A bit of a milestone this week. I finally lost 20 pounds, and that was within a month. I have never been on a diet that has been so easy. Although sometimes I do want sugary things, I never crave them. I can go out to parties etc and never feel the burning desire to eat something. I just feel happy eating this food. Actually, a better word is content. I still have a long road to go, at least 60-70 pounds. Sometimes when I think of the big picture it can be so daunting with so much weight to lose. I also have moments where I panic that the diet will stop working, but I think that those thoughts are derived from the psychological damage I have taken from low fat/low calorie diets in the past. I guess this diet isn’t just healing me physiologically, but psychologically too. The fact is I feel good when I eat this food and I guess thats the main thing.
20 Pounds Down
If you play your carbs right
After the last week I have tried experimenting a little by adding carbs slowly back into my diet, and watching my weight loss and appetite. At the highest level my carb intake was around 60-70g of carbs but more typically around 50-60g. I noticed only a small increase in hunger once I had my bowl of berries at night, which was generally my biggest hit of carbs. But the hunger wasn’t so strong, and the ability to eat frozen berries was so cool and refreshing- something that you can’t get when your eating to stay in ketogenesis.
I noticed too that a lot of carbs were sneaking into my diet in the foods that I ate. For example, sausages in New Zealand tend to have carbs added to them and so each sausage was adding 5g. I didn’t realise that a grilled chicken salad from McDonalds adds sugar! It all adds up! So when I intended to be around 40-50g of carbs I was much higher. My water retention kicked in too and so it was difficult to tell how much weight I lost. I instantly popped up a kilogram, but I think I was losing weight from the new high weight, but it seemed much slower. When Im under 50g of carbs a day the hunger and weight seem to melt off.
So my answer to this problem was simply to cut the hidden carbs. Because 50g is actually a lot of carbs if you play your carbs right (get it:). And when I am going to eat carbs I want to enjoy them and eat what I want i.e frozen berries!!!! Since I have done this I have really felt my well being has increased. Within days Im now at a new low weight of 278 pounds, or a 19 pound loss overall.
Food Predictability
The current nutritional paradigm for obesity hypothesises that we put on weight because our energy consumption increases over the amount of energy we expend. But many examples exist in nature where animals increase their fat storage due to environmental cues. One classic example is found in European Starlings, which increase fat storage, not based on food consumption, but rather the perception that food supply is diminishing.
The ability to predict oncoming food shortage is of paramount importance to European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, which only weigh 15g, are endotherms (warm-blooded), and must survive sub-zero temperatures throughout winter. The ability to build fat stores for this period is therefore vital. Although the types of cues to identify oncoming winter differ in bird species many have been found to respond to local changes in the environment (2).
In an experiment by Cuthill et al (2000) European Starlings were provided a predictable vs. unpredictable food source. Starlings were trained to feed from an operant feeder, with access to that feeder indicated by a bright light. The experimenters separated birds into two treatments. The ‘food is predictable’ group was offered food in alternating half hour blocks, while the ‘food is unpredictable’ group had food access scattered throughout the day randomly. What this means is that some birds knew that food would be available every half hour, while others could potentially go for hours with no food available, even though at the end of the day they had equal access to the same amount of food. Fat and lean muscle tissue gains were then measured at the end of each day.
The results from the study clearly showed that birds that were offered an unpredictable food source showed gains in fat and muscle storage whereas birds that had a predictable supply did not. It is important to bare in mind birds foraged and consumed equal amounts of food, mass gains in this experiment were not attributable to any statistically discernable difference in foraging rates, and therefore it was the change in the predictability of that food source that lead to weight gains. This is a ‘true winter fattening’ response, and is what would be an expected cue of oncoming winter (3).
With a regular pattern of food availability the ‘food is predictable’ birds could rapidly adapt to a regular routine of feeding whereas the unpredictable treatment resulted in a mismatch between motivation to feed, and the ability to do so. When the birds in the unpredictable treatment underwent several sequential episodes of not eating this would have presented a very real starvation risk, and is predicted to affect the optimal level of energy reserves (4-6). In birds, feeding disruption has been shown to stimulate production of glucocorticosteroids, and other hormones, in the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal cascade, which in turn affects body mass (7).
What I find most interesting from this study is that fat accumulation is completely independent of food consumption, and this refutes the calories in/calories out model. This certainly would not be unique to birds and shows that in humans there will also be certain biological mechanisms that ‘turn on’ fat storage, but the basis of these mechanisms is as yet still debated – but we can be relatively sure that it involves processed foods. It also indicates that hormones, starting from a process in the brain, are involved in turning on that fat switch not energy levels.
Another interesting aspect of this study, which is worth looking into further, is how a reduction in energy reserves can change the biological state of the animal (i.e fat deposition in this species). Because we are larger animals it would take longer to run dry our energy reserves (i.e glycogen), but I wonder what state we enter into once this is done. Intermittent fasting may provoke such a state in humans, but seems to have more positive effects such as improved insulin sensitivity, improved chronic disease markers such as LDL cholesterol, and possibly an increase in longevity. This issue I will look at further in future posts.
1. Cuthill IC, Maddocks SA, Weall CV, Jones EKM (2000) Body mass regulation in response to changes in feeding predictability and overnight energy expenditure. Behav Ecol 11: 189-195
2. Pravosudov VV, Grubb TC Jr (1997) Energy management in passerine birds during the nonbreeding season. A review. Curr Ornithol 14:189-234
3. Lehikoinen E (1987) Seasonality of the daily weight cycle in wintering passerines and its consequences. Ornis Scand 18:216-226
4. Hutchinson JMC, McNamara JM, Cuthill IC (1993) Song, sexual selection, starvation and strategic handicps. Anim Behav 45: 1153-1177
5. McNamara JM, Houston AI (1990) The value of fat reserves and the tradeoff between starvation and predation. Acta Biotheor 38: 37-61.
6. McNamara JM, Houston AI, Lima SL (1994) Foraging routines of small birds in winter: a theoretical investigation. J Avian Biol 25: 287-302.
7. Wingfield JC, Maney DL, Breuner CW, Jacobs JD, Lynn S, Ramenofsky M, Richardson RD (1998) Ecological bases of hormone-behavior interactions: the “emergency life history stage.” Am Zool 38: 191-206.
Turning to Nature
The science around obesity has started confusing the hell out of me. So many low carbers are large proponents of the insulin hypothesis, but many examples exist that may allude to the fact that this may not necessarily be based on fact, or at least, there are other factors that contribute to the success of low carb diets. However, for a non-nutritional scientist such as myself it can become very confusing, not to mention frustrating, and I feel left in some kind of dieting hell limbo – so you keep telling me all these theories are wrong BUT WHAT DO I DO!
One thing I have learned over the years, as I have conducted my own research, is that we can often turn to the natural world for answers to many of our problems. Generally, in nature species work along continuums with all species found along these. Life is a trade-off – animals don’t spend more energy than they need too in order to get the job done. Fortunately, one can then look at similarities between species at different stages of the gradient and come up with common patterns, or differences, that may allude to why animals do what they do. Here is an analogy we are all familiar with. Carnivores are found on one end of a continuum, herbivores on another, with omnivores scattered throughout the middle (some animals are more herbivorous than others but do eat meat so would be found closer to the herbivore end of the spectrum i.e chimps, and vice versa). One thing we know is that carnivores have small guts, canine teeth, tend to eat a lot less regularly among many other traits etc. So we can assume that in order to be an effective carnivore these traits are probably going to be important.
My research tends to focus on foraging in animals, specifically fish. I always tell people I am a marine biologist and this is certainly true. I study the different foraging strategies of various fish species and look at how this reflects in their ecology. But essentially my area of expertise really lies in animal foraging more so than it does in marine biology, and my skills are lot more transferrable to animal behaviour/foraging than they are to other areas of marine biology. Ask me why a particular mammal species feeds a certain way and I could probably tell you, ask me why larvae of a particular Echinoderm congregate in a certain area and I get a bit more stumped. But it is just easier to say ‘Im a marine biologist’ than some long-winded explanation, and the embarrassment for both parties as their eyes start to glaze over, and you can see they regret asking. But I think that due to my frustration on this dieting matter I’m going to take matters into my own hands and start turning towards the natural world to ask the questions that are not been answered right now.
I’m not sure how effective this will be but at least I will be relying on my own skills, and possibly (hopefully) the infusion of new information from a completely unrelated field could shed some light into our foraging patterns. We are animals, we are vertebrates, we are mammals – we share similar digestive systems, enzymes, genes, brain structures, behaviours and a plethora of other names I could mention with our fellow animals. We too fall along the same gradients in nature, and so maybe taking the spotlight to us, and how we fit within this larger evolutionary picture, is what is needed right now.
I will of course be posting about my weight loss and how this is going on. Ill probably do a summary once a week and in between if necessary. I lost weight this week. Not as much as the last weeks I dropped to 280 pounds at my lowest, a one pound loss. However, I think this is somewhat biased as I have increased my carbohydrate intake (30 – 50g a day) and I feel I have contained more water. At the moment the scales are telling me I am about 283 pounds and this increase (from 280 pounds) coincided with my increase in carb intake. I am sure this is water content. But it makes me realise that I should really be using a measuring tape around my stomach, which may not be so influenced by water retention.
My Carb Ceiling
So this week I tried a bit of self experimentation. I knew I was eating a low amount of carbs per day, but had never measured it. The reason I did not do this is because sometimes when Im out and about I need to eat something, and that just may be a sausage roll with the pastry ripped off, or a big mac with no buns. Yes I eat big macs occasionally. It is very hard to calculate the carb content of such a meal and so I just make sure that I check the labels of the food I buy and make sure carbs are non-existent or at least very low.
BUT I have been reading around the web that staying ketogenic may not necessarily be a good thing, it seems that unprocessed carbs may not be completely evil (although I take this with a grain of salt as I ate unprocessed carbs while on paleo and didn’t lose weight), and even Atkins suggests experimenting on yourself by increasing carbs until you get those old hunger pangs back. So this week I thought I would allow myself to have one meal per day that contained an extra 10g of carbs. I chose berries….frozen berries.
I have found that there is a subtle difference after I eat berries – I definitely want more. But that could be either because their damn yummy OR because Im so conscious of getting hungry that Im paying attention to any pangs of hunger I might have. Taking that into account I still felt ever so slighty hungry, but nothing unbearable.
So i would say that my carb range is currently between 30-40g of carbs a day because Im sure extra carbs slip in their occasionally by accident. For example, little beknownst to me sausages and other ‘processed’ meats have more carbs in them in New Zealand, than in North America (even though its grass fed meat), the sausages I thought had 0 carbs actually had 5g of carbs each! I will try adding another 10g allotment of unprocessed carbs and see how that works starting tomorrow – probably root vegetables. At any stage if I start to feel hungry (like the old days) then I know I have reached my carb limit.
Does Low Carb Reduce Anxiety?
I have a good friend, and he has known me for years, which basically means he knows all about my dieting history. In short, he knows how fucked up I am when it comes to food. Lately, he has noticed some changes in my eating patterns due to the low carb and became interested in the theory. So I started the indoctrination process first by showing him ‘Fathead’ the documentary (available on Itunes), and then followed up with the final nail in the coffin – the google talk by Gary Taubes. He has just started thinking that the calories in/calories out model may be flawed (unlike me who is 100% convinced), and that the insulin theory is the best hypothesis we have for maintaining health.
Thing is, unlike me, his battle has always been with anxiety. I told him that perhaps a low carb diet would help by maintaining sugar levels and not overexciting his body, thus causing an anxious state. He has begun to eat low carb and rather than me tell you how he feels I will let him:
So today was my indoctrination process into low carb courtesy of my best friend. I have to place a caveat here people, I am ‘openly skeptical’ about this low carb process, but having watched Gary Taubes and ‘Fathead’ I am going to try high fat and low carbohydrates and if it works I will become a zealot like my learned friend.
My issues tend not to be with weight, but unfortunately more with anxiety. I don’t mean anxiety about an exam or before getting married, I mean crippling, crazier than thou anxiety, I mean knowing it is irrational and knowing the anxiety is out of line with reality but having to live with crippling fear. Fear of anything. Don’t get me wrong people, I am able to function, I can work, I can socialise but behind closed doors I am a mess, and I know it. I don’t want to delve into it too much as this is a public forum. I have withdrawn most caffeine from my diet (except for tea) and alcohol etc. Reading books on the matter sugar is an issue. I am slim and people say I need to eat more and I can. I am a big fan of carbohydrates. I use to eat rice sandwiches, I love toast with marmite (NZ food – ed), I love pastries. I noticed in watching my friend on his low carb diet eat similar amounts to me and not get hungry. I had a meal this morning consisting of bacon, an egg and some lettuce. Unlike Dan, I had two pieces of toast. I noticed Dan (who has had troubles with hunger his whole life) was not hungry afterwards. I drove into town 20 minutes after eating the above and had a craving for pastry and thus stopped and ate a donut and chocolate croissant (or pan au chocolat for all you Francophiles!). If one could have been a fly on the wall in the car, you would have seen me eating like someone who hadn’t eaten in months. I slept an hour later for 90 minutes and felt groggy - if this was a work day I may have had to have some caffeine and now that you know my history, that is not a good thing.
So after watching Gary Taubes, I had my first meal that was low carbohydrate. I can not think of the last time I had a low carbohydrate meal, in my family we always had carbohydrates with every meal. My meal consisted of:
1. Bacon – 3 rashers fried in butter (grass fed – ed)
2. Egg – fried * 2 (also fried in butter)
3. Spinach
4. Cheese
5. Avocado
6. Red onion.
I know it sounds like a lot, and it was. After having had several mouthfuls I felt sick and wanted to stop, but I wanted to see the full effect.
20 minutes after eating I have noticed:
1. A strange, what I call euphoric, sensation running through my central nervous system. It is a calming and soothing almost warm glow. I have not experienced this before. Please be aware I eat a LOT of bread and am usually hungry after eating it and want more and somewhat feel ‘jacked up’. So I don’t feel jacked up right now. This strange sensation Dan explains to me is what people call a sense of calm. So – this is a new sensation. I can also concentrate and do not feel manic. But that was my first meal, so there could be some expectation bias, so I am still an open book.
2. I feel full. I even feel a little bit sick from all the food.
So people, I am going to try this low carb option and will keep you posted. I am going to miss my good friend bread. I will look forward to updating you on how my weight fluctuates and also about my mental state. If any of you have any experience with stuff like this, I would love to hear from you and guys, do the cravings for carbohydrates eventually leave? How do you deal with having things like bacon and eggs for breakfast in the morning?
I am really looking forward to seeing how this pans out, if I keep on feeling this sensation that Dan refers to as ‘calm’, it may just be worth it!
Thanks
M
ps – the picture of the deer by Frieda Kahlo I think describes the anxiety (to me anyway). Vulnerable, attacked and exposed to the world with no protection or self defense mechanisms. A complete state of fear.
So a pretty positive outcome. I had to get him to write this when I could see the positive effect it was having on him. I have told him that the savoury breakfasts get easier after a few days when your body is used to chewing the fat, as will the cravings for carbs. But the more input the better! I will get him to write another post in the near future to let you know how it all went.
281
As of today 281 pounds is my new weight. This week I lost 4 pounds, and since I have started I lost 17 pounds (approx 5-6 pounds a week). This week was a real challenge for me because I didn’t start losing weight until Friday. After the large initial losses in the first two weeks, having my weight stall for five days was hard – although I am under no illusions that this level of weight loss can continue. Although I felt that I just needed to persist, and it would come off eventually, that was a large psychological hurdle to jump over.
It was a bit of a double whammy because after reading Stephan Guyenet’s criticisms of the insulin theory of weight loss my confidence in the diet also took another hit. Questions arose such as ‘do lowering insulin levels matter’, and ‘do I need to be low carb at all’? When you combine that with the lack of weight loss it took some mental effort to just keep on track. In the end I came to the conclusion that for whatever reasons low carb diets do work, and maybe I just have to accept that the answers are still coming.
Im glad I persisted and the weight finally dropped so I was wise to just be patient. My hunger levels are under control, and Im starting to trust that I don’t need to pig out, and I will still be satisfied after a meal. I feel I am starting to undo a lot of the psychological damage that previous dieting has done to me in the past, and that reason alone makes this endeavour worthwhile.
Civilized Forager
I decided to change the name of my blog from insulince.wordpress.com to civilizedforager.com. The idea for this change came when I, unfortunately, read the year long blog war between Gary Taubes and Stephan Guyenet. If you have read my earlier posts you will know that I started this low carb diet after reading Gary Taubes books, which appealed to me immensely as each claim was backed up with cited scientific research, and seemed to be theoretically solid. Apparently, Stephan didn’t seem to think so, and has a large amount of posts refuting the claims that Gary Taubes has made. The problem is that Stephan also cites his claims with scientific research, and has a thorough understanding of the scientific literature on obesity. But for a) someone who does not have the time to thoroughly read all this research, and b) just wants to find a way to lose weight, I find all this very confusing and frustrating.
I guess the scientist in me always wants to know the mechanisms behind why things work. Thats why I have become so incredibly disheartened and frustrated at this debate. Both sides bring up excellent arguments and research to back their claims. In short Stephan seems to think obesity is controlled by our brain via a reward based system – modern foods mess with our brains neurocircuitry and our brain raises our set point (i.e we get fatter). His answer is to eat unpalatable food (read – boring food). Gary Taubes on the other hand believes that we get fat not because of our brain, rather that it all happens at the level of the cell, specifically the fat cell. His hypothesis is that insulin, which increases after a high carbohydrate meal, causes fat to be locked into fat cells, and the only way to get this fat out is by lowering carbs, and therefore insulin.
As Gary Taubes states a working hypothesis needs to be able to explain the data it claims to be able too, and if it doesn’t then you need to adjust the hypothesis. Because their seem to be valid arguments from each side it seems obvious that neither theory fully explains why people get fat. I do not see that these theories need to be mutually exclusive though. The fat cell must control fat storage to some degree, and respond to it’s environmental stimuli (nutrients, insulin etc). This must be true as our muscle cells differ from our fat cells, and it is at the cellular level that these changes are maintained. As far as I know the brain isn’t telling the muscle cell to stay as a muscle cell. However, the brain is in charge of maintaining our bodies as a homeostatic system, and as such would need to be able exert direct control over all our organs and tissues (including adipose tissue). So to me it would seem both genetics, cells AND the brain play an important role in fat deposition. Trying to claim one is more important than the other is a bit like saying ‘because my mum said so’ – everyone has their biases.
I am NOT a nutritional or obesity scientist, and I don’t have time to read the research. But as a scientist that studies marine animals I love the process of science and trust it implicitly – if done right. As a consequence I tend to find people that understand the science behind the obesity literature, and that have an unbiased approach in it’s interpretation. It is for these reasons, I respect both Gary Taubes and Stephan Guyenet, as well as Loren Cordain, the founder of the paleo diet. But, each one of these guys offers a very different mechanism for obesity. So what I have had to do is step back and ask what do they have in common amongst these theories. In short, each one of them have stated that low carbohydrate diets work. Taubes would claim it’s because of the high levels of insulin, Guyenet would argue it’s because you have cut out highly rewarding foods, and Cordain would argue that its because you are no longer consuming foods we have not evolved to eat. But are these necessarily mutually exclusive arguments?
I have dribbled on enough. My predicament is I now need to go through life trying to pick apart what works for me, and finding common themes shared by respected scientists, so that perhaps one day I can hit the nail on the head when it comes to weight loss. So I thought to myself I can’t really have a blog called insulince if insulin is not the only factor in weight loss. I wanted to come up with a name that explained how I am just trying to eat healthy food that helps me lose weight, but in a modern society and amongst all the confusing and conflicting advise.
According to wikipedia:
Forager – someone who searches for food over a particular area
Civilized – someone coming from a modern or urban society
I think that sums up my dilemma quite nicely. I was going for modern forager but it was taken so I wen’t for civilized forager instead – I actually prefer it now anyway. But for now it seems that low carb works, regardless of the mechanism, so for now that’s what I am committing too.
285
Two weeks ago when I started this diet I weighed 298 pounds….far too close to 300 for my own comfort. It has now been two weeks of eating less than 20g of carbs a day, following the advice of Gary Taubes, and I find myself at 285 pounds!!!!! So thats a 13 pound loss or around 6 kg. I do believe this diet is having some very bizarre side effects, which I will outline here.
1. I am eating as much as I want and losing weight
2. I am eating when I feel physiologically hungry (i.e stomach rumbling)
3. I find myself putting a meal aside and having it the next day because I am full
4. I am skipping meals at night because I don’t feel hungry.
5. I can put off eating for a bit if it is inconvenient, even if I feel hungry
6. My energy levels have risen
7. I have become a bit of a fanboy of Gary Taubes
I don’t know I mean these low carb diets really make people do some weird things!!!!!
The question now is do I stay ketogenic? Given that it’s not hard at the moment, and things are going swimmingly well, Im likely to stay ketogenic until I get my weight under control where I will review it again. But I am wondering what other low carbers may think about doing this? I need to start looking into whether this is healthy long-term, I suspect it is, but if anyone has any studies that they can link please feel free.
Energy Levels
The old calories in/calories out model states that if you expend more energy (i.e exercise) this will increase your energy out and help to lose weight (obviously if your energy out is lower than energy in). Gary Taubes argues that this is flawed because it is based on the assumption that our bodies will not increase our appetite or decrease our metabolism to compensate, and numerous studies show that our bodies do this. Therefore, these two factors are not independent of each other, and by that I mean you can’t increase your energy out component without directly influencing your energy in (more hunger, metabolic rate reduces).
Gary Taubes argues that rather than exercising to lose weight, thin people tend to exercise because they have access to more energy. That is their bodies are not hoarding all the fat into fat cells and therefore hijacking energy from the food we eat. Now that I am on low carb (< 20g a day) theoretically my body is now, finally, accessing my fatty reserves, and trust me that would be similar to when they first struck oil in Texas – it’s a bonanza of untapped energy.
Regardless, I have found that my energy levels may have increased as a result. I say may because I don’t notice that I have more energy, what I have noticed is that tasks that involved a lot of mental persuasion to do are now been done with little thought. For example, washing the car, cleaning the house, walking to work etc. All of these I would have tried to avoid before because it seemed like too much work (yes I know how sad that sounds), but now I am able to do them without any mental blockages. Additionally, I am able to do more of them for longer before I become tired.
Now this could easily be attributed to the placebo effect – my diet is working and so I feel more uplifted and so more energetic. I would not be confident enough to argue this isn’t the case. So I blog about this with that caveat in mind. The good news is I am dropping weight like no bodies business. Just last night I dropped another 0.9 pounds giving me a grand total of 11.2 pounds lost since last Saturday. I am still very dumbfounded at how easy this is.
