Let's Be Honest

I was poking through Diet Doctor's New page this morning (which is an RSS feed of lots of low carb and paleo blogs), and happened to see an interesting looking post by Dr. Adam Nally titled Much Ado About Ketosis.  The post was a pretty good one; it wasn't exactly enlightening to me since I've already read just about everything that has to do with ketosis, insulin, low carb, paleo, and food in general over the last three years, but it was good nonetheless and I'm sure it will help educate plenty of people about this subject, and that's really important in our society of sheep blindly following the conventional food gurus. 

However, there was something he said that kind of touched a nerve.  It's clear to me that he didn't intentionally try to trick people with what he said, unlike many a government food committee, but the point he was making is important to the conversation about low carb and paleo eating.  I don't want to seem like I'm attacking Dr. Nally, because I'm really not.  I think his writing is good and that he's doing a good thing by educating people.  It's just that what he said follows a pattern I've seen in the low carb and paleo scene, and I think we need to point this out and get really honest with ourselves.

So what the heck and I even talking about?  Well, here's the comment Dr. Nally made that bothered me:

Our bodies recognize the seasons we are in based upon inherent hormone release.  The key hormone is insulin.  Insulin is the seasonal indicator to our bodies.  Insulin tells our bodies when it is a “time of plenty” and when it was a “time of famine.”  Why?  You ask.  We didn’t have refrigerators 100 years ago and you were lucky if you had a root cellar.  The body needs to know when to store for the famine (the winter) that was around the corner. Insulin is that signal.
During the summer, potatoes, carrots, corn and other fruits are readily available.  These are all starchy carbohydrates and they all require the body to stimulate an insulin response so that they can be absorbed.  Insulin stimulates fat storage.  Just like bears, our bodies were designed to store for the winter.

During the winter, when carbohydrates are less prevalent, insulin production decreases to baseline levels.  If you think back in history, your grandparents probably used stored meats & cheeses that could be salted or smoked for preserving during this time of year.  Those crossing the plains were commonly found with pemmican, a concentration of fat and protein used as a portable nutrition source in the absence of other food.  Think about conversations you may have had with your grandmother when she told you that for Christmas, she received an orange.  A single orange for a gift?! Many of my patients drink 12-15 of them in a glass every morning.  The winter diets of our grandparents were very low in starches and carbohydrates.  When carbohydrate intake is low, little insulin is produced.

And here is the comment I made to his post:

I appreciate your post and the good data found within it, but I have to argue one important point you made. As a gardener and wanna-be homesteader, I know for a fact that there were plenty of carbs available to most folks before refrigeration, and yes, even in much older times. You mention that carrots, potatoes and corn are plentiful in summer but not in winter. It’s funny you mention those foods, because they are amongst the longer storing crops. And actually, potatoes have to last all winter long because you start next year’s crop by planting last year’s tubers. Fruit is easily dried by cutting it up and placing it in the sun. Many native Americans did this with wild native fruits. They even made fruit leathers. And while we’re on native plants, the native Americans also grew native winter squashes, which last anywhere from a few months to literally two years. And let’s not forget acorns, which are super plentiful, easy to store, and nearly 100% carbs.

As for grandma getting one orange for Christmas, that was because shipping fruit was nearly impossible before our modern highway system. However, that doesn’t mean grandma didn’t have fruit in the winter, though admittedly she didn’t eat as much as we do today, and mostly what she ate was preserved in a heavy sugar syrup.

I’m not trying to be a troll. I think your message is a good one, but we need to be honest when we talk about low carb and paleo. Otherwise, we’re just as bad as the health officials and scientists that spout bad dietary advice.

Yes, it's pretty easy to store carbs for the winter, and it seems paleolithic people did indeed do this whenever possible.  Tom Naughton, the guy who introduced me to low carb in the first place, and a blogger I can trust to always be honest and upfront, mentioned this last fall in a post titled My Previous View of the Paleo Diet Got Squashed. 

Again, I'm not trying to bash Dr. Nally.  What I really wanted to get across with this post is that we need to be really open and honest when we talk about food in this low carb/paleo community.  The conventional wisdom about food, with it's grain-based pyramid and low fat hysteria, is based on lies and untruths, bad science and money-making agendas.  Those of us who are fortunate enough to have found out about these lies early in the game, and who are trying to spread that information to the rest of the world, have a responsibility to not only be truthful but also well educated.  It's easy to say that past people didn't have carbs in the winter and therefore neither should we, but that's simplistic thinking.  Maybe it's true for some populations, but it's clearly not true for the human species as a whole.  That kind of logic is akin to the idea that fat causes you to become fat; it makes sense at first because it's such a simple idea, but it's clearly not right. 

Don't get me wrong; this isn't just about Dr. Nally's post, either.  I've seen this a lot over the years reading blogs and articles.  When you're trying to make a point that you believe in, it's easy to simplify data or ignore conflicting information.  It's not something we do because we're evil; I've been known to do it myself, and I'm pretty sure I'm not a bad person.  We do it because we truly believe in what we're saying, and we want to help people.  I totally get that.  But it's not the way we should be acting.  If we're dishonest or not totally upfront with people, they may listen to us at first, but then after a while it will breed mistrust and contempt, and may end up turning them away from this way of eating all together.  They may even end up feeling the same way about low carb/paleo as they do about the standard American diet; like they can't trust us, and don't know what to believe.  Which would be a shame, because this is clearly a very healthy diet.

So here's my call to every low carb/paleo/WAPF/whole foods blogger out there; be totally honest when you blog.  If you're trying to educate people, make sure to do your own research and not just depend on another's opinions.  If something seems overly complicated, don't assume telling the whole truth will confuse people.  If you don't understand all of the information yourself, be honest and tell people that and give them links so that maybe they can read it and make their own conclusions.  We don't have to be perfect; as a society, we're still trying to figure out what's best for our bodies and our health.  But we should at least be honest.

The Lure of Skinny

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, about weight and food and what it means to be healthy.  I read Body of Truth, which is a scientific look at obesity and how it affects health.  I've been doing some soul searching.  What I've discovered, through all of that searching and thinking and reading, is that our society and their longing for thinness is pretty messed up. 

It actually makes me pretty mad, if I had to be honest.  Mad at scientists, at doctors, at women's magazines, diet gurus, Hollywood, the weight loss community, and myself.  I've been trying for a couple weeks to get these feelings into words, but I've been struggling with it.  My emotions are so raw and tangled up.  It's almost the way I felt when I first watched Tom Naughton's Fathead documentary and found out that the low fat/high carb standard American diet was a sham that was making us all sick.  Only this time, it's somehow worse. 

Why am I mad, exactly?  I talked about it some in a previous post, but I didn't go into a bunch of detail there.  And since I wrote that, I've read Body of Truth, which is just fascinating.  I read it in two days, I think, which is very quickly for me, and I plan on reading it again soon with highlighters in hand.  It all goes back to weight and health, with one equaling the other in the collective mind of our society.  A skinny person is healthy, and a healthy person is skinny.  You're fat because you're unhealthy, and you're unhealthy because you're fat. 

When I joined the low carb scene back in 2012, I was totally revved up to get going on this plan.  I was a diehard believer, and I knew that in just a short while, the weight would start falling off of me.  So I buckled down, ate as low carb as I could manage as a vegetarian, and watched the scale.  However, aside from an initial 7 pound drop the first week, the scale never moved.  I started eating meat a few months later (because vegetarian low carb is really really hard), and waited for the scale to move.  Again, it never did.  I tricked myself into believing I was getting smaller, losing inches, but looking back at it now, I don't think I actually did.  I have a way of making myself believe something when I really want it. 

Then Chad and I started cutting out the junk and went more of a paleo bent.  Again, I waited for the pounds to drop.  I started lifting weights and I was running.  No change.  I gained a little while on vacation, and lost it again when I went back on the diet, but that was the extent of it for me.  Meanwhile, Chad was losing weight and it made me feel bad that he could do it but I couldn't.

That's not to say I don't think these ways of eating are bad.  While I was watching the scale, waiting for a miracle to happen, my health was improving tremendously.  I had more energy, I was feeling stronger and happier and more clear headed, my ice pick headaches went away, my menstrual cycle normalized, my fingernails started getting stronger, my moodiness went away (mostly; I am human, after all). 

But because the weight wasn't coming off, and everyone in the low carb/paleo crowd said it should be, I thought I was a failure.  I kept all of these feelings inside, though.  I didn't want anyone to know that I was feeling like that, or that I couldn't lose weight even though everyone else seemed to have no problems with it.  In my mind, I was clearly doing something wrong.  It felt like my dirty little secret.

Then, like I explained in another post, I gained 10 pounds over the 2013 holidays, and then another 5 pounds over the 2014 holidays, and no matter how hard I try, how many carbs I cut, how small my portions are, how much fat I eat, how much I exercise, how much I watch sugar and grain consumption, how much I cut calories, no matter how much I desperately I want it, I can't lose that weight.  I've literally tried everything I can think of to lose this weight, to the point where I got obsessed with it.  I would look at myself in the mirror and get so angry at myself and swear that I would do better the next day.  My binge eating got worse, and I felt so out of control.  I'd be so good for weeks, but nothing changed on the scale, so I would binge, and that would make me feel even worse about myself.  I cried because I feared that I would continue to gain the weight and there would be nothing I could do about it. 

(To be clear, a binge eating episode is different for everyone who has the problem; some people consume 5000 calories, while others only eat 100.  The real sign that it's a binge is that you can't stop yourself from starting, you feel like you have no control over yourself while you're doing it, and once you're done you feel absolutely terrible and guilt stricken.  For me personally, a typical binge is probably 400 calories, and since I don't drive, it's almost always food in the house which is all whole natural foods, usually of a fatty nature.  Not that I'm trying to justify what I binge on; I just want to make the picture clearer.) 

And then by chance, I found the book Women Afraid to Eat, read it through, then bought and read Body of Truth shortly after.  Weight isn't equal to health, these books said.  Weight loss is incredibly hard to maintain (yes, even for some low carb/paleo people).  Your body fights too much weight loss.  Dieting is bad for you!  The effects of dieting are far worse than the effects of being overweight as far as health goes.  Actually, being overweight (bmi of 25-29.9) is a pretty healthy place to be, as far as longevity goes.  And the terrible thing about this is, scientists have known all of this since the 60s.  More modern science only confirms what these earlier researchers found. 


I have totally cut out the schemes to lose weight.  For one blessed month now, I have had no get-skinny-quick plans.  I have eaten mostly very healthfully; lower carb paleo WAPF style foods; veggies, eggs, meat, dairy, raw milk, fruit, good oils and fats, resistant starches.  I have mostly tried to eat at meals (breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 5:30pm), and only until I'm satisfied.  However, I'm not being strict about it, either.  I've eaten cake and ice cream at a party, I've made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, I munch on candy when I visit my mom's house, and Chad and I have gone out for ice cream a couple of times.  Thirty blessed days of no binging and no emotional eating.  Thirty days!  And I haven't felt guilty eating the junk, either.  I try to keep it low, because of course I know it's not good to eat sugar all the time, and I know that it will make me feel bad and be tired and moody. 

I'm trying not to think about weight at all.  I'm trying to eat for health and wholeness, and let the scale fall where it may.  I do check my weight occasionally, though, because of my intense fear that I'm going to start gaining a bunch of weight.  After a month (a month!) of eating whatever I wanted, and eating sugar and other junk whenever I wanted (within reason), I haven't gained any weight at all. 

I've read a lot about set points and how your body wants to be at a certain weight.  Not many people in the low carb/paleo community seem to like this idea (for that matter, I don't know any diet group that does, and why would you?  That's basically saying dieting is going to fail).  I have a bunch of reservations about it myself, but I can't help wondering if it's really true.  Is my set point 200 pounds?  When I weight 275 pounds, was it because I ate so much junk that I forced my body to gain all that weight against its will?  When I got down to 175, I was absolutely miserable and couldn't stay there for more than a few weeks.  I was happy at 185, but it's been five years since I  got to that weight, and that's the amount of time when a dieter starts creeping back up to their starting weight.  Am I going to get back up to 215, where I was before going on a low calorie diet?  I hope not.  I'm having trouble fully accepting these extra 15 pounds and loving my body with the extra roundness.  But if I do gain the other 15 pounds, it won't be because of my diet or lack of self control.  I know that now.  I also know that the extra 15 pounds won't make me unhealthy, either.  I bet I'm healthier than most thin people eating a SAD. 

The real reason I started writing tonight was because I wanted to talk about the lure of skinniness and what it can do to a person.  Since I've spent so much time rambling tonight about everything else, I think I'll save that post for another time.