I stopped by the pharmacy today to pick up my levothyroxine (synthetic T4) prescription, and it wasn’t ready — so I sat and read the lit they had in the waiting area. One pamphlet was called “Weight Management” so I figured I’d see what kind of foolish things they’d say.

1. “Eat filling foods that are low in calories.” Because calories are calories, the body is a closed system, and our digestive system is identical to a bomb furnace, right? They suggest grains and legumes, because lectins are a health food, of course.

I’ve tried to completely avoid grains and legumes. The only legumes I’ve had since November is a bit of hummus, before I sat and thought about the fact that it’s ground garbanzo beans. Maybe some soybean oil in fast-food condiments, such as mayo and salad dressings. Unfortunately I’ve had a few pieces of bread: one sandwich, some breaded chicken nuggets (curse you Mickey Ds), and a brat in a bun. I need to stop doing that.

2. “When you eat meat, cut out fat and cut down portion sizes.” Hah! My last meal in Austin was a pound of steak. It was quite yummy. I try and get as much fat as I can, and I think I’m just not getting enough. I need to start adding more butter to the food I eat.

3. “Avoid fried foods.” Makes good sense, since most food is fried in vegetable oil, possibly including soy, peanut, and trans fats. As for losing weight, I don’t think this matters at all. Again, they’re trying to say “reduce calories,” and it’s easy to get a lot of calories from fried food.

4. “Use low-fat or nonfat dairy foods.” Cuz, you know, fat soluble vitamins are over-rated. This is part of the “fat makes you fat” mantra, which Taubes addressed directly in a “What if it’s all been a big fat lie” article in the NY Times Magazine and GCBC. Finding full-fat dairy is difficult. Raw milk cheeses are usually full-fat, but yogurt? Forget it. Out of the hundreds (no joke) of brands and flavors of yogurt at the local grocery store, there were maybe five that were full-fat; the rest reduced or nonfat. Yogurt is a good food if it’s made from raw milk. What’s the point of pasteurizing milk, then adding bacteria back in? Wtf? Of course, it’s what you have to do if your milk is ass. Frickin’ ass milk.

5. “Avoid fast food.” Tom Naughton addresses this well in his documentary. Fast food isn’t great on the paleo scale, but if you avoid full-sugar cola and strip the buns of the meat, it can be a part of a weight-loss diet. There’s low-carb options at tons of fast food places, especially if you’re willing to toss buns away. Stay away from their salad dressings, unless they’ve got a good oil and/or vinegar dressing.

6. “Avoid high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks.” I came to Paleo via the Weston A Price Foundation, which is high on nutrition, so I’m very much a high-nutrient guy. (They also tend to be pro-whole wheat, which is where they diverge from the rest of paleo crowd; see Kurt’s post on the subject.) There’s not much that’s high-calorie and low-nutrient, unless you eat potato chips, candy, fruit, or grain-based snack bars. They recommend nonfat yogurt (see above), hummus (see above!), baby carrots (nature’s candy bar), and pistachios (one out of four ain’t bad for a mainstream publication). I recommend not eating when you’re not hungry. And if you are hungry, eat a big, fatty piece of meat. With butter.

7. “Watch what you drink.” The only area that we agree, except for their recommendation of fat-free milk. At home I drink water; if I’m out, I drink unsweetened iced tea.

So this guide is mostly useless for weight loss. If you want to lose weight and be healthy, here’s my seven tips:

1. Eat fatty foods, such as meat and dairy. Add butter or bacon to every meal.
2. Avoid lean meat. It won’t be filling, your body is unlikely to process that much protein, and you’re skipping all the great fat-soluble vitamins.
3. Fast every so often. 24 hours a few days a week, or maybe 36 hours a couple times a week.
4. Cook with butter, not vegetable oil. If you’re lactose intolerant or want to stay away from casein, ghee or coconut oil are good options.
5. Avoid carbs. Your body burns way less fat when you’ve got an insulin spike. If you do eat carbs, only eat them once a day; you won’t be burning any fat for 3-4 hours after you ingest them.
6. Eat nutrient-dense food (such as pastured meat, eggs, and dairy), and avoid anti-nutrients (such as in grain and beans) and low-nutrient foods (such as potatoes or high-fiber veggies).
7. Avoid soda; drink water when you’re thirsty. Contemplate quitting caffeine, or switch to hot or iced tea.

I lost 8 pounds in December, and 14 in January. February is a short month, but I’m hoping for another 14 pounds.

Going into my third week here, I’m settling into a routine. I ride Monday thru Friday, and find something else to do when the crowds move in on the weekends. When I ride, I get up in the morning, suit up, ride, and cook when I get home. Usually just one meal a day, which means frequent 24-hour fasts. I haven’t yet tried a 36-hour fast, but it’s tempting.

Every day that I’m on the mountain, there’s tons of people eating bagels, candy, breakfast bars, etc. They gotta take lunch, they gotta eat breakfast first, they gotta snack when they’re on the mountain… I really don’t feel it. Fasting is cake. But then, I’m on a 100% fat diet — burning off body fat the whole time.

IF is easy. I don’t feel hungry when I’m riding. I’m losing weight – is it the fasting, or the fact that I’m calorie-deficient?

December 31st: 243.4 pounds

January 20th: 232.8 pounds

New Digit! I hit a new record low on the scale. I started last year around 270, hit a low of 237 in the Summer, then crept back up as my eating habits went to crap — too many fries and cokes. Tuesday this week I finally broke below that Summer low, to 236.4 pounds. Exercise and good paleo eating has helped tons.

One of the things that really drove me to reduce my sugar consumption was a line from Fitness Spotlight:

every time you put sugar into your mouth just tell youself “I don’t feel like burning fat for the next 3-4 hours”

I’ve lost 11 pounds so far this year, in addition to about 8 pounds in December. Obviously snowboarding helps, but I’m not going out every day, and usually only making about 8-10 runs. It burns calories, sure, but that just makes me active — and I was just as active back in Houston. Being 240 pounds and active means I burn 3000-4000 calories a day, just toting that extra weight around. I see the “skinny” (ie normal-weight) people and wish I could get around like them. I wish I was that fit — and then I think, maybe I am that fit. If they were carrying a sixty-pound weight strapped to their belly, they’d probably be having the same problems I am.

And that means: my #1 way to improve my success on the slopes (other than practice) is probably to lose weight. My muscles will work less, my cardiovascular system will work less, I’ll burn less energy, and be able to stay on the hill longer. That’s definitely incentive to stay away from the sugar.

I’m not, of course, looking for weight loss alone. I can imagine paleo critics saying, “of course, it must be snowboarding at 240 pounds that’s causing you to lose weight.” But I’m not just losing weight – I’m burning fat. If I was eating the same toxic shit that most people on the mountain are consuming – glazed donuts, sandwiches, buns – then the insulin spike would prevent a lot of fat loss and burn a lot of lean tissue. I want that lean tissue!

Progress is always motivation to stay the course. I had 5 cokes and two servings of fries in my first week in town; my goal is much less in the second week. And I’ll be posting my lower numbers here, too.

Thursday, January 21st: 232.8

A few of the paleo bloggers have mentioned Dr Mehmet Oz’s new year’s guidelines. Oz is also in the Larry King interview with Gary Taubes (part 1, part 2). The interview is interesting because it brings in not just Oz but also Jillian Michaels.

The mainstream (Oz, Michaels) contention is that “just 100 calories a day” of extra food (or less exercise) is what causes obesity. Thermodynamics is often brought in: calories in = calories out! It’s all sciency so therefore it’s true! “Weight is an energy equation,” Michaels says.

But it’s not an independent equation. Oz kinda hints at this: exercise isn’t awesome because it burns calories, but because it builds muscle, and muscle is what burns calories. Yet cardio doesn’t build muscle (in most people it probably breaks it down). Biggest Loser is all about cardio, too. You don’t get buff and pump up your basic metabolic rate (BMR) by sitting on the exercise bike for an hour a day; you’re just burning off whatever fuel your body can find.

AND IF YOU’RE EATING CARBS, your body can’t burn fat. Carbs up-regulates insulin and down-regulates glucagon. Burning fat is very hard if your hormones aren’t cooperating. Exercise burns through any circulating blood sugar, muscles need more energy, and the body responds by releasing stress hormones, which then scavenge lean tissue for some protein to convert into energy. (And some researchers theorize that those stress hormones then lead to heart disease.) Riding a bike and running burn off your muscles and give you heart disease. A great way to burn off body fat? Not at all.

Strength (resistance) training is a great way to build muscles. The smart way. Whether you’re at a gym, doing body-weight exercises (like pushups and pullups), or something like Crossfit, you’re putting on muscles. 24 hours a day, those muscles need food. About 20% of your total BMR is muscles, so being more muscular won’t dramatically increase your daily energy expenditure, but indeed it does only take about 100 calories a day to shift to weight loss; a few pounds of muscle can do that. Maximize muscle gain by working out after a long fast; the absence of insulin and the presence of growth hormone will help you bulk up faster and more efficiently.

So more muscle tissue increases BMR, which means the negative side of the weight equation gets bigger, which means weight loss. The positive side of the equation is calories in. And this is really what Taubes was getting at in the interview: what you eat isn’t just calories; it also produces hormonal responses.

Trading one meal for another calorically equivalent food isn’t neutral. The presence of cofactors and/or anti-nutrients will change what gets absorbed, so just because you put it in your mouth doesn’t mean you’ll get those calories. The elephant in this room is the insulin response from consuming carbs. Eat carbs and you’re body won’t want to burn fat for the next four hours. Eat a meal (or snack) every 3-4 hours and you won’t burn fat til you sleep.

Well, not strictly true. Triglycerides are constantly going in and out of adipose tissue. Insulin suppresses the burning of body fat, but it doesn’t drop it to zero. It’s just much much harder. This is why the Biggest Loser contestants are able to drop so much weight — that, and at 400 pounds, an hour of exercise burns an obscene amount of calories. Reduce carbs a bit, starve yourself, and burn five thousand or more calories a day, and you’ll drop weight.

Alternately, you could drop to <20g of carbs a day, fast a couple times a week, and skip the exercise — and lose weight anyway. Avoid the antinutrients (like phytate and lectins), get a full complement of vitamins (eg A, D3, and K2 together), and you’ll be healthier in addition to weighing less.

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