Sagehill--I like the low carb weekend approach. It at least partly addresses possible nutritional problems that could arise on a long-term plant-based diet. This is one reason that I am happy that Denise is tackling this issue--there are people who might benefit from this sort of approach, but then vegan idealism sets them up for all sorts of possible nutritional deficiencies down the road. Vegetarians like to push meatless mondays, with the hopes that it will be a slippier slope and more people will end up vegan. I would be willing to go meatless mondays if my recently vegan sister and niece would start doing meaty mondays. That bit of meat would do them a lot more good than a day of salad and nuts would do me harm.

This is what upsets me most about folk like John McDougall, Colin Campbell etc. Even if a population eats only five or ten percent of their calories as animal products, that does not make the animal product component of the diet unimportant. Suppose I eat 2500 calories a day, nothing but potato plus two eggs. That makes six percent calories from animal food. Insignificant? Look at b12. Unless the potatoes are dirty, the only dietary source is those eggs. Just about all the choline comes from the eggs. John McDougall thinks choline is more or less poisonous (unless of course it comes in a plant form), but then, he is a nutritional bigot when it comes right down to it. I think he probably does do a lot of people some good--but I wonder how many he hurts, people who cannot or will not stick to his approach, but might do very well on some low carb approach?

This is why I do not want to outright condemn approaches like the Rice Diet, maybe low carb is superior for most people, it is certainly my favourite approach, but there are always those people out there that cannot or will not. What if somebody is addicted to carbohydrate, and just cannot stop? Better they succeed on the Tarahumara diet, than fail on low carb.

Exactly. I was a failure at vegetarianism, even though I was eating eggs and cheese. I gained weight, was sick all the time, had no energy. After reading Denise Minger's first book, I understood why; I don't have much of the enzymes that let me extract protein from plant sources.

Those slim ladies at the health food store, helping me craft a vegetarian diet, did have them.

Though hearing stories of whipping people and how little they wound up eating reminds me of a thesis I first read on Gnolls.org:

Vegans Are Cannibals: The Truth Behind The “New Vegan High”

That the names of Post and Kellogg ended up the banners of breakfast cereal in this country, which very well may be one of the most damaging foods in our culture -- not through its own merits of being sugar-soaked cardboard with a few synthetic vitamins and cheapest rock minerals, but by its merits of replacing something called real-food people especially children then don't eat instead, and a few other good reasons -- is SO ironic.

PJ

I guess I'm looking at LF more as a dieting intervention, to shake things up, rather than a lifetime WOE.

I don't think LF is a good WOE of eating for thin people, especially the Rice Diet, but in some ways LF (PH, fasting, Stillmans) does make sense for weight loss since we already have lots of stored fat to pull from our body if it needs fat for whatever reason...one reason why obese people can fast more easily than thinner people.

And there's no denying that even the best of dedicated LC'rs usually stall after a number of weeks or months, forcing many of us to go ever more LC extreme, which quite often doesn't work over the long term, either. I can attest to all of that over the past eight years. If LC was the perfect diet, we'd all be thin! Instead, only a relatively few make it to goal.

However, going the other way--Minger's Carbosis (though a PH is far better than the over-extreme Rice-Sugar Diet)--is a way of breaking LC stalls so LC can work again, and better yet, a higher-carb LC that Atkins intended us to do all along via the Carb Ladder, something so many of us ignore in our desperate chase to lose weight: "It worked before... it should/WILL work again!!" but it doesn't, no matter what we try, reason why so many people fall away: http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/...g-term-low.html

The other point is that a one-food, no-fat diet like the PH (for a period of time, not forever) is an elimination diet that gets us away from undetected, or even suspected but addictive allergens like dairy, etc that are likely causing the LC stalls, as well as other health problems. However, for me the key words are "for a period of time."

We all need to take responsibility for deciding which path to take, based on our OWN N=1 experiences, rather than allowing science studies propounded by dedicated proponents to dictate to us, based on rodents or other studies that may or may not be relevant to OUR body, reason why I tried the PH in the first place: I'd tried everything else in the LC realm... it was time to try the opposite, low-fat.

I sort of agree and disagree. I see people who do well climbing the carb-ladder, and other people doing fine sitting at the bottom and going eh, why bother. But it is perfectly sensible that both types exist. For me, only good things happened when I went low carb, and only better things when I got more extreme. My blood sugar behaves very predictably, though. Less protein, less carbs equals lower blood glucose, every time. Sixty or seventy grams of protein, under fifteen grams gives better workouts, better recovery, better mood, better get up and go, vs. 110, 120 grams of protein, same carbs. It also means that I do without the residual aural hallucinations I was still getting when I was around white noise. So I shy away from Atkins having a reason for the carb ladder--yes, he did, but it doesn't seem to apply to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBi2VABLNb0

Old McDougall interview of Dr. Atkins. A few things stand out. They both acknowledge the anti-diabetic effects of the other diet. McDougall insisting that Atkins works because ketosis is like being sick (so you eat less, fasting basically), Dr. Atkins suggesting something less stupid, the existence of a J-shaped curve--just because replacing fat for carbs at some ratio makes things worse, that doesn't exclude the possibility that if you go far enough, things will start to get better. I think if you somehow managed to eat a very high carb, low fat diet, and reverse your diabetes, and showed up at Dr. Atkins door, you'd have gotten a pat on the back. Show up at McDougall's door with blood sugar 90 instead of 100, hyperinsulinism corrected, he'll tell you you're killing yourself.

One argument McDougall makes a lot sounds awful familiar--how can a food that people have been thriving on (not really, they were dying of all sorts of infectious diseases, but at least they weren't getting diseases of civilization, small comfort it must have been to grieving mothers), for millenia be the cause of modern disease? Sounds a lot like paleo, and also an argument Taubes made in GCBC against meat and fat being disease-causing agents. I think it stands against a foodstuff being in and of itself sufficient to cause these diseases--certain foods have not changed that much, but maybe the combinations that we eat them in has. If you ask me whether meat is the cause of diabetes, of course I say no. If you ask whether there are conditions under which meat might cause diabetes--harder question to answer. Same with Asia--does rice cause diabetes? It may not have in the past. That doesn't mean that it doesn't contribute to the development of diabetes in today's China. That is a severe logical fallacy.

Raises hand as one who has currently been stalled for 6 years on LCHF eating, not to mention increasing BP and BG. I had hoped IF might be the Holy Grail as that was new for me, but after losing the weight that had crept up on me over the last year during my first three weeks of IF I stalled once again (for the last 3 months) at the weight I've always stalled at for the last 30 years. Not to mention that IF has not helped with BP or BG in the way I'd hoped.

I hate low fat eating so much that I had hoped IF might work instead. The only diet I ever "succeeded" at (meaning got down to a fairly normal BMI range) was LF, but I was miserable on it. But in my mind LF meant things like plain steamed green veggies (yuck), salad with only a vinegar dressing (yuck), plain white rice (yuck), fat-free yogurt (yuck), naked skinless chicken breasts (yuck). I lived like that for a miserable year and lost a ton of weight, but was so unhappy I decided I would rather weigh 300 pounds.

But something like the potato hack sounds pretty doable. Potatoes are pretty satiating. They are much more appealing than plain steamed greens (yuck). Of course a baked potato with plenty of butter and sour cream and maybe chives and chopped bacon still sounds pretty appealing. But a potato with salt, pepper, some ACV and maybe a little mustard sounds pretty good too.

So yesterday I bought a few bags of small new potatoes, rinsed them all, and just threw a bunch into the crockpot for a few hours until cooked. Had a meal of warm potatoes last night after a 48-hour fast, cold potatoes for breakfast, hash browns for lunch. They taste pretty good! Have not checked my BP, but BG numbers are going lower each time I check.

I like the idea of maybe more LC eating on weekends. Maybe toss in a couple fasting days. Meanwhile I'll see how the potatoes go. I may have to cook up some more.

I became rather interested in investigating the origins of cooking, so I just read Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham. He makes a very good case for the development of cooking at about 1.8 million years ago. One of the comments he made is that during the "dry season", when food was scarce, fat levels in meat may only be at 1 or 2 percent (is that possible? for an animal to be that low fat?). And humans may have had to survive primarily on high carb roots and corms. In that case, I can see an adaptation to a diet that is high carb, very low fat, but meager rations, would make sense. Not an ideal diet by any means, but survivable until conditions improved. Could result in a loss of fertility, for example (like the low hormone levels induced by rice diet).

He also brought up the issue of AGEs, how we would surely be adapted to exposure to them in our cooked food. Unlike all other animals who have never had the chance to adapt to cooked food.

Merpig,
As Dr Fung becomes more confident in his protocols and has more exposure, he has clarified that he treats persistent obesity (the patient has been overweight for a long time) with long fasts. 7-10 days, or as long as can go (like Margaret to 21 days) and repeat in cycles, to reverse the insulin resistance. Surprisingly when they do eat, their appetite is reduced. Dr. Fung explained it again in a podcast I heard yesterday on Sigma Nutrition.

Teaser and whoever likes podcasts on nutrition,
I recently learned about Sigma Nutrition http://sigmanutrition.com

and am going through some back podcasts. Danny Lennon appears to have an an open mind about optimal nutrition, good science background, and has both sides of the high/lowfat and the calorie/hormonal debates on. After Dr Fung was on, he presented some of the counter arguments to his points.

We might be adapted to eat cooked food--but, are we adapted to eat cooked food in our modern environment, cooked food when we're carbohydrate intolerant, fat intolerant, have leaky guts, etc.?

I was looking at this last night, an argument for how low fat addresses insulin resistance. Of course it has to throw low carbohydrate under the bus while it's at it.

http://www.forksoverknives.com/fat-...ce-blood-sugar/

file:///C:/Users/donald/Downloads/archinte_40_6_005.pdf

It links some classic studies. In this one, normal subjects were fed diets of almost pure protein, carbohydrate, or fat for two days, or fasted.

Glucose tolerance on the third day was best in the group that ate high carb, then high protein, the starvation and fat-fed groups were identical.

Jeff Volek has shown a similar thing with fat tolerance, by the way, put people on very high-fat diets, and the postprandial rise in triglycerides after a fat load decreases quite a bit, with a lower peak and a quicker return to basal.

In the case of the protein--what are the odds that people, especially people new to a high-protein diet, will undereat? Pretty high. Same with the pure-fat diet. This is physiological glucose intolerance, perhaps from an elevation in free fatty acids, but it didn't matter to these non-diabetic subjects until they actually ate some glucose.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...l01610-0047.pdf

Another classic study by another author. It's feeding bunnies a high fat diet (at least for bunnies) so I wouldn't take it too seriously, but it's still a fun read.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/0010480616


And something more recent...



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/0010480616

There really doesn't seem to be much doubt that elevated free fatty acids plus a glucose load makes for higher insulin requirement, lower glucose tolerance. In GCBC, Gary Taubes suggested that increased insulin sensitivity in the fat tissue specifically might be the major contributor to whole-body insulin sensitivity. Well, maybe. Sounds good when I have my carbohydrate hypothesis hat on--but when I have my insulin hypothesis hat on, that cutting plasma insulin by 50 percent sounds sort of anti-obesogenic.

Janet--I was sort of surprised in Dr. Fung's rebuttal to Denise that he wasn't more open to the idea of a separate pathway to address insulin resistance--just listening to his interview at sigma, when they get to the recent Kevin Hall study as being counter to the insulin hypothesis, Dr. Fung points out that a problem with the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis is that lowering carbohydrate intake isn't the only way to lower insulin.

Yes, I know he is using longer fasts, and I'm certainly not the least opposed to that idea either, just have been unable to do it! When I've fasted, so far, I do make sure to get a decent amount of water, sodium, potassium... but still reach a point where I start to feel too hungry, weak or tired to go further. I still live in hope though.

Teaser, the second link you posted is linked to your hard drive, which I don't have access to.

Oh, shoot... didn't realize that one came in as a download. This should work;

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1394223/

Steve Cooksey is doing an experiment with very low fat. It looks to me like it's just calorie restricted though. He' keeping his carbs low as well. This will still allow FFA to be released. Maybe phase 2 will have enough carbs to inhibit FFA release and actually be able to tell us something.

http://www.diabetes-warrior.net/201...low-fat-phase1/