"Life Without Bread"

[Jacques]

Megan has taken back cheese into her diet and does not seem to be having any problems with it. Dugdeep points out that some people take cream to make the quota. Maybe that is the solution for some people and they can test it out to see if their body tolerates it?

I don't seem to be bothered by the problem because I have my own "supply" stuck to the body, like Megan. But the slim people, athletes, those who do a lot of physical labor and don't have fat on their bodies, have different issues to deal with and that does need a solution.

Well, I am what we can call a slim people and it is very difficult for me to gain weight.

Needless to say that I do not have a lot of fat in my body. Eventhough I take 3 to 4 tablespoons of coconut oil a day, it does not change anything. I even rub my body with coconut oil to increase the good fat in my body.

I have stop eating cheese many months ago but I did not have any side effects while eating it. Maybe i could reintroduce cheese and see how my body will react to it. But may i say that since the dairy products are a NO in general, it is going to be difficult to do that.

 

[RedFox]

I'm the same as you Gandalf, I find it very difficult (if not impossible) to gain weight.

I've noticed - after a couple of years of remaining the same height - that I've grown a little, and my legs are a little bit sore still. This is interesting in light of the hormone balance issue written of in Life Without Bread, where the body can compensate for higher insulin by cutting down on hormones in the same general category, including growth hormones. Perhaps balancing this up with the diet (same reason underweight people - like me - are supposed to gain a healthy weight. this may come, I guess. to be seen in coming months) has made my body resume the last part of its growth, given that I'm still in my early twenties? Any other young members noticing this?

I have noticed that my muscle tone/strength has improved dramatically over the last few weeks. This seems to have had the effect that my posture is greatly improved and I am standing taller. I am not sure if I have grown taller, but my trousers (and tops?) seem to be a little on the shorter side at the moment.....given I am in my thirties I find that rather interesting. Growth, repair and strengthening seems to be what is happening. Getting taller may be part of this for some people I think.

I think that if my muscle tone keeps improving that I may actually start to gain some weight in the form of muscle! I have never been able to gain muscle mass before (and keep it more than a week), no matter what exercise I did.

 

[Lilou]

I have noticed that my muscle tone/strength has improved dramatically over the last few weeks.

I have also noticed an increase in muscle tone/strength since incorporating more fat into my diet. I have never had a problem gaining weight,quite the opposite, I put on weight quickly & readily & have spent my whole life fighting excessive weight gain! I have always felt it was a curse, but can see that an inability to put on weight is a problem as well.

Never the less, I have noticed increase muscle mass & decrease in fat mass since upping my fat intake. And a little bit of exercise has gone a long way in speeding up this process. And if I could gain alittle height, I would be thrilled!!

Viva la Fat!!! :D

 

[Joe]

I'm the same as you Gandalf, I find it very difficult (if not impossible) to gain weight.

I've noticed - after a couple of years of remaining the same height - that I've grown a little, and my legs are a little bit sore still. This is interesting in light of the hormone balance issue written of in Life Without Bread, where the body can compensate for higher insulin by cutting down on hormones in the same general category, including growth hormones. Perhaps balancing this up with the diet (same reason underweight people - like me - are supposed to gain a healthy weight. this may come, I guess. to be seen in coming months) has made my body resume the last part of its growth, given that I'm still in my early twenties? Any other young members noticing this?

I have noticed that my muscle tone/strength has improved dramatically over the last few weeks. This seems to have had the effect that my posture is greatly improved and I am standing taller. I am not sure if I have grown taller, but my trousers (and tops?) seem to be a little on the shorter side at the moment.....given I am in my thirties I find that rather interesting. Growth, repair and strengthening seems to be what is happening. Getting taller may be part of this for some people I think.

I think that if my muscle tone keeps improving that I may actually start to gain some weight in the form of muscle! I have never been able to gain muscle mass before (and keep it more than a week), no matter what exercise I did.

Maybe you should experiment with a little working out, as in weight lifting, nothing serious, just the main muscle groups. In "life without bread" they mention that this enhanced the weight (muscle mass) gain for people on the diet. Haven't tried it myself yet.

 

[dugdeep]

A comment on "calculating" how much to eat of this and that. We're supposed to have built-in "calculators." No other animal can do the math, and yet most healthy animals manage seem to maintain their weight if they aren't exposed to human foods.

I understand your aversion to calculating food intake and, believe me, I share it. When I was in holistic nutrition school we were taught this stuff with a little bit of disdain - it was looked at as "dietitian stuff." None the less, when a question like "how much fat should we be eating?" I think these calculations have their place as a rough guideline. No one is suggesting we start weighing out our meals and eat with a calculator next to us, but when we're looking to find out what a high fat diet actually looks like, the formulas have their place. Eating excessive protein and not enough fat is a legitimate concern, so anything that can help inform is valuable IMO.

[quote author=megan]
My experience with lowering carbs is that I have not had to calculate anything. The only thing I use calories for now is to estimate how much food to buy for the week so that I don't run out or waste it. Once I dropped carbs to less than 50 g/day (average), my appetite started working and now I simply lose my appetite when I have had enough. I seem to go through somewhere around 2000 calories a day, pretty much the same as I have for a long time. I don't do heavy work and don't even have the capacity for it, so that is all I seem to need.[/quote]

That's great that you've been able to transition so smoothly, but not everyone has. That's why I think we can only "go by feel" so much. If those having difficulty with a transition to low carb were going by feel, they would be right back to high carb. Again, I don't think we should rely on calculations, but they do have their place if just to get a rough idea.

I've also found my appetite dropped right off with the switch to low carb. No more cravings, no more blood sugar drops. Snacks don't interest me. I can't think of anything less interesting than watching the Food Network now, whereas before it served as entertainment (when I still had a TV).

[quote author=megan]
Recently I have tried adding cheese to my diet, so as to reduce protein intake. I definitely have the necessary lactase gene, and I have had no negative effects from reintroducing it. I have been choosing only high-quality, no-carb natural cheeses. The one problem I am having is that my food BUDGET is out of control. I am cutting back further on supplements and that helps, but I haven't figured out what to do about the cost yet.
[/quote]

I don't know if cheese is necessarily the right answer here. First off, it's not that low in protein. 1 cup of cheddar has the same protein content as a pork chop. Also, if casein is as nasty as the research here by forum members has indicated, cheese is the last thing we would want in our diets. Butter, particularly ghee, and high fat creams are low in casein. Cheese, particularly hard cheeses, are high in casein (an ounce of cheddar has close to the same casein content as a cup of milk). So unless we're testing out casein now, I think cheese should still be avoided. FWIW.

[quote author=megan]
The sense I got from reading Why We Get Fat was that more research is needed to understand what causes us to gain and lose weight. Nothing I have read really explains it. Knowing that insulin regulates lipogenesis doesn't provide a complete picture -- it is just part of the explanation. There is more to it that is still unknown. I am still eating some carbs, in certain restricted forms, and yet I am losing weight without going hungry. Do I not have an insulin response to those carbs? I don't know. Maybe it is the specific forms of foods, or maybe it is something else. More than likely it is a combination of things. All I can do is keep trying different things and observing the results, while reading whatever I can find that might help.
[/quote]

Completely agree with you here. I've been reading some criticisms of Taubes and Eades and it seems that they're ignoring a good chunk of research. Insulin isn't the whole picture, by any means (especially considering protein consumption raises insulin too, in some cases more so than carbohydrates). I still think that low carb is the way to go (a hard conversion for me, truth be told) but I think the "why" of that is still yet to be established. And since Taubes and Eades seem to have the "science is settled" attitude, it's probably not going to come from them.

 

[Gawan]

I'm the same as you Gandalf, I find it very difficult (if not impossible) to gain weight.

I've noticed - after a couple of years of remaining the same height - that I've grown a little, and my legs are a little bit sore still. This is interesting in light of the hormone balance issue written of in Life Without Bread, where the body can compensate for higher insulin by cutting down on hormones in the same general category, including growth hormones. Perhaps balancing this up with the diet (same reason underweight people - like me - are supposed to gain a healthy weight. this may come, I guess. to be seen in coming months) has made my body resume the last part of its growth, given that I'm still in my early twenties? Any other young members noticing this?

I have noticed that my muscle tone/strength has improved dramatically over the last few weeks. This seems to have had the effect that my posture is greatly improved and I am standing taller. I am not sure if I have grown taller, but my trousers (and tops?) seem to be a little on the shorter side at the moment.....given I am in my thirties I find that rather interesting. Growth, repair and strengthening seems to be what is happening. Getting taller may be part of this for some people I think.

I think that if my muscle tone keeps improving that I may actually start to gain some weight in the form of muscle! I have never been able to gain muscle mass before (and keep it more than a week), no matter what exercise I did.

Diabetics have often the problem with tissue repair, that may really be in connection with what Lutz wrote about, i.e. the imbalance of growth hormone and insulin.

To gaining weight: I'm looking forward seeing a scale to test it out again. :)

 

[anart]

I don't know if cheese is necessarily the right answer here. First off, it's not that low in protein. 1 cup of cheddar has the same protein content as a pork chop. Also, if casein is as nasty as the research here by forum members has indicated, cheese is the last thing we would want in our diets. Butter, particularly ghee, and high fat creams are low in casein. Cheese, particularly hard cheeses, are high in casein (an ounce of cheddar has close to the same casein content as a cup of milk). So unless we're testing out casein now, I think cheese should still be avoided. FWIW.

I agree with this, fwiw. I think that casein causes long term health issues, so it's often not noticeable right away, when a person eats it. I think many people could say they can eat cheese and it doesn't affect them, because they can't feel the effect until years down the road. I think it should be avoided completely.

 

[Scottie]

I haven't lost any weight. In fact, I gained 1 kg last time I checked. Haven't been working out terribly much lately, so that's not it.

I did notice that I can't eat lunch unless I'm:

1. in the middle of physical labor
2. cold

Otherwise, I tended to eat lunch just because it was lunchtime. That was a bad idea, and the end result was that after an hour or two, I'd get a mild stomach ache that wouldn't go away for a few hours. I was actually drinking a small amount of duck fat after lunch for awhile too, and I stopped doing that - but I still got the stomach aches.

Eventually, I concluded that I simply shouldn't eat unless I'm actually hungry. That means basically skipping lunch most of the time. Yesterday, I ran out to the store around lunchtime and grabbed a bag of pecans since I was a bit hungry. 100g, 74g of which were fat, 3g carbs, and the rest was fiber. They were pretty tasty. On a 3000 calorie diet, that works out to 31% of my daily fat needs.

For breakfast, I always toss in 2 eggs in addition to the bacon/snausages, so that's probably a far amount of fat. I think eggs have like 5g of fat, so that's 10g + whatever's in the bacon and other stuff.

I really like the gravy idea. I've also contemplated trying some cheese again, but I just don't know about the casein thing. Plus, eating cheese might be torturous to others in the vicinity! Nuts on the other hand seem like a pretty good source of "added fat" - especially pecans and walnuts.

But then of course, the TYPE of fat matters as well... And I really can't stand chewing rubbery fat!!

 

[Scottie]

I don't know if cheese is necessarily the right answer here. First off, it's not that low in protein. 1 cup of cheddar has the same protein content as a pork chop. Also, if casein is as nasty as the research here by forum members has indicated, cheese is the last thing we would want in our diets. Butter, particularly ghee, and high fat creams are low in casein. Cheese, particularly hard cheeses, are high in casein (an ounce of cheddar has close to the same casein content as a cup of milk). So unless we're testing out casein now, I think cheese should still be avoided. FWIW.

Hmm... Yeah, so probably no cheese. But high-fat cream... I wonder if it would be possible to find "organic cream" instead of the highly processed stuff at the supermarket that even has wheat added to it!

 

[dugdeep]

I don't know if cheese is necessarily the right answer here. First off, it's not that low in protein. 1 cup of cheddar has the same protein content as a pork chop. Also, if casein is as nasty as the research here by forum members has indicated, cheese is the last thing we would want in our diets. Butter, particularly ghee, and high fat creams are low in casein. Cheese, particularly hard cheeses, are high in casein (an ounce of cheddar has close to the same casein content as a cup of milk). So unless we're testing out casein now, I think cheese should still be avoided. FWIW.

Hmm... Yeah, so probably no cheese. But high-fat cream... I wonder if it would be possible to find "organic cream" instead of the highly processed stuff at the supermarket that even has wheat added to it!

Well this is interesting. I've been doing a bit of digging on the casein content of cream and came across this about 'cream separators':

[quote author=http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/cgi-bin/res.pl?keyword=Cream+Separator&offset=0]
... Separators have been made in sizes suitable for all dairies, and have been driven by hand, horse, steam-power, etc. Cream seperators have various advantages over the old manual method of extracting cream: the greatest quantity of cream is obtained, and in a fresh condition; no casein is left in the cream; and dairy working is greatly facilitated.
[/quote]
So it seems, if the cream is separated by the use of a cream separator, no casein is left. I'm sure this isn't completely foolproof (but then, in all likelihood, neither is ghee), but it would, at the very least, minimize the amount of casein exposure, hopefully to negligible levels.

A quick read of the wikipedia cream separator page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_separator) makes it seem like all dairies are using centrifugal cream separators these days. The cream is completely separated from the liquid leaving fat and skim milk. Fat is then added back into the skim milk at the appropriate percentage (2%, 3.5%, 10% etc.).

So the higher the fat percentage, the lower the casein and lactose content. This jibes with a lot of reports online that I've come across where people who are dairy intolerant are OK with butter and whipping cream (35%).

So it might be worth testing out. It'd be nice to be able to do something along the lines of 60% cream, but they only go as high as 35% here in Canada (I think 'double cream' in the UK is quite high, but we can't get that here). I might talk to a raw dairy farmer here to see if s/he could do some to order. And I agree with Mr. Scott - grass fed/organic is a must. This is particularly important for people in the U.S. where GMO bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is still used far and wide.

 

[Gaby]

I don't know if cheese is necessarily the right answer here. First off, it's not that low in protein. 1 cup of cheddar has the same protein content as a pork chop. Also, if casein is as nasty as the research here by forum members has indicated, cheese is the last thing we would want in our diets. Butter, particularly ghee, and high fat creams are low in casein. Cheese, particularly hard cheeses, are high in casein (an ounce of cheddar has close to the same casein content as a cup of milk). So unless we're testing out casein now, I think cheese should still be avoided. FWIW.

I agree with this, fwiw. I think that casein causes long term health issues, so it's often not noticeable right away, when a person eats it. I think many people could say they can eat cheese and it doesn't affect them, because they can't feel the effect until years down the road. I think it should be avoided completely.

I think cheese is a big no for this reason as well. You can be totally fine and one day drop dead from an obstructed artery in the heart or the brain. It is tempting though, imagine all the fat the guys could get from dairy products.

For those of you who can afford it, perhaps some lab testing (delayed allergy testing (IgG)) is in order. Just keep in mind that lab testing is not reliable and if you have been off from dairy for awhile, it'll be negative. You can do genetic testing for gluten, and if it is positive, it will be wise to stay off dairy since casein and gluten are similar. You can order genetic testing for gluten at glutenfreesociety.org

But the opioid problem from dairy and gluten, and the heavy metal contamination seems to be an issue that goes hand in hand. We live in a world polluted by heavy metals and dairy was really not a part of our evolutionary physiology. We were meant to consume dairy only as babies and that is about it.

If cream has no casein, I would be willing to give it a try. But it will be nice to have some kind of testing done afterwards to see if the lab test can trace if one's immune system is reacting.

 

[broken.english]

I am a kind of living proof of Psyche's above statement: Lab testing is not reliable. This includes IgG4 tests(72 hours delayed reaction), which I had a few years ago. After review of the results, my health practitioner almost kissed my feet, because I held the record in not being allergic to anything. The only yellow marking(mild reaction) was for a group of fruits, which contains apples and kiwis.

The only downside is, that I ended up in hospital three times with heart attack like symptoms, without having a heart attack. That was in 2003. A similar case is reported at glutenfreesociety. org under atypical symptoms of gluten intolerance. I am still alive and doing quite well with a diet close to the Ultra Simple Diet, which is just moderately counteracted by my family and friends. They accept some of my preferences but do not really want to learn anything, which is against their or their doctors' beliefs. My personal experience is such, that family and friends cling to the official party line, no matter how much personal research or experiences one presents to them. The worst group are the vegetarians, as they believe to have an ethic and moral basis, which is almost impossible to shatter.

My personal conclusion: All of us should try and unlearn everything, we were taught about nutrition and start from scratch, which is Ultra Simple Diet and further findings on this, such as the beneficial effects of healthy fats.

 

[mcb]

I agree with this, fwiw. I think that casein causes long term health issues, so it's often not noticeable right away, when a person eats it. I think many people could say they can eat cheese and it doesn't affect them, because they can't feel the effect until years down the road. I think it should be avoided completely.

It's probably not a good experiment for everyone to try at once. I am choosing only high-quality soft cheeses, and if I find a better way to balance fat and protein I will do that instead. The cheeses that are nutritionally labeled indicate more fat content than protein, which I take as a good sign.

I am really just feeling my way along at the moment. I was sensing that I might be getting too much protein (I don't feel quite right when I eat more than a certain amount of meat), and this was a quick way increase the proportion of fat. There may well be long term issues with casein, but I already ate it for the better part of 60 years and if it is going to do something bad, I imagine it already has.

It doesn't help that I am swamped with work and don't have a lot of time to shop, think, or do much of anything. The change in diet has improved my mental functioning, though, which is helping me get through the work.

 

[mcb]

I think cheese is a big no for this reason as well. You can be totally fine and one day drop dead from an obstructed artery in the heart or the brain. It is tempting though, imagine all the fat the guys could get from dairy products...

Or perhaps a pulmonary embolism. But that was last year (2010) and I wasn't eating cheese at the time.

In my day job as a database developer I end up debugging all sorts of software problems. This feels a lot like that. My hunch is that it isn't just what we eat; it's what we eat with what. I am not saying that casein would necessarily become safe to eat, but I would be surprised if, after eliminating flour, starch, and sugar (as Taubes identified the major culprits), certain other "problem" foods became less of a problem. Once you alter a major variable by lowering carbohydrate consumption, it may be necessary to go back and re-examine the effects of other foods.

Of course Nature will help us along. I would guess that the way those Eskimos finally got the balance right was that those that didn't get it right died or headed south. I would rather not learn that way, but it's not always possible to avoid it.

 

[mcb]

...Yesterday, I ran out to the store around lunchtime and grabbed a bag of pecans since I was a bit hungry. 100g, 74g of which were fat, 3g carbs, and the rest was fiber. They were pretty tasty. On a 3000 calorie diet, that works out to 31% of my daily fat needs...

I had almost forgotten about nuts as a fat source. What about cashews? I've been warned about them often enough (elsewhere, not here) because they contain "too much fat." Isn't that what we're looking for? Nuts can be rather high-carb, though.