Focus On The Wrong Knowledge Problem

If you want to understand why everything you were told about diet for most of your life, has been completely ass about face, you can read about that here, in four pages, or buy Nina Teicholz's book "The Big Fat Surprise" in over 400 pages.

I've already written about two wrong ideas commonly held, even by professionals. That you need to exercise to reduce weight. And to lose weight you need to eat less so that calories consumed balance the calories you burn during the day. Both those ideas are wrong as explained in the section about bus drivers, and the WHI above.

There are real choices if you want a weight loss diet. Banting or Low-Carbohydrate High-Fat is the most efficient and painless way, but there are other alternatives. Perhaps the most useful of those is the simple act of fasting. An extended overnight fast, is a very effective tool, when combined with low carbohydrate principles.

The woman eating a Paleo diet needs to know that if carbohydrates are kept below 120gm a day weight loss is likely, even though one is not in ketosis. For more rapid weight loss, it's desirable to be in ketosis and for that the amount of carbohydrate in the diet needs to be less than 50gm a day. She would benefit from reading some of the research studies Dr Jeff Volek has done.

I suspect that the Weston Price advocate is confused about what Weston Price actually said. I doubt if she understands what carbohydrates are, and why that is important. It's common to meet people, who are quite well educated, but still confused about which foods are or are not sources of carbohydrates.

She might also benefit from knowing that when she eats breakfast, if she eats zero carbohydrates, fat burning will continue. Perhaps continue all day if she's careful about the foods she chooses for lunch.

Finally the young professional woman. She's already eating a gluten free diet, with some success. She will probably find that a grain free diet is even better. She was worried about high blood pressure. If she adopts a Banting diet her blood pressure will probably return to normal.

The other issue people raise when I speak of a high fat diet, is their fear of high cholesterol. The Framingham Study showed conclusively that total cholesterol was ineffective as an indicator of future heart disease.

Because the ability to test for HDL-C and LDL-C had been developed, and they had drugs (statins) that reduce LDL-C, the recommended protocol switched to using statins to lower LDL-C. It turns out that LDL-C carries a payload of particles, and the nature of those particles is important. If the particles are large and fluffy they are harmless. If they are small and dense, they might be harmful.

People eating a low fat diet, produce small dense particles, and low HDL-C. People eating a high fat diet, produce large fluffy particles, and high HDL-C. That's a double advantage because high HDL-C is known to be protective against CVD and Alzheimer's.

John Stephen Veitch