The Revolutionary 12 Step Guide to Perfect Health & Weight Loss
This program is for those who are in serious need of help and/or want to lose weight, look, feel, and perform better. Most diets out there are hard to follow. Diets are easy to preach, but hard to practice. I can’t get you from zero to hero in a day. I know for a fact that eating a grain, dairy, legume free diet will lead you to a healthier life but most people can’t implement these changes overnight. Following a paleo diet will get you looking, feeling, and performing better. It’s just that going from how you eat now to how you’re “supposed” to eat is easier said than done.
I wanted to create a program that is realistic, feasible and practical. Using the widely successful A.A. 12 step program as an influence, here is my 12 step program to eating healthier, losing weight, looking and feeling better. Many of these rules are borrowed from Archevore.com. (more…)
“I need to lose my stomach fat” <—- My Pet Peeve and What to do about It!
“I want to lose the fat on my stomach.” – this is one of the most common goals I hear from people (usually middle aged 30-50 year olds) and it’s one of my pet peeves. Not because I think they’re stupid but because they’re always looking for a simple solution but you need to do a bit more. When people say that they want to lose the extra fat around their stomach, they are coming from an area of ignorance. Now, I don’t want to come across as a holier than thou, know it all but people really do lack the most basic knowledge on this topic. Don’t look for a simple fix, just do what I outline in this article later on, and work hard. (more…)
Get Rid of Western Disease Once And For All
Patty’s Great post, informative and concise on gluten. See original here.
Ok bear with me here….I might get some terms a bit off and some dates have a tolerance, but I am going to paraphrase why Gluten sucks so bad for your health.
After hanging with my old pal Robb Wolf for 4 days it has become apparent that there is a chemical war going on between our bodies and the nature of grains to defend themselves.
Now Robby correct me where I have Pattersonized this too far. (see comments section)
In short: It is not the fat that is trying to kill us…..nor are the high glycemic foods 100% the culprit, nor is it necessarily sugar or starch.
The worst part of our diet comes from grains and more specifically a protein in them called gluten.
Here is how it all started: We have evolved for over 4 million years. We have subsisted on a hunter gatherer diet consisting of game meats, fish, seasonal fruits and vegetables, nuts and tubers. It has only been the past 5,000 years or so that grains were introduced into our diet. Cultures that switched to grain as a major source of nutrition shrunk by over 6 inches and lost over 25lbs of lean body mass.
The tallest people on earth in the late 19th century were plains indians (5 ‘ 11″ average ht) who lived on a hunter gatherer diet. By contrast the average height of a US calvary man was 5’4″. Also Hunter Gathers showed no sign of Cv disease, type II diabetes, various cancers, Alzheimer’s and a host of other gnarly diseases that are killing us in record numbers.
The difference……grains
Why? Think of the goal of every living thing on earth………..especially think Tbear.
It’s goal is to procreate. Now also recognize that every living thing has some sort of mechanism to defend itself from being killed so it can pas on its genes (Try to get the remote from Tbear when there are females present and you shall see)
Clams have shells, roses thorns, snakes have venom (Tbear has skinny wrists, but watch out for the elbows). Grains have gluten and its purpose is to beak down your gut and kill you.
Stop eating gluten (none….zip….zilch) for 30 days and see what happens. Talk to Tbear or check Robb’s site for what to eat in combination with zero gluten.
Grains To The Grave
Everyday, we are bombarded by images of grains and grain products all around us. Turn on the television, how many commercials do you see of boxed cereal and beer? How many commercials do you see advertising vegetables and fruits? Go to a supermarket, how many aisles are there of bread, bagels, donuts, muffins, rice crackers, and cereal? Heck, even the government tells us to eat copious amounts of grain products. I’m about to let you in on a little secret … grains are unhealthy.
Homo sapiens have been hunting and foraging food for our survival for 150,000 + years. Their ancestors (Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus, Neanderthal) have been doing the same for over 2 million years. That means for over two million years, we have been eating meats, nuts, leafy greens, regional veggies, tubers and roots, seasonal fruits and berries. Only about 10,000 years ago with the agricultural revolution, have our diet shifted towards a predominantly grain based diet (wheat, rye, barley, rice).
10,000 years may seem like a long time, however, it is just a drop in the bucket in the evolutionary scale. Our digestive system has not yet evolved to effectively digest grains. Need some proof? Continue reading…
Grains have a very unfavorable inflammatory response to our system. Lectins are specialized proteins found particularly in wheat, legumes, and dairy. Lectins are not easily broken down in the stomach and they are resistant to stomach acids and digestive enzymes. They bind to insulin receptors, attack the stomach lining of insects, and they seemingly cause leptin resistance. Furthermore, they bind to human intestinal lining causing ulcers and holes in the gut lining. This becomes problematic because it leads to the leaky gut syndrome, holes in your gut causes contents of your gut being leaked out into your bloodstream. Think about it, your poop gets leaked out of your gut into your bloodstream. The body sees that as foreign substances in your bloodstream and ignites your immune system into overdrive. This may lead to auto-immune diseases where like diabetes, narcolepsy, psoriasis, Crohn’s Disease and many more.
Gluten, a form of lectin, is even worse. Gluten is found in wheat, rye, and barley. Celiacs are 1% of the population who are completely intolerant to gluten. Any gluten in their diet can be disastrous. But just because you’re not diagnosed with Celiac disease, doesn’t mean that grains won’t have an effect on you. Everyone is in some degree or another, susceptible to gluten side effects. Gluten intake compromises your body’s ability to process calcium and Vitamin D3, leads to hyperparathyroidism and other bone defects. You do not want to be deficient in Vitamin D.
Another unfavorable response of eating grains is the associating insulin spike you get. Grains are chock-full of carbohydrates. When we consume high amounts of carbohydrates, it gets broken down into simple sugars in our blood stream. When our blood sugar levels get too high, our pancreas releases a hormone called insulin. Insulin is the hormone that signals to our cells to start storing this extra sugar in our muscle and liver cells as stored energy. If we do not readily use up the glucose as energy, and our muscle and liver glycogen stores are full, we will store the glucose into our fat cells. Now imagine when you’re eating large amounts of carbs in every meal: pasta, cereal, rice, bread, bagels, dessert, donuts, muffins, your constantly increasing your blood sugar levels and constantly releasing more and more insulin. Too much insulin poses a serious health problem. As you keep releasing insulin, your body’s cells become desensitized to the amount of insulin and will not respond to its signal. Thus, insulin and glucose stay in your blood stream. This insensitivity to insulin leads to hyperinsulinism (Google it and find that it is related to a host of diseases), and type II diabetes.
Still not convinced that grains are bad? Let’s analyze exactly how nutritious grains are. The government, nutritionists, and trainers are constantly telling us how healthy whole grains are. Well, let’s compare whole wheat bread to broccoli and see what we come up with.
As you can see from the data above, I have compared 100 grams of multi-grain/whole-grain bread (two slices) versus 184 grams (1 cup) of chopped, cooked broccoli. The bread contains a whopping 265 calories per 100 grams while broccoli only has 52 calories per 184 grams. If you’re trying to lose weight, think about how much bread you’re eating versus the amount of broccoli or veggies you’re eating. Furthermore, the bread has more than 20 times the amount of sodium and over 4 times the amount of carbohydrates leading to higher insulin release and we’ve already discussed how bad that is. People always defend bread by saying how much fiber bread has but broccoli, spinach, and other veggies have just as much. When we look at the micronutrients of these two foods, you’ll notice that bread is pretty much devoid of any vitamins and minerals whereas broccoli is a good source of Calcium, Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Potassium and Manganese.
One final note to add, eating too many grains produces an acidifying effect in your body. A net acid producing diet promotes bone de-mineralization leading to osteopenia and osteoporosis. The acid must be buffered by alkaline stores in your body and the largest alkaline store in your body is calcium from your bones. Therefore, calcium is actually stripped from your bones to buffer the high acidic diet you’re eating from dairy, cereal grains, legumes, and meat and excreted in your urine. Eat more fruits and vegetables if you want to preserve your muscle mass and bone mineral density as they have an alkaline effect.
I know most of you cannot cut out all grains from your diet but hopefully this article will shed some light on what happens to you when you eat the stuff you eat and entice you to make a change. I just want you to make an informed choice, not one dictated by governmental agenda and nutritional “experts.” At most, grain products will kill you, at the very least, there are much better options for your health and body composition.
Paleolithic Nutritioin
Kurt G. Harris MD
The PāNu approach to nutrition is grounded on clinical medicine and basic sciences disciplined by knowledge of evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology. The best evidence from multiple disciplines supports eating an animal-based diet high in fat, low in cereal grains and relatively low in carbohydrate.
PaNu – A modified paleolithic diet that can improve your health by duplicating the evolutionary metabolic milieu.
How do you do it?
Here is a 12- step list of what to do. Go as far down the list as you can in whatever time frame you can manage. The further along the list you stop, the healthier you will be. There is no counting, measuring, or weighing. You are not required to purchase anything specific from me or anyone else. There are no special supplements, drugs or testing required.*
1. Eliminate sugar (including fruit juices and sports drinks) and all foods that contain flour.
2. Start eating proper fats – Use healthy animal fats or coconut fat to substitute fat calories for carbohydrate calories that formerly came from sugar and flour. Drink whole cream or coconut milk. 3. Eliminate gluten grains. Limit grains like corn and rice, which are nutritionally poor. 4. Eliminate grain and seed derived oils (cooking oils) Cook with Ghee, butter, animal fats, or coconut oil. 5. Favor ruminants like beef, lamb and bison for your meat. Eat eggs and some fish. 6. Get daily midday sun or take 2-8000 iu vit D daily. 7. Try intermittent fasting or infrequent meals (2 meals a day is best). Don’t graze like a herbivore. 8. Adjust your 6s and 3s. Pastured (grass fed) dairy and grass fed beef or bison has a more optimal 6:3 ratio, more vitamins and CLA. A teaspoon or two of Carlson’s fish oil (1-2 g DHA/EPA) daily is good compensatory supplementation if you eat grain-fed beef or no fish.
9. Proper exercise – emphasizing resistance and interval training over long aerobic sessions. 10. Most modern fruit is just a candy bar from a tree. Go easy on bags of sugar like apples. Stick with berries and avoid watermelon which is pure fructose. Eat in moderation. 11. Eliminate legumes 12. Eliminate all remaining dairy including cheese- (now you are “Orthodox paleolithic”)