am also experiencing a lot of the rewards now. My personality just opened up a lot. My friends saw a huge change. They said I used to be kind of “stepford” and just really closed off and perfectionist. I’m more open and just more relaxed. I think my eating disorder was a blessing in disguise because it forced me into therapy, and I now have a healthier relationship with food and with myself than a lot of people do. Things are far from perfects, and I think I will always be more sensitive about my weight than a lot of people, but I also really take care of myself now.
Thank you for sharing! While I don’t think I ever had a diagnosable disorder, I can still relate a lot to your history. I don’t think any struggle is a walk in the park.. so your story is no more boring than anyone else’s
I really learner a lot, so thank you! (Typing this from a phone, otherwise I would’ve had more to add!!)
I also really appreciated your story. And enjoyed reading it, knowing the happy ending.
I have many of these stories. Most recently, I told my dad and his wife to go gluten free. My aunt and uncle too. Now they’re all proclaiming the evils of wheat, handing out copies of Wheat Belly, and we eat really awful GF fake foods when I visit. Oops. They still think I’m GF…
On the other hand, for those of us who make our living telling others what to eat, what are we supposed to do?! “Cut back on the fried food and PUFAs, eat enough, and the rest go figure it out for yourself!”?? Or is my job pointless and I should just go use my nutrition degree in a lab somewhere where I don’t screw anyone up…
Your job is now to help de-program people so they can actually pursue what they are eating with an open mind and all options on the table. Show them what healthy function is and give them some ideas for how they might get there.
That’s something I’m really struggling with as a health care provider. People turn to me so often for advice on diet and I feel like the crazy person for deviating from what everyone was taught in school. Other NPs and MDs go against what I tell patients and think the low fat, low calorie, no salt, or sugar diet is the answer to everything. But what else can you do except try to help people live a little and enjoy the food they eat.
Becky, exactly!
Ooops! I accidentally hit enter.
I was going to say that I am in the same boat. My nutritional advice is completely opposite other practitioners I work with.
In fact,I have to sign off on the RD’s charts and it kills me to see her “meal plans” of 1300 calories. OMG. I want scream, “Run! Don’t do this!” But I can’t. I have to support her.
And I’m sure she thinks I’m a fat ass…because I am. But I’m coming to terms with it — and I have lost 6 pounds even.
And the best news? Today I took my sweater off because I was hot — checked my temp and 98.9! The RD said, “Well I haven’t seen any normal temp that high in…hmmm…ever.” Lol
Right On Matt!
Ouch, this post opened up a couple of those embarrising things I like to hide from myself ;)
Nothing extreme here, haven’t made anyone go vegan or anything, but I can recall giving advice like I was the fountain of all knowledge on more than one occasion where I later found out (nobody had to almost die) I was pretty much almost but not quite unlike totally wrong.
Nowadays I try to shut up unless someone really wants a complete rundown of my arguments and what I bad them on. Then they can hear my conclusion, but are responsible for their own.
Trying to shut up is a lot like trying to pick up chair. Your not doing it.
I’ve fortunately gotten lucky. Got my dad doing a “candida cleanse” and some other stuff, like quitting antibiotics, ended up eliminating his lifelong sinus problems that surgery, allergy shots, etc. did nothing for.
During my pee phase my sister got a refractometer and stopped waking up with heart palpitations.
The bummer was that my family didn’t listen when it came to what I was most right about. I’ll told them to sell their houses and get out of real estate in 2007 and put all their savings into precious metals.
Maybe you should start an off-shoot website, 180 degree personal finance
No thanks. All the money I made from the aforementioned sage advice was immediately eradicated by trying to play the Forex game. Kind of lost my appetite for that as well.
I’m pretty sure most people handing our financial advice encounter some serous regrets, even more so than the diet advice-givers
People losing health over bad advice is one thing, but MONEY??!! That’s serious! ;)
Haha for some people it is more serious!
Sadly, that story is very familiar in this industry. The problem is very few professionals can stay ahead of the game and amateurs do not stand a chance.
I’m a professional in this industry and I avoid participation in any topics related to what I do. We have to be very careful what we say and we are not legally allowed to give advice, unless we actually are financial advisers and have no conflicts of interest. Usually when we talk about any topic professionally, we have to specify that it is not intended as legal advice and declare what our position is, if we have one (ie if we are invested in something related to the topic).
scrap the word legal, I meant to write financial advice, not legal advice.
Matt, I have had sinus problems for many years now. Do you think I could benefit from that “candida cleanse”?
Matt, your humility does you proud. I too have bored and misled my nearest and dearest with ever shifting dietary advice. Blame it on overenthusiasm and wishful thinking… And in turn I followed all sorts of “expert” guidance, sometimes with disastrous effects. (Paleo and intermittent fasting got me into the worst depression I have ever weathered.) However, some advice is good, and some things do work. Though I have sometimes resented you for making me even fatter (110 kg) through refeeding, I have to thank you for helping me revive my thyroid without medication. No more cold hands or feet, no more fatigue, no more gluten intolerance, no more migraines and, best of all, no more fibromyalgia. At 59, after a lifetime of dieting, eating disorders and ever worsening health issues, I feel reborn. A friend who hadn’t seen me for over a year says, You’re not really fatter, just bigger boobs, looks sexy. And there’s more : eyebrows back, new hair growing along formerly receding hairline, good muscle tone, trim ankles, healthy gut, better sleep, better mood, libido risen from the dead. Amazing.
And after due trial and error, my personal guidelines are simple :
– never go hungry
– no PUFA, no pain
– know thy triggers (most nuts and seeds, soy and buckwheat, too much iron)
– eat thy daily carrot ( you may trash Ray Peat on his special forum, but he’s quite helpful with some issues)
– enjoy thy grilled cheese, good wine, goat yoghurt with maple syrup, rich chocolate mousse and other favored treats with a guilt-free conscience
– if your feelings disagree with the experts, trust your feelings
This is what works for me, but each of us has to experiment.
Regarding the relentless weight gain during refeeding, I have a hypothesis : maybe the body needs to load up on good saturated fats before letting go of harmful PUFAs ? Just guesswork, but if I must lug this heft around for an indeterminate length of time, there’s gotta be a damned good reason !
Anyway, Matt, I admire your honesty and ability to think outside of the box. All my thanks for your help.
Claire
I don’t trash Ray Peat! He’s my single favorite health researcher!
Doesn’t mean I can’t give him a good jab from time to time, or that I don’t deserve some as well.
Actually, I think Ray Peat’s brilliant, and I’ve picked up a lot from him : avoid PUFAs including fish oil, coffee against iron overload, raw carrot to get rid of excess estrogen, don’t overdo the veggies… But I also had some mishaps, most notably with gelatin. I started adding gelatin to my coffee, and it just felt wrong. After a few days I beagan to feel depressed, and not just because the coffee tasted odd. I switched to organic gummy bears, and some really ugly black sores sprouted on my tongue. I tried again a week later, and the same thing happened. Exit gelatin. But thanks to Ray, I discovered that my “cheese addiction” was a desperate call for calcium rather than an indulgence. Trust the body, I say, and customize the diet.
Was this beef gelatin you were using Claire?
I have to be careful with the gelatin, too. For me, it’s because of the ratio of arginine to lysine. Too much arginine can cause me to feel ‘off’ and have some skin irritations.
I know it’s too soon now, but I think in a few years we’ll look back and laugh at the whole add “X” to your morning coffee. Lately I’ve seen suggestions for “X” to include gelatin, eggs, butter, coconut oil, only full cream. Take that other stuff if you want, but please, leave your coffee alone! Milk and/or sugar are fine. End of rant (which ironically defeated the whole purpose of the post.
I don’t follow Peat, but I naturally like to eat his way as in lots of dairy and fruit. Only he doesn’t like yogurt, which is my main source of dairy. I enjoy meat with cheese melted on top and I ate like this before I heard of Peat.
When I was starting out, I ran out of money and had $10 left for food one week. I bought milk and orange juice. I was tut-tutted as in “you can’t just live on that, no wonder you are so skinny…” My body was ok with the liquids, but my palate was glad when I could afford solid food again.
This story is all too familiar. Years ago I read a book that raw food erases all diseases and wrinkles. I was so into it, I told everyone. My landlady started cold turkey and ate 3 pounds of cherries, got so sick and thought she was going to die. She was so furious that she evicted me. My daughter is vegan. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut.
Wow! An eviction! That’s quite a slap in the face!
Interesting timing on this article. I just said to my husband this morning, as I was trying to explain some of the ideas behind how I am eating now, that I should just keep my mouth shut and do what I’m going to do. My dear husband just looks on in perplexity as I shift my eating habits at least once a year. I’ve been raw, vegan, vegetarian, low carb, high carb, SCD (early GAPS), and most recently paleo in the last 10 years. I read Eat for Heat about 4 weeks ago and decided it was time to end the craziness. All this (craziness) to try to hit the magical number of 140 on a 5?8? body at 52 years old. Actually, over the last year as paleo has dashed my hopes of getting there, I gave in to the fact that I’ll probably just be at 155 for the rest of my life and I should just be happy with that. I’ve been at 140 a couple of times, but my body just doesn’t want to stay there. It’s time to learn to relax, and eat and enjoy food with my husband and family.
I also read the 12 Paleo Myths and it so resonated with me. I had cut everything out of my diet but meat and vegetables because I was convinced they were having an adverse effect on me. When I started Eat for Heat, I had just cut eggs out of my paleo diet. Can you imagine being on paleo without eggs! Ridiculous! Meat and vegetables for breakfast, meat and vegetables for lunch, meat and vegetables for dinner! Ridiculous! Oh, and my blood work came back hypothyroid in the middle of the paleo stint!
I’m just going to eat! And not drink water all the time! I can tell that I’m thicker, just in the last 4 weeks, but I refuse to get on the scale, since that’s part of the craziness.
Thank you, Matt Stone, for the research you’ve done and your courage to put information out there that is so against the mainstream. BTW, my pee is actually yellow (formerly perfectly clear) and my temps have been in the 98’s several times in the last 2 weeks (up from the 96’s and 97’s.
Awesome post.
Crazy how we will continue to cling to an idea about health, even while our actual health is declining from following that idea.
Regarding gurus: http://vimeo.com/58953915
Dr Lendon Smith is the bomb, his books were way ahead of their time.
Does it boil down to maturity? Younger people think in terms of absolutes, but as we get older we can see there is room for more ideas, even seemingly contradictory ones.
Yeah, I was pretty self righteous about the WAPF, and earlier, veganism. Surprisingly, LCing made me less judgemental, but I still thought it would save the world, and I would sometimes subject my parents to annoying speeches about how this might happen. It is embarrassing to remember, but theories on spiritual development usually include a fundamentalist stage early on, so maybe all of us go through this kind of irrational devotion on our way to greater knowledge? (In Fowler’s Stages of Spiritual Development, the third stage, Synthetic Conventional, emerges during puberty, and yeah… Many people and churches–and diet gurus heh–operate at this level, instead of allowing questioning of their tenets. :P)
But um, I think I might be getting kind of… Not exactly fanatical, but definitely having a strong belief that I need to eat more calories. I’m concerned that my awareness of how little I eat is going to turn into the idea that eating enough is going to make my life magically rainbow butterfly perfect, which would be a really bad expectation to put on something like that.
I’m not being too evangelical about calories, I hope, and I do have my doubts about how many of them a person of my age ought to eat, sometimes, too. But there can be the temptation to think that if you just do the right things, you’ll get these mind blowing results. Then when whatever you’re doing, even if it’s good for you, doesn’t make you look-like-beyonce-and-have-the-energy-of-a-healthy-16-year-old, you get impatient and seek out some other means of achieving the unrealistic goal, never allowing yourself to find self acceptance or trust your intuition.
Maybe information overload (or disinformation) leads us to follow outside cues rather than our own feelings and hunches. In turn we become preachy before we’re even achieved anything sustainable. After 4 billion years of evolution, all living species know how to feed themselves – all, except ours. Too much fakery in the food industry, too much hype, too much thinking, and our inner compass becomes fogged.
Hmm yeah, for sure. I’ve increased my awareness of my body’s needs so much in the last year or two, largely due to Matt’s teaching, but it’s probably always going to be a struggle, especially in our culture.
I’ve been on this site for a long time and am still very skeptical that too many calories is a good thing. I think the magic rule is probably listening to how many your body wants. Which during starvation is a lot, but during non-starvation is a pretty normal amount.
Seems reasonable.
I guess because I’ve struggled with major lack of appetite (meaning I’d like, eat two bites of dinner and feel full, as did my mother when she was my age), I have more trouble trusting that cue. :P Since doing a little force-feeding (resulting in about 2,000 to 3,000 calories per day for the past 1.5 months–I’m in my early 20s and taller than average), my appetite has come back pretty strongly at times, and I’m trying to listen to it (can be difficult because I sometimes get ravenous right after eating a meal xD).
But yeah, it’s a tricky thing for sure. And force feeding for someone who has always had a normal appetite, doesn’t really make sense to me either. I think I’m believing less in cure-alls, and more in how different people’s needs are.
I agree. I purposely over ate this past January and I regret it. It just made me gain weight and feel miserable. I feel great eating to appetite of whatever I want. And you’re right, in recovery that might be a lot. But now I feel like I eat a ‘normal’ amount.
That’s a big reason why Diet Recovery was revised to recommend “eating to appetite of whatever you want” with the caveat… “If you’re metabolism isn’t rising make sure you are eating enough calories” (as those recovering from ED will often eat very little when eating to appetite and never get anywhere).
I do feel though at the beginning of recovery it can be necessary to eat even when you don’t have an appetite. This period for me only lasted a few weeks and came after the initial binge period. I will also still force myself to eat scheduled meals even if I’m not that hungry. If I don’t then I get ravenous later on and I just think that’s bad in general at this stage of healing.
Yes, I do agree you should always eat meals on schedule, hungry or not. But I think they can be smaller meals if you’re not hungry, and you start to adjust as you go. I still think the hunger will come pretty organically once you open up your eating habits.
I pasted my ED story above, and as I note, it was very important to get on a regular eating schedule. Once I did, my appetite regulated pretty quickly (within a couple of months, as I recall) to expect meals at the right times. My problem was feeling like I “shouldn’t” be as hungry at meals as I was. I think that is a big issue for most ED people.
Oh, I meant to mention, one thing that can be helpful here is longer meals, in a couple of courses even. When you have 45 minutes or an hour to eat, your body has time to properly register food. If you eat a few bites of appetizer and get a little full, in another 20 minutes, you will be hungry again and can get a good meal in this way.
Force feeding was important in my recovery. I didn’t have an
appetite. In the beginning it was such a struggle.
Right, that’s why I say, one way or another, you gotta get the calories in to raise metabolic rate. And that’s the reason I started to favor recommending foods that make that process a lot easier and more realistic. Once metabolic rate is high, no need to do anything really but maintain it.
I’m fairly new here, so I may have missed it being explicitly stated, but are you saying that high temps equal high metabolic rate?
That is the general consensus. I don’t always feel that more is necessarily better though. I’m of the mindset that how you feel is the number one marker of health. Of course people with really low temps and cold hands and feet generally don’t feel to well. So temps can be a good tool on the journey to better metabolism but I feel some people can become a little bit obsessed about achieving high temps.
Turned my Dad vegan at the same time as turning myself vegan. I did this with one statement: I handed him a pro-vegan pamphlet and said, “I’m only giving this to people I love.” I wish I hadn’t known how powerful that statement was, especially when delivered from a daughter to a father. Ten (eleven, twelve?) years later, he is still vegan (I haven’t been for 6 or 7 years), and there is nothing I can say (no Weston A Price pamphlet I can give) that is powerful enough to change his mind.
It’s a big, big regret (and lesson) of mine.
I try not to give out any unasked for advice. I tend to be on the receiving end of it. I am often interrupted in my enjoyment of my food by some obese person telling me something like “that will give you a heart attack” or something like that. The irony! I usually diplomatically tell them that I am eating what my family ate going way back and that they have consistently lived fit and well into their 90s.
I have also been the target of food shaming at work by some crazy women, who are probably envious.
“The worst vice is ADvice.” Just study, experiment, listen to your body, challenge your beliefs, keep an open mind, and try to find information until you’re confused. That works for me and prevents falling for dogmatic diet religions.
I recall those 2 weeks I lived with a saturated fat nazi. He was always insisting I eat food that he had used vegetable oil in cooking or even worse, something out of a can. He ignored me when I told him that those things gave me indigestion. I couldn’t cook anything decently and there was always such a fuss, he could not let me be. Lard became my shield, which is ironic as it only 40% saturated iirc. He went on and on about his arteries, yet he was on so many medications and drank a lot of alcohol. He also ate chinese food twice a week (fried in pork fat) and ate cakes on Sunday (more lard). He was crazy and the fuss he made was enough to have me eat out.
So fucking true.
The ironic thing is, if you wouldn’t have gotten caught up in health evangelism years ago, you wouldn’t have an audience to share this message with now.
And if you knew then what you know now, you might not have started blogging at all.
But I’m glad you did. It’s like we all got to go on this journey together.
And now we’re pretty much back where we started. Some things a little better, some things a little worse. A lot of things learned, a few of them remembered. A lot of habits tried, a few of them kept. A little less stupid, a little more wise.
Nice comment, Chris.
I think the difference between what you say about Matt and all we other mortals is that health is his life passion and his life work, while others (maybe just me) have just borrowed that passion to try to convince people.
But sometimes it doesn’t stick, and we find our real passions emerge after we deal with all our food issues.
Totally right dude
Matt, you did the same thing for dieting and nutrition as Judas Iscariot did for Christianity – you betrayed it so that it can get stronger than ever!
Yea that comparison sucks big time but nevermind, haha
At various times, over 20 years, I’ve sung the praises of:
1. GAPS/SCD/Body Ecology/”Candida” Diets/Paleo
2. Macrobiotics
3. “General” vegetarianism (with dabbling in raw food veganism, though I never jumped on that bandwagon)
4. Pleomorphism and “Alkalinizing” diets
5. Metabolic Typing Diets
6. Ray Peat-style eating
At this point, I no longer have anything to say about “diets” other than “everyone has their own unique constitution and metabolism, which one should discover by looking inward instead of looking outside one’s self and experience to diet gurus.”
That’s probably the only sane thing I can say at this point about food, other than anyone who supports a particular diet dogma by quoting “scientific studies” can go to hell, since every one of the above diets uses scientific studies to back up what the preach…
The only food I can find that exists in nature that isn’t totally reviled by some dogmatic group is, perhaps, raspberries and blueberries, but even they might come up against fructose phobes and macrobiotic practitioners who find them too “yin.” All other foods have significant detractors….
The first time my husband met my parents when we were dating, I served tofu lasagna. It’s a running joke in our family. I remember ranting on about the virtues of a raw vegan diet to my brother and mother while holding the book that convinced me of it all and directly quoting. They didn’t buy into it, thank goodness. Actually, the funny thing is, no one in my family ever converted to any of my health ideals at the time, but now that I am completely over it all and eat whatever I want and never say a word about what anyone “should or should not” do and eat things i once believed were of the devil, some in my family are now turning to “health” fads in an attempt to get “healthy.” And I now find myself telling my mother, “just eat the gluten, eat the dairy, eat what you want for cryin’ out loud! Quit obsessing about what you are eating or about losing those 20 pounds so you can fit into that wardrobe of size 10’s you have been holding onto for 10 years thinking you will someday fit back into them! Get rid of the clothes, find something fun to get involved in, and just live!”
Wow, does this ever resonate with me. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way… losing friends.
And in my insane quest for “alternative” help with my goiter I went to an “alternative” sort of doctor who had me take colloidal silver in tablet form, and mega doses of iron, for 3 months. I went into a huge decline, developed a gluten intolerance, gut dysbiosis, malabsorption, peripheral neuropathy, exhaustion, etc…. thanks doc! Still getting over it 2.5 YEARS later.
The fact that, no matter what’s true or not, people are always trying different approaches that fit with their current belief systems, brings this koan to mind:
———————————————-
One day a fifty-year-old student of enlightenment said to Shinkan:
“I have studied the Tendai school of thought since I was a little boy, but one thing in it I cannot understand. Tendai claims that even the grass and trees will become enlightened. To me this seems very strange.”
“Of what use is it to discuss how grass and trees become enlightened?” asked Shinkan. “The question is how you yourself can become so. Did you even consider that?”
“I never thought of it that way,” marveled the old man.
“Then go home and think it over,” finished Shinkan.
I was a vegan for almost 18 years! At some point after many years of eating this way I had to go to the dentist for what I thought was a problem tooth. Problem was I needed extension work, like a dozen cavities and a root canal. Of course mr. know it all thought to himself if only I could eaten a raw food diet this never would have happened. Luckily no one in my family listened to me and they just thought I was nuts, and they were and still are right.
Oh, yes, evangelism.
I stopped being an evangelist not when I found out that what I said was wrong (it was), but when I understood anything I felt I needed to understand about my own eating disorder and I naturally started reading other things.
Life has been absolutely awesome since then. It’s amazing how much stress you create in your life by trying to shut your mouth when you feel like screaming: “If you keep eating [evil food] you will die!!” at friends gatherings.
I must confess I still sometimes say out loud things like “yuck, that has so much oil in it I wouldn’t ever eat it”, but it’s just my opinion. I guess. :)
Direct Sales. Supplements. (cowering)
Worst was the realization that I was trusting my health and well-being (and that of my family) to complete strangers. Our most fundamental and primal need, entrusted to something that may as well have been just some automated script on the internet.
After years and years of trying just about every diet (except Vegan and Vegetarianism….but I have done my fair share of drinking LOTS of green smoothies), I am back to the point of what I was eating about seven years ago or so. A diet (but not a DIE-t) made up of a combination of Italian, French and American food (except for when I’m craving Indian food or Thai food or any other good stuff). Yummy stuff! Suits me well and keeps me going. When I ate that stuff before, I was moving around A LOT more and weighed almost 100 pounds less than I do now. I didn’t really have too many health problems then either (until I started reading all of Dr Mercola’s articles…then I had LOTS of health problems, ha).
I’m starting to slowly lose all my diet and refeed weight. I’ll probably never get back to where I was healthwise or weightwise. But I’m feeling a lot better now than I was a few years ago…deep into the abyss of my DIE-ts.
Now, I try really, really hard not to be evangelistic about food. Sometimes I talk smack about PUFAs and I tell people to eat more food/eat what they feel like eating, but that’s it.
Sometimes I want to start a blog (that really could help people), but all the stupid diets people in that niche are on would drive me crazy.
It wouldn’t be focused on food, but I know food would come up. And I’d probably post some of my favorite French recipes (because of the sheer yumminess of it) and then get ostracized for it…sigh.
Italian recipes too! I learned some great recipes from our Italian neighbors when we lived in Italy. They’re sooooooo unlike Olive Garden and delicious…;)
No evictions, but I told a colleague that GABA would be great to calm her nerves and she got the worst migraine of her life, for 3 days.
The sad thing is, I was totally mystified ;)
I don’t think I could recommend even so much as a cheese and tomato sandwich to her these days, and be taken seriously …
Ha, I’m glad I’m a little bit of a wuss when it comes to giving definitive statements. My friends laugh at how often I use qualifying statements or sugarcoat things, but honestly it has saved me from sounding dumb quite a few times when I’ve been into different health-related movements
I am a Personal Trainer. I convinced a client wanting to lose weight to try Primal.
She lost 8kg and then proceeded to develop serious thyroid issues. By the time she got them back under control she had put back on the weight. I don’t think she has ever put the two together, but I still feel bad.
Last year I preached the gospel of paleo and no one listened. Now that I’ve moved on, everyone I know is going paleo. I started to spout some 180 stuff and just realized that this time I’m keeping my mouth shut. Lesson learned. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon too many times in life.
I will still tell people the negatives of low-carb. Sometimes they listen and at least moderate.
The year I was a vegetarian I went from 190lbs to 240. The next 3 years I did low carb, paleo and the cyclical Ketogenic diet and went from 240 to 260-270 (depending on water weight). The whole time I was preaching and getting fatter and fatter. The more they didn’t work the more I preached. I was trying to convince myself I wasn’t the idiot that I was.
Diets don’t freaking work and I think it’s funny that the new trend in diet books is they say THAT for 200 pages and call it a diet book. I’ve been on the FUCKIT diet since last Nov (also when I found 180 degreehealth) and my weight is slowly going down without any work whatsoever.
I also went from working out 4-5 days a week to just 2 and my results are BETTER and I don’t have aches and pains anymore. My friends at work that do P90X and Insanity are constantly complaining about back and shoulder pain. When they preach to me I see myself 5 years ago and I understand, dude. They will collapse and outgrow it.
Really wish Mom would shut the f*** up about wheat belly…
Oh, the absolute crap I’ve chatted regarding health purity.
Eh, I was actually so bad – a few years ago I never seemed to ever step down off of my raw / wholefood vegan pulpit to preach of said diet choices virtues… & the hilarious thing is I was the one covered in acne, freezing cold all the time whatever the weather, exhausted from just having to walk up the stairs… OMG & I still haven’t managed to regain the full colour in my lips that seemed to drain out of them from my extreme dietary restrictions. Gah.
Never again.
I am definitely starting to believe that a raw, whole food diet is tough on the digestive tract and does not allow for the proper absorption of the nutrients of these foods. I feel like the maximum absorption of micro nutrients in the most easily digestible way is key. I’m also starting to believe that the sugar and easily digestible carbs a lot of diets rail against, are important in giving the body the energy to digest food better.
I am so with you on those beliefs. These past couple of months I’ve chosen to go by my gut & how it responds to foods – I bloat out after eating a single apple on an empty stomach now (probably from abusing my tummy with so much fibrous acidic low-sugar fruit for the last 6 or so years from becoming such an orthorexic anorexic mess) but, as a good example, my tummy remains it’s usual concave self after eating the wondrous 1000 calorie bowl of potato gnocchi & tomato sauce I chose to have for my breakfast this morning; mmm, I ? carbs.
Oh & don’t even start me talking about eating the raw vegan ‘gourmets’ manna from frickin’ heaven that is nuts OMG those to my insides have & will always seem to be like the equivalent of eating tree bark: impossibly indigestible. Bleh.
Yes, I did way too many nuts and raw carrots. During my re-feeding I got a lot of bloat as my weight gained. It was a little alarming because I equated the big tummy with all of the extra pounds. Fortunately as my digestion has improved the bloat has gone away.
As my body composition began changing for the better on low carb/paleo people started asking questions. I would tell them what I was doing and slowly I noticed people around me doing a similar thing.
They could only see the muscles and abs but didn’t see or feel the fatigue, dizziness, depression, low sex drive, cold temps, confusion, joint pain etc..
Im sure now that I am putting on weight, and eating what ever the hell I want they think Im even more crazy..
After all, aren’t 6 pack abs the epitome of health? pfft I wish.
Now that I know what I know, I always wonder how many of the very “healthy” looking people I see jogging around the lake with a six pack showing, are secretly feeling like shit.
YES. I live in California where there are a-plenty of health fanatics. When I see people pounding out the miles, I know some are probably doing great, but that others might be really suffering. Especially on runners, you see so many knee braces and so on. “Knowing” what I “know” now (ha ha), I wonder if taking a break might let those things heal up.
Have you gone over your older books to see if they still conform to your present take on what/how to eat? I had gotten pretty confused from reading the “Digestive Ruin and Recovery Book” – which tells us that refined sugar and fructose are big evils… (or is that still applicable for people with IBS and digestive issues?) Does that also apply to what to/or not to eat with GERD?
Slowly getting to that. We just revised the original Diet Recovery and uploaded a new version on Kindle this weekend. Sometime next year I hope to do that with all of them.
Here’s something refreshing written by Marc David – Eating Psychology http://psychologyofeating.com/is-there-anything-new-in-nutrition-worth-talking-about/
Nina – I like Marc David and some of his ideas. Intuitive eating.
The embarrassment of having preached paleo to some degree was enough to cure for the most part. I can’t stop talking overly enthausiastic about my newest health interests and the topic of health and wellbeing in general though. Nor do I want to downtune my enthausiams, I enjoy it. I act as I am moved to do so.
I am somewhat appalled that you would eat foie gras. In general I think people who buy and eat factory farm animal product, with the knowledge of how they are treated, and without regret, to be somewhat evil. Foie gras, well let me say that, apart from my strong aversion to gore, I would be willing to shove a shotgun down the troat of those that produce it, aim for their genetalia, and pull the trigger. In my opinion, people who eat it deserve to lose their pinky toe by use of a rusty old pockets knive’s saw blade.
I love how people that are against animal cruelty have such violent fantasies.
Can you really make the generalization that people who are against animal cruelty have more violent fantasies than people who are not against animal cruelty?
I doubt it. Also, I’m more against human cruelty. And, of course, I was exaggerating. I was just portraying my strong aversion against these practices and my strong dislike and anger towards people who contribute to it.
Can you really make the generalization that people that eat factory farm products are evil? Don’t think so. And the only reason I make a generalization about animal creulity people are because of the rants I have read and the acts of violence some of them commit in the name of their cause. You state that you act as your moved to and then post some shit about blowing someone’s balls off with a shotgun? Joke or not you seem to back up what I say.
XD
No I cannot make that generalization, and I didn’t. I added two parts: (1) with full knowledge of how the animals are treated and (2), without regret. Then I do think I can make the generalization that those people are somewhat evil.
Also, I’m actually a very peaceful guy. Last time I had a fight was when I was 12 yo and another kid started punching me in the face because of a misunderstanding. And, I’m a very capable fighter. Whenever someone picks a fight with me I almost always smile and raise my hands, works every time.
Great post. I think it’s important to spend time on this kind of practical philosophical stuff. Ideas like this that can inform how we live in a broad sense can be really useful. I went vegan almost 30 years ago. I preached a lot, but it didn’t last long and my vegan friend caught me trying to sneak a snickers… “that doesn’t look vegan.” (He is trying to save up money to go to a third world country to have his rotting teeth patched up). If only I had learned my lesson then. I’ve always been preachy about whatever I was doing, diet or otherwise. I’ve gotten a lot better, but it’s still tempting and I’m quite sure I could be more self aware. The last year and a half has been somewhat humbling. I talk quite a bit about what I’m doing with re-feeding lately, and some of the theory behind it, but I have found myself over the years using more and more qualification in general. I’m not sure people always hear that part though. 180D ideas aren’t my ideas and not stemming from my experience, so I try to keep that in mind. I also think it’s good to keep in mind that our experience may not be relevant to other people. How many diet gurus are borne out of the mistaken assumption that they are? If I think someone might fit the profile of a person that would benefit from Matts ideas, then I just send them here.
Yes, it’s far better to point people to a source of info then to try to force it on them. If they are really interested they will follow up on their own. I have become much better at detecting when people’s eyes are glazing over when I talk to them :) I think as we get older we start to realize how much we really don’t know. It’s not that we shouldn’t be passionate about things but that passion should be tempered by the memories of all of the times we had to pull our foot out of our mouth.
Oh yeah, and how about posting those breakdancing vids!
I can absolutely picture a pre-teen Matt Stone busting some mad moves in his Adidas gear. BRING IT!
Wait. What was your music of choice, Matt?!!
I was so obnoxious in my proselytizing orthorexic ways that when I tried to tell a friend who had also experimented with the paleo diet about Matt and 180degreehealth, she rolled her eyes and told me I should know by now that following some guru who claimed to have all the answers wasn’t healthy.
All very true. I’ve certainly cried wolf too many times for people to take me seriously, not that i care too much and i’m not too evangelical. Now if i’m eating a particular way i’d rather just say i don’t like the taste of a particular food, coming across as a fussy eater isn’t nearly as painful as coming across as an orthorexic.
I know how obsessive i am and how my mind loves these big complex eating protocols, Ray Peat anyone? And i see it on the forums, a lot of people never finding an answer to their health problems through nutrition because the problem’s with their thinking and forums are their social outlet. They’d hate not to have to be on them.
Once i was offered a fantastic job in a ski town in the Alpes. I nearly didn’t take it because i was on the ‘raw tip’ at the time and worried about the lack of available fruit. Now how healthy is that lol?
My mother always warns me about eating too many eggs. I rarely eat eggs now. Or, she still tells me I need to eat more sugar. Yeah, that paleo period was pretty bad. She’s an MD and there was time I didn’t listen…
Aww shit. I was just proselytizing yesterday to my coworkers about the health risks of drinking too much water when they wanted to start yet another “water challenge”. With charts and gold stars and prizes.
A water challenge?! WTF is wrong with people!!?
We’ve been doing it for years based on drinking half your body weight in oz. That puts me at about…135 oz a day? Back in the day I read that was the correct formula and convinced everyone else to go along. And I like to earn those stickers. I was completely ridiculed of course for even suggesting it was no longer a good idea. I’m the guru of the room…despite being the biggest health mess currently. Not at all embarrassing…
Health evangelism is really fucking scary. It’s almost funny while still seriously screwed up.
I wrote about this very topic on my blog. I don’t want to post the link here, cuz then I’ll get an email with a ‘comment’ about said post and that’s stupid.
I’m very happy I dropped my diet dogma and started eating whatever the hell I wanted. My wife is happier too. I’m surprised she didn’t kill me.
Matt, I would seriously love to see you do a post on baby food. My wife and I are expecting our first in a few months, and while I’m already hip to the breastfeeding/egg yolks/butter thang, I’d like to hear some of your suggestions for baby foods too. Thanks so much for everything you do, Matt. You are most informative and crazy funny.
I’ll be coming out with a book about feeding kids very soon actually Pat. Food Ninjas: How to Raise Your Kids to be Lean, Mean, Eating Machines. I’ll try to throw a little in there about baby food for ya.
Thanks Matt! You da best!
I would love it if you read my latest blog post, actually. It took me a very long time to gather my thoughts and finally write it. I was kind of screwed up for a while, and a little scared. I thought ‘paleo/primal’ was the only way for so long, but I was still fucking broken, even more so. I had to admit to myself that no, it’s not the only way. It was a great learning experience, but I’m so glad I saw the light. Dude, I’m drinking BEER again! YAY BEER! And ice cream! Isn’t ice cream the greatest thing, um, ever?
Health fanaticism is so much like religious extremism and I cannot believe people don’t see that. That’s the sad part, and the worst part, I think.
I’m stoked to read you’re releasing a book on feeding kids! I can’t wait! November 15th is our little guy’s due date. Maybe it’ll be a ‘birthday’ present? ;)
Thanks again, Matt!
– Mama Primal Pat
It will never end. The latest is a the Prancercise lady whose You Tube video went viral:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-50GjySwew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCAO0Ga7oMU
http://prancercise.com/
She admits that eating fish isn’t in keeping with a horse’s diet, lol.
Matt, I read your article a couple of days ago and today while browsing Tumblr I came across this quote from Malcom X that kind of ties with people and their diet preachings.
“Don’t be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn’t do what you do, or think as you think. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today”
There was a time when all of the low-carbers and dieters did not know what they do know. Just some food for thought.