I had a donut yesterday.

Donuts are bad on three fronts: carbs (simple ones at that), wheat, and veggie oils. Definitely the sort of crap I shouldn’t even be near.

I was talking with my boss, with whom I’m planning to do contract work next year, when the donuts showed up. I felt like Marshall in this week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother: eat the donut with the boss to get on his good side.

I guess mostly I’m posting about it to reinforce (to myself) not to do that kind of thing next time. I avoided eating a bun with my burger today (and nearly always); and I’ve skipped the kolaches and donuts at the office before. I think writing goals down makes them more real. It’s like hearing something three times.

It also got me thinking about cheating in the mornings. It’s possibly the worst time to cheat; consuming carbs shuts down fat burning, and I’ve got the whole-body fat-burning thing going after an overnight fast. Skipping breakfast extends the fast, while a zero-carb breakfast would at least maintain fat burning. If I get some carbs with lunch an afternoon cheat would turn straight into fat, but a morning cheat means I’m not burning fat and lunch now has a good chance of being ’stored for future use’ too.

So, no more donuts. Not gonna happen.

thread title courtesy of morrisey and marr

A 1975 study on Japanese expats in Hawaii and California showed the US-based ethnic Japanese had a much greater rate of heart disease than their counterparts back in the mother country. “Researchers pinpointed the likely cause to be diet-related – fish consumption specifically.” (link) So what kind of crazy nutjob would claim that eating more meat, cheese, butter, and bacon would be healthy?

Would you listen to this guy's diet advice?

A phrase I like to mock the mainstream with is “everyone knows.” If you watch TV, whether news or dramas or sitcoms, you’ll see people bash bacon, eggs, and meat as unhealthy food choices. Everyone knows that they’re bad for you. Countless scientists say so. Study after study states, quite clearly, that continuing to eat saturated fat is a quick and tasty ticket to heart disease.

It’s hard to overcome that bias. Whatever forum I’m in — online, friends, coworkers, dates, etc — a common refrain is “how can thousands of scientists be wrong?” Then the obvious conclusion: you paleo-diet people are crazy nutjobs. And I’m often stuck trying to dig my way out of a hole and explain what’s going on.

Not every scientist does their own novel research. As is the case with climate science, in which nearly every researcher relied on the East Anglia temperature data, health/diet/nutrition researchers rely on existing literature and reviews to base their opinions. Starting over from scratch is a waste of time. So you start with what’s already been published.

The risk in such an approach is that the published, peer-reviewed literature might be suspect, such as the East Anglia data that relied on a cherry-picked dozen samples, out of hundred available. As long as you throw out data that disagrees with your theory, it’s easy to prove a theory. Scientists are responsible not just for reading existing literature, but critically evaluating it.

For example, that Japanese emmigrant study, often cited as evidence that the American diet (assumed to be a meat & butter diet) is to blame for heart disease. Yet the study itself was unable to correlate coronary mortality with diet, and adhering to traditional Japanese culture was sufficiently “healthy” that it overcame the American diet: acting Japanese and eating American was healthier than the reverse. The following year (1976!) a study showed that the original data did not implicate the American diet as a cause for heart disease.

This is a weird example, in part because I do blame the American diet. Just not the meat and dairy part, which has been in decline for decades. The USDA started telling us to eat more of its products (grains), we obliged, and Americans started coming down with more cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Deaths decreased, so obviously the program was working, right? Yet incidence of disease increased.

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Again I come back to: who should you believe? Don’t believe me. Go read the sources. Go read both sides of the debate. One side is saying “thousands of scientists can’t be wrong” and the other side is saying “thousands of scientists didn’t do the same research; one guy did the research and dozens cited him and then thousands more assumed everything previous was done correctly.” Which is the more convincing argument?

One of my favorite exchanges is that between Taubes and Fumento. Taubes writes an article in the NYT (What if it’s all been a big fat lie). Michael Fumento responds. Taubes replies. Fumento tries to get in the last word. If you haven’t read this exchange, please do. Go ahead, I’ll wait. I even re-read it myself.

The reason why it’s so awesome is because it’s plain to see who is on the side of reason, and who is shrilly trying to claim some kind of authority.

And that’s what each of us should do with the issues that are important to us. Do you care about your health? Then you owe it to yourself not just to find out what each side is saying, but to find the debates between the two. Both sides will have zealous evangelists and ignorant nutjobs. Both sides will have ardent supporters that think they’re on the right side. But one of them has to be wrong; it’s possible that both sides are mistaken and the truth lies somewhere else!

But if the best argument the mainstream can come up with is “there are thousands of us, and we have badges!” then I declare them all to be a bunch of poopyheads. I care about my health, and I want to see the best arguments both sides can come up with. I’m in the minority here (and hence a crazy nutjob), but the logic and evidence convinced me.

Do your parents have cancer, heart disease, and diabetes (like mine) and do you want to avoid it yourself? Do you care about exercising efficiently and in a way that will keep you on your feet for decades, and avoid stress and strain injuries that sideline many middle-aged athletes? Do you care about global warming? Economics? Politics? Freedom? Snowboarding?

Cuz if you care about snowboarding (and are a crazy nutjob) then you’d know about TonyC’s snowfall comparisons!

When talking to friends (and worse, acquaintances) about the paleo diet, often the first sticking point is my suggestion that eating meat and eggs is healthy. The message that cholesterol is dangerous is common in the public consciousness, specifically the idea that eating cholesterol-heavy foods leads to heart disease. In this post, I review the connection between dietary cholesterol (ie how much is in the foods you eat) and serum cholesterol, and the relationship to heart disease.

“it is still important to limit the amount of cholesterol you eat” – Harvard School of Public Health

“a diet high in cholesterol can contribute to elevated blood cholesterol levels” – Mayo Clinic

“The jury is still out on whether there is a direct link between dietary cholesterol, which is found in the foods we eat, and blood cholesterol, which is manufactured by the body” – about.com

Association

Early studies found that high blood cholesterol levels are associated with heart disease. But association is not causation. Does high cholesterol cause heart disease? Does heart disease cause high cholesterol levels? Or are they both caused by some separate, third factor?

The message got out: high cholesterol levels are associated with heart disease. But the caveats, caution, and confusion did not. Many people relied on reporters to interpret the dense scientific jargon of research papers and distill it to something that you could rely on when shopping at the grocery. The media filled with the simple message to avoid eggs, red meat, and other cholesterol-rich food. My family switched from butter to margarine, as did many Americans in the middle of the 20th century.

Studies

In the scientific community, after the initial association was identified, scientists set off to find out what causes what. And that’s when the simple model broke down. Cholesterol turned into Good Cholesterol (HDL) and Bad Cholesterol (LDL), and then that broke down too. Now there’s light, fluffy LDL and small, dense LDL and … bah! Life was just easier when we could avoid eggs and everything would be OK.

Strangely, Ancel Keys (who kickstarted the whole hatefest on saturated fat) authored a study claiming no link between diet and serum cholesterol. The oft-cited Framingham study also produced such a study, although it was never published. A 1976 study in Michigan found no link between food (not just dietary cholesterol) and serum cholesterol. Ravnskov links to a whole bunch more studies.

One thing to note is that these studies found no correlation with the ranges of their study population. Maybe everyone in each group already ate so much cholesterol that more didn’t matter? Maybe the range of nutrients in the diet wasn’t enough to effect a change in cholesterol? Yet the cholesterol values did vary widely; something was causing spikes in cholesterol, but it wasn’t anything that the researchers measured. It could be genetics (such as hypercholesterolemia), an untracked element of the food, etc. One Finnish study found that reducing saturated fat and cholesterol intake led to higher serum cholesterol, and studies on indigenous hunter-gather populations such as the Masai indicated that ultra-high-fat-and-cholesterol diets themselves didn’t lead to CVD.

Homeostasis

The body is replete with homeostatic systems, that is, systems that try to maintain a constant level of some hormone or enzyme or other protein or chemical in your body. Cholesterol is one such homeostatic system. The liver produces cholesterol as part of a complex balancing system. Cholesterol is a precursor to dozens of hormones, including Vitamin D and the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen; it’s used to build cell walls; and insulates nerve fibers. It also plays a role in inflammation, such as repairing damaged tissue after trauma or disease. It’s a critical molecule, and your body will manufacture about 3000 mg of cholesterol each day — that’s the equivalent of over a dozen eggs.

Why would a bit of extra cholesterol in the diet lead to catastrophic disease? Our bodies are built to use cholesterol, not to expel it like a waste or toxin.

The Myth

Yet somehow the myth was born. Perhaps from a confusion between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, maybe a mistake made by news reporters. The myth persists, if not in research than at least in the public consciousness.

Although carefully controlled, short-term trials have found that eating cholesterol raises serum cholesterol values, that raise is just a blip. No correlation has been found in long-term studies. Your body regulates cholesterol levels in response to disease and trauma in addition to the daily needs of living. The cholesterol in your diet won’t kill you.

I run in a pair of Vibram Five Fingers; the KSOs, to be specific.

Vibram Five Fingers KSO

When I started running last year, I looked into real running shoes. I picked up a couple issues of Runner’s World, surfed around on the net, and decided that I needed to check in to a running store and figure out if I pronate or supinate, and what kind of shoe would be best. I found a nice, expensive pair of Nikes and two months later… my ankles hurt so much when I ran that I couldn’t make it more than a couple hundred yards.

At some point I ran across a couple posts on Richard’s blog, then read through the New York Magazine article on “You Walk Wrong“, and started finding a whole bunch of related posts and news articles. I also picked up Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run — I loved it. I’ve read a handful of books that made me go “wow, I want to do that!” and Born to Run definitely inspired me to run more. It made me want to be an ultramarathoner! I picked up a pair of KSOs and set out running again.

I don’t really like wearing shoes. But yet I don’t like roomy shoes; I prefer shoes that are snug but not binding. Wearing the KSOs is like wearing socks. They’re different because they fit between the toes (like toe socks), yet still comfortable. They don’t feel like they’re crushing my foot, or blocking off circulation anywhere. After wearing them for a while, I’m much more socially comfortable kicking off my shoes at work.

Naysayers might suggest that science can do better than nature — and I agree, but only if science first understands nature. Big, padded heals in running shoes is a response to seeing people run in less-padded shoes. Look at how people run barefoot, and compare that to people running in sneakers. The biomechanics aren’t the same at all. Science should look not just at the heal, but how impact pressure is transmitted up the leg, and at studies that compare fancy shoes to bare feet. Although researchers have concluded that there’s no scientific evidence that fancy shoes help, and that the cost of shoes is correlated with injury (supposedly this study but the abstract doesn’t confirm), there’s no prospective, randomized study that’s shown that barefoot is better. But this is one of those cases where there’s tons of evidence suggesting that barefoot is better; do you want to risk it? Or would you rather just do what the TV tells you?

I’d really like to blog about why running barefoot is good for your feet, but really I learned that from the sources I read above. Lots of great stuff!

I saw some of this show earlier in the week during my strength-training session at my apartment complex’s gym. The weight loss was amazing, especially for five months. I wondered how they did it and I poked around for information, and of course it’s completely contrary to the paleo plan.

My first concern is that I haven’t lost much weight myself. When I’ve kept on the diet, the weight comes off, but I haven’t stayed on the diet for long periods. Specifically, I tend to cheat a bunch. A coke here, some rice there, maybe some ice cream now and then. I stay away from grains and eat a good complement of fats, but carbs are a weakness.

A lean, fit 5′10″ adult male will burn about 1700 calories a day just sleeping all day. Even small bits of exertion will push that up over 2000 calories a day. Heavier people (say, at 250 or 300 pounds) will burn 500 or more extra calories daily keeping that extra tissue fed and warm. So the massive calorie-deficit diets the show contestants are on are near-starvation.

Luckily, the diets aren’t high-carb; if they were, I think they’d have huge problems. The diet plan is “4-3-2-1″, four fruits & veggies, three lean meat, two carb units, and one “other”, which is probably a cheat carb unit. If you’re yoyoing your blood sugar and insulin with carb infusions, they probably need cheat carbs just to remain sane. And five meals a day helps there, too, normalizing blood sugar.

But, they eschew fats, ignore micro-nutrients, still eat grain (probably poorly-treated whole grains!), and eat five times a day! Craziness.

Their results do underscore the most important factor in weight loss: sticking to your plan. Whether it’s intermittent fasting & paleo, or health-be-damned starvation diets, cheating kills results.

The main reason to eat paleo is long-term health. Do you want cancer? Heart disease? Diabetes? That’s my primary motivation. But I do know for intense physical activity (like snowboarding!) that I want to lose weight and get fit. The lesson that I get from this hugely popular TV show is: STICK TO YOUR PLAN. If they can do it while eating that crap, I can do it while enjoying bacon, steak, butter, and cheese!

Zero-carb lunch for me, then!

see also: 100 Calories a Day

Cheating makes it harder to not cheat.

My ‘worst’ cheat is having a coke in the morning. I don’t like the bitter taste of coffee and I’m used to caffeine in the morning, so that means coke. I can rationalize it a bit, too, by knowing that glycogen stores are depleted after sleeping (ie fasting), and so if I’m going to have a coke, the time to do it is early in the morning.

A 20oz coke, though, is 68g of carbs. I won’t be burning any fat for 3-4 hours after consuming that much. Plus, about 3-4 hours later (ie at lunch time), I’m famished — and tempted to order fries with my bunless burger, or noodles with my chinese, or maybe hashbrowns if I order bacon & eggs, or …. I’ve lived with my body long enough to know what carb cravings feel like, and to know what sates that feeling. Cheating begets cheating; it’s the vicious cycle of carb addiction.

Since I’m trying to cut down on the caffeine, too, my alternate breakfast is water. I don’t need to eat, and if I’m eating moderate carbs daily (~150g), skipping breakfast isn’t very hard. I don’t feel hungry in the morning. The more I skip breakfast, the easier it gets.

And if I don’t have a morning coke, I don’t crave carbs with lunch.

And if I don’t eat carbs at lunch, I don’t get that 2pm post-lunch lull that says “omg go get some more sugar.” Peanut M&Ms are ok, aren’t they? Nuts, right? Well, no, on two counts. A normal bag is another 56g of carbs, and peanuts are legumes, which means lectins. My other afternoon craves are milky way dark (mmm, dark chocolate) or beef jerky and cheese. Although convenience-store cheese isn’t really cheese, it’s the best of my choices. If I skip the morning coke and stay away from carbs during lunch, I also don’t get afternoon cravings. And if I do step out for an afternoon snack, it’s much easier to pick up some beef jerky and a 0-carb beverage (diet coke, diet energy drink, or just water) if I didn’t have a carb-heavy lunch or breakfast.

Then I’ll get home and go for a run. An afternoon candy snack means I’m craving carbs again. Run, then go get fries, or tater tots, or eat a potato with my steak. Order a coke (cuz I’m craving sugar again). But if I’m not craving carbs, it’s easier to just sit down and cook or eat through my pantry, which tends to be zero-carb. Olives, cheese, and salami, or I’ll cook bacon & eggs, or a steak and some green veggies.

The easiest time to continue eating low-carb is after a fast, and since it’s easy to fast while sleeping, breakfast is the big weak spot. If I skip that morning coke, the rest of the day is much easier.

I can rationalization it as a one-serving, glycogen-restorating, small-impact event… but that ignores the cascade that carries through the day. The reason to not drink a coke in the morning is because I know about the cascade. I hate the cascade. I hate the cravings. I hate myself for giving in to the cravings. I hate the blood-sugar yoyo. I hate the morning coke for what it brings.

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I think there are two things that lead people to cheat on their diet. One is bad habits (”we always order pizza on Fridays, I always get the potato with my steak, I always eat sandwiches at home”). The other is a cascade. The easiest way to stop the cascade is to ride the overnight fast: eat a good, zero-carb breakfast and ride your new, low-carb diet throughout the day.

One of the benefits of running every day is that I can try something different each time I run, or experiment with running differently, different shoes — or breathing differently.

I posted on running out of breath back on my old blog. When I first started running, nearly a year ago in December of 2008, I could make it about 100 yards before I ran out of breath and slowed down. It was hard. I was able to gradually increase the distance that I run before I’m out of breath, but along the way I made one major discovery: when I run out of breath depends on how fast I run. The slower I run, the further I can make it before I have to stop and breathe.

When I was very out of shape, small bits of jogging or running were very difficult. Even at a slow pace, I’d quickly run out of breath. I could walk for miles, seemingly indefinitely, but climbing stairs and slow jogging were both limited-time activities.

I’m still “out of shape”, but getting better. I can jog a mile continuously; that’s been my target for the past couple weeks and I haven’t pushed further. (I was thinking of doing another lap, which would have been 1.7 miles, but my legs hurt, so I stopped.) But it’s obvious to me now that running faster just wears me out. I’m chosing to jog slow enough that I can make a mile without running out of breath. Sprints will tear the wind out of me quickly, a run a bit less so, and faster jogging before I finish a mile.

My breathing comes hard in the first quarter mile, but by the time I end the mile I’ve found a rhythm to both running & breathing. I spend the run thinking about it; do I need to modify my footfall? Breathe differently?

One difference I’ve noticed lately is that I’m breathing deeper. Quick breaths means I’m quickly out of breath; deeper breaths taken “from the diaphragm” (rather than higher up in the chest) keeps me from feeling oxygen-deprived.

Mostly I’m blogging this as a record. How I felt about breathing a year ago, six months ago, now. I’ll be interested in seeing how I think in another six months.

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P.S. I blogged recently about sprints vs running vs walking, and these two have some interplay: I think running faster improves fitness more quickly. This implies that running, jogging, and walking are pointless from a fitness perspective. So why do I run? Hmm. I’ll think about it and post more later!

The first time I went to a gym to work out was seventeen years ago. I remember the muscle soreness that kicked in a couple days later, too. My interest in weight training is an adult interest; I was never too interested in performance while I was in school.

A coworker dragged me along, and he pushed me to work as hard as possible. He made fun of the people that lifted low weights, obviously not putting much effort into their workouts. I still see that pattern today in many of the people that I see at the gym. They treat weightlifting like an annoyance; like their goal is to get the exercise over as quickly and easily as possible.

But the point of weight lifting isn’t to move your arms. Why even bother using weights? Why not just flail your arms for a few seconds and call it done? If you aren’t going to try, then why do it? I guess there’s a few people that get pulled to the gym by friends, family, and ill-conceived group training sessions. (It’s tough to get a real personal trainer to let you off easy.)

Muscleheads say “no pain, no gain,” but I don’t think pain itself is the market of correctness. If anything, it’s an incidental marker. And I think that motto encourages weightlifters to push themselves in the wrong way. But I’m a believer in high-intensity training, and HIT means heavy exertion and that usually means pain.

The wrong way to lift weights is to use low weights, lots of reps, quick movements, and to throw your whole body into a movement. The right way is to use high weights (or no weights at all… more on that later), a moderate or small number of reps, slow movements, and … um, better movement.

High weights, low weights, or no weights? “No weights” means doing body-weight exercises. This actually winds up being high weights. Bench-pressing, squatting, clearing, etc your own body weight is fairly high on the performance scale. Low weights don’t stress your musculature enough to cause a response. That’s the whole point to weightlifting: to stress your body enough so that it responds. If you give it a small stress, you’ll get a small response. The major idea behind high-intensity training is that it is the intensity of training that matters, not the duration. Push big weights, and your body will be forced to respond.

My life is fucking sedentary. I sit at a desk for eight hours a day; plus time I spend at home and on the weekends coding, writing, and surfing. Plus couch time, drive time, and reading. If I’m not stressing my muscles hard during a workout, my body quickly realizes that it’s got enough muscle already.

If you don’t want your body to respond — if you’re not going to use your time at the gym to maximize the response you get — then why are you going to the gym? You’re already there; a bit more effort and you’ll get tons more results.

How many reps? This is mostly a measure of how heavy a weight you use. You should be doing reps until your muscles quit; this is a “one set to failure” training protocol (google it!). Lots of reps means you chose a weight that you can push easily. You can train to failure, but now you’ve got a choice: how much time do you want to spend in the gym? Studies have shown that high intensity exercise engages not just anaerobic but also aerobic systems. Use a weight heavy enough that you can only do a few reps, and you’ll get your heartrate up. Plus, the same results for much less time in the gym! (Unless the gym is also your meat market — in which case, I suggest results will get you results.)

How quickly? I feel like laughing whenever I see someone doing reps as quickly as they can. That’s aerobic exercise, not strength training! Plus pushing heavy weights that quickly is risky, and is an invite to a pulled muscle. What matters is how intensely you are stressing the muscle, not how many times it cycles. There’s a number of people that have taken this to the extreme, doing only one rep, but spending 30-90 seconds doing it. VERY intense.

Whole body or isolated movements? This is a bit of a trick question. Isolated movements help you focus on single muscles, but unless you’re training for an aesthetic competition, you want functional strength not just big muscles. What you want to avoid is using momentum, or twisting your whole body to pull in some energy to get the weight moving. This can be risky (especially using free weights). Again, your goal isn’t to do as many reps as possible; it’s to work the muscle. Isolated exercises done right will make sure you’re stressing the muscle as much as you can, while compound movements (freeweights, nautilus-type, or body-weight) will build broad, functional strength. I think both are good; what you want to avoid is cheating and risky movements.

In the paleo community, there’s a definite bias towards body-weight exercises. I agree with it, but I don’t do much of it myself. I think using gym equipment is a fine compromise. I have a feeling it would be easy to integrate more body-weight-type exercises into my routine, but I’m not there yet. I’m still primarily using gym equipment. I think it’s important to not be cowed by the community, though; a half-hour in the gym is better than (another) half-hour on the couch!

Once I move, I won’t have access to a gym. I’ll definitely be adding more body-weight exercises then.