Maybe I'm wrong about this but I think that his (durianrider) video was in direct response to last week's JAMA study showing how low carb diets performed better than low fat. It was his way of having a temper tantrum. Big baby that he is. sticking his fingers in his ears.

That video...........

Thanks for the giggles Happy.

1. Since eating high-carb makes my eyes bulge out and my vision blur and my blood glucose to go from just-barely-pre-D levels to Downright Durned Scary, and puts me down on the couch with crippling fatigue yet, oddly, with a frightening racing heartbeat, I guess I'm just forced to be a "fat" person, then. Oh well. Fat, but alive and not blind, and conscious, with a normal heartbeat. I'll take it.

2. This may be neither here nor there, and I mean no offense to vegans in general, but why have I never, ever, ever, ever, ever seen a vegan + low-fat "guru" who looks happy? Why do they always have very long, very drawn faces and even when they're smiling they look like they're looking out of miserable eyes? Maybe this is my perception, but I think I'll take happy and satisfied over presumably "healthy", drawn and on the verge of tears all the time. (Again. This is just MY perception.)

I'm not being ugly, here. I'm being 100% honest and am stating my own experiences and observances. I'd rather live my life, and feel and be MEASURABLY healthy/healthier (and I am, by far), than be skinny, staring out of hollow eyes, mostly asleep or swinging to extreme anxiety due to lots of carbs/carb crash, and bleating about how I'm sure I'll eventually live 10 years longer than the next person (with no proof of that).

To each his or her own.

Well, but doesn't that only make sense? It takes soooooooooo much veggie (and a smaller amount of most fruits, but still quite a bit) to build up a bunch of calories.

Who's to say that's "healthier"? Eating more compact calories, like it or not, does seem to have enabled our brain sizes to increase, enabled us to physically grow larger, etc. (per a great deal of anthropologists past and present alike). How does just "being skinny" mean health?

I mean look at some of those people. They're grey.

If they feel healthy, good for them. If blood tests (including metabolic) read well for them, then, even better. But just being skinny -- forget "lean" -- at any cost, is far from a guarantee of health.

Getting back to my first point about fat v. frighteningly scrawny, pale and hollow-eyed (sorry, fat v. "lean") pictures: frankly, if I were to gain 10 lbs. over the next month eating contrary to what I believe is healthy, I could easily lose it within 1.5 - 2 weeks by eating "just veggies," particularly if I very much limited the starchy ones. So it would be no trick at all for any of these veggies to have gotten a bit of a paunch, then went into a week's hiding with the juicer. Anybody can do that. I'm a perimenopausal 45-year-old thyroid impaired inactive woman and could do it -- I have, and in recent years at that.

Geez. This speaks volumes.

I gained 50 pounds in my four years eating a vegan diet. I haven't been able to get back to anything like a normal weight since then. It ruined me.

That was my reaction too. The low carbers look healthier. And I'd trade weights with any of the low carbers pictured there.

I started to glance through the comments. When I saw that everyone seemed to be in agreement with the video, I figured they were pulling any critical comments, so I just stopped reading. It's clear from the video they're not interested in facts or discussion.

Anyway, such leaness could well be lethal...

Recent reports are saying nowadays after a certain age you NEED and SHOULD have an extra 10-15 lbs to protect your body against illness, cancer treatments, hospitals stays, etc. People with that extra "cushion" tend to survive these things better than those who are skinny... uh.... "lean."


ETA: Just saw this blog article in Mark's Daily Apple on four success stories, Where Are They Now?, a year or more later...

HappyLC, thanks for posting this. It is compelling, I must admit. I recently came from the very low-fat vegan diets that many of the vegan doctors in the video advocate and I've read most of their books. I've also read some of the low carb doctors' books, though not all of them.

A few things came to my mind when I saw it, both good and bad:
- I have to admit that pictures do speak a thousand words here (for me, at least).
- The video was made by VegSource, a very prominent vegetarian-related organization. So it's a sure bet that their aim was not to show the low carb doctors in a good light to begin with.
- Having said that, as a few mentioned here, I also don't think the term "fat" refers to many of the LC doctors I saw in the video. The pictures are not super-thin, sure, but I might venture to call many of them no more than overweight, and some even slightly overweight. It's not as if these doctors are completely obese.
- Some have claimed here that we don't know who started out think and who didn't and that many of the LC doctors were overweight when they started while probably many of he vegan doctors were not. I don't know how much of this is true, but I do know that Dr. McDougall mentions in his new book "The Starch Solution" that he WAS overweight in his 20's - about 50 pounds. He also mentions some significant health issues, like having had a stroke at a very early age (I think it was even in college).
- As you mentioned, HappyLC, many of the studies quoted where LC won out did not test a vegan diet and not the kind of ultra low-fat vegan diet that the doctors in the video advocate. We're talking a diet of less than 10% of calories from low fat. You could easily say that a study that shows that a low carb diet doesn't win out wasn't testing a true low carb diet if it was using a carb range that was higher then Atkins Induction. Sometimes, this can make a difference.

Ultimately, I'm not saying one is better than the other. I think it's an individual matter. Some people do well on the ultra low fat vegan diet and some do not. Some do well on the low carb diet and some do not.

Tam

Lee, I actually just addressed a little of this. It's not quite true that all of the vegan doctors were never metabolically challenged or overweight when they started. For example, Dr. McDougall writes in his new book that he was 50 pounds overweight in his 20's when he started his journey to medical school and investigating nutrition and health. He also had had prior to that (I think in his teens) some very serious health issues, such as a stroke.

I can't vouch for the other vegan doctors, but I don't think we can say that they never had weight or health issues so they were starting from 0.

Tam

Actually, when you view some of Dr. McDougall's videos from lectures he does at conferences, he is quite happy and upbeat. There is also a lecture that Dr. Barnard did for PBS about diabetes that you can view on the PBS website (at least you could at some point) and he is also quite happy and upbeat.

Just putting it out there .

Tam

This post seems to make the assumption that vegans eat only vegetables, or primarily vegetables. But the diets that many of the vegan doctors in the video advocate is actually not necessarily high vegetable (Dr. Furhman's is, but his is the exception). They are high-starch and very low fat. For example, Dr. McDougall's diet consists of mainly starch (which includes beans) with vegetables and fruits as side dishes. He doesn't necessarily disallow any fat (at least, in his new book) - he just says to keep oils out of the diet and fatty plant foods like avocado and olives as now-and-then treats. Dr. Barnard's approach also advocates whole grains and beans with vegetables and fruits (his PCRM website mentions the "Power Plate", which consists of whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables in equal amounts on your plate.

So we're not talking here about a "vegetable only" diet.

Tam

I don't know much about Mark's plan, but the stories are pretty impressive.

However, if you go to the McDougall website and forums, you can also find quite a few people who have had the same experience - lost a lot of weight, improve their health on the low fat vegan diet and are still today maintaining their health and weight.

I guess the point is that any diet will work for someone who can stick with it and who feels it is right for them. We are all different and what works for one person might not work for another. So there's no right or wrong diet .

Tam

I'm glad it works for you! It doesn't for me.

I've done the vegan/vegetarian/piscatarian/ovolactate things in my looooooooong history of dieting, and did not feel well any of those times.
Some people require animal fats and meat in their diets to feel well, both psychologically and physically.

I'm one.