As you probably know, Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades finally have a new book out, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle Aged Middle. I’ve just started it, so it’ll be awhile before I can write a review. I can already tell you that, as usual, they do an excellent job of taking complicated metabolic science and explaining it clearly to a non-medical audience.
In the meantime, I decided to celebrate the arrival of the book in my mailbox by putting together more clips of the interviews we conducted while I was shooting Fat Head. In these clips, the doctors are talking about weight gain, diets and hunger, particularly the “internal starvation” that can occur as people eat too many carbohydrates and become insulin-resistant.
This is one of the concepts that blew me away when I read Good Calories, Bad Calories. Suddenly it made sense why fat people overeat – or at least appear to overeat. In fact, they’re eating as much as they need to keep their cells fueled. When elevated insulin commands your body to store calories as fat, you run out of fuel and become hungry. So you eat more. In other words, you’re not getting fat because you’re eating more; you’re eating more because you’re getting fat.
Enjoy.
If you enjoy my posts, please consider a small donation to the Fat Head Kids GoFundMe campaign.
Tom, good to hear that you’re enjoying the book. I was one of the fortunate few chosen to receive a pre-release copy of the book in exchange for allowing Drs. Eades to use my name and experience (if they so choose). I’m almost at the end of week 4, and have been publicly sharing my progress at http://mdc6weeks.blogspot.com/ Feel free to check it out and comment.
Looks like you’re making good progress. I haven’t tried the plan yet (still reading the book), but I also gave up diet sodas recently on the advice of a naturopathic doctor. I’m learning to love iced tea again.
We need a “healthcare Czar”. It needs to be someone like Mark Sisson or the Eades to get the country back on track with proper diet and exercising right. That’ll save a few billion in healthcare.
Keep up the good work. Healthcare reform starts in the kitchen!
That’s what keeps getting lost in the health-care debate. People point to how much we spend versus our longevity as evidence that insurance-based systems are inferior. If we continue becoming a nation of diabetics and pre-diabetics, we’re going to spend a fortune and still die prematurely, no matter who’s paying the bill.
Gee, it seems that everyone is jumping on the “The 6-Week Cure for the Middle Aged Middle” bandwagon. I’ll be curious to see how you do. I adore the Eadeses madly and they are major nutritional heroes of mine, but I was actually pretty disappointed in the book. Maybe I’m not the intended audience. For someone who knows nothing about low carb eating, does not even really care, but who wants to knock off a few pounds quickly and be told what to eat it might be just the perfect book. But that’s not me. I’ve been reading about low carb since I read the original “Protein Power” in 1997, and I will not go on *any* diet that just gives me menus of what to eat. I didn’t buy this book to get a cookbook. I want *guidelines* that will easily let me pick my own choices of food.
But even so I’ve decided to give the plan a try anyway. I just started week two today. During week one I lost ONE pound and no inches, and was basically hungry all the time. We’ll see how week two goes! It’s really hard to do the shakes at work and have them be satisfying.
I’ve just started the book. I don’t know if I’ll try the whole cure or not. Giving up caffeine, even for two weeks, is not high on my list.
The video is brilliant. Even though I know this stuff, they really tell it in a fascinating way. Sometimes you need stuff hammered into your skull repeatedly, I guess.
My good-carb diet lets me gain weight at an alarming rate. 6kg gained so far. Also, I’m craving sweets again. Me and my experiments. 😀
I think the Eadeses should not promote their book so much, because it will take even longer till the second post on the Man-is-a-carnivore series will come out. 😀 Two intermediary posts – this is torture!
Are you still trying your good-carb experiment, or have you given up?
Still doing it. But it’s really hard. I’m reading Voegtlin’s Stone Age Diet now and he describes why he thinks that man is essentially carnivorous. And here I am eating my brown rice, which makes my meat less filling while I think of chocolate and donuts, which really sucks right now because they start selling all these Christmas sweets at my supermarket. I’m on the verge of giving it up. Looks like it clearly doesn’t work. LOL
I guess I’ll go zero carb after this stuff and maybe start a blog on that. – I’m getting more convinced by the hour.
Meat and water, Blake Donaldson style. I did that before and it was great. No hunger, no need for sweets and I always love my meat (I’m low-maintenance really). Plus, it’s probably the cheapest diet ever and I’ll be back to normal in November. I’ll also stop feeling like a fool all day.
Why was I doing this again…? Oh well, at least I test my most dearly held beliefs. Isn’t that what a real scientist should do? Damn, if nutrition was a science and not a religion, I wouldn’t need to do all these tests myself.
It’s really a religion. Christianity is falling apart and people look for a new one:
You have priests who know the absolute truth, which remains true even if it’s refuted by experiments. You have a holy past in the garden of Eden where people ate only fruit and vegetables. You’ll reach salvation by starving yourself and refraining from the evil which is fat. You crave it, because you are evil by nature. It’s the Original Sin and it makes you want animal fat. But if you sin like the damn sinner you are and eat, you can repent by sacrificing your free time and money in the gym on the stairmaster. Your reward will be eternal youth.
It’s pretty much the mono-myth of self-punishment. Joseph Campbell clearly missed this one.
Plus, I can’t help but think that PETA are the Mormons, Atkins the Aleister Crowley and Gary Taubes the Richard Dawkins of the new age of nutrition.
Heh, carbs do make you cranky. 😀
It was a worthwhile experiment, but I can’t say I’m surprised. My composer lived on lots of brown rice and veggies for a time, and it just made him weak and sick. Some people claim to feel terrific on those diets, and I’ll take them at their word. But it sure doesn’t work for me.
We’re not neanderthals, but I saw an article recently stating that according to chemical analysis of their bones, their diets were probably 90 percent meat. Can’t convince me meat-eating is a bad habit we developed late in our history, as some vegan nut jobs claim.
I ordered the book and I read it. Before I had it I commented on the Eades’ blog that I was looking forward to receiving the book but didn’t expect anything new – that’s because I am an avid reader of a number of blogs on Low-Carbing. And indeed -the book is well written, science broken down into digestible bits – but there is not a lot there that wasn’t in the first book published by Dr. Atkins. Cut the carbs, cut the dairy, cut the coffee, get your act together, get your butt into gear and you’ll be alright. So go ahead and buy the book if you are relatively new to low-carbing. If not – spend you money on something nice to eat.
I’ve been eating paleo/primal for about 8 months and have lost 40 lbs. I’ve hit plateaus a few times but after a few weeks, the weight loss has continued. I was at another plateau, so decided to use the plan in the Eades new book as a “kickstart” to losing again. So far, its worked. I’m on day 4 and lost over 5 lbs. I like to eat “real food” now, so doing the shakes is a bit of chore. I just keep telling myself it’s only for 2 weeks, so no big deal. I actually feel quite full and have rarely felt hungry at all. I will be glad when I can quit the shakes though!! After this, I don’t think I’ll ever crave a milkshake again!
I haven’t gotten that point in the book. I don’t suppose they recommend adding malt flavoring to the shakes …?
I agree with Debbie about the “6 Week Cure” book in that I also would have preferred to simply have guidelines (like numbers of carb grams), but I think I’m out of the mainstream here because lots of people to whom I recommend Protein Power find the calculations tedious and have a hard time figuring out what to eat. This book will probably work better for them so I do understand why the book was done the way it was. I’m not the target audience. (I also was surprised that the meals in the third two weeks of the six week plan contain more carbs than we typically eat at our house.)
The interview video is terrific, Tom. The Drs. Eades do a great job of explaining the physiology of hunger (as does the audiovisual interpretation in Fat Head–those little hungry talking Tom faces are particularly memorable).
Glad you enjoyed the hungry talking cells. My animator slaved over that sequence for days.
“…their diets were probably 90 percent meat. Can’t convince me meat-eating is a bad habit we developed late in our history, as some vegan nut jobs claim.”
(I don’t know how to quote <.<)
The thing about meat eating is that it isn’t as safe as it used to be, plain and simple. I’m sure most people reading this know that. Grass fed beef is a pretty pricey option not available for all.
I’ve also found chicken and some other meats to be really high in Omega-6s. If someone would eat a lot of meat like that, ratios will really knock down.
I’m not saying we should stop eating meat, rather we shouldn’t feast on it like some do. Hence the sad reason I have to increase my carbs to max 200 g/day.
I agree that feed-pen meat isn’t as good as the pasture-raised variety, but my health is still better than when I ate too many carbs. We bought a subcription from a local ranch, so our per-pound price will be around $4. That’s for a variety of chicken, pork, burgers, steaks, sausages, etc., all grass-fed.
I always was so jealous of people like you who somehow find a farmer near you and get to buy such great food. It’s not the same in cities like New York. Still, aren’t chickens supposed to on some veggie diet?
From what I’ve read, chickens allowed to graze freely eat grass, seeds, worms and bugs. Many “organic” chickens are raised without antibiotics, but fed mostly grains.
The availablity of locally-raised meats was one of the many reasons we chose this area. A friend took me to the farmers’ market during my exploratory trip, and I met some of the providers. I also buy raw-milk cheeses at the same market now, and I find them much easier to digest. Nearly double the price of the packaged/pasteurized stuff, but worth it.
“I always was so jealous of people like you who somehow find a farmer near you”
I am a farmer near me. Not only do I get the raw milk, grassfed beef and lamb and freerange chickens and pigs, I get it largely at production cost, meaning cheap cheap cheap. Imagine fillet steak at under NZ$4 per kilogram.
And the chickens go nuts to eat meat.
I if ever leave Tennessee, I’m buying a place next to you.
Very good easy to understand interview. The part about the “chinese restaurant syndrome” caught my attention. Dr. Eades says it is caused by the carbs in the meal. I was thinking it was more of the glutamate that caused the hunger signal soon after eating at these places. Glutamate does stimulate an insulin response.
If it jack up insulin, that probably contributes too.
I was enjoying Felix’s post until the association between PETA and Mormons. Not sure where that came from. I can’t think of a single thing we’d have in common with PETA. Perhaps he was mistaking us for a similar faith that refuses to partake of meat. We often hold chili cookoffs and summer barbecues. Heck, my wife once catered a dinner for the women at church that featured steak tips and chicken kabobs. It was fantastic!
Tom, giving up caffeine wasn’t that bad. After the 2nd week, I didn’t even have the desire to start back up. I presume by your comments earlier that you saw my Eulogy for Diet Coke on my blog. I miss the idea of it, but I don’t actually miss having it. It’s weird. I want to want it, so it’s almost certainly 100% psychological.
Actually in an earlier post, I mentioned that Mormons eat meat but outlive Seventh-Day-Adventists, who are vegetarians and have longer-than-average lifespans. Some people have pointed to the Adventists as proof that a vegetarian diet is healthier. The fact that Mormons live even longer means it’s not shunning meat that makes the difference.
I’ve tried to give up caffeine a couple of times. Frankly, probably not going to ever happen. But did give up the diet soda, and yes, I enjoyed your eulogy.
More of the Drs. Eades, if you have it, please. I love how they explain things.
Thanks, Tom, for providing these extra clips!
I love how they explain things too, which is why they’re on-screen so much in Fat Head. They’re also two of the nicest people I know.
@Dr. Latino, I don’t know if this comment section is even still open–I only discovered this blog fairly a few months ago and am still working my way through the archives. But if it is and you read this, I thought I would let you know that–now, at least–you can get pastured meat in NYC. My son lives in NYC and recently got a freezer full of pastured beef, pork, and I don’t know what all else delivered from a farm somewhere outside the city. I know it’s not cheap, but it’s available and my philosophy, even on a more or less fixed retirement income, is to cut corners elsewhere to be able to afford quality pastured meat that won’t compromise my health and the health of my family.