On Dec 20, 2005, at 1:08 am, Robert Kesterson wrote:
>
> I could, but I already eat quite a lot of it.  Today I had a pound
> of beef
> and a bit more than a pound of chicken, plus some eggs for breakfast.
> (Then of course lots of veggies and fruits too.)  That's fairly
> typical,
> and that is right at maintenance calories for me.

Cutting out chicken might help.  It's really to lean to form a large
part of your diet.  Ironically, organic chicken is worst in this
respect as the animal is killed while adult, and even leaner.  When
you eat chicken, you need to make up the calorie deficit from its
high protein with something else, which will probably be either nuts
or fruit.

You haven't mentioned severe hunger or muscle weakness, so I'm
assuming you aren't suffering rabbit starvation.  But it might be an
idea to eat more fatty cuts of meat.  When you say you eat beef-
exacty which chunks of cow do you go for?  I find most beef too lean
to be worth eating, and only eat beef mince these days.  Steak
especially is little more than dog food in my eyes.


> I just turned 41 last month.  I don't know for sure whether I lose
> mostly
> fat, mostly muscle, or an even split.  I do know that if it's
> mostly fat,
> it would have to come to a halt pretty soon.  I'm under 10% bodyfat
> (most
> abdominal muscles are visible, veins showing on the biceps, etc.), so
> there's not a whole lot of fat that could be lost, though there
> definitely
> is a little bit here and there.
>
> Maybe it's more to do with where I started?  Five years ago, I
> weight 238
> lbs -- most I have ever weighed.  That's when I decided to nip that
> in the
> bud and got serious about diet and exercise.  I've dropped down to
> a low
> of 183 lbs, then come back up and down several times and have been
> pleasantly hanging in the 185-195 range for the last year.
> Recently I got
> up to 203, and decided to cut back again, just about the same time I
> discovered paleo eating.  I very rapidly dropped back under 200,
> losing 2
> lbs a week consistently.  If I drop my calories down to 2500 or so,
> I'll
> drop weight.  (I wish it were that simple for everyone -- if I could
> bottle it and sell it, I could retire.)

I'm really, really baffled!  Unless there is something odd going
wrong with your metabolism, I can't see why you should lose weight on
2500 calories a day.  That's loads!!!  I know a guy who's 45 and eats
roughly half that a day (mostly bread and beans though).

The only thing I can suggest is that you eat a really high fat diet,
and don't make an effort to keep your calorie intake so high.  I
can't believe you would start to lose muscle when your excess fat was
gone. You might not fancy trialling that though.


> Not that I know of.  I don't have any of those symptoms, anyway.
> When I
> was younger I always had a very high metabolism, and was the
> proverbial
> "beanpole" through my teens.  I could eat tons of whatever I wanted
> and
> not gain an ounce (much as I would have liked to).  Fast forward 20
> years
> and it's a whole different picture.  Weight gain is fairly easy
> now, but
> fortunately so is weight loss.

There seems to be two ways this can go.  In my family, there appears
to be a severe milk intolerance that causes people (especially men)
in my family to be really thin.  The difference is, we start to waste
away in our old age rather than suddenly start to gain weight.  My
boss on the other hand was really tall and thin as a child, but he
started to gain weight in his 30s (he's lost most of it now he's
eating paleo).  There must be a key difference somewhere and I'd give
anything to know what it is!


> I don't know of any problems there either.  I had a full physical
> when I
> turned 40, and the doctor didn't seem to think anything was amiss
> anywhere.

Stage 1 in eating paleo is learning that everything the government
tells you about food is wrong.  Stage 2 is learning that everything
the doctors say about your health is wrong ;o)

After years of slowly decreasing health, I was losing the physical
strength and mental will to do even basic daily tasks, but according
to my doctor there was nothing wrong.  There may have been one test
that was "a little low" but not serious enough to do anything about.
It's better to trust your own gut feeling than medical advice; it's
worth a lot more.