"Eat Like A Predator, Not Like Prey": Paleo In Six Easy Steps, A Motivational Guide

[pappag]

Lots of success with the paleo diet with this family...
http://paleoparents.com/our-before-after-story/

... who also wrote the book, "Eat like a Dinosaur", which has been getting rave reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Like-Dinos.../dp/1936608871

[Dantheman]

plugged my numbers into a cholesterol calculator and got this:

Your Total Cholesterol of 299 is HIGH RISK
Your LDL of 236 is VERY HIGH RISK
Your HDL of 47 is NORMAL
Your Triglyceride level of 80 is NORMAL
RATIOS:
Your Total Cholesterol/HDL ratio is: 6.36 - (preferably under 5.0, ideally under 3.5) AT RISK
Your HDL/LDL ratio is: 0.199 - (preferably over 0.3, ideally over 0.4) AT RISK
Your triglycerides/HDL ratio is: 1.702 - (preferably under 4, ideally under 2) IDEAL

That's a good trig number, but the HDL/LDL ratio is concerning.

Yeah, I'm going to eliminate eggs and beef for a month a see what happens.

I would get the other tests done before I modified my diet. Then you get a better baseline to compare to, and a second datapoint for your current diet would be good. Like I said, these numbers can vary a lot day-to-day so you want to confirm the data before making major lifestyle changes. If the second test results are similar, then make changes and re-test.

[XXX-er]

Unless you are a bone rack which is not a big problem in N.A. ask most any MD what the average 50 yr old North American can do to improve their health and they will say "lose weight"

at 175lbs 5'8" I was overweight but due to body type I didn't look overweight, my buddy the doc said oh yeah I could see you had a gut & if you lost 10-15lbs all yer numbers will fall in line ...he was right

[Dantheman]

Perhaps each body is different

Yes. Dietary cholesterol does not effect most people due to the liver downregulating in vivo cholesterol production in response to increased dietary intake. But in some people the downregulating doesn't occur and they hyper-respond to dietary intake. Natty's family history of hypercholesterolemia indicates that he may be in that minority.

I actually got some blood drawn yesterday and I'm getting results tomorrow afternoon. I'm still averaging 4-5 eggs/day and I'll report the results here.

[hitek79]

I've read through this whole thread before, but I don't remember if it's been discussed before. Here's my question in regards to wheat and grains. Why are so many people allergic to them if they aren't that bad.

I do know some people have allergies to shell fish, but I can't say I've ever heard of anyone that's allergic to beef, or pork, or fruits or vegetables. I'm sure that it happens, but the numbers have to be absolutely miniscule compared peanut/dairy/wheat allergies.

[natty dread]

Good call Dan, I will wait til I get the tests done to make the changes. Just email my doc about the tests you mentioned and made an appt.

XXX: My doc said the 10 lbs I lost could have definitely contributed to my marked decrease in BP. You are prob right, I do eat too much (maybe subconsciously using paleo as a rationalization) and could stand to lose another 10. I am immediately reprioritizing life to put exercise back on top!

[dino]

I've read through this whole thread before, but I don't remember if it's been discussed before. Here's my question in regards to wheat and grains. Why are so many people allergic to them if they aren't that bad.

I do know some people have allergies to shell fish, but I can't say I've ever heard of anyone that's allergic to beef, or pork, or fruits or vegetables. I'm sure that it happens, but the numbers have to be absolutely miniscule compared peanut/dairy/wheat allergies.

Just a guess here, but I think the theory is along these lines: Humans have been fully evolved and living as hunter/gatherers/foragers for something like 200,000 years. Agriculture was invented basically 10,000 years ago. "Allergies" are generally unheard of in indigenous forager tribes. Processed food (all agriculture products, especially wheat and grains) are relatively new introductions into the human diet.

[XXX-er]

I read about guys who embrace the paleo thing and scarf down WAY too much free run chicken/beef/lamb or whatever, sure the free run thing is good but the fact you ate too much is probably overriding the better quality of meat thing

Consider most of our moms told us " eat all your food you are so skinny" well maybe we are still hearing mom but the time when we should have worried about being too skinny is long past

if you wonder what a portion size is the white label on the side of all food products has the portion size at the top, I pay attention to the portion size & amount of sugar

It is way easier to just eat less than to try and burn off the excess food that you ate, the thing with paleo is because protien & fat are satisfying you can get away with eating much less food without feeling hungry so eat less move more and consider ... it is OK to be a little hungry

[Dantheman]

Got my blood test results yesterday:

TC: 160
HDL: 50
LDL: 96
VLDL: 14
Trigs: 69

[pappag]

Got my blood test results yesterday:

TC: 160
HDL: 50
LDL: 96
VLDL: 14
Trigs: 69

Optimal across the board.

[skideeppow]

I have been on the paleo for the last three weeks. That with crossfit 4 days a week and on my bike about the other three or four days, I have dropped 14lbs. Went from 213 to 199. Lightest I have been in 15 years.
The fact that I am off suger (which i had an addiction to) and bread, grains as well as dairy amazes me. After the first week, it got so much easier.
I

[zion zig zag]

We get a blood test every year at work, so I have a history.
My numbers pre paleo:
Total 166
Triglycerides 55
HDL 69
Non-HDL 97
VLDL 11
LDL 86

After a year of paleo:
Total 204
Triglycerides 58
HDL 75
Non-HDL 129
VLDL 12
LDL 117

[Spats]

Got my blood test results yesterday:

TC: 160
HDL: 50
LDL: 96
VLDL: 14
Trigs: 69

TC of 160 is lower than optimal (minimum mortality range is 200-240). As HDL and LDL have immune functions as well as being fat/cholesterol transporters, that can sometimes be a sign of undiagnosed chronic infection. It's worth investigating. Paul Jaminet at Perfect Health Diet has spent a lot of time on this issue and what can cause it.

[Spats]

We get a blood test every year at work, so I have a history.
My numbers pre paleo:
Total 166
Triglycerides 55
HDL 69
Non-HDL 97
VLDL 11
LDL 86

After a year of paleo:
Total 204
Triglycerides 58
HDL 75
Non-HDL 129
VLDL 12
LDL 117

As I said to Dan, the minimum mortality range for TC is between 200-240, and TG/HDL is the best predictor of CVD, so you're doing great.

Also keep in mind that LDL is "calculated", which means it's a bogus number and lowering your TG raises your HDL. A TG of 58 is low enough that your LDL is probably overestimated in both cases.

[Spats]

natty:

LDL isn't necessarily = death. See Anthony Colpo's "LDL Cholesterol: “Bad” Cholesterol or Bad Science?"
http://www.jpands.org/vol10no3/colpo.pdf

I have no idea what your diet is like...but some people find that dairy fat consumption makes their LDL and TC skyrocket. If you use a lot of butter or drink a lot of milk/cream, this could be a factor. What's your dairy consumption like?

Note that the fat from red meat itself (or eggs) doesn't seem to be as much of an issue. The current thinking is that it's due to butter's high myristic acid content (C14:0), but no one is totally sure, because it's purely an observational thing in the Paleo community at this point.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of treating numbers, especially when people have lost a lot of weight and feel better than they have in years. As I've noted above, minimum mortality for TC is 200-240 -- yet official guidelines say everyone should be below 200! In other words, they've defined the healthiest people as "at risk" in order to sell them dangerous drugs.


EDIT TO ADD: when getting CRP, you want the hsCRP (high sensitivity CRP). Regular CRP really only tells you if you're in massive systemic inflammation mode, which you most likely aren't: it's used for people with chronic disease.

[Spats]

My sis has Lupus, doc put her on the Paleo diet as part of her management plan. Not only is it helping control her condition very nicely, its helping keep very trim and no I'm not posting pic's.

Congratulations! That's great to hear. Two major things to avoid with Lupus are alfalfa sprouts and fava beans, due to L-canavanine content...they're not paleo, but some people sneak them in anyway.
http://www.gnolls.org/2982/anti-nutr...perimentation/

I had type 2 diabetes or maybe high blood sugar depending on which doc you talk to I cut the sugar completely, cut the food intake, cut back on carbs, ate protien & fat but just way less of it

Within the year my good cholestral went up, my bad cholestral went down, A1C dropped from 9ish to 6.9 and I lost 15-20lbs on 175, so I entirely controled Type 2 with diet ... I had been eating too much food for years

Great news! Don't tell any dietitians in North Carolina, though

Also, for the athletes out there, I'll just leave this here: your whey protein and protein shakes may not be gluten-free!
http://www.gnolls.org/3066/your-whey...mine-peptides/

[natty dread]

natty:

LDL isn't necessarily = death. See Anthony Colpo's "LDL Cholesterol: “Bad” Cholesterol or Bad Science?"
http://www.jpands.org/vol10no3/colpo.pdf

I have no idea what your diet is like...but some people find that dairy fat consumption makes their LDL and TC skyrocket. If you use a lot of butter or drink a lot of milk/cream, this could be a factor. What's your dairy consumption like?

Note that the fat from red meat itself (or eggs) doesn't seem to be as much of an issue. The current thinking is that it's due to butter's high myristic acid content (C14:0), but no one is totally sure, because it's purely an observational thing in the Paleo community at this point.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of treating numbers, especially when people have lost a lot of weight and feel better than they have in years. As I've noted above, minimum mortality for TC is 200-240 -- yet official guidelines say everyone should be below 200! In other words, they've defined the healthiest people as "at risk" in order to sell them dangerous drugs.


EDIT TO ADD: when getting CRP, you want the hsCRP (high sensitivity CRP). Regular CRP really only tells you if you're in massive systemic inflammation mode, which you most likely aren't: it's used for people with chronic disease.

Thanks for chiming in spats. My dairy consumption consists of 1 tbs of half and half a day in my coffee and a very small amount of butter in my sauteed meat/veggie stir fries. I use mostly olive oil. I have completely cut out milk and only have cheese rarely as a treat. my diet is 90% grass fed meat, fish, eggs, and veggies.

I meet with my doc tomorrow to discuss my results. He is sort of "meh" about further blood testing beyond another basic repeat cholesterol test to confirm results--his reason being that even if we find out what kind of LDLs I have, there's "not much we can do with that information." I like my doc, but I may have to consult with someone else to further investigate this.

I wouldn't be as worried if my LDLs were slightly elevated above "normal"--they just seem shockingly high and if I have to decreased meat and eggs and live on fatty fish as my protein, I'll do it if necessary. But then there's the research that shows LDL level doesn't matter...
I'll let you know what I find out.

[Dantheman]

TC of 160 is lower than optimal (minimum mortality range is 200-240). As HDL and LDL have immune functions as well as being fat/cholesterol transporters, that can sometimes be a sign of undiagnosed chronic infection. It's worth investigating. Paul Jaminet at Perfect Health Diet has spent a lot of time on this issue and what can cause it.

I skimmed the PHD series on lipids and immunity. Interesting stuff I've never seen discussed elsewhere. I suppose I'll up my dairy fat consumption (just finished some leftover psuedo-tartiflette!)

his reason being that even if we find out what kind of LDLs I have, there's "not much we can do with that information."

Except, you know, markedly improve your understanding of your actual heart disease risk.

[bagtagley]

What was 'pseudo' about it?

[Dantheman]

True tartiflette requires reblochon, which is not currently available anywhere in the US, and lard fumee, which I may have been able to locate at a specialty shop downtown but already lacking the correct cheese I was not motivated to hunt it down. Most recipes also call for a small amount of white wine, which I did not have and was not going to get in UT on a Sunday.

So I faked it with bacon and a combination of some good camembert and Delice de Bourgogne. Not tartiflette, but still absolutely delicious.

[gaijin]

Spats chimed in on another thread a while back when I mentioned I'm not eating animal fat anymore after seeing my father go through quadruple bypass surgery. (He's 66, I'm 36) Spats basically posted a bunch of links showing that animal fat has no relation to heart disease and that I didn't need to be torturing myself. Informative, for sure. But I made diet/lifestyle changes anyway. I firmly believe our American upbringing has severely skewed our perception of health. Starting with grandma's house as well as school lunches.

At 5'9", last October I weighed 175, which is the biggest I have ever been. Homer Simpson was my nickname. This April I got down to 155, which is what I weighed before I turned 21 and could buy beer. 20lbs in six months. I never once tried to lose weight. I only tried to stop eating foods I thought were bad for my heart. Ice cream, butter, cheese, chips, basically anything processed. The American shit-show.

Yes, I eat meat. But only real and fresh meat. And only in small amounts. 3-4 bites. I don't eat jerky or packaged meats. I make my own bread with a bread machine and olive oil. Rice is also a staple food in the house. All animal fat is a side-dish to my vegetables and grains. Steak is 3 bites to top off my salad/rice entree. I don't know shit about gluten, but I'll read up a bit.

I also walk more now, 3-4 hours a week commuting to work. Walking and eating healthier are undoubtedly the reasons for losing the weight and also keeping my cholesterol levels in healthy zones.

It wasn't hard. The hardest part of changing my diet to real foods was always feeling hungry for the first few weeks. I wasn't getting very much (any) fat in my diet and I could feel it. My stomach wanted it, it was used to it. Just like alcohol. I firmly believe fat is just as physiologically addictive as alcohol. We convince ourselves we need it. "Just a little bit." leads to a little bit more. "We need it." is a fabricated lie your stomach enzymes are telling you. Tell my father to lay off the ice cream even after a quadruple bypass and he sounds like an alcoholic justifying a beer. It's the exact same language and viewpoints. "I need to eat less fat." in the morning changes to "The human body needs fat." by the afternoon.

I'm not a nutritionist. I'm just a guy who knows we become our parents. So I changed my lifestyle. Meat is a side-dish, not an entree. Suddenly, I feel 20 again and I need a new wardrobe. I don't feel hungry anymore. My tastebuds are stronger. I have zero cravings for the shit-show foods.

/cool story, bro.

[powpig]

Careful Spats, you may be engaging in criminal activity and not even know it.


http://www.naturalnews.com/035691_di...on_advice.html

Health blogger threatened with jail time for advocating Paleo diet that cured his diabetes

Thursday, April 26, 2012
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) Internet free speech is under assault in America, and a dangerous new trend has surfaced that threatens to throw nutritional bloggers in jail for advocating healthy diets on their blogs or websites. As you read this, a blogger who wrote about using the Paleo diet to overcome diabetes is being threatened with jail time in North Carolina, where the state Board of Dietetics / Nutrition claims his nutritional advocacy is equivalent to the crime of "practicing nutrition without a license."

His name is Steve Cooksey, and his website is http://www.diabetes-warrior.net

He's being targeted by state "dieticians" (which is another word for "nutritional moron" as you'll see below) who say that Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to "practice dietetics or nutrition." His website's advocating of the Paleo diet for individuals who have health challenges is, they claim, a violation of law.

So they've threatened him with arrest if he does not take down his website... or at the very least stop advocating the Paleo diet to readers.

Criminalizing health advice
But wait a second. People give nutritional advice on their websites all the time. Millions of websites and blogs, in fact, currently offer advice on fitness, nutrition, disease prevention, natural remedies and more. Are all those people now criminals if they live in North Carolina?

And even worse, could this censorship insanity spread to other states? Might such censorship be pursued at a federal level?

Truth is, such an effort has already taken place. I don't recall who was behind it, but nearly a decade ago, several U.S. Senators got together and tried to push a bill that would make it a federal crime to offer health advice on the internet. That effort failed, and we never heard anything more about it. But now that the U.S. government has crossed what I call the "threshold of criminality" and has devolved into a police state gang of total thugs (TSA, anyway?), it's not hard to imagine these people trying to bring back their loony ideas of criminalizing health advice on the web.

The point behind all this, of course, would be to monopolize information while silencing those who freely share the truth about natural cures, vitamin D, cancer prevention and so on. The truth about nutrition quite obviously threatens the power and profits of the pharmaceutical industry -- an industry that thrives on nutritional ignorance and highly deceptive marketing of its poisons to the uninformed masses. Merck, in fact, was just fined $321 million for criminal violations in the illegal marketing of Vioxx (http://www.naturalnews.com/035690_Me...marketing.html).

In North Carolina, monopolistic thuggery and oppression of Free Speech is making the state look pretty ugly from a liberty perspective. As reported in the Carolina Journal: (http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclu...sive.html?id=8...)

"Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail. The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist."

The key here is found in the phrase, "...can't encourage others." Thus, the mere "encouraging" of someone to eat something healthy is now considered a crime in North Carolina.

Thus, the sentence, "Eat more vegetables and less meat" can suddenly land you in jail. Or posting a blog that includes, "You will be healthier if you drink fresh raw veggie juice each day" suddenly turns you into a criminal.

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Hear the interview with this Paleo diet blogger on the Robert Scott Bell Show
Robert Scott Bell recently interviewed Paleo blogger Steve Cooksey. Find the April 25, 2012 show at:
http://naturalnewsradio.com/Archive-RobertScottBell.asp

Here's the interview on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R653E4OXJzc

[Crass3000]

I'm pretty sure a diet high in vegitables, low on meat except fish is pretty good for you. Too much meat is hard on your system and leads to more cancer, etc. Vegetables have so many cancer fighting properties it is amazing we eat anything else. Except for I guess other stuff tastes good. A diet high in meat is great for putting on bulk but is not very healthy. Don't get me wrong, I still eat like shit but a smart person eats lots of veggies.

[XXX-er]

the Inuit ate a lot of meat cuz all they had was meat and they did fine (except for enlarged livers) until they started eating the white mans diet and this has been documented by the medical proffesiion

[iceman]

Medical recordkeeping is a traditional Inuit activity.