Todd:
> > ...
> I agree. When I started paleo, I had already lost most or all of the
> 35 lbs.
To make the picture clearer, can you estimate what month you started Zone
and what month you started NeanderThin? Since you didn't start NeanderThin
until spring, much of the LDL increase (as well as weight loss) could be
attributed to Zone instead of the high-SFA NeanderThin, right?
> One case is not evidence, except as it concerns that one individual!
:-)
> ... Wolfgang Lutz followed
> patients for years and charted cholesterol levels as he put
> them on his
> 72g lowcarb program. He documented a common rise in cholesterol,
> followed by a drop to about what it was to start with, or lower
> (especially in younger people it would go lower).
So would you say that SFA's are a concern re: LDL only in the short-term and
maybe people should start out with a lean Paleo diet but can then gradually
add SFA's, or should they continue to avoid SFA's due to other concerns? The
subject of SFA's seems to be more complex the more I delve into it.
> My hypothesis is that combining very lowcarb, near-paleo, with daily
> IF will change these numbers more dramatically than lowcarb or
> paleo alone
> ever did. We'll see in a few months if I'm right.
OK, so your hypothesis for Westerners is that most of us must combine a
Paleo or near-Paleo diet with intermittent fasting to achieve
hunter-gatherer-like stats such as LDL 30-70, BMI 19-24, BP around 110/70,
FBS around 70-85, etc.?
That leaves us needing an explanation for how all the H-G's do it. Is your
hypothesis that they intermittently fast out of necessity and that this
explains why they can eat without counting calories when food is available
and not get overweight or develop other bad health stats? Is the success of
intermittent fasting just due to low overall calories or does it have some
other or additional effect? Is exercise also a factor? If exercise is a
major factor that can overcome dietary factors, how do we explain the
Northwestern Pacific Indians who were reportedly fairly sedentary fishermen
but apparently were not obese? Is types of foods a factor at all other than
low carb?
That also leaves us needing an explanation for why wild animals don't get
obese, even when their prey is plentiful. Lions do not get fat amidst
plentiful antelope, yet domestic housecats do become obese and often remain
obese despite owner's efforts to limit their calories and let them exercise.
If food type does not matter much, why is it that a cat or dog will eat
itself to death on pet food, but will reportedly never do so in the wild? Do
different rules apply to cats and dogs than apply to humans?
Also, there may be more "outliers" than you think, since I told everyone who
asked about Paleo or NeanderThin that they did not have to consciously count
or limit their calories if they ate all Paleo foods. I'd say 3 out of about
15 or so people did not lose a significant amount of weight (and I know
there are some Paleo dieters here who've had trouble losing weight without
restricting calories and/or fasting, such as yourself). Those three did not
adhere strictly to Paleo foods and/or ate lots of saturated fat, and one of
them was lean to begin with. A couple of the 15 said they lost some weight
just by eliminating wheat and continuing to eat the same amounts of food
they always had. I agree that not everyone will necessarily lose weight on
Paleo foods without counting calories and pushing the plate aside before
becoming full, but in my experience, the outliers have been the ones who
didn't lose much weight on a near-Paleo diet, and everyone I know personally
who went strictly Paleo for at least several months eventually became quite
lean (the kind of lean that Loren Cordain, Wiley Long and Boyd Eaton
display--who are apparently three more outliers). Of course, no one ate the
quantities of eggs, bacon and pemmican that Ray Audette did (and few would
even conceive of doing so), and none had the early stages of type 1
diabetes, so I agree that he appears to be an outlier. As always, individual
results will vary.
You mentioned on Sat, 5 Oct 2002 that "Anecdotally, I find that I gain
weight if my lowcarb diet is also low-protein. After a while, I seem to
develop an insatiable appetite, and I tend to eat large quantities of these
low-protein, high-fat foods." The more I learn about the results of your
experiments, the more it's looking like a high-protein, low-carb,
moderate-fat diet such as Cordain suggests makes sense for you. I know
you've tried a high-SFA NeanderThin diet, but have you tried the
Cordain-type diet?
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