The “e-book” part is important.  I don’t own a Kindle or other digital reader because I enjoy the feel of an old-fashioned paper book in my hands, but I have a digital copy of this one stored on my computer, and I’m glad I do.  Throughout the book, Nikoley cites blog posts (from his own blog and many others), online articles and YouTube videos as resources and –- you’ve got to like this –- embedded links to those resources right there on the page.

Great feature.  As much as I believe in tracking down sources, sometimes I don’t feel like glancing back and forth between a bibliography and my computer screen while trying to accurately type in a URL that’s 75 characters long. With the e-book, I just click the link.

(For those who buy the paperback book, Nikoley provides the URL of a web page with all the same links, by the way.)

But enough about the joys of hyperlinks. I enjoyed this book because it’s Richard Nikoley being Richard Nikoley:  analytical, humorous, encouraging, provocative and — as you know if you read his Free the Animal blog — occasionally pissed off!

Weaving together strands of evolutionary logic, findings from research, and personal experiences, Nikoley argues the case the book’s title suggests:  the key to lasting weight loss and superior health is to stop following the advice peddled by the anti-fat hysterics and to eat like our paleo ancestors:

Good health is natural. It’s not something that needs to be industrialized or drug-induced. By eating natural foods available to us, humans can enjoy good health and longevity. Technology should not separate us from or destroy the natural or man-made habitats we and non-human animals need to live and thrive in good health. The key to being lean, strong, and healthy is in your head. Use your intuition, just like animals do… The burden is squarely on you. Modern institutions only want to sell you stuff. They don’t care about your belly or health. They care about their bottom line and your spending.

Free The Animal: Lose Weight & Fat With The Paleo Diet is an easy read (you can tackle it in an afternoon), but covers a lot of ground.  The easiest way to describe the topics covered is to list the chapter titles:

• The Paleo, Primal, Ancestral Lifestyle
• Your Inner Animal
• The Standard American Diet And Other Diet Health Disasters
• Fat Is King
• The Cholesterol Con
• Natural Disease Prevention
• Eat Like A Caveman
• The Power Of Fasting
• Evolutionary Exercise And Fitness
• A Primal Weight Loss Plan
• Recipes And Supplements
• Success Stories

Before describing what a paleo diet is and why you should be living on one, Nikoley explains what’s wrong with the diet the “experts” keep pushing on us.  Did I mention that he gets a little hot under the collar now and then?  Well, here’s why:

… Another reason grain is said to be healthier than animal fat—the real reason, in my opinion— is that if you do a little research, you’ll find that the ADA is in the pay of the world’s leading companies promoting and profiting from obesity and ill-health by producing cheap, highly processed “food.” You have to dig deep, but if you look at the fine print of any alphabet soup “health” institution website, you can usually find who’s paying them to admonish you with unhealthful advice. The American Dietetic Association is sponsored by Aramark, Coca-Cola, Hershey, National Dairy Council, Abbott, CoroWise, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Pepsico, Unilever, Soyjoy . . . you get the idea. The American Diabetes Association’s list of sponsors is essentially the same, with the big drug companies thrown in. Do you think these companies are paying the ADAs to diss sugar-water drinks, processed foods and other sources of carbohydrate overload? And if not, how kindly are the ADAs going to take to having its affiliated dietitians and nutritionists contradicting ADA guidelines and policy?

… Think about it: fatty meats and eggs are wonderful, nutritious foods with literally millions of years of evolutionary credentials, not to mention the visceral pleasure almost anyone in their right mind gets from eating them. Yet they get tossed aside by self-important minions. And who are the self-important minions? The experts who have been telling us for years that fat is unhealthy, that’s who. The ones who have blood on their hands, as far as I’m concerned. They have, through their arrogant ignorance and disregard for the unassailable logic of human evolution, condemned millions upon millions to moribund lives of physical unattractiveness, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and the list goes on. As we can see by looking around or looking it up, the statistics get worse year after year, in the very face of the experts’ changing advice. But do they ever show humility? No, the best we get is more authoritarian arrogance. “You eat too much. You don’t exercise enough. You haven’t been listening to us and you’re not properly following our diktats.”

In the chapter on Natural Disease Prevention, he relates a personal story about the power of paleo diets to overcomes diseases –- one that’s similar to hundreds of personal stories I’ve heard from Fat Head fans:

My mom, in her early 70s, is a Type 2 diabetic. I have witnessed that the “help” she used to get from the medical establishment went beyond malpractice. When she was diagnosed some years ago, there was considerable confusion about what she ought to eat. She was aware of the low-carb advice, but her doctors were telling her to eat low-fat—advice that is pervasive throughout the medical community. As we all know, it is very hard to maintain a low-carb diet that’s also low in fat. You have to eat something. Making up the difference with protein can get very unpleasant. Just in terms of sheer mass, fat is more than twice as energy efficient as either protein or carbs. On this recommended low-fat diet, my mom’s blood glucose levels kept creeping up. She’d have huge swings, with spikes well over 200 and more.

To put that in perspective, a normal pancreas will release enough insulin to keep blood glucose no higher than about 145 mg/dL as an absolute spike; normal is in a range of about 80–100. Finally, the doctors determined she had to go on the self-administered shots. She’s no dummy. She could see the downward progression. Type 2s always get worse and worse.

Then my mom went on a super low-carb diet, with no concern for how much fat or protein she ate. She consumed no grains, no grain products, and very limited fruit. Her blood glucose quickly stabilized between 85 and about 105 most of the time. She had been used to shooting two types of insulin, a fast-acting and a time-release; a few weeks into the new diet, she was able to drop the fast acting one. Then, she and my dad hitched up the 5th-wheel trailer for a camping trip. She forgot her insulin at home. They were only a couple of hours away, so it could have been acquired, but she decided to just monitor her blood glucose level closely instead of going home. It stayed in the healthy range: she went the whole weekend without a shot.

One of the reasons I enjoy Nikoley’s blog is that (like yours truly) he’s a libertarian who believes in providing information and then encouraging people to experiment and find their own path.  He doesn’t expect people to follow orders, and he doesn’t issue any.  There’s no “do exactly what I say or you’ll stay fat and then die” nonsense here.  He spends part of one chapter explaining the benefits of grass-fed beef and organic foods, but then writes this:

However, I want to be as inclusive as possible. You can reap the benefits of Paleo by buying food from grocery chains. I also don’t want to discourage someone from the Paleo scene because they feel they don’t measure up if all they can reasonably source is grain-finished meat due to budget or other considerations. It’s a personal choice. Your emphasis should be on getting results first.

I don’t force myself to be a Paleo “purist.” I go out to eat, attend dinner parties at vegetarian friends’ houses, and indulge a little during the holidays. But concentrating on real food and passing on processed carbohydrates has resulted in 60 pounds of fat loss, massive reduction in blood pressure, cessation of prescription medications, fabulous lean muscle and strength gains, and a host of other lifestyle improvements.

I first learned about the benefits of intermittent fasting from Nikoley’s blog.  (I just finished a 24-hour fast last night, in fact.)  If you’ve never tried it, he describes how to get started in the chapter titled The Power Of Fasting. Trust me, once you’ve fasted a few times, you’ll wonder why you ever thought you had to eat three or four times per day, day in and day out.

The chapter on exercise is good too.  Like me, Nikoley used to walk for miles and miles, then wonder why he didn’t lose weight.  (He actually gained 25 pounds over a few years, despite walking thousands of miles.)  I still walk for pleasure, but I’ve learned from people like Nikoley, Fred Hahn and Dr. Doug McGuff that the best exercise for health and weight control is brief, intense exertion.  That’s the method that allowed Nikoley to lose more weight and vastly increase his strength — at age 50.

One of the real pleasures of being a blogger is hearing from readers who’ve made dramatic improvements in their health.  Nikoley passes on some reader success stories in the last chapter (complete with before-and-after pictures), but finishes the book by pointing out what more and more of us have realized:  sure, it’s great that overweight and sick people can re-claim their health and vitality, but it didn’t have to be this way.  If not for the misguided “experts” out there, we wouldn’t have needed to find a road to recovery:

Every single day in this country and around the world, people are subjected to conventional “wisdom” and advice from the likes of Oprah, Dr. Oz, the medical and drug company establishment, the government-institution establishment, the industrial-agriculture food establishment, the talking heads in the media establishment, and health columnists. What kind of advice? Advice that keeps people in their 20s and 30s, and even children, in many cases, obese, immobile, and sick. What’s worse, it keeps them dependent on a system constructed for others’ profit.

And isn’t that what it’s really all about, at the end of the day? The authorities don’t want you using your own mind. They want nothing to do with your reasonable and rational self-experimentation on your own body. No, what they want is for you to recognize their “superior” intelligence and privileged access to information only they know how to properly interpret. They want you to need them—to always look to them for your answers.

They want you to be skeptical—but only towards information that contradicts their diktats. They want to be the authority, the last and final word, always and forever, and they aren’t going to give that up without a fight.

Well, they’ve got themselves a fight.

Damned right they do.

Keep fighting, Richard.  You’re one of the reasons we’re going to win.

No more ‘freshman 15′ for this student

Tom,

First of all I want to thank you for all your work and research that went in to the movie Fat Head.  I found the movie easy to watch thanks to your humor, but also because it was full of facts and most of all transparency, something that I really appreciated.

After watching your movie the first time (around September) I decided that I would try your low carb-high/fat-diet to see if it would do any good for me.  (I’ve always been a little bit overweight even when I was in great shape.)  Almost immediately I dropped around five pounds, but unfortunately after a few days I quit the diet due to harvest and spending such long hours in the fields.

After New Year’s I went back to school to finish up my degree, and after a disagreement with my roommates about the effect of fat on a healthy diet, I made them watch your movie to settle the argument –  after which they realized that they had been misinformed.  After this incident I decided to again go on your diet and have been religious about keeping my carb intake day to around 100g per dat, while my caloric intake remains around 2000 per day (sometimes a little lower).

I can say that it was everything you have said it would be.  The first week I sorely missed carbs and spent long hours dreaming about bowls of pasta and freshly baked bread, but after a few days these cravings died down and I no longer felt hungry in between meals.  After a week I had already lost six pounds.  Now after only two weeks of changing my diet by simply cutting out carbs, I have lost an astonishing 16 pounds, and besides looking better, I feel great.

Again I just want to thank you for dispelling the health myths that have been perpetrated by our government and their scientists.  You now have another disciple spreading the word.

Sincerely,
Phillip

Excellent, Phillip!  (I’m not a disciple-seeker, but keep spreading the word.)

A former vegetarian goes low-carb

Dear Tom –

I’ll try to keep this short and sweet.  I’m sure you get these by the thousands but I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that I saw your documentary. When I was a young kid I had all the energy in the world, I was last to come in from recess every day, but when I turned 8,  I would come home from school and eat a pb&J with my dad and a lot of potato chips, and then two or three hours later have a big plate of enchiladas or spaghetti when my mom got home. I put on weight FAST, and then ceased being active because it’s no fun being the fat kid on the team and I didn’t have the energy anyway.

My aunt was a doctor, and around this time started advising my mom that all the fat in our diet was bad. So we switched from whole milk to fat free, from eggs and bacon for breakfast to cheerios and fruit, and my dad decided it was best for him to become a vegetarian. Well two years later, my dad passed away from a heart attack. My father was an incredibly healthy man (aside from the diet).  He was an iron worker, and when he came home from work he rode his bike for miles. He was actually in the mountains riding his bike with a friend when he died. We were devastated and couldn’t understand why such a thing could even happen to a man like him.

After my mom and I moved to a new state, we got a house with a swimming pool and she bought a big trampoline, and I lost all kinds of weight without even noticing until none of my old clothes fit. Looking back now I realized that my mom, who’s always been naturally thin, never had any starchy or sugary foods in the house at this time.

When I turned 14, urged by what can I only imagine now was pure insanity, I became a vegetarian for about two years. I felt horrible all the time, my eyes were sunken in and my hair started falling out. I gained back a lot of the weight and it felt like I was always sick. So under the advice of my aunt, I went on a super healthy low-fat diet and worked out at least an hour a day until I was glowing red and drenched in sweat — and didn’t lose a pound.

I gave up for a couple years and got all the way up to 180 pounds, until last December. Your documentary has changed my life. I’m 19 years old, and the best part is I feel like a 19-year-old-now. I get up early for school or work every morning, I never feel tired throughout the day, and I can fit into all the cute clothes I’ve always wanted to wear but was too embarrassed. I’ve already lost 14 pounds since New Year’s with little effort on my part. I don’t count calories like I used to; in fact I don’t even think about them any more.

I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen about the benefits of low-carb, including my husband, mother and grandmother. I’ve been reading your blog like a maniac and email bits and pieces to people, like your post about cholesterol and Alzheimer’s to my grandmother. I showed your post about nutritionists and mechanics switching jobs to my husband and he thought it was hysterical. I’ve even talked him into to eating this way; he’s loving it and feeling all the benefits despite formerly having a bread addiction. I can’t say thank you enough! Thank you thank you!

(Just a funny little side note about my aunt:  she probably only gets about 10% of her calories from fat, and she is probably one of the most irritable, grouchy, unhappy women I know.)

Thanks again,
Sarah

Now there’s an interesting correlation:  do low-fat diets make people grumpy, or do grumpy people prefer low-fat diets?  In my case, it was certainly the diet causing the grumpiness.

Either way, Sara, I’m glad to hear you’ve rejected the low-fat nonsense and feel great — as a young person should.  (The good news is that you can also feel great when you’re 53 … trust me on that one.)

Still another former vegetarian goes low-carb

Some months ago, I heard from a woman named Rae.  Here’s that letter first:

Hi Tom,

I know you must hear this all the time, but “Fat Head” made such a huge impact on me. I watched it around the time I was considering bringing 18 years of vegetarianism to an end. What I learned inspired me to learn more, and I realized how I became very overweight while eating a low-fat grain-based diet, why I struggled with depression much of my life (which only began when I became a vegetarian, but I never saw the connection), and why I had to constantly fight the urge to eat whole sticks of butter chased by a bottle of olive oil – obviously my body was telling me something, but I just thought I was a weirdo for craving fat the way I did! And I thought fat was the reason I became fat in the first place!

I’ve been so busy getting reacquainted with fat and meat that I forgot to eat my ‘heart healthy whole grains’ and lost about 35 lbs (and still going!) without really trying. I feel incredible!

THANK YOU!

Rae

That was back in July.  Now here’s a hot-off-presses update from Rae, which included the pictures below:

Hi Tom!

I emailed you several months ago when I had lost about 35 lbs after seeing Fat Head. I wanted you to know now I’ve lost nearly 80 lbs since Fat Head made me re-think everything I had ever learned about food and nutrition. I wish it had been around 10 years ago so I wouldn’t have wasted my 20s being an obese depressed vegetarian. I don’t know how to express my gratitude to you. I do tell people to watch Fat Head when they ask me how I lost weight. But some people are so resistant to anything outside of conventional wisdom! Even though I’ve gotten serious results, because Oprah doesn’t endorse what I am doing, it must not be real. Oh well!

Understandably you might not want to open a file from a stranger, but I just wanted you to see the difference you made. Fat Head totally changed my life. You must get these emails all the time – you’re wracking up some impressive karma! Please don’t stop doing what you’re doing!

Rae

One of the advantages of being married to a secure woman who knows I adore her is that I can say things like this without getting in trouble:  Rae, you don’t just look far leaner and healthier – you’re officially a hottie now.  (I know this because I showed Chareva your before-and-after photos, and she said as much.)

Congratulations, and way to go!

As I was going through our 2011 pictures to gather material for the Naughton Family 2011 DVD (my version of a photo album), the before-and-after really sunk in.  As I explained when I announced that we’d bought a mini-farm, it was only because of Chareva’s considerable imagination that we ended up here.  I took a quick look at the place and was ready to bolt.  It doesn’t make a good first impression when the front pastures look like this:

Well, no big deal … someone with a bush hog can take care of that mess.  I wasn’t put off yet.

Then we saw the house.  Every single window looked like this:

Even the garage doors had huge burglar bars over them.  There were security cameras everywhere, with wires hanging loosely from the walls and ceilings.  The doors — even the ones inside the house – had multiple deadbolts on them.  I assumed the owner had a touch paranoia.  Later, as the owner was moving out, Chareva learned part of the paranoia was because of this:

Yup … the previous owner was the old-fashioned type who kept her savings in a basement safe.  I guess if my entire net worth was all in one place, I’d have it surrounded with burglar bars and security cameras as well.

She never spent any of that net worth on little matters such as cleaning, so the entire house was filthy.  I don’t know if you can tell from this picture, but the stairs and floors all over the house were covered with dust, mold, dirt and dog hair:

As a guy, I don’t put a lot of thought into how a bathroom should decorated, but this sure didn’t make me want to buy the place:

The attic was also infested with wasps, some of whom made occasional sorties into the house.  The roof over the front porch looked like a wasp airport — the O’Hare version, with constant arrivals and takeoffs.

So when Chareva told me we needed to snap this place up before someone else did, I thought she was joking at first.  That’s why she’s the artist and I’m not.  She was seeing what the house and land could be, not what they were.

She ended up serving as the unofficial on-site contractor while I went back to full-time work as an independent programmer.  My only role in the renovating and decorating (besides paying for it) was making occasional suggestions.

Now that Chareva’s vision is a reality, I thought I’d share some before-and-after shots.

The garage (which the previous owner used as an unfinished basement) is now the girls’ playroom.  The garage door is gone, replaced with a wall, door and window.  We still need to find a long, narrow rug for the floor, but the girls enjoy watching TV, playing Wii and creating art projects down there.

I wasn’t crazy about the previous owner’s taste in colors:  aqua blue and white (dirty, unwashed white).  Here’s the entryway before and after:

Here’s the dining room, before and after:

We don’t normally pack so many chairs around the table, but had friends over for dinner yesterday.  More on that later.   Here’s the living room before and after:

The master bedroom before and after:

Even the halls and stairways look better now:

In the house we rented after moving to Tennessee, Chareva’s “office” was one side of a large room she shared with the girls — their playroom.  Not great for focusing on work when they were home.

Now she’s got her own:

She can see down into into the kitchen from there, which makes it convenient if she’s working on a project while something’s cooking on the stove.  I took this picture from her office stairs yesterday as she was preparing a big ol’ pot of her low-carb chili:

The kitchen is the one room in the house we decided to deal with later.  The only change was having the floor re-tiled.  Chareva was making chili yesterday because we invited my friend Jim from work (who had us out to his house for what Alana later dubbed “The greatest Thanksgiving ever!“) and his family out for a visit.

One of the many aspects of living here that I love is seeing how the girls have taken to it.  Before our Saturday visitors arrived, we had the shin-deep grass in the front pasture cut.  The girls decided to gather up some grass for mommy’s compost heap, and (of course) play in the stuff.

Now that’s good, clean (in a manner of speaking) fun.

For my own version of fun on the farm, I decided to turn that pasture (for now, anyway) into a three-hole frisbee golf course.  Jim and I played several rounds together, while Sara and two of his girls did likewise.  (Despite assuring me he had no experience with the game, Jim scored a string of birdies.  I didn’t.)

I read up on Frisbee golf courses online.  I could create a regulation nine-hole course around the property, complete with shots through trees and over the creek, the kind of challenges that make the real courses interesting.  I may do that … but of course eventually I’d be sharing the course with whatever critters Chareva decides to raise.

And perhaps with critters she doesn’t decide to raise.  Last week, she took this picture out our bedroom window one morning around 6:00 a.m.  The lighting is lousy because of the hour, but you get the idea.  Deer were ambling around our front yard:

We’re not exactly farming yet.  Chareva still has to pick her locations for raising chickens and planting various gardens.  We’d like to grow pumpkins and sweet potatoes somewhere on the property, and Sara is determined to raise a few watermelons.  Sheep, a dairy cow, maybe a goat … that’s all up in the air for now.

But I can already tell you I love life on the little farm.

Anyway, here’s the link again for Fat Head on iTunes.

If you’ve already seen it and liked it, a positive review wouldn’t hurt the traffic any.  If you’ve already seen it and didn’t like it … uh … go give a one-star review to “Super Size Me.”  That’ll show me.

I’m nearly done with the data conversion that’s been occupying my evenings.  If you sent me an email this week and I haven’t answered yet, I’ll get to it this weekend.

I don’t know if this is pathetic, funny, a positive sign, or a combination of all three:  The makers of Karo corn syrup would like you to know that their product doesn’t contain any high fructose corn syrup.

I found this photo while going over my collection from Christmas. My mom had a bottle of this stuff in her kitchen, apparently to put in some kind of Christmas dessert I didn’t eat.  (If memory serves, we used to put dark Karo syrup on our waffles during my sugar-laden childhood.)

In case you’re wondering about the difference, high fructose corn syrup undergoes an extra step in which enzymes convert more of the glucose from the corn into fructose to make it sweeter.

I recommend you avoid corn syrup of either variety.

Fat Head: Based on your definitions of SANE and inSANE foods, what are the three worst foods you see people typically consume?

Jonathan:
1. Any beverage with a high concentration of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (e.g., regular soda)
2. Foods full of processed starch combined with sugar (e.g., cakes, pies, snack cakes, doughnuts, etc.)
3. Foods that are fundamentally sugar or processed starch (e.g., candy, white bread, etc.)

Fat Head: You also state that the quality of food affects our need and ability to burn fat.  I know it’s a complex topic, but as briefly and simply as you can explain it, how does higher-quality food enable us to burn fat more efficiently?

Jonathan: The need to burn fat (distinct from the need to slow down and to burn muscle) means our body has an abundance of nutrition and a shortage of calories. When there’s an abundance of nutrition and a shortage of calories, the body wants to burn fat to fuel itself instead of slowing down and burning muscle.

The ability to burn fat means metabolizing fat for fuel is “easy” given our hormone levels. For example, if we have the hormone insulin circulating in our bloodstream, it is not “easy” for our body to burn fat for fuel. No matter how much we need to burn fat at that point in time, insulin has removed our ability to do so effectively.

High-quality food provides an abundance of nutrition and satisfies us so effectively that we avoid overeating. Additionally, high-quality food creates a hormonal environment that makes it much easier for us to burn fat for fuel. More nutrition plus less overeating and healed hormones enables our body to burn fat rather than slowing down and burning muscle.

Fat Head: The USDA recommends eating nutrient-dense food, but advises against eating red meat.  Isn’t red meat nutrient-dense?

Jonathan: If we divide the nutrition provided in a serving of lean red meat by the calories provided in a serving, we see that lean red meat is nutrient-dense.

Fat Head: Are whole grains nutrient-dense?  Do you ever eat them?

Jonathan: Dividing nutrition per serving by calories per serving, we see that whole grains are less nutrient-dense than non-starchy vegetables, seafood, lean meats, low-fat or fat-free plain Greek yogurt, low-fat or fat-free cottage cheese, citrus fruits, and berries, as well as most nuts and seeds. Therefore, we would be better off eating so much of the aforementioned nutrient-dense foods that we’re too full for less nutrient-dense whole grains. For example, when we’re out to eat, we could easily tell our server, “Please hold the starch and double the vegetables.”

I personally do not eat any whole grains because they do not further my health and fitness goals.

Fat Head: I’ve seen quite a few guidelines on how much protein a person should eat, and they’re all over the place.  According to one expert, I only need about 50 grams of protein per day.  The Protein Power guidelines put me at around 130 grams per day.  According to both you and Tim Ferriss, I should be consuming closer to 200 grams per day.  That’s a lot of protein.  What would be the advantage for me of consuming that much?

Jonathan: Lean sources of protein are very satisfying, positively impact our hormonal balance, are nutrient dense, and are relatively difficult for the body to convert into body fat. Also, we have to eat something, so focusing on protein-rich foods is a great way to satisfy ourselves while ensuring both the need and the ability to burn fat. Put differently, if you didn’t get about a third of your calories from protein, you’d be getting them from foods that are less likely to ensure you have both the need and the ability to burn fat.

Fat Head: You suggest consuming at least 30 grams of protein soon after waking.  I’ve been doing the opposite lately, limiting my meals to lunch and dinner as a form of intermittent fasting, which I presume you’d advise against.  Why should I eat a protein-rich breakfast in the morning if I’m not actually hungry?

Jonathan: Studies show that consuming protein every three to four hours boosts the metabolism (need to burn fat) and creates a hormonal environment more optimized for fat burning (ability to burn fat). I, too, am not hungry when I wake up. As a solution, I’ve found mixing whey protein powder with a big glass of water is a great way to boost the metabolism and help hormones even when hunger isn’t present. I also mix two tablespoons of wheat grass powder into my protein shake to sneak a few servings of non-starchy vegetables in.

Fat Head: How do you feel about intermittent fasting in general?  Do you believe the positive hormonal changes promised by advocates of intermittent fasting do indeed occur?

Jonathan: The research behind The Smarter Science of Slim shows that anytime the body has insufficient nutrition (distinct from insufficient calories), the metabolism slows down (bad), the body burns at least as much muscle as fat (bad), and a hormonal environment is created that will cause fat gain in the long term (bad). However, my research suggests that as long as the body is provided with an abundance of nutrition (including protein and essential fatty acids) insufficient calories could provide a positive result.

Fat Head: The diet you recommend is around one-third protein, one-third carbohydrates from fruits and non-starchy vegetables, and one-third fat.  I haven’t tried to calculate macronutrient percentages lately, but I’m pretty sure my diet is more than 50% fat and probably no more than 15% – 20% carbohydrates.  Is there something wrong with that ratio?   Can you explain why less fat and more carbohydrate would help me lose weight more weight?

Jonathan: As long as you are eating at least ten servings of non-starchy vegetables a day while getting about a third of your daily calories from protein, the rest of your diet could consist of natural fats—ideally, mostly from plants and seafood—without compromising long term health or weight. In other words, studies show that to optimize long-term fat loss and health, we must eat at least ten servings of non-starchy vegetables and approximately a gram of protein per pound of body weight per day (there are exceptions for very heavy individuals). After that, as long as it’s full of water, fiber, and protein, we are good to eat it.

Fat Head: You urge your readers to get their carbohydrates from non-starchy vegetables and low-sugar fruits, and I totally agree with that.  But frankly, I’d find it difficult to consume a third of my calories in the form of, say, green vegetables while simultaneously limiting my fat intake.  For example, I checked the nutrition label on a box of spinach and found that it provides about 90 calories in the form of carbohydrates.  I’ll happily eat that box of spinach, but only if I add at least two tablespoons of butter to the mix, which means I’m already consuming twice as many fat calories as carbohydrate calories, and that’s before I even put any meat on my plate.  So, with that preamble out of the way, here’s the question:  if you’re going to get a third of your calories from non-starchy carbohydrates, how do you make all those piles of vegetables palatable?

Jonathan: Without a doubt, a SANE cookbook is needed, and one is coming this year.

In the meantime, sautéing non-starchy vegetables with a teaspoon of olive oil and various seasonings can make it easy and delicious to consume 3-4 servings of non-starchy vegetables in a sitting. Do this with lunch and dinner, and someone can eat 6-8 servings of non-starchy vegetable with less than a tablespoon of olive oil. Add some non-starchy vegetables to an omelet or scrambled eggs for breakfast and put some sugar snap peas (delicious raw) in a bag to snack on, and it’s relatively easy and tasty to take in more than 12 servings of non-starchy vegetables without consuming over 12 servings of added fat. And that’s what someone would do to achieve excellent health and fitness. If someone’s goals are more moderate, the non-starchy vegetable intake becomes even easier.

Note: The research underlying The Smarter Science of Slim shows that naturally occurring fats found in foods that are rich in water, fiber, and protein are fantastic for fat loss and health. It does, however, recommend we add as little fat to food as possible, as pure fat isn’t rich in water, fiber, or protein.

Fat Head: You cite research in your book to convince readers that despite what we’ve all been told, saturated fat and cholesterol don’t cause heart disease.  But you also recommend consuming egg whites and low-fat or fat-free dairy products.  While producing Fat Head, I was focused mostly on restricting carbohydrates, but I’ve become more of a whole-foods guy in the past couple of years.  Since eggs are a whole food, why should we consume eggs whites instead of whole eggs?  Why consume consume fat-free dairy products instead of full-fat dairy products?

Jonathan: Whole eggs are healthy sources of fats since the majority of eggs’ calories come from fat versus from protein or carbohydrate. I recommend mixing egg whites with whole eggs to even out the ratio of protein and fat. If someone gets sufficient lean protein from other sources and takes in all the non-starchy vegetables necessary to optimize heath and weight, then whole eggs are fine. More simply, if someone eats eggs as a source of fat, whole eggs are fine. If someone eats eggs as a source of protein, he needs to mix egg whites with whole eggs to ensure he is actually eating mostly protein.

The point with the low-fat or fat-free plain Greek yogurt and cottage cheese is similar. If someone eats Greek yogurt and cottage cheese as sources of fat, then the full fat variants are fine. However, if someone uses these foods as sources of protein, she needs to make sure the majority of the associated calories are from protein. Note: Eating reduced fat/low-fat anything is only desirable if the fat is not replaced with sugar. Low-fat food that is chock full of sugar is terrible for health and fat loss.

To be really clear, it’s not about fearing fat. Rather, it’s about maximizing our intake of foods rich in water, fiber, and protein. We should enjoy fat freely, just after focusing first on water, fiber, and protein.

Fat Head: I’ve heard from dozens of readers who lost a lot of weight by cutting sugar and starch, but are now stuck at 20 or 30 pounds heavier than they’d prefer.  What, if anything, can people who reach a plateau do to lower their set-points even more?  What do you tell people who can’t seem to drop that last 20 pounds?

Jonathan: Exercise less—but smarter—as recommended by The Smarter Science of Slim. This type of exercise is specifically designed to work our muscles in a unique manner to trigger a magnitude of “fat-burning hormones” unparalleled via nearly any other exercise technique.

Fat Head: You wrote quite a bit about how hormones drive weight gain in your book.  Once women reach menopause, their bodies undergo hormonal changes that encourage accumulating more body fat.  Is there anything they can do to avoid this hormonally-driven weight gain?

Jonathan: Yes. Eat more and exercise less, but smarter. More specifically, eat so many non-starchy vegetables and so much lean protein that you are too full for starches and sweets. Then exercise your muscles so deeply that it is impossible for you to exercise that way again for about a week.

Fat Head: A couple of other authors who wrote about lowering the body’s set-point claim that we need to engage in aerobic-type exercise for an hour per day.  Do you believe aerobic exercise can lower the body’s set point?  If not, why not?

Jonathan: I did not find any studies that showed aerobic exercise to meaningfully impact the hormones which influence the set-point. Therefore, I do not see how aerobic-type exercise could meaningfully impact the set-point.

Fat Head: You recommend brief, high-intensity exercise instead of jogging or walking on a treadmill.  Why do you believe this kind of exercise is better for weight loss?

Jonathan: What I believe is based on the work of countless brilliant doctors, academicians and researchers all over the world. As I said earlier, biology isn’t a matter of opinion. Consequently, every piece of advice I give is grounded in the research, which has proven that high-force exercise works a specific type of muscle fiber (Type 2b) that triggers a uniquely helpful hormonal response. Think about triggering this hormonal response like trying to move a heavy piece of furniture. You can gently poke at the furniture for one, ten, or even 100 hours, but no quantity of low-force movements will cause you to move the furniture, i.e., the result you want.  Fewer but higher-force movements are how you get the result we want.

Fat Head: There’s a lot of buzz these days about paleo diets and paleo exercise.  I’m sure you’re familiar with the terms, so what do you think of the paleo/primal lifestyle?  Is it healthy?

Jonathan: The eating philosophy I advocate is similar to a paleo type diet, but there are three differences. My understanding of paleo diets is that no/very little legumes or dairy are permitted and fatty meats are encouraged. (My apologies if I am mistaken.) My research shows there are high-quality legumes and a few high-quality dairy products, and that these high-quality foods are both healthy and helpful for fat loss. It also shows that the best sources of fat are plants—nuts and seeds—and seafood. Therefore, if you are looking for the highest quality protein combined with the highest quality fat and given the choice between a fatty cut of meat and a lean cut of meat plus a handful or two of nuts, The Smarter Science of Slim recommends the latter.

Fat Head: How would what you recommend differ from the advice people receive from paleo/primal advocates like Mark Sisson and Robb Wolf?

Jonathan: It’s going to be more similar than it is going to be different. I mentioned the three dietary differences above.

When it comes to exercise, I agree with Mr. Sisson and Mr. Wolf on the “less but higher-quality” angle. However, my research takes this concept one step further and provides a specific type of exercise that can be done at home without any equipment and ensures the highest-quality exercise possible while minimizing impact on joints and ligaments. To my knowledge, the specific type of exercise recommended by The Smarter Science of Slim is not part of the paleo/primal regime…although I suspect Mr. Sisson and Mr. Wolf would not be opposed to it, as they are both scientifically minded individuals.

Fat Head: You don’t have recipes or meal plans in The Smarter Science of Slim, so explain what a typical day’s meals look like for you or someone following your recommendations.

Jonathan: Recipes and meal plans are coming. In the meantime, SANE meals are going to be similar to paleo meals but focus on getting fat from plants and seafood rather than fatty meats and can include high-protein, low-sugar, and low-fat dairy as well as legumes. At the end of the day, it’s about each individual’s tastes and goals because The Smarter Science of Slim is not a set of ridged laws, but a body of knowledge that enables people to most effectively accomplish their particular health and fitness aspirations.

Thank you, Jonathan.

So I was pleased to receive a copy of Judy Barnes Baker’s newest cookbook Nourished: a Cookbook for Health, Weight Loss and Metabolic Balance earlier this week.  For those of you who don’t know, this is the cookbook Judy originally pitched to the American Diabetes Association.  For awhile, they were on board … then backed out.  Can’t say I’m surprised.  They just can’t admit their dietary advice is wrong.

The book includes an opening section that explains the science of why low-carb diets are the best choice (especially for diabetics) with short chapters written by Dr. Mary Vernon, Jacqueline Eberstein (who worked with Dr. Atkins for decades as his nurse) and Dr. Richard Feinman.

But you already know that stuff.  You’ll want this book for the recipes.  Here are just a few examples of the hundreds you’ll find in the book:

• Corned Beef Hash with Poached Eggs
• Peanut and Chicken Soup
• Creole Gumbo
• Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait
• Sautéed Cabbage
• Barbecued Ribs
• Herb Roasted Olives

If you think a low-carb diet is boring, it just means you don’t have enough good recipes on hand.

To celebrate the release of the book, Judy is running a prize-giveaway contest on her Carb Wars blog.  Here’s the link.

Herb Roasted Olives … mmmm…

Our cover model this year is pancreatic cancer, folks — and as you can see, she’s a hot little topic!  We don’t want to start any rumors, but we have it on good authority she’s often seen in the company of some beefy hunks.

The hot little topic made a splash in the media last week, with headlines and opening paragraphs like these:

Bacon eaters warned of cancer risk

Eating two rashers of bacon or one sausage a day can increase the risk of a deadly form of cancer by almost a fifth, according to a new study.  New research by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has found that eating 50g of processed meat a day can increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by 19%.

Processed Meat Could Raise Pancreatic Cancer Risk

Some possible bad news for all the bacon lovers out there.

A new review in the British Journal of Cancer suggests a link between processed meats — like bacon and sausages — and an increased pancreatic cancer risk. In particular, eating an extra 50 grams a day of processed meat — or about a sausage — is enough to raise pancreatic cancer risk by 19 percent, BBC News reported, while an extra 100 grams of processed meat a day could raise the cancer risk by 38 percent.

“The authors of this study have suggested that one of the reasons could be that some of the chemicals that are used to preserve processed meat are turned in our bodies into some really harmful chemicals which can affect our DNA and increase the chance of cancer,” Jessica Harris, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, told Sky News.

Holy jumpin’ jiminy!  A 19% increase in risk – that’s almost a fifth!  Better drop that bacon right now, Mister.  You don’t want to mutate your DNA and roll the dice with a 19% increase in the odds you’ll die of pancreatic cancer.

I tracked down the full study, and it was pretty much what I expected:  a meta-analysis of several other studies, all of them based on food-recall surveys.  So let’s put on our Science For Smart People hats (mine is cone-shaped; you can choose your own) and ask some critical-thinking questions:

Q: Was this an observational study or a clinical study?

A:  It was a meta-analysis of 11 observational studies, the kind where the researchers pool the data and crunch the numbers.

Q:  Did the researchers control the variables?

A:  No, because they couldn’t.  They were dealing with data published by other researchers who may or may not have done a good job controlling their variables.  As the authors of the current study noted:

Our study has some limitations. First, as a meta-analysis of observational studies, we cannot rule out that individual studies may have failed to control for potential confounders, which may introduce bias in an unpredictable direction. All studies controlled for age and smoking, but only a few studies adjusted for other potential confounders such as body mass index and history of diabetes. Another limitation is that our findings were likely to be affected by imprecise measurement of red and processed meat consumption and potential confounders.

Let me put that into plain English:  Our findings are meaningless. The studies we analyzed were based on food-recall surveys that are notoriously inaccurate, and most of them didn’t control for body mass index or diabetes, which essentially means they didn’t control for intake of sugars and refined carbohydrates.

Okay, folks, move along; nothing here to see.

…

What, you’re still here?  Then we may as well continue.

Q:  If A is linked to B, is it possible that they’re both caused by C?

A:  Yes, of course it’s possible.  As the researchers noted above, “All studies controlled for age and smoking, but only a few studies adjusted for other potential confounders.”  Since processed meats are often served with a big wallop of refined carbohydrates – pizza, burritos, deli sandwiches, etc. – it’s entirely possible that people who consume more processed meats have higher rates of pancreatic cancer (if that’s even the case) because they also consume more white flour.

Q:  If A is linked to B, do we see that connection consistently, or are there glaring exceptions?

A:  We can answer that question by looking at the charts from the full study.  This one shows the change in the relative risk of developing pancreatic cancer from consuming an additional 120 grams of red meat per day:

A relative risk of 1.0 is neutral – no change in risk.  Below 1.0 means lower relative risk and above 1.0 means higher relative risk.  The horizontal bars represent the range of values that fell within the “confidence interval,” the black squares represent the average relative risk for each study, and the white diamond in the last row represents the overall average obtained by pooling data from all the studies.

The first thing that jumped out at me is that in four of the 13 studies analyzed, the relative risk of developing pancreatic cancer was lower for the people who (supposedly) eat a lot of red meat.  I wouldn’t call that a consistent result.  If some studies show higher risk and some studies show lower risk, I’d conclude that we’re looking at the wrong variables.

But through the magic of statistical analysis, the researchers pooled the results (from studies that often failed to control the variables) and declared that consuming 120 grams of red meat per day raises your risk of developing pancreatic cancer by 13%.

Now here’s the change in relative risk from consuming an additional 50 grams of processed meat per day:

Nine studies, and in three of them the relative risk of developing pancreatic cancer was lower for people who consumed more processed meat.  Once again, that’s hardly a consistent result, but the researchers pooled the data in order to declare that processed meat raises your risk of pancreatic cancer by 19% — which leads to our final question.

Q:  What was the actual difference?

A:  Almost nothing.  That’s the short answer.  Now for the longer answer:

Scientists like to cite relative risk instead of absolute risk because relative risk sounds far more impressive.  Suppose that when I lived in sunny California, my odds of being struck by lightning were 1 in a million.  But now that I live in Tennessee, suppose the odds are 1.5 in a million.  That’s a 50% increase in relative risk … but a meaningless increase in absolute risk.  The actual difference — the change in absolute risk –  is 0.5 in a million.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the age-adjusted annual incidence rate of pancreatic cancer is 13.6 per 100,00 men and 10.3 per 100,00 women.  We’ll split the difference and call it 12.15 per 100,000 people.  Expressed as a percentage, here are the odds that you’ll be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year:

0.0122%

Just barely over one-hundredth of one percent.  Now … let’s set aside the fact that this meta-analysis was 1) based on observational studies that 2) used unreliable food-recall surveys and 3) produced inconsistent results.  Suppose we choose to believe that processed meat really and truly causes pancreatic cancer at the increased rate found by pooling all that data, but we keep on eating our bacon anyway.  Here are the odds, expressed as a percentage, that we bacon-eaters will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year:

0.0145%

And here’s the actual difference between those two numbers:

0.0023%

Well, maybe you’d prefer to deal with lifetime odds instead of annual odds.  Okay, fine.  According the National Cancer Institute, the lifetime odds of developing pancreatic cancer in the U.S. are 1.45%.  If eating 50 grams per day of bacon or other processed meat really and truly (and all by itself) raised the rate by 19%, your lifetime odds would be 1.70%.

Here’s the actual difference between those two numbers:

0.25%

Enjoy your bacon.

Ingredients:

• 2 ten-ounce boxes of frozen spinach
• 4 TB (half a stick) of butter
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• Salt to taste

Steps:

Microwave the spinach for 10 minutes, then press out most of the liquid.

Put drained spinach in a dish and stir in the butter, then stir in the parmesan so it melts.

Stir in the remaining ingredients.

Adjust the spices to taste.  Sometimes I use a little garlic salt in place of some of the garlic powder, but you can always add salt later.  I also like extra nutmeg now and then.

Enjoy.