Philip wrote:
> 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?
>   

I started Zone shortly after the January lab results came in.  I was 
very strict with it and lost a lot of weight fast, since relative to my 
size it was a pretty severe caloric restriction.  I was getting about 
1,600 calories a day.  I don't have any records, and my memory may be 
off, but it seems to me that I actually went under 200 lbs on the Zone 
diet.  I do know that I started experiencing cold hands and feet, and 
fatigue, and in the gym I was getting weaker.  I could have added 
"blocks" to my Zone diet to correct, but by then I had started reading 
about paleo, as a result of Barry Sears's comments that the Zone was 
paleo-inspired.  Although Sears had a lot to say about why carbs 
shouldn't *exceed* the Zone allowance, he really didn't have that much 
to say about why they shouldn't go lower, and what he did have to say 
didn't seem that convincing.  I'm guessing it was mid or late March when 
I switched to a Neanderthin diet.  I regained some weight but felt a lot 
better.


>> ... 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. 
>   
First of all, it's far from clear that LDL in itself is a concern at 
all, although LDL particle size probably is.  I think that increased SFA 
intake causes a temporary LDL increase in many people, although in those 
who are also losing weight at a good clip it may not be so.  
Fortunately, we now have (but didn't in 1997) some excellent controlled 
studies of VLC (very low carb) diets that are high in SFA, and the 
evidence from those studies is reassuring.  See for example 
http://www.obesityresearch.org/cgi/content/full/12/suppl_2/115S

>   
>> 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.?
>   

I'm not in a position to generalize.  I'd love to achieve those stats 
but I'm 53 years old, insulin resistant for decades--in short, I'm 
metabolically damaged goods.  Although I'd like to believe that LCIF 
could undo that metabolic damage, and I'm definitely giving it my best 
try, I may not get those stats.


> 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?
I just don't know.  I suspect that by not becoming IR in the first place 
they have an advantage.  By not becoming IR their appetites are likely 
to be more in synch with their actual energy requirements.  Not being 
surrounded by an abundance of weird processed foods must also help in 
this respect.  Cordain's research suggests that HG meal frequency is 
more likely to be 1-2 per day.

>  Is the success of
> intermittent fasting just due to low overall calories or does it have some
> other or additional effect?
Ah, that's the interesting part.  Mattson's animal studies suggest that 
the fasting effect is independent of caloric deficit 
(http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/10/6216).

>  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?
>   
I think exercise is a key factor in overcoming IR, but perhaps less so 
for people who do not become IR in the first place.  But that's just my 
conjecture, with exactly nothing to support it.

> 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?
>   
I would never claim that the type of food doesn't matter.

> 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).
Yup.  You just can't say "eat all you want" of these foods and you'll 
lose weight, because you just don't know how much they'll want to eat.  
Overweight people are metabolically screwed up!  Our appetites are not 
well behaved.  We are perfectly capable of eating too much of the right 
foods.  And even though the old "a calorie is just a calorie" claim is 
false, it doesn't follow that calories are utterly irrelevant to body 
weight.  It just means that the relation between body weight and 
calories is complicated, for many of us.

> 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?

I don't know whether I'd make this statement today or not, but by that 
time I was experimenting with various nonpaleo lowcarb approaches, I 
believe.  For example, rich cheeses such as brie are pretty low in 
protein, and I could consume quite a bit of that sort of thing.

In ten years of this forum, I've probably held every position on every 
issue, and written more crapola than any other person.  Not only that, 
my experience of food changes over time.  If my current experiment 
doesn't yield satisfactory results, maybe I'll try Cordain.


Todd Moody
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