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

[zion zig zag]

I have absolutely no desire to snack, which is just fucking awesome


Here is another interesting thing, I got a whiff of a fresh loaf of Wonder bread this morning and I thought I was going to puke. That shit smells nasty, never noticed it before.

See, WTF?!? I could snack all day, even if it's paleo snacks I just want it!

And 2nd, I still get weak in the knees when I smell fresh bread and I haven't had any in probably 2 months.

[mrryde]

See, WTF?!? I could snack all day, even if it's paleo snacks I just want it!

And 2nd, I still get weak in the knees when I smell fresh bread and I haven't had any in probably 2 months.

Really? I had 3 eggs for breakfast 4 hours ago and I am not even slightly hungry. I am a big guy and love to eat, but the cravings have all but dissipated.

[hafilax]

It's been 10 days since I decided to go the Paleo route, couple of things I noticed.

First of all, I lost 8 lbs
I slept really well the last two nights.
I have absolutely no desire to snack, which is just fucking awesome
I am learning to like water
I do feel more energetic, but I haven't had a chance to get out for a long ride yet to see if I bonk earlier than usual

Here is another interesting thing, I got a whiff of a fresh loaf of Wonder bread this morning and I thought I was going to puke. That shit smells nasty, never noticed it before.

So far, so good

Unless you are seriously obese I don't think you should be losing 8 pounds in 10 days. That's a bit extreme and points to a large energy deficit. I think 10 lbs/month is a typical recommendation for maintainable weight loss. You might be able to pull it off but for most people it seems that gradual loss leads to greater success.

Wonder Bread is neither. Fresh croissants OTOH...

For all of those who have lost weight and reached a target size, did you start eating more at some point? The calorie deficit has to be made up for somewhere as far as I can tell. Maybe the body becomes more efficient but I would think that a more energy balanced diet would be necessary. This is something I have always wondered since I'm on the hard gainer side of things. I've never had to lose weight.

[mrryde]

I wouldn't call it seriously obese, but more obese that I'd like to be. I am sure this rate of weight loss won't be maintained. I am just reporting my observations and experiences.

[cinnepa]

awesome thread ........ going to get back to some meat and really try to cut back on the grains to see what happens - been off meat for a few years but not fish. remember seeing or reading somewhere how someone tried to use the wild as an example for not eating meat and how meat actually did not give you energy after consumption but rather made you tired in the digestive process afterwards. they used gorilla's and lions as the prime examples of diet vs. their energy. gorilla's being so strong yet on a vegetarian diet, and lions who would eat their kill and pretty much sleep for hours afterwards. who knows......really like the info in this thread though; eye opening for sure, though i don't think i could get the wife to buy in - may have to do my meat munching (that doesn't sound right) during my workday.

[hitek79]

Why is milk bad?

[BurnHard]

Unless you are seriously obese I don't think you should be losing 8 pounds in 10 days.

It's most likely to be mostly water weight. 2-3lbs of fat, MAYBE, but the rest is water weight due to reduced carbs & sodium intake.

On a different note, is anybody doing Intermittent Fasting?

This is my second time on IF, had great great success the first time but quit because it wasn't vibing with full time MMA training.

Now that I'm an office drone I'm back on IF and feel abso-fucking-lutely amazing! I combine Paleo/Modern-Paleo with IF and just feel amazing 24/7. I wake up refreshed, I do my morning workouts (2-3 hours of Muay Thai & wrestling) and feel great because I stuffed myself the night before and muscle glycogen is repleted. I have 20-30g of whey protein right after training and then fast. I barely feel hungry at all all day, rarely think about food, am 100% amped & focused and don't have the post-lunch slump like all my co-workers. Then around 5-6pm I leave work & go home to make a feast of a dinner. Last night my dinner consisted of Italian styled olives & veggies in olive oil and a bunch of full fat cheese, a 1.5lbs Rib Eye steak, and a shitton of brussel sprouts cooked in butter, coconut oil, ginger, garlic, and soy sauce. Fuckin amazing btw. Followed by some 90% dark chocolate with a few oranges for dessert.

I went to bed stuffed and happy and healthy.
Been doing this for 5+ weeks now, feel amazing, have an easy time maintaining weight eating whatever the fuck I want. Over the last few weeks I'm pushing hard to adhere more and more to Paleo/Modern Paleo and the weight is slowly starting to drop.

Paleo + IF = WIN!

[hafilax]

Bad parts of milk:
-spikes your insulin
-a lot of people can't digest it
-fears of antibiotics and growth hormones from factory farms

The first two are lessened to a degree when bacteria or yeast modify it into cheese, yogurt or kefir. The 3rd by buying organic raw milk since pasteurization is supposed to be bad as well. The insulin spiking is usually bad unless used as a recovery drink in which case it stimulates muscle repair. Some use chocolate milk as a recovery drink because of the sugar, protein, fat mix.

Diet is organism specific. You can't generalize from one species to another. Giant Pandas and Koalas could be the most extreme examples because they entirely rely on basically indigestible foods. Eucalyptus is poisonous to every other mammal. The Panda especially since it is bear and part of the order carnivora yet 99% of its diet is bamboo. It's digestive system is designed to eat meat and bamboo is incredibly hard to digest yet they survive because of microbes in the gut that are able to break down the cellulose. Maybe Spats should take a trip to China and teach the Pandas to hunt again since they really should be predators and not prey.

The most interesting reading I've done this week was on the changes in brain size. I've been trying to figure out why the agricultural revolution even happened if grains and especially the first grains are so incredibly toxic as claimed by Spats. I wondered if brain development had anything to do with it. A quick read seemed to indicate that brain size expanded rapidly when meat and fruit became more important in the diet which fueled the energy hungry brains and it turns out that our brains have shrunk significantly as grain consumption has increased. Brain size isn't a direct measure of intelligence but it is an interesting statistic. Some claim that this brain shrink is dietary, others sociological. I couldn't find any theories that didn't sound like conjecture. If it is purely dietary then will Paleo Diet kids have bigger brains?

[andrewjesaitis]

Basically, try eating more fatty meat (which means you'll eat less other things) and see if you like the change. If so, try pushing it farther.

Thanks! This seems doable. So just cut the bread, increase the (fatty) meat, eat more Veggies, and keep the caloric intake in the same ballpark.

One more question, from the little bit of googling I did on the subject, there seems to be a split in the paleo community about the fatty meat part of the diet. Some seem to think that it is better to stick with lean cuts and get fat from things like olive oil and salmon. Any truth to this? I guess I just worry about artery damage, even if I'm not becoming outwardly fat.

[cinnepa]

had a few slices of turkey breast and a fives guy bacon burger today (sans bun); probably not the best source of beef but it was lunchtime - after a few years off that was good and interesting. lots of raw veggies so far too - we'll see how dinner goes tonight. going "cold-turkey" on pasta products will be tough.

[Spats]

remember seeing or reading somewhere how someone tried to use the wild as an example for not eating meat and how meat actually did not give you energy after consumption but rather made you tired in the digestive process afterwards. they used gorilla's and lions as the prime examples of diet vs. their energy. gorilla's being so strong yet on a vegetarian diet, and lions who would eat their kill and pretty much sleep for hours afterwards.

There's a whole lot of bunk-ass vegetarian propaganda out there.

Gorillas spend their entire day eating because they have to. So do all browsers and grazers -- there's just not very much food value in plants. Elephants eat several hundred pounds of leaves per day. And the reason gorillas can digest cellulose at all is because of those big-ass herbivore guts they have, full of bacteria that can break it down. All herbivores have big-ass guts to break down the plants they eat.

We don't. Humans can't digest cellulose: most of the plants we eat just get crapped back out ("dietary fiber").

(Ruminants have an extra stomach chamber (the "rumen") full of special bacteria to digest grass. They swallow grass into the rumen, digest it some, puke it back up into their mouth, "chew the cud", and swallow it again.)
[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant[/ame]

Humans, and other carnivores, have much smaller guts and much bigger brains compared to gorillas, because meat and fat are much easier to digest. Because our guts are smaller, we can spend more of our energy on other things, like running around, killing things, and running those big brains we have (our brains use ~20% of our resting energy). Since meat and fat are so much more energy-dense than plants, we can eat maybe once a day (see: BurnHard's IF) and do nothing the rest of the time, instead of having to continually stuff leaves in our face like a gorilla must.

And the reason humans don't have big carnivore teeth is that we started making stone tools ~2.6 million years ago -- not coincidentally, the date after which human brain size started its relentless increase from 350cc to ~1400cc.

[Spats]

One more question, from the little bit of googling I did on the subject, there seems to be a split in the paleo community about the fatty meat part of the diet. Some seem to think that it is better to stick with lean cuts and get fat from things like olive oil and salmon. Any truth to this? I guess I just worry about artery damage, even if I'm not becoming outwardly fat.

If you can't be convinced that saturated fat is the healthiest thing you can eat and your best source of energy (and that we've been lied to for decades in order for Monsanto, ADM, and Cargill to sell us 'vegetable oils' made of seeds), you're going to be stuck in Faileo Diet land. Dr. Cordain has done a lot of great research, but on saturated fat he is totally, blatantly wrong.

Once again: THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN SATURATED FAT INTAKE AND HEART DISEASE. Sorry to shout, but it's such an entrenched myth that I get impatient sometimes
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abst...n.2009.27725v1
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/c...ngham-follies/
Red meat doesn't correlate with heart disease, either:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20479151

And the video version of how we all got bamboozled:
[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exi7O1li_wA"]YouTube - Big Fat Fiasco pt. 1[/nomedia]

Remember that this non-correlation is despite 40 years of being told that if you eat red meat and saturated fat, YOU ARE GOING TO DIE...so anyone left eating fatty red meat doesn't give a shit about their health. Yet despite that, they're not dying any more than the health freaks eating birdseed...

The Paleo Diet is a high-fat diet. If you want to understand just how much hunters valued fat, try reading this book (note: link to free PDF in review):
http://www.gnolls.org/1403/hunters-m...al-by-hunting/

im trying to plan my garden around this. (i know a garden is not hunter gather paleo people -> but i like growing stuff) so is squash cool? both winter and summer? what should i plant?

Whatever you like to eat! Any fresh vegetables are +++. Just don't plant a bunch of corn and beans

Don't forget the spices.

going "cold-turkey" on pasta products will be tough.

Don't worry about it. Like I said: just eat more meat and less grains, see how you feel -- and if you're feeling better, you'll naturally push it farther. Let it happen.

Bad parts of milk:
-spikes your insulin
-a lot of people can't digest it
-fears of antibiotics and growth hormones from factory farms

To add to this (which I mention in the OP): butterfat is good for everyone, but some have problems with casein and lactose.
Lactose is milk sugar, and if you're not white or from certain regions of Africa, you're very likely to not be able to digest it.
Casein (the protein in cheese, and 80% of the protein in milk) causes some people to react badly. Whey protein is fine for everyone, but you shouldn't need it on a paleo diet

If it is purely dietary then will Paleo Diet kids have bigger brains?

Doubtful IMO. It's probably a few thousand years of selection pressure to be smaller and eat less. Since our brains use 20% of our energy, someone with a smaller brain starves more slowly in bad times...and you don't need a big brain to push a plow up and down a field.

However, odds are good they'll have better teeth, less allergies and asthma, stronger bones, and better health generally. Weston A. Price's "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" is an interesting book written by a dentist 80-odd years ago who noticed that every time native cultures adopted Western foods, their teeth and health went to hell. He couldn't have known about epigenetics at the time, but he knew what the results were. It's available free online, and worth skimming for the pictures.

[Spats]

I predict your grocery bill is about to increase.

Calculate how much breakfast cereal, cookies, potato chips, and other snack food cost per calorie (or, worse, "energy bars" or "health food").

Example: Big box of Cheerios, 1400 calories, $4
Two dozen large eggs, 1680 calories, $4
75/25 hamburger @ $3/pound: 1725 calories, $4

Even grass-fed hamburger from steepconcrete's farm is $3.50 a pound, shipped.

lots of raw veggies so far too - we'll see how dinner goes tonight. going "cold-turkey" on pasta products will be tough.

Glad it's working! Like I said, don't worry about cold-turkey. Let it happen. HINT: eat the meat and veggies first, until you don't want any more. Then you can fill the rest of the way up with starch...

...but you probably won't want much of it, and you'll want less and less as time goes on.

On a different note, is anybody doing Intermittent Fasting?

Yes, from time to time. Haven't eaten a thing yet today. It's great!

So far, so good

Glad it's working! A lot of that 8# is probably water, but still: good work.

See, WTF?!? I could snack all day, even if it's paleo snacks I just want it!

Maybe your body wants to build muscle? Try eating paleo to satiation. Do you get fat, or do you get built?

[BCMtnHound]

Calculate how much breakfast cereal, cookies, potato chips, and other snack food cost per calorie (or, worse, "energy bars" or "health food").

Example: Big box of Cheerios, 1400 calories, $4
Two dozen large eggs, 1680 calories, $4
75/25 hamburger @ $3/pound: 1725 calories, $4

Even grass-fed hamburger from steepconcrete's farm is $3.50 a pound, shipped.

^^^This. I am always amazed at the difference of price between processed foods, and that which is unprocessed and from closer to the source (despite that 1 doz eggs from the local farm costs as much as your 2 doz must be another northern mark-up )
But the eating habits and overall health of the population seem to me to be as much or more about convenience and propoganda/advertising as they are about budget or availability (in the supermarket - not vending machines and such, another matter entirely). It always seems to come down to a lifestyle choice.

Still wondering about the sprouted grains, though. Not a dietitian, but as horticulture is a part of my credentials, I know of significant chemical changes that happen in a seed during its germination. How does this change the toxicity potenial that this thread describes as being harmful to the digestive tract.
Notwithstanding the carbs still within those juvenile grasses & legumes, they are purported to contain many beneficial vitamins (not sure if they are the digestible kind), and protein content actually increases for a short period immediately following germination. Any thoughts or references recommended?

[powpig]

I don't have a problem with most of the concepts here, but do wonder about digestion. As has been stated, our bodies will burn carbs for energy before fat, that means to me that carbs are more easily digested than fats and my guess would be that fatty meats are the most difficult for us to digest. We've all heard about the pounds of undigested meat in our innards that can cause cancer, can't say that's not a concern for me. So making a conscious effort to eat more fatty meat kinda makes me wonder.

[Spats]

Still wondering about the sprouted grains, though. Not a dietitian, but as horticulture is a part of my credentials, I know of significant chemical changes that happen in a seed during its germination. How does this change the toxicity potenial that this thread describes as being harmful to the digestive tract.

Sprouting definitely decreases the amount of anti-nutrients and increases the nutrient value -- basically you're changing from "seed" to "part seed, part green plant".

The Weston A. Price people are big on sprouted grains for this reason: they're very much proponents of traditional (pre-industrial) diets, with all grains sprouted and/or fermented. (Though they still emphasize the primary health role of animal fat and protein.)

There is substantial overlap between WAPF and Paleo principles, and all the Paleo people I've seen respect WAPF even if they don't agree with 100% of their guidelines.

As has been stated, our bodies will burn carbs for energy before fat, that means to me that carbs are more easily digested than fats and my guess would be that fatty meats are the most difficult for us to digest. We've all heard about the pounds of undigested meat in our innards that can cause cancer, can't say that's not a concern for me.

"Rotting meat in the colon" is another one of those bunk-ass vegetarian myths. I can't even give you studies to refute it because it's so untrue...it's like trying to find a study that refutes "the moon is made of green cheese".

Your body absorbs fat through the intestine very easily, since it's not joined into weird complex molecules like amino acids or sugars are. Think about it: if your body didn't perfectly absorb all the fat you eat, you'd see grease in the toilet after you shat. The only time that happens is if you're eating Olestra, which your body can't absorb, or taking alli or Orlistat, which stop your body from absorbing fat and make you shit your pants:

http://angryaussie.wordpress.com/200...y-side-effect/

If you've got undigested ANYTHING in your colon, it's most likely because you're an undiagnosed celiac or you've got massive gut dysbiosis. And your body burns saturated fat the easiest of all, because it's a straight chain of carbons and acetyl-CoA can just munch it down like Pac-Man.

[jfost]

Since I had coincidently bought about 7 lbs of steak...

BEEF
100% Grass-Fed Beef Price Per Pound, $
Tenderloin Steak (Filet mignon) 25.00
New York Strip 18.00
Porterhouse 18.00
T-Bone 18.00
Delmonico (Rib eye) 18.00
Rib Steak 15.00
Rib Roast 15.00
Top Sirloin Steak (Sirloin strip) 13.50
Flank Steak 14.00

for every 2-day supply of 7lbs, QuikR12 is out $98-$175 depending on his taste in steak!!! I'd say that's an increase in the grocery bill!

I kid, I kid... I get that you save by not buying the processed carby snack stuff, and can prob. get deals on the "undesireable" fatty cuts that are looked down upon by the masses!

[QuikR12]

You should see the order I just put in!

Really though, I shop super cheaply unless I'm putting together an exotic gourmet concoction. I went shopping (at Grocery Outlet of all places) and got home with a cupboard full of grain products that cost me ~$100.00, and there's literally not a real meal item in the fucking bunch! I went to another store for meat, and bought "cross-rib" steak on sale; it was $28 for the 7lbs. That 28 bucks worth of meat has lasted me every day this week, and I'm only half way through. I figure if I can eat very well, and healthily for <$4.00/meal (dinner), I'm doing great.

[Spats]

And No. My main assertion is that whole grains are a net positive when consumed in moderate amounts

No, they make you die sooner. Here's an actual controlled study:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co...ilability.html



"At two years, the group that doubled its fiber intake had a 27% greater chance of dying and a 23% greater chance of having a heart attack. The extra fiber was coming from whole grains."

Moral: eat more whole grains, die sooner

Any questions?

You can talk all the bullshit associational studies you want, and you can claim all the theoretical anti-cancer properties you want for phytic acid, but the fact remains: eating more whole grains makes you die sooner. It's not a strong association -- but as DART was a controlled study, it neatly disproves your mistaken argument.

Meanwhile:

Eur J Clin Nutr. 2009 Aug;63(8):947-55. Epub 2009 Feb 11.
Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet.
Frassetto LA, Schloetter M, Mietus-Synder M, Morris RC Jr, Sebastian A.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...?dopt=Abstract

“Even short-term consumption of a paleolithic type diet improves BP and glucose tolerance, decreases insulin secretion, increases insulin sensitivity and improves lipid profiles without weight loss in healthy sedentary humans.”

[DeutschBag]

I only got through reading three pages of this thread before I ran out of time. I'll read the rest when I get home from skiing this weekend. I also did read Splat's 'how to' blog article, which I found pretty damn good. I currently am not on the Paleo diet, but do really limit my bread/cheese/pasta/grains intake - at least much more than I have in the past. However, I don't eat a lot of red meat at all. I really can't. I've been a gout sufferer since I was 17 years old. Finally, now at the age of 36, I've gotten control of it. It's taken me the last year and a half, but life is so much better without going through the constant and debilitating attacks that had plagued me for so long. I've completely stopped drinking alcohol and have really curtailed my meat intake which has really seemed to help tremendously. I also am on 300 mg/day of Allopurinol which has made a huge difference too.

My brother is big in to crossfit (he's certified and all that) and has been eating Paleo for over 4 years now. I've seen the changes in him and they are amazing. We talked a lot about his diet this past summer, but he could never answer me when I asked him how this type of diet would affect a gout sufferer. I guess that's what I'm asking - can I do this? I already eat very healthy - hardly any processed food, very limited bread/grains, and I eat a ton of fruits/veggies. For meat, I do eat chicken or turkey occassionaly and a lot of fish (salmon mostly). I don't eat much red meat at all. Through diet and exercise, I've gotten myself back in to pretty good shape while recovering from the days of constant gout attacks.

This may have been brought up earlier in the thread, so I apologize if I'm duplicating any questions. Again, I'll read through this when I get back from Austria.

One other note - my job requires me to travel often and all over Europe. How can I say no to the Spaghetti Carbonara in Rome or the Pesto Foccacia bread in Tuscany?

Woohoo - off to climb some mountains and ski down them! I'm so happy that I can do this shit again! Gout really limited me for a long time!

[Viva]

If you've got undigested ANYTHING in your colon, it's most likely because you're an undiagnosed celiac or you've got massive gut dysbiosis.

Come on over and let me fix you up a bowl of "strained corn".

[woodstocksez]

No, they make you die sooner. Here's an actual controlled study:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co...ilability.html



"At two years, the group that doubled its fiber intake had a 27% greater chance of dying and a 23% greater chance of having a heart attack. The extra fiber was coming from whole grains."

Moral: eat more whole grains, die sooner

Any questions?

You can talk all the bullshit associational studies you want, and you can claim all the theoretical anti-cancer properties you want for phytic acid, but the fact remains: eating more whole grains makes you die sooner. It's not a strong association -- but as DART was a controlled study, it neatly disproves your mistaken argument.

Yeah, I have a question. Why is the blog post that you read at that link different from the one I read? Here's a bit from that blogger:

I should say, out of fairness, that the result wasn't quite statistically significant (p less than 0.05) at two years. But at the very least, this doesn't support the idea that increasing fiber will extend your life.

Other questions occur to me that aren't addressed by that blog post, but I didn't see a link to the study in the blog post and I didn't bother to try to find it. Didn't seem worth the effort.

I also have another question. Is a single controlled study commonly taken as dispositive proof of a "fact" in scientific investigation (particularly one as seemingly sweeping and extravagant - to my layperson's eye - as "eating more whole grains makes you die sooner")?

I'm interested in replies to these questions not only from Spats, but also from the scientists and people with strong background in, and/or knowledge of, experimental science who are posting in or reading this thread.

[jon turner]

I also have another question. Is a single controlled study commonly taken as dispositive proof of a "fact" in scientific investigation (particularly one as seemingly sweeping and extravagant - to my layperson's eye - as "eating more whole grains makes you die sooner")?

I'm interested in replies to these questions not only from Spats, but also from the scientists and people with strong background in, and/or knowledge of, experimental science who are posting in or reading this thread.

Typically in science, if an experiment contradicts another experiment, it isn't taken as disproving the other experiment or results, but scientists would look further into both studies, try to devise new studies to help reconcile the differences, etc. This is my major complaint with what Spats says. He finds all the evidence for his purported truth, then just negates anything that has differing results - I know he does look for evidence for why the former studies were incorrect, but I feel it is at times incomplete and not exhaustive from what I've read in his blog and threads here. The biggest problem with all of these studies is that the human body is a very complex system, and any study attempts to simplify to just a few variables. Yes, Spats posts a lot of useful information and supports his arguments well, but there are contradicting studies and other people who live just fine and healthy on other diets. His definitive, here's my proof, everyone else is wrong, approach, is what I find most disconcerting.

This is basically the same argument (with different data) that was made in the past to support the low-fat diet he's railing against.

[MultiVerse]

remember seeing or reading somewhere how someone tried to use the wild as an example for not eating meat and how meat actually did not give you energy after consumption but rather made you tired in the digestive process afterwards. they used gorilla's and lions as the prime examples of diet vs. their energy. gorilla's being so strong yet on a vegetarian diet, and lions who would eat their kill and pretty much sleep for hours afterwards. who knows......really like the info in this thread though; eye opening for sure, though i don't think i could get the wife to buy in - may have to do my meat munching (that doesn't sound right) during my workday.

In the video earlier in this thread showing the tribesman hunting game using traditional methods both hunter and prey reach a point of exhaustion with success or failure being determined by attrition and yet modern humans race across America on bikes riding almost non-stop and finish in eight days. The difference is carbs.

While racing across America might be an extreme example, eating carbs before the effort, during the effort, immediately after the effort, then a few hours after makes repeated efforts possible. For some time now, a high performance diet has been a mix of carbs for training with more proteins and fats for the rest of the time. Efforts of less than an hour don’t require any carbohydrate.

All told, current thinking holds that for hard efforts longer than two hours a person should consume between 400-600 calories form carbs prior to the workout, another 200 just before and another 200 to 400 calories per hour during, followed by still more immediately after, finally, for several hours eat high carbohydrate foods like pasta, rice, etc. After that, reduce your carb intake significantly and focus on healthy fats & proteins and healthy fruits & vegetables.

[bagtagley]

All told, current thinking holds that for hard efforts longer than two hours a person should consume between 400-600 calories form carbs prior to the workout, another 200 just before and another 200 to 400 calories per hour during, followed by still more immediately after, finally, for several hours eat high carbohydrate foods like pasta, rice, etc. After that, reduce your carb intake significantly and focus on healthy fats & proteins and healthy fruits & vegetables.

What's the best balance between health and effectiveness? Do I pack a bag of sugar, or will dried fruit do the trick? I hate bars and gels, and find that a PBJ keeps me going longer than any of that stuff.