Yes, Dr. Lustig, I really NEEEED to be this extreme

What?  Where do people come up with this?

Dr. Lustig is on the soapbox again, with a weird new piece on dieting.  Here's an interesting quote: 

"All successful diets share three precepts: low sugar, high fiber (which means high micronutrients), and fat and carbohydrate consumed together in the presence of an offsetting amount of fiber. Anything after that is window dressing."

I guess he gleaned all that information out of Dr. Gardner's A to Z study, which showed the Atkins diet to be the most successful.   Despite the fact that the Atkins diet doesn't require one to take great pains to be sure that they are mixing their fat and carbohydrate together in the correct ratio that Dr. Lustig inadequately specifies, I am sure Dr. Gardner managed to sneak that part into his study, and that is the sole reason for the superior results on Atkins over the Ornish, Zone and "Mediterranean" diets.

Could it be that the Atkins dieters achieved results by eating all that window dressing?  Nom, nom, hope the dressing was high fat, or at least from the window frame instead of the glass, providing as much of the fat-melting woody fiber as you could get from a piece of industrial high-fiber bread back when you were eating it.  Hey, chopsticks anyone?

Dr. Lustig thinks we shouldn't be so extreme as to embrace the Atkins diet.  Why?  Hey, cause there's no MILK, he says!  No milk, no vitamin D!!  That is because all the cheese that those stooopid low carb jihadists are eating on the Atkins diet must have had all the vitamin D removed or never added.  But somehow, the Paleo Diet (OK, where's my trademark key on this font??) gets a free hall pass, even though it specifically bans the essential food, even during the "ongoing weight loss" part of the diet.

Newsflash Dr. Lustig!  The Atkins diet does not ban milk.  The Paleo diet does. Now, which is more extreme?  Oh, by the way, lets take a look at all the REAL foods that people on the Atkins diet are eating that contain vitamin D.  If you follow the above link, you will see a list of really great foods that are staples of the diets my friends on Atkins eat. (Personally, I eat epi-paleo, an even more extreme diet. No Vitamin D there, either.)  You will also notice that the list contains a sprinkling of foods that are usually not high on the list for Atkins or Paleo.  Things like FORTIFIED milk, FORTIFIED soymilk, FORTIFIED cereals, etc.

Hey wait a minute!  FORTIFIED MILK??????  What Dr. Lustig is telling us to do is to be careful about "extreme" diets that contain really great sources of vitamin D, and recommends diets that contain vitamin D supplements instead.  How about a gob of FORTIFIED margarine with that FORTIFIED cereal?  When did this form of fake eating become not only typical, but preferred?  Just because it is typical doesn't mean it is optimal.

Dr. Lustig ends with this:

"All real food is inherently good. It's what we do to it that is bad. Food processing is the Mr. Hyde of the obesity pandemic. The way to reverse it is to do the opposite, to stop altering food and instead consume it in its natural state." 

Great idea, but I am pretty sure that doesn't include drinking altered milk products.


Here's my advice for Dr. Lustig, if he really wants to navigate through the diet mess.  First, read some of the clinical studies.  Second, learn a bit about biochemistry and human body systems.  I have stated recently on another blog that I am not a biochemist, but even I know that fiber is that stuff that goes through your intestines without getting broken down.  Micronutrients are nutrients you need in small quantities.  These are two different things.  High fiber doesn't necessarily provide a high number of micronutrients like Lustig contends.

My reply on Dr. Rosedale's blog

Dr. Rosedale recently posted an interesting "finale" to the latest AHS12 safe starch debate.  This response is from js 290:

"I’ve often wondered if the people claiming to have thyroid (typically low energy) problems on a VLC simply are not eating enough? That is, the claim is that by adding back carbs into the diet, they miraculously solved their low energy/thyroid problems. Perhaps all that really happened was they ate more, which happened to have been carbs. My guess is they would have experienced the same effect by eating more fat.
This is really a very fundamental concept that anyone who’s gone through a differential equations class should pick up very quickly: the concept of a coupled system. That is, energy input and energy output are coupled in the mathematical sense; therefore, they cannot be treated independently. Changing one affects the other, probably in very non-linear ways. So, if one understands coupled systems, then one can immediately reject the notion of “eating less and moving more.” Because eating less may cause one to move less. And, in order to move more, it may absolutely require eating more.
As an unqualified skeptic, that’s my guess on the supposed “thyroid problems” that people claim to experience. They either aren’t fully keto-adapted, they aren’t eating enough, or both."

Gotta luv it when diffyQ is invoked, like that makes the argument sound more plausible, especially for those folks who cover their eyes during the mathy parts.  Clearly, this person hasn't a clue with what is happening to some of us on this type of diet.  JS also seems to be quite caught in the lure of thermodynamics.

I was on the leptin reset for several weeks with little weight-loss success, and feeling colder and a bit tired.  When I went off the diet with one carby meal  it immediately kicked me into something that worked better.  My energy was better, my mood was better, sleep got better and I started losing weight.  Yes, the calories were higher than a typical evening meal, but overall not as high as many other days on the plan.  On days I was eating the Big A$$ Breakfast featuring fatty hamburgers lots of un-drained bacon, the overall calorie level was relatively high compared to the caloric level on a more typical pre-leptin-reset day.

I responded:
"Your calorie explanation sounds plausible, but untrue in my case. I think one of the problems with many of the theories and chatter about this effect is that it is very difficult for people who have few problems transitioning to the diet to understand or even believe that the issue exists.
The problem with the explanation by many low carb experts is that it oftentimes does not adequately address that transition phase. I know in my own case, had I not backed into a lower carb diet accidentally, I would never have stuck with it. Returning to the “safety” of a high carb diet can really make a difference to people who are on the edge hormonally, at least adrenally.
It doesn’t help much when people continue to insist that we are all doing it wrong. I followed a number of plans religiously. Now that I know how it feels on the other side, I have no problem going through a bit of hell to get back into a fat-burning state if I get out it for some reason. I have developed short cuts. Before I did Kruse’s leptin reset with CT, re-entry meant certain loss in weight, but also loss of sleep ability, libido, energy, and feeling constantly cold.
I do not think it is wise for the low carb community to ignore such data. There are plenty of people in the high-carb community who are more than ready to bash us for their perception of the failings of our diet. Let’s not give them any more ammo by not dealing with it. Instead of sweeping such data points under the rug, it would serve us well to stir them up, take a look, and make the diet more workable and successful for everyone."

And, lucky for the state of my low carb journey, adding back carbs more than a meal here and there always makes me feel much worse.  I would never want to pitch my tent in the "safe starch" camp for very long, preferring to view the extra carbs as more of a temporary drug with significant negative side effects.  Better, ya'know, in those one-pill-per-prescription bubble-packs so it is hard to overdose and kill yourself.

I read Animal Pharm's leptin reset post with great interest.  She was unable to successfully do the leptin reset as written.  It sounds like her experience was similar in some aspects to mine, and people should be reading and talking about it.

I would suggest that Dr. Rosedale and others not have his post be the final word in this matter.  Just take a look at his quote picture at the top of his post.  People who don't do as well on VLC aren't even fully into the ridicule stage yet.  It is still pretty much total denial.  Nobody over on his "team" even responded to my comment.

I listened to Jimmy Moore's podcast with Dr. Phinney, and came away disappointed in the range of the doctor's answers to stalls.  When a questioner mentioned thyroid and adrenal issues as possible players, he strongly denied any thyroid issues based on his experience, but he never even approached the adrenal question.  And another thing that really bugged me is that he discounted one thyroid comment that he heard because the comment was from someone who had a "terminal" degree.  Hey, Dr. Phinney, Dr. Schwarzbein does not have a terminal degree.  Maybe you should stroll on over to her site and see about what she has to say.

Data White-Out

Dang!  This is unfortunate.  It was always a joke in the halls of statistics.  If you don't like a pesky data point that seems to blow holes in your fave theory, just get a little bottle of white-out.  Apply liberally.  Poof!  Problem's gone.

Trouble happens when it is MY data point.  Now, to compensate, I am going to write a series of blog posts.  I hope you read them and send a link to EVERYONE YOU KNOW who has anything to do with the low- and lower-carb world because they really need to read this stuff.

I posted a thoughtful reply on Ron Rosedale's end-of-safe-starch-discussion blog, and eventually it got past the moderator, but while I was waiting, I thought it best for me to collect my thoughts here, where I have some control over what is included. (You can find Ron's post by finding the link on the right.)

If you have always wondered what it is like to actually live in a place such as Morovia, untouched by any 7-country study, 22-country study or other serious anthropological inquiry, well, stay tuned.  You'll be able to see that lost demographic right here, eating, sleeping, struggling with both.

Here's a general outline of what I intend to cover:

1.  Review my original comment on Rosedale's blog.

2.  Elaborate on the tricks I now use to get back into VLC-fat-burning mode.

3.  Respond to another poster (somewhere?) who mentioned he thought that people who tried many diets carefully were just neurotic.  Yep, I hope I don't get too Portia on you, but this topic deserves a blogpost all on its own.

4.  A post on the general state of "discussions" about carbs and the lack of science.  From a certain point of view, there is really no difference between many of the luminaries who coo to their audience segment, kick out the comments of those who have a different experience and otherwise ignore or discount their data.  They all deserve some time in the science doghouse.

So, to get started, I hope new readers will visit some of my earlier blogposts about what happened to me.  You can find them here and here.