"Life Without Bread"

Laura said:
Well, it's just that I don't WANT as much fat right now. I'll play around with it, add some digestive stuff, and see if it is some lack of digestive juices issue.
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I've also noticed this...usually I drink the bacon fat left over after making bacon for breakfast, and lately I just don't seem to want it. Later in the afternoon I do drink butter tea made with part ghee part coconut oil/milk, and that satisfies me enough dinner is small.

Our weather went from being a brisk 35 to the mid 70's to low 80's today. My daffodils are popping all over the yard, and the birds are all going berserk. :shock:

I do know that with MS, if I get over heated (and I have the last couple days with the high temps) my appetite vanishes.

In other news that is diet related....I had a neurologist appointment today, and he was thrilled with the results of the diet! He told me "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it." :flowers: :flowers: :flowers:

I still have to go in for an MRI, but I haven't had one in 18 mos, and I'm due for one. Blah. Other than that, a good day!
 
Laura said:
Just thought I would note that I notice a little fat sensitivity in myself lately. Not much, just a bit, and I wonder if that is because of the lengthening of the days/light? Are we programmed to need less fat in spring and summer?
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I too think there's something to it. It's autumn here in Oz. I used to have to struggle to eat equal portions of fat and meat in summer. Now that the weather has cooled down, I can easily eat more fat than meat. I used to attribute it all to my body adapting to the diet. But maybe the weather/season plays a factor as well.
 
Just wanted to throw in my experience with fat consumption lately. For the last few days it seems that my usual breakfast was to fatty. My typical breakfast looks like this: 90-120g of fatty bacon frayed on 60-80g of Ghee or Lard and that was all I needed for the much of the day plus adequate supplementation. And for the last week I wasn't able to eat my usual portion. I was a bit surprised when I felt, during breakfast, like my body responded "it's enough" before my bowl was empty.
Secondly, my forehead started to be greasy again and when this occurred last Autumn I upped my digestive enzymes and HCL and greasiness was gone. Now it's back again, so I'm playing with my enzymes and HCL and OX-Bile supplementation. Upped protein from today, although 50-70g for breakfast is SCIFI for me currently.
Pollination season started here as my rhinitis is, but for now I'm fine without medication. Waiting for Birch, that's the killer.
 
I've begun - today - experimenting with Kruse's breakfast suggestions. This means: 1. Dragging myself out of bed much more quickly when not on a schedule. 2. Eating perhaps three times what has been the usual meal size for some time now.

It knocked out my hunger until lunch - wasn't really hungry then either, but could eat more, and had another good-sized meal. And a smaller dinner. (the huge breakfast also immediately cured the present round of constipation)

In hindsight, it used to be - on this diet - that as my meal sizes gradually shrank, I began snacking more and more and having more and more small meals. So this is an experiment in a sudden reversal of both trends.

If it works as Kruse suggests, it might be of great benefit - my body is usually fairly cold, almost no sweat whatsoever (except for rare moments when my body's heating fires up to higher levels) except on hot summer days, and my hands usually freeze like heck in winter. (double gloves are not enough on cold days) Unless my metabolism - which despite being really skinny seems really low - changes, in an ice age, without careful preparation, I guess my limbs would probably be among the first to go.

I'll update on how the experiment goes.



Random things noticed: For those who've had issues with bloating (for me, such are mild when they occur - and the huge breakfast noted above actually went down well!), drinking some olive oil seems - somehow - to help, for me.

I've left ghee behind for the moment - it subtly affects my mind, mainly throwing off intuitive judgment, and perhaps also making it harder to properly engage System 2; though to a far, far lesser degree than butter, which last time I had it locked System 2 firmly into low-effort mode. Given casein sensitivity, I guess even trace amounts (ghee) are best avoided even when lard is unavailable. It also - as previously mentioned - for me seems to digest fairly poorly in any case - whereas other fats, like lard, fish oil, olive oil (my new fallback for when I run out of pork fat and can't get more in a while) work better and leave me without hunger for longer.
 
I'm a little sensitive to both ghee and butter, but I actually seem to do better with butter! Weird since I would think butter's higher casein would give more of an effect.

I was thinking about eating a larger breakfast after reading some of the Jack Kruse thread. Eating a big breakfast and then not being hungry until dinner would be nice. I think the key was, if you're hungry throughout the day, then eat more protein and fat. Still reading that info, though.
 
Laura said:
Oh boy, that was pretty nastily done. All I can say is from our experience here: fiber and carbs are BAD NEWS. We've had the medical conditions that were corrected by eliminating both to prove it.
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I am going through some of the Paleo Summit materials now, with a little help from my back that went out (muscle spasms) with the changing weather and my boss that invited me to take a sick day. So I am in bed (an adjustable one) with the cats. My back is better, but my head is starting to hurt from weeding through this mess of authors and would-be authorities / spokespeople.

The first thing I see is that it doesn't work very well to look for "good guys and bad guys" and then just ignore the bad ones. In listening, I hear good points coming from people that are otherwise saying things that don't agree with my experiences. I think it is important to listen and sift, sometimes, even if your head hurts after a while, if there seems to be a potential to discover something about yourself from doing so. I listened to Matt Stone's presentation this afternoon, and I agree with him about not boxing your thinking in by identifying with a particular food ideology, but I find him appallingly ignorant about the anti-nutrient properties of grains. He seems to me to follow an "all in moderation" approach that can be terribly damaging to susceptible individuals (me among them!).

The issues with which we are dealing can be quite subtle, in part because each one of us is unique in certain respects. What I have learned about me over the last year concerning fiber and carbs is that I do best when I restrict fiber and totally avoid grains. Too little carbs & fiber and my GI tract goes very unpleasantly haywire. This may be because I am fiber dependent from 15 years of "trying to get enough fiber," but it appears that I have to have some now. I use stool diameter as a gauge of whether I am eating too much fiber.

In addition to limiting fiber, I have been limiting carb intake relative to my CLL (Atkins Carbohydrate Level for Losing), which appears to be somewhere around 40 grams/day (my intake has been in the 20-30 g/d range). I am going into "maintenance" now as I approach my primary weight goal and I will probably seek out my ACE (Atkins Carbohydrate Equilibrium) just as a reference point. ACE is the carb level above which one starts to leave fat-burning (lipolysis) mode. I suspect that for me it is somewhere in the range of 50-60 grams/day, although it might be as low as 40.

The reason I would even care about my ACE (and I haven't cared up until now) is that I don't have much access to nutrient-rich poleolithic-era foods such as organ meats, and I feel as the result of experimentation that organic plant foods can help balance my nutrient intake & pH, along with a few selected supplements. It's not ideal, and it would not help me survive in another ice age (I'm likely too far gone for that anyway), but it's doable if I can avoid major plant anti-nutrients. In that context it is good to know one's ACE.

The critical things for me are to keep my GI tract running relatively smoothly, to avoid recurrence of hypoglycemia or chronic weight gain, to gradually improve my energy level, to address eczema problems (haven't figured that one out yet--low carb made it worse), and to continue to deal with my autistic spectrum issues (with which I am having increasingly good results).

Carbs do not seem to be an issue as long as I respect my tolerance levels (CLL and ACE). Eating a certain amount of foundation vegetables and even a limited amount of selected and tested starchy ones such as sweet potatoes works for me. It may not work for you, and it may not even work for me over time. I have to continue experimenting and testing. Bodies differ and bodies change. My goal is to learn what I can from this life while contributing what I am able, here and elsewhere. Food has turned out to be a major factor in pursuing that goal, but for me "optimal diet" is not the goal itself.

While technically I am following a neo-paleo version of an Atkins diet, I should mention that when I read the New Atkins book I see a lot of food suggestions that set off alarm bells. The book is good for understanding the procedure, but it fails to make good food recommendations. To use it, you have to already know what is safe to eat, and to be prepared to adapt as you (and we) continue to learn.

The last comment I will make is that it is important to be cautious even of the "good" sources of information that we use. While I do regard the criticisms discussed here that were directed at Nora Gedgaudas (after her Paleo Summit talk) as nit-picking, they prompted me to examine some of my assumptions. What was "paleolithic diet?" How cold was it earlier in this last glacial period? It should be obvious that these kinds of questions do not have a single answer, and yet our simplification-prone minds can easily produce fantasy-based generalizations if we don't reign them in. The forum can either catch these errors or amplify them. It's not foolproof.

I am doing a bit of my own research on the paleolithic period. Currently I have the heavily-cited 1974 Scientific American article THE COPROLITES OF MAN to read. It has clearly become "accepted fact" and I would like examine it more closely. I am interested in hearing what other are learning about this period as well.
 
3D Student said:
I'm a little sensitive to both ghee and butter, but I actually seem to do better with butter! Weird since I would think butter's higher casein would give more of an effect.

I was thinking about eating a larger breakfast after reading some of the Jack Kruse thread. Eating a big breakfast and then not being hungry until dinner would be nice. I think the key was, if you're hungry throughout the day, then eat more protein and fat. Still reading that info, though.
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I have long eaten a large breakfast, something I learned in my vegan days, and I have actually made it smaller lately because I wanted to limit my per-meal protein intake as I approach my weight goal. It still remains my largest meal of the day. I am finding that for me, mid-day hunger is mainly related to emotional state.

I become hungry if I am frustrated (with problems I am solving as part of my day job) or bored. It has little to do with how much protein, fat, or whatever that I eat at breakfast. Also, as I have mentioned before, when the stomach empties out after breakfast it produces an anticipatory "time to go hunt" hunger signal. If you didn't have a refrigerator and depended on hunting and gathering this would be a much more useful signal. As it is, we need need to be careful not to misinterpret "time to hunt" as "time to eat."
 
dugdeep said:
Well it seems the Paleo-clique, who are firmly entrenched in the "safe starches" idea, have set out to 'debunk' Nora Gedgaudas' Paleo Summit talk. This is written by Melissa McEwan on her blog Hunt Gather Love - _http://huntgatherlove.com/content/paleolithic-poop-and-carbs

[quote author=MM]
...So when I hear more info about coprolites, my ears perk up, particularly if it's totally outside the realm of anything I've ever heard. In Nora's presentation she cites a paper that she says shows that a wide-ranging sample of paleolithic coprolites shows that they weren't eating any plants. What?

So I tracked down this paper. Turns out it's not a paper, it's an article in a magazine, though I admit that Scientific American is definitely a quality magazine.

So your homework assignment for the night is to read the "paper" and figure out where it says any of what Nora says at all.

Spoiler: it doesn't say any of those things at all. Nope, none. Hilariously, a lot of the article is in fact devoted to the Pecos basin hunter-gatherers I've written about, but they didn't live in the Paleolithic and they ate a massive amount of various plants....
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[/quote]

I have only had time to analyze this one claim. It is valid. The detailed analysis contained in the Scientific American article pertains to to specimens ranging in age from 500 BCE to 800 CE. There is a brief discussion at the end of the article making reference to specimens "as much as 300,000 years old" thought possibly to have come from Homo Erectus. The information was preliminary, and while no plant material was found, neither could any conclusions about paleolithic diet be drawn from the information in the article.

Gedgaudas' Talk said:
...what these researchers did was they got a variety of human coprolites from a variety of locations. And of course, as many people know, coprolites are fossilized human feces, which is always fun. And anyway, what they were doing is analyzing these things to figure out what people were eating.

And what was really fascinating was they found this whole range of coprolites from 50,000 to 300,000 years old where there was no evidence of plant fiber in them whatsoever. So, weʼre obviously well-equipped for making use of meat and fat in a fairly exclusive way...
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This is faulty reasoning and improper citation. But then this portion comprised all of two or three paragraphs (viewing the written transcript) out of a much longer presentation. The reference in the book is more concerning, because it shows that this is not simply a case of faulty memory during a talk, and she says essentially the same thing in the book as in her talk. But then it's only one paragraph in the book. It is certainly a warning to read critically.

All of the books we have been reading are imperfect. That's a good argument for reading a variety of sources, putting the material to the test as individuals, and "comparing notes" here in the forum. Negative comments about our sources can sometimes be useful, even when we disagree with those making the comments.
 
Just a reminder (to Psalehesost, 3D Student, and Megan, as well as others) that gut healing is key and will take a different amount of time for different people and how much damage was done eating the wrong foods. There's also more information on Dr. Kruse's site about leaky gut and how to heal it. Just a tip: when reading Kruse's blog posts, read the comments. There's often as much important info and links in the comments as in the body of the post.

Megan said:
The last comment I will make is that it is important to be cautious even of the "good" sources of information that we use. While I do regard the criticisms discussed here that were directed at Nora Gedgaudas (after her Paleo Summit talk) as nit-picking, they prompted me to examine some of my assumptions. What was "paleolithic diet?" How cold was it earlier in this last glacial period? It should be obvious that these kinds of questions do not have a single answer, and yet our simplification-prone minds can easily produce fantasy-based generalizations if we don't reign them in. The forum can either catch these errors or amplify them. It's not foolproof.

I am doing a bit of my own research on the paleolithic period. Currently I have the heavily-cited 1974 Scientific American article THE COPROLITES OF MAN to read. It has clearly become "accepted fact" and I would like examine it more closely. I am interested in hearing what other are learning about this period as well.
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You are looking at the earlier article, not the 1975 one.

Psyche said:
dugdeep said:
Here's a link to the paper MM says is the one Nora referenced. I haven't looked at it yet - _http://www.scribd.com/doc/83243120/Coprolites-of-Man

[Edit: There are lots of links in the original blog post not shown in this post]
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Funny, because I stumble upon that blog post earlier this morning and decided to have a look. The reference that Nora gives is from those authors, but 1975. Melissa gives a paper from 1974 which sums up the science of coprolites so to speak. So I went and had a look at the listings of publications from 1975 and looking around found other articles where they quoted Bryant and Williams-Dean and the studies of coprolites in general. It seems to me that Melissa is splitting hairs.

The Scientific American article does say that,

"He did not find plant materials of any specimens [...] So far we have found no bone and plant remains [...]".
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It refers to specimens from a specific region and from 300,000 to 50,000/70,000 years old which is the point that Nora was making in her book. Other publications point to the discovery of millet traces, but from 12,000 years ago.

Other specimens have pollen from flowers and seeds and even cactus traces, but the date of those that were really old does point to a lack of any plant remains.

She is splitting hairs, or so it seems to me.

I checked other of Nora's references from the book and it seems to me she is reasonable and gives plenty of information that can be traced.

ADDED: Yeah, it can be argued that she should give a reference to a study that is all about human coprolites from 300,000 or 70,000 years ago which argues of the non-existence of plant material residues. Other old samples had pollen on them, suggesting that they might have eaten flowers. That is hardly a rich fiber diet...

It seems to me that is simply nitpicking if you see the whole picture of what they mostly found:

"Preliminary analysis has identified grains of sand, which are almost inevitably ingested at the seashore, flecks of charcoal, which indicate the use of fire in the preparation of food, and fragments of mollusk shell, which point to one food resource that may have been exploited by the inhabitants."
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Just want to mention that I eat a large breakfast and a moderate dinner, both very high in fat. I'm never hungry and can eat only those two meals. The only thing I don't eat as early as possible after waking.
 
Psalehesost said:
I've begun - today - experimenting with Kruse's breakfast suggestions. This means: 1. Dragging myself out of bed much more quickly when not on a schedule. 2. Eating perhaps three times what has been the usual meal size for some time now.

It knocked out my hunger until lunch - wasn't really hungry then either, but could eat more, and had another good-sized meal. And a smaller dinner. (the huge breakfast also immediately cured the present round of constipation)

In hindsight, it used to be - on this diet - that as my meal sizes gradually shrank, I began snacking more and more and having more and more small meals. So this is an experiment in a sudden reversal of both trends.
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I started the experiment yesterday too, where I eat about 3-4 times more in the morning (eggs, fatty meat, some green beans and butter) and ate again something for lunch after about 5-6 hrs again but not that much and then needed to snack again, cause I felt hungry. So that I eat less wouldn't be the truth at the moment also before going to bed I most often start to feel hungry again and skipping meals is impossible for me at the moment.

Other side effects in the morning are (since a longer time) dizzy-spells and light-headedness and in the morning also the first cramp since a long time. So I may consider going for potassium again and/or I must get my body moving and doing some exercises in the morning (which seems to help when I have an appointment and need to run around) against the light-headedness.
 
Just a note, Gawan. You are a special case with "type 1" diabetes, so you might not necessarily need to fall into the general guidelines of Dr. Kruse. Anyway, everyone will have different experiences and take different amount of time to get to the goal: eating breakfast and not getting hungry until dinner is great if and when you get there. And NO snacking. But as I said, it's different in your case and other things are driving your physiological processes that need to be taken into consideration (e.g. blood sugar, insulin, etc.). So you should proceed carefully and snack if you have to or eat more often, etc.
 
One thing I've lately become aware of is that it wasn't a good idea to reduce magnesium on the assumption that eating so much meat/fat would be sufficient. I've recently resumed taking it and it makes a positive difference in the way I feel and the way my system works. We discussed it here and think that, if the aquatic ape hypothesis is going anywhere in the right direction, we evolved getting a lot of magnesium by absorbing it through the skin while in sea water. I don't really like the stickiness of the transdermal method (though baths are okay), so taking some mag malate before bed (away from meals) seems to be the solution.
 
As I have read the Dr Kruse thing, I'm a little lost.

I was trying much of the time to follow the 0,8g of protein / kg of body weight thing. That means 52 grams per day for my 65 kg.

I had translate that by 3 meals of 17/18g with more fat at breakfast than at dinner.

So, I am not realy ready to jump to a 50 g breakfast.

This morning I have made it 25 g (the maximum recommanded by Naura Gedgaudas) and I will try to stay at 52 grams a day for the moment.
 
Goemon_ said:
As I have read the Dr Kruse thing, I'm a little lost.

I was trying much of the time to follow the 0,8g of protein / kg of body weight thing. That means 52 grams per day for my 65 kg.

I had translate that by 3 meals of 17/18g with more fat at breakfast than at dinner.

So, I am not realy ready to jump to a 50 g breakfast.

This morning I have made it 25 g (the maximum recommanded by Naura Gedgaudas) and I will try to stay at 52 grams a day for the moment.
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REMEMBER: the protein control thing is only for AFTER you are fully adapted. In the beginning, eat all you want. Then gradually increase fat and reduce protein somewhat. Only after you are at your correct weight and other symptoms have gone away, THEN you experiment with stricter protein controls.

However, some of these elements may become moot after cryogenic therapy. Anart has posted about her first treatment in that thread, and we have two members of the crew here taking their first two treatments today. I'm scheduled to go next week. We'll be reporting on results.
 
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