It's not about carbs

A good diet is not necessarily a low-carb diet. It's a low-toxin diet.

Primary known toxins:

• excess sugar (particularly fructose?)
• excess linoleic acid (omega-6)
• wheat and soy
• trans fats

Similarly: a good diet is not necessarily a high-fat diet. It's a high-nutrient diet.

Some important nutrients:

• Fat-soluble vitamins ADEK
• Magnesium
• Zinc
• Selenium
• Omega-3 fatty acids
• Copper
• Potassium
• Other vitamins BCE
• etc.

The SAD is dangerous not because it's high in calories, or fat, or sugar, or salt. It's dangerous because it's high in toxins, substances (or quantities) that are outside the human evolutionary experience.

A Paleo or Primal diet is healthy, but not because it's low in carbs or high in fat. It's healthy because it's relatively low in toxins and relatively high in essential nutrients.

Macronutrients hardly matter at all. Evidence: Inuit and Masai high-fat diets vs Kitavan high-carb diets. Both are completely fine as long as you get lots of nutrients and avoid toxins. Keep the same macronutrient ratios and add toxins and subtract micronutrients, and you get a lot of very sick people.

Core message draft 02

• Most people are broken: overweight, chronic knee/hip/shoulder pain, diabetic, IBS, ulcers, acid reflux.
• You can fix all this and look sexier, feel healthier, and be fitter than you ever thought possible.
• You can have all this just by eating real food and training intelligently 1-2 hours per week.

The core of my message

Inspired by reading the first few pages of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die":

First draft:

• You can live pain-free again.
• You can be healthier, fitter, and sexier than you ever thought possible.
• You can have all this just by eating real food and training 1-2 hours per week.

Learned helplessness

Learned helplessness may be part of the reason that people fail to lose weight. They've tried so many different (ineffective) things -- low-fat, low-calorie, Weight Watchers, aerobics -- that they just kind of give up and accept their fate.

Just a thought... not really convinced on this one as it relates to weight loss.

Twins: distance runner vs sprinter

Just came across this photo of identical twins. Otto, on the left, trained as a distance runner. He is predictably scrawny and weak-looking.

Ewald, on the right, trained as a sprinter and thrower. He is nicely muscled. Yes, he is posing for the camera in the top picture, but the difference is stark. The bottom picture shows you a more natural pose that reveals the difference in the musculature of the upper back and shoulders. They are basically the same height but look at where their shoulders stand!

There's nothing wrong with being a distance runner if you are okay with being weaker and less useful -- not to mention less healthy and with a higher probability of osteopenia or osteoporosis in your future.

Distance running is also very healthy as a once-a-week activity.

But the vast majority of training should be geared toward sprinting and lifting.

I really wish we had a picture of female twins like this. Then women would see that being a sprinter doesn't mean being grotesquely muscled, unless you are an Olympic-caliber sprinter and you take steroids.

Takeaway from this, other than bashing distance runners: environment is way, way more important than genes.

Hat tip to Art De Vany for posting this photo originally.

Why people don't floss

Watched Kstar's presentation on sitting and mobility at Google a few days ago and was struck by the flossing analogy.

People know they should floss. They know that if they don't, their teeth may fall out and they may get gingivitis and systemic inflammation and it could kill them. But they didn't floss yesterday and they haven't died today and their teeth didn't fall out today, so they're not going to floss tonight, either. They don't feel the tangible benefit from flossing.

(As an aside, I do floss frequently but it's mostly because it feels good. And I remember my friend G saying something to the effect that he loves flossing because "it's like, man, THAT was in my mouth?!")

Fear-mongering doesn't work. It doesn't promote widespread adherence.

People need to see that doing X makes a tangible, immediate, noticeable difference in their lives.

This is why it's so important to get ppl to realize that it takes very little effort and very little time to get to that advanced novice phase, where you're healthier and stronger and fitter than 80-90% of the population. In some people it may take as long as 6 months but in other cases it can be 3-4 months with as little as 2 hrs per week invested.

It's easier to encourage adherence by convincing ppl that they won't have to worry about their IBS acting up while on a date next week, than to convince them that avoiding linoleic acid and gluten will prolong their life and lower their risk of cancer.

It's easier to encourage adherence by pointing out benefits such as clearer skin, reduced/eliminated joint pain, than "this will align your joints" or "this will reduce systemic inflammation." Make it tangible, real, immediate.

4% of calories as PUFA or 15%?

Some Eskimos in their sample got as much as 15% of calories from EPA+DHA.

From the (ongoing) fascinating series over at Perfect Health Diet on total serum cholesterol in hunter-gatherers.

So much for the idea that 4% of calories as PUFA is the upper limit that we should aspire to?

Getting 10% of calories from linoleic acid is probably a terrible idea, and getting lots of omega-3 from potentially rancid, isolated, industrially produced fish oil is probably a terrible idea (although Robb Wolf and Dan John and Poliquin and a few others still seem to be keen on megadosing fish oil, at least for a few weeks/months).

I wonder if getting 15% of calories from actual marine animals is not that bad after all, or at least not as bad as getting 10% of calories from soybean oil.