On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, JoAnn Betten wrote:

> OK, i decided to give this Anchell thing a try.
> (very short history: went on NeanderThin 3 years ago--lost 30 pounds
> quickly, gained it back slowly)

Interesting, and similar to my story.

> since i don't have the Anchell book, i've just been following the basic
> outline of the diet as posted by Todd (thanks Todd!)

Nichts zu danken.

> i lost 10 pounds in a week, which i am very happy about, but the monotony of
> the diet is making me crazy.  question:  will the weight come back if i go
> back to my regular paleo eating?  is there some sort of maintainence
> Anchell, low-pyruvate diet, or is this it?

Answer: I also found the monotony very difficult for the first
week or so.  Now, in the third week, I don't seem to mind it so
much.  I seem to have made some sort of psychological adjustment,
which is easier because I am still losing weight, although more
slowly than the first week.  Total weight lost as of today
(almost the end of the third week) is 15 lbs., 12 of which came
off the first week.

The maintenance diet is what Anchell calls the "Modified meat
diet" (as opposed to the "Meat diet", which is what you've been
doing).  It is the same as the Meat diet, with the following
exceptions: (1) You may add eggs and natural (i.e., not processed
with sugar or other additives) cheese; (2) at one meal a day you
may have 2 non-meat servings, instead of 1.  Anchell claims that
most people on the Modified diet regain about 5 pounds of fat and
then stabilize at that weight.

As you can see, the Modified diet is not much less monotonous
than the Meat diet.  What I plan to do is the following: When I
have lost the weight I need to lose I will experiment,
introducing other paleo foods, in the same single-serving amounts
that I have been using with the Anchell foods, and see what
happens.  Frankly, I find it hard to believe that the
substitution of, say, mushrooms or onions for blueberries is
going to cause weight gain.  But then I also find it hard to
believe that this diet would work at all.

I just ordered, though the university library, a copy of the 1953
NEJM paper by A.W. Pennington that originally inspired Anchell.
Anchell says that as far as he is concerned Pennington was the
Einstein of obesity and nutrition.  Incidentally, Anchell himself
is now 81 years old.

Todd Moody
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