Robert Kesterson wrote:
> I have often heard it said that metabolic rate declines with
> age.  (But I  
> still think it's more activity that declines, and metabolism 
> follows.  At  
> least for the majority of people.)
> 

Yeah, I guess I'm an exception to the rule. I'm still a little confused
about something though--hope I'm not being too dense or difficult here. I
understand that you gained weight because your activity level fell (without
any dietary change). However, regarding the point at which you started
losing weight you said, "I cleaned up my diet even before going paleo --
that was the same time that I got off the couch and rediscovered exercise."
How do you know that exercise was the main factor in losing the weight when
you changed your diet at the same time? Even given that activity level was
the only significant factor in your weight gain, that doesn't necessarily
preclude the possibility that diet played a role in your weight loss.

> I think this is likely very true.  Despite having plenty of 
> vitamins and  
> minerals, there just aren't that many calories in vegetables 
> -- you can  
> eat huge mounds of them and not worry about it.  Fruit and 
> nuts are more  
> calorie-dense but they seem to be self-limiting (you can only 
> eat so many  
> before you tire of them).  The same with meat -- pretty dense 
> calorie  
> source, but you just don't want to eat that much of it at once.
> 

Yeah, veggies, nuts and meats are very filling and they don't give you
cravings for more the way chips and cookies do (unless salt and sugar is
added to the nuts). One of the most filling foods I've ever eaten was
chicken breast with a nut-and-egg coating. 

I'm a little skeptical of Cordain's warning about not eating too much nuts
to avoid gaining weight, given that the !Kung San consume huge quantities of
nuts by American standards and are still skinny little people and
Paleolithic digs in Europe have revealed huge mounds of hazelnut shells that
the Stone Agers had gorged on. My guess is that most people who put on
weight from eating nuts are probably eating salted and sweetened nuts along
with beer and chips and other easily-consumed calories.

> > Do you have to pay as close attention to the quantities on the Paleo
> > diet?
> 
> Not really.  I pretty much eat whatever I want, whenever I 
> want.  But I  
> can still overdo it -- it's a lot easier for modern man to go 
> pick up a  
> pound of nuts or meat or whatever from the grocery store than 
> it is for  
> the HG to pick up and shell a bunch of nuts, or hunt down an 
> antelope.   
> These days, there are far less calories involved by the 
> person doing the  
> eating.
> 

OK, so it sounds like that is one difference you experienced between the
Paleo diet and the SAD. A lot of SAD eaters I know would probably be
skeptical re: claims about not having to count calories as much with a
dietary style that tends to include more meats and fats, but that's been my
experience as well. What about the clean SAD--could you also eat pretty much
until you were full on that diet?

> > Also, you may have a "large" frame (more bone).
> 
> Possibly, but I wouldn't think so.  My wrists are only about 
> 7 1/2" around.
> 

OK, well that probably puts you in the medium frame category. So by HG
standards you're still on the plump end of the BMI scale (no offense
intended of course :-) ). So to you, HG's probably seem very thin indeed. 

I can remember the first time I saw grass-fed beef cattle. I thought they
looked like they were starving. Turns out that cattle (at least that
particular breed) are naturally lean unless they are fattened up by the
farmer on feed or hay and those cattle were actually in very good shape. My
perception of what is normal in cattle weight had been skewed by farming
practices. I think our perceptions of what is normal human weight have been
skewed in a similar manner.

> > Since your activity level apparently did not increase 
> during those 15
> > years of weight gain, your weight gain in your 20's would 
> presumably  
> > have been
> > mostly fat, rather than muscle.
> 
> True.  Another of those trends I insisted on reversing.

So, while I'm not suggesting you lose more weight, it seems possible that
getting down to 175 lbs. might involve losing some fat, not just muscle,
unless you added significant muscle after your 20's.

> > ...The [lean] Bannock were Plains Indians who hunted buffalo 
> > (American bison).
> 
> Of course.  Ever tried to run down a buffalo?  :-)
> 
> (Seriously -- I've investigated raising bison, and have developed a  
> tremendous respect for anyone who would attempt to take such 
> a beast while  
> barefoot with little more than a pointy stick.)

Well, the Bannock Indians of 1880 hunted buffalo on horseback (or stampeded
them off cliffs), but before the Spanish brought horses the Bannock would
have had to hunt or stampede buffalo on foot. Various methods are discussed
here: http://www.saskschools.ca/~gregory/firstnations/bison.html. It looks
like the buffalo were becoming scarce by 1880, so the guys in Cordain's
Bannock Indian photo could have been so lean in part because of food
scarcity or being forced to hunt smaller, leaner animals, but it's hard to
know. They seem to muscular to have been very short of food, though and
their leanness matches many other HG photos I've seen.

I have read that many of the Indians had given up on buffalo hunting and
then took it up again when the Spanish introduced horses to North America.
The Indians saw the horse as something that would allow them to live the
better hunter-gatherer life again and leave the less desirable
semi-agricultural life behind.

The Bannock were still very physically active, even with the aid of horses,
but the main difference between the nomadic Plains Indians and the slightly
more plump Indians of other regions of the Americas appears to be that the
Plains Indians ate mostly buffalo (along with some roots and berries) and
ate little or no maize, acorns, squash, potatoes or other crops. 

> 
> > Or do a Google image search on Australian
> > aborigines to see how lean they can be when they maintain a 
> > traditional
> > diet and lifestyle and how obese they can get when they 
> adopt the modern  
> > diet and lifestyle.
> 
> Indeed.  But how much is the diet part, and how much is the "and  
> lifestyle" part?
> 

The two are inseparable, of course, and both play a part, but I think the
example of the !Kung San men and women may point to diet as a playing a
bigger part. The San women are reportedly half as active as the men, yet the
women appear to be as lean as the men.

> > It appears that the leanest
> > HG's tend to be those that eat more (wild) land-based meat 
> (like bison 
> > or
> > kangaroo) and less starches or sea animals and don't live 
> in the cold
> > Arctic, where the Eskimos have apparently been naturally 
> selected for  
> > more fat cells.
> 
> That's interesting.  At first glance it would appear that the 
> leaner ones  
> have less fat in their diet (based on my thinking that wild 
> game on land  
> has less fat stores than ocean animals, which may not hold 
> true depending  
> on which animals are in question).
> 

Yes, and it is a little surprising since eating fat is not supposed to make
one fat, though natural selection for cold survival could play a role also,
and this analysis is just based on my casual observation, rather than a
scientific survey.

> > some health authorities have been putting out the opposite 
> > message--that being a little plump is actually healthy. 
> Some scientists have pointed
> > out that their data indicating that plump people are 
> healthier than lean  
> > people is likely skewed by those who lose weight due to illness.
> 
> That seems really odd -- to base a conclusion of a "healthy" 
> weight on  
> someone who has just lost a bunch *due to illness*.
> 

Actually, they were concluding that being thin is "unhealthy" because they
were ignoring this fact that some Americans are thin because they have lost
weight after already developing a severe illness. They didn't differentiate
between people who were thin through genes or diet and exercise vs. people
who were thin because they had previously been heavy and then lost weight
when they became ill (in other words, it wasn't the thinness that made them
ill, it was the illness that made them thin), so that the thin population
segment was skewed negatively by the inclusion of those who had lost a lot
of weight due to illness.

> > Since I don't know of any HG's who consciously limit or count their
> > calories, and the HG San of the Kalahari
> > eat about the same amount of calories per day as Americans 
> (2,140 /day
> 
> For what it's worth, I lose weight at that calorie level.  My 
> maintenance  
> level is about 3K/day.
> 

Yes, that's well above the reported average American level of 2,000-2,250
K/day, but of course you are taller than the avg. American (especially if
that is an avg for both men and women, like I think it is), much more
active, and eat a much healthier diet.

We disagree on which factor is more important, but I think we agree that
diet, exercise and genetics are all factors in body weight.