Tue, Jul-29-14, 10:58
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Senior Member
Posts: 3,948
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Plan: Protein Power
Stats: 213/167/165
BF:35%/23%/20%
Progress: 96%
Location: United States
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- Clearly, somebody needs to proofread the booklet.
- There could be a couple of reasons for this. First, leafy veggies are part of the crucifer family of plants, and too much of them depress thyroid function. Second, Westman wants his patients to be in ketosis, which happens only when net carb intake is below 50g/day. Honestly, though, I'm skeptical about the wisdom of this for more than 90 days, even for therapeutic reasons. Insulin is involved in thyroid signaling, and keeping insulin levels too low for too long increases the likelihood of hypothyroid symptoms. If you accept Paul Jaminet's assertion that processing vegetables take more energy than those veggies contain, then VLC is essentially a zero-carb diet. I'll allow that due to biochemical individuality, some people will thrive on VLC.
- Nuts are problematic for a couple of reasons. With the exception of macadamia nuts (which are just little balls of omega-9 fat), nuts have anti-nutrients that must be removed before you can safely eat them. The skin of almonds, for example, contain 2 anti-nutrients:
- protease inhibitors, which prevent digestion of the nut's protein
- phytates, which bind to certain minerals, e.g., zinc and magnesium, they come in contact with.
To make almonds safe to eat, you must first soak them in water overnight. This fools the nut into reacting as though it's just rained, and it's time to grow; so, the protease inhibitors in the nut's skin get deactivated. Then, you have to slip the nuts out of their skins, because soaking doesn't deactivate phytates. Next, unless you enjoy soggy almonds, you have to dry them out in the oven or a dehydrator.
After that, you're left with very tasty almond kernels that it's very tempting to overeat, giving you (a) a huge amount of calories in one sitting and (b) a lot of inflammatory omega-6 fats along with the protein in the nuts.
That's a lot of work for very little reward, IMO.
- I don't know about this.
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