Friday, February 8, 2013

My Answer to Woo - Part 2

Woo says that no one is making the low carb faddists declare their reasons for going low carb.  I disagree.

Way back a long time ago, when the paleo pool was a bit clearer and not as much of a cesspool, people were free to eat what they wanted, as long as it was meat and veggies and they were both old.  Then some of the over-exercizers got tired of the lower carb thing, and in order to maintain their over-exercise-routines, began adding carbs.  Sisson came up with the nifty carb graph.  People seemed happy with all this for a time.

Even before AHS11, the carb wars intensified.

It used to be that low-er carb was the paleo standard, and that if people wanted taters, they had to give themselves permission to do some neolithic cheating.  Either from their exercise or diet guru, or by reading the tea leaves of their n=1.

Gradually, this situation changed into a plan where people were free to consume as much glucose-producing carbage as they wanted, as long as they could "cover it with exercise".

Gradually, some paleo luminaries changed this situation into a plan where carbs were again considered an essential nutrient, and people were required to consume a bit of glucose-producing carbage in order to counteract a carb deficiency.  Their brownshirt followers went all over the paleosphere enforcing this new rule.

Eventually, people like me were required to show a note from the doctor in order to continue eating a low-carb diet without constant ridicule.

Eventually, this turned into a carbbist-inspired krystalnacht event within the paleo cesspool, even worse than usual.  Folks casually mentioning to each other on a forum or two that they can't wait until the low carb people leave for good.

Problem with paleo popularity leveling off?  Blame it on those fat low carb people.
Problem with people thinking that paleo thing is just a fad?  Blame it on those red-faced low carb people.
Problem with eating disorders?  Blame it on the Low Carb scene.
Nope.  It's not the Jews, it's not the feminists, it is the LOW CARB people, its JIMMY!!!!!

Now, we are being told that we have eating disorders.  Eliminating. Entire. Food. Groups.  EEFG, set to appear in your next DSM.  What's next, a letter on our sleeve?  Or, maybe another comment like this: 

"From my nutrition training, it was well-known that those with eating disorders would hide behind the likes of vegetarianism or veganism in order to legitimise their food avoidance... it is an easy way to eliminate a boat-load of energy in one "legitimate" hit. "I don't eat meat".

There has been much talk behind the scenes about similar things occuring within the paleo community, especially with its increasing popularity and (unfortunately) links to the LC community (you just want to Hulk-smash those links, don't ya?)."

So, Paleo Guy, you are that much into hulk-smashing?  Tell me Paleo Guy, who says stuff like that?  No need for people like me to be afraid of a potato, when we have some hulk-smashing tater tots on board.

37 comments:

  1. How important is it to fit into the Paleo community norms? How much does Dr.Emily Dean matters? She can eat banana for breakfast, but gets hypoglycemia episode eating sugary garbage, and stretches her experience on everybody else, but criticizes Wooo for the same thing "She (Wooo) also applies her personal experience like a scythe against all other experience…".

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  2. Paleo cult disgusts me more and more each day.

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  3. The Paleo cultists can just fuck right off. I wasted stalled months trying "solutions" provided by them. I stumble across the Low Carb Jihad and I've dropped 23 pounds in one month. Last Wednesday my very demanding trainer asks me to try something. I grab the bar and try it and he starts smiling and says "that's amazing". I'm sitting there in a deep squat with a bar over my head and ask him what he is talking about. He says, "there is no way a guy your size (I'm still 6'3" and 281 pounds, LOL) age should be able to do an overhead squat like that. I am so proud of you. I love my job." None of this, despite my considerable will power and hard work, happens without the LCJ. We are not a cult. We are real people helping each other with our hard earned knowledge and experience. For me, the Woo Fueled Ragers have been an incredibly inspiring, enlightening gift. And I am proud to be one. :-)

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  4. Paleo just turned into another fad diet! The growing number of metabolic challenge population will find no help with the latest Paleo guru. The low carb metabolically challenge growing crowd are the ones that will really stick with a diet and will turn it into a lifestyle not only because they want to but because they have to. Those in paleo guru cult will jump from the latest fad to the other adding carb from left to right until they all end up were they started because they can. At least for now, we will see when they reach middle age.

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  5. :-) i still insist on using the p-word for myself. paleo-cultists and paleo-templates are two entirely different things, like there used to be hippies and HIPPIES.... to me paleo = non-neolithic, because most of my problem-foods (from a tolerance point of view, not triggers) are grains, legumes, some dairy, and industrial seed oils.

    may i still play with the LCJs ... PLEASE??? ;-)

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  6. @G, they are not all that important. I think some were surprised when I compared a certain person to Dr. Duke. But, I am convinced even more now that such a comparison is not only fair, but could be extended to others in their tribe as well. I can eat a piece of banana as well, but with results I am not that happy about, and now this makes me eating disordered? I think this type of disordered thinking needs to be called out, whether I consider myself a member of the tribe or not.

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  7. @G, now as for Dr. Emily, she did allow my response post to be published, but she has not been strong enough in moderating the carb wars debate. She should have put another Woo-style comment after getting that Paleo's guy's comment, something like, "TPG, I cannot print your message in its current form because of the inappropriate comments about a certain group of people. Would you like to edit it, or may I edit it for you?"

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    1. I sense Emily regretted she opened that can of worms. I speculate she did it after being bagged by some "concerned citizens" who bombarded her with e-mails. She is not impartial, she is really taking sides in that issue, and sees LCarbers as a bunch of unreasonable maniacs. "Life is too short", deprivation is horrible, some doctor was tortured by his conscience because one of his asthma patient took too seriously following the diet which was helpful. How dangerous for her mental health! I was furious reading it.

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    2. Oh, I agree, and it looks like with every additional comments post she is trying to re-direct it. But, sheesh, doing higher carb because that is the land of the metabolically flexible? Maybe when she gets older and less flexible, she won't confuse cause and effect so.

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    3. ..and...she does not need to produce her e-mail list. Everyone knows the usual suspects lol.

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    4. It looks like they have been able to successfully (at least temporarily) re-direct the hatred towards vegan and macrobiotics, even though none seem to have read much about macro. It is really not that much different from orthodox Judaism. (OK, the specifics are completely different, but not the way the lifestyle is approached.)

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    5. Galina, it doesn't sound from her latest post that she is regretting anything. In fact, in part three, she seems to be suffering a common ailment pointed out by Dr. Kruse, that of not taking chances by doing anything other than referring to other studies or papers. In the recent case, she seems to have read about macrobiotics about as much as Becky Hand has read about low carb. That is pretty much like visiting the busy bee to find all about Weston Price.

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    6. I think that real Emily is very bias underneath of very politically correct and leveled exterior.

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  8. I thought it hilarious that TPG even started with, "based on what I have been taught about nutrition...". He's this exercise dude who frequently injures himself with his extreme exercise, and he's read a bunch of stuff about the paleo diet, which has been trademarked by Loren Cordain, who is a real exercise expert and has done a considerable amount of reading and research in nutrition.

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  9. @Sid, me too. Wish it weren't so creepy.
    @Sam, I am afraid you are right. The paleo cult has become infested with people just trying to sell the latest book or meal plan. That's why I like to turn the lights on every once in awhile.
    @tess, you are fine with your name unless p stands for potatoista. Then, I am going to kick you out of the LCJ tribe with all my moderation powerz.

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    1. lol -- the day i turn potatoists is the day i ... reincarnate into the body of a young male gym-rat. ;-)

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  10. ha ha! Looking forward to your blogpost on that topic!

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  11. @EB,

    I follow your blog. You are LCJ to me. Of course, I speak for nobody else. We have an anarchistic streak in us. :-)

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  12. Great post EB.
    Sometimes I think the social awkwardness of LC is what begat Paleo (ie, it had nothing to do with what our ancestors ate).

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  13. Hey Bill, an interesting theory that I have not heard before?

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  14. I really liked "paleo/primal" before the rice/tato brigade took it over. back then the "p-diet" distinguished LCers who ate real food from LCers who subsist on frankenfood and there was the added benefit that a broad range of carb levels was accepted (ie Sisson's carb curve).
    These days it's more about trying to define resistant starch and metformin as "ancestral" than anything else.
    I do think there is a silver lining though, I figure that 20 years from now we'll be laughing our collective carb deprived asses off as the perfect potato diet brigade bemoans their rising blood sugars and inability to lose weight

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  15. Hey Maile, I hope they figure it out before it gets that bad.

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  16. Perfectly funny.

    As i see it safe starches first arose from 2 motives - a) Kurt Harris noticing that LC paleo were making fools of themselves saying early man never ate anything carb. Of course they did, they ate anything going back then. So fixing this exaggeration was in order.
    b) Paul Jaminet fixing non-weight health issues with ketosis noticed he did not feel so well and had brainwave that what may be one person's metabolic advantage may be another's nutritional disadvantage.
    Still comes out in favour of fat over starch though.

    My diet mantra is "eat as much fat as keeps me happy, and just enough carbohydrate to keep the gut bacteria happy". The latter isn't much. It's not for me, I have pets to feed.

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    1. Hello King George! Yes, early-neo paleos did make that mistake about how many carbs were in traditional diets, and swung from the banana theory, all the way through to the Inuit diet, and back to bananas. 'Course, if they had actually read about macrobiotics, they would have realized that balance is important, and there is nothing worse than swinging from one extreme to the other. Looks like the wider paleo community is a good example of the rot that can happen when macrobiotic principles are not honored.

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    2. to continue....it is well-known within the macrobiotic community, the stages of illness. From that diagnosis-point, it certainly appears that the 3-c's and some of their male cheerleaders have already gotten to the final stages of disease. And that would be arrogance.

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    3. ..and....pets to feed?....I love pets, so I see St. Peter. Better to go to a vet.

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  17. @ GH, WRT your pets: LOL! but beware, they might be tinkering with your appetite/cravings and saying the same thing about you - perhaps their "pets" are adipocytes :)

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    1. Yeah, I want them to be quiet and content, but not so happy that they're up partying till all hours!

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  18. I love the comment about "a note from the doctor". It's the same thing with a wheat sensitivity; you get people cross-examining you about coeliac diagnosis. A food makes me deathly ill, I choose not to eat it (finally), who needs to pay for a diagnosis? But some people act as if it's your duty to try to eat wheat unless you have the certificate, or like all your experience has been delusional unless some cheesy MD you've never met before puts his rubber stamp on it.
    I'm like, "I'm a Grown-Up now, last time I checked this was a Free Country".

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  20. Oh, I know, it is sort of like, "If this food makes you deathly ill in a way that I do not understand, then YOU are the one with the problem, unless you provide some certificate from some established authority that I recognize. Once that certificate is provided, I will begrudgingly allow you into the party, but will make fun of you along with the others when you slip out to go to the bathroom. And then I will tell all the others, despite the note, that the party will be much better when all the note-bearers decide to leave."

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  21. There is this pattern I read over and over - "I was sick/obese, I went VLC/Atkins, it worked for a while, then I wasn't happy, so I ate safe starches, now I'm happy and healthy, so ketotis is unnecessary and unhealthy"
    And I think, this is pretty much my pattern BUT at least I know that had I not gone VLC and ketogenic for a while, the chances are good that I would not be able to handle starch now, and if it ever goes bad again, VLC is the sure way to fix it.
    People think they way they are now is the way they have always been and will always be, but it's not so. What you are doing now influences what you might try later. It's called epigenetics.
    Even Harris and Jaminet arrived at "safe starches" AFTER zero carbing.
    Maybe that's what made them so safe.
    People need varying periods of ketosis to "fix their metabolism", for some it will be life-long, for others, just a week or two every now and then.

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    1. ha ha, epigenetics? I thought they called it menopause!!!

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    2. Epigenetics. Life is a journey and you never step in the same river twice type stuff.
      Something as simple as becoming dependent on opioid drugs is the result of epigentics. use opioids for too long, now drugs will affect you differently, you'll be less sensitive. Withdrawal will over time restore something like the original gene expression and you'll become sensitive again.
      You cannot state that a certain dose will be adequate or excessive except in the context of where you have been before and its effect on gene expression.
      So it is with carbohydrate. I am not directly comparing carbs with an addictive drug here, God Forbid! The point is that whatever you have done for the past few months has a powerful influence over the effect of what you choose to do now.

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    3. Stan-Heretic had an interesting post a while ago about dangers going too quickly off LC, and emphasizing that the adaptation back to the diet with conventional amount of carbs may take several months.

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