Report: Week 6 of My High-Carb (after Paleo) Diet

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Garrett Smith

On a whole other topic, if you think we've "dominated" this planet, not only are you mistaken, but you may want to pay more attention to where that is leading us...

side note....good read on that is "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn (thanks Steve L.)...good book for some deeper thinking

[Scott Clark]

Will, I can't understand why you have such an axe to grind with Paleo. You say that you want to eat Paleo, but you also say everything is much better on a low fat, grain based diet. It seems to me that you've found your niche and that is that.

Tubers and other starchy vegetables can add up quick in terms of carbs. It's just a matter of replacing bread with potatoes, pasta with carrots, etc. Of course, there's nothing wrong with "eating paleo" and enjoying grains or dairy every so often. Black box it and enjoy life.

[Craig Loizides]

It sounds like you tried a very low carb paleo diet while doing a lot of endurance work and ended up struggling. From this you've concluded that a diet of protein powder, vegetables, bread, and pretzels is best for you. Is it possible that something between these 2 extremes would be optimal?

You seem to believe that a paleo diet is supposed to be very low carb. In The Paleo Diet, Cordain recommends 19-35% protein, 22-40%C, 28-47% fat. In a study of 229 modern hunter gatherer societies, plant foods made up 0-80% of the calories with a mean of about 35%. In earlier times there was proabably an even higher percentage of plant foods. The majority of carbs usually come from tubers rather than fruits. There is no single paleo diet. People have been successful on a very wide range of paleo diets. You can find more information here:
http://www.thepaleodiet.com/index.shtml

You mention the anabolic diet. There's no reason why you can't combine paleo with the anabolic/metabolic diet. I prefer cycling carbs. It feels more natural to me than trying to eat the exact same ratios all the time. You might want to take a look at the metabolic diet trouble shooting guide.
http://www.metabolicdiet.com/images/md_tshoot.pdf
You could also take a look at the Paleo Diet For Athletes. It ends up being about 50% carbs with the bulk pre/post workout.

Regarding creating superior foods, it would require first understanding what nutrients are really needed and in what proportions. Michael Pollan has blamed this nutrition reductionism for a lot of our problems today. People seem to think they just need to get the recommended amount of certain vitamins and they'll be fine. But studies generally show that eating fruits and vegetables is good for you, while taking vitamins doesn't do anything unless you're deficient. We just don't know enough to do better than real foods and I'm not sure there's a reason to try.

As for 90/10 ... it really depends on your goals and how your body responds to certain foods. Not everyone has the same goals as you. For me, paleo serves as a guiding principle in helping maximize happiness, not a hard set of rules.

[Will Moore]

Thank you all for your responses. I knew at some point, Mr. PhD, Garrett Smith, would have to chime in...No Garrett, I'm not confusing Paleo with low-carb. I "chose" a low-carb approach to Paleo because the Paleo diet by its very nature is already relatively high in fat....no diet should be relatively high in fat and carbohyrdate at the same time, I don't care how now natural the food is. I've seen your posts all over these boards and it seems to me that you think you know it all, but you don't. I can't match your educational credentials, in fact, I've never spent a day in a college classroom...but I do have an IQ that puts me squarely in the 98th percentile of the population and I have a job as a Senior .NET Developer for Microsoft Products and Technologies. I was working as a baker in an artisan bread bakery prior to this job. I taught myself programming.

Now, about what you said; You implied that "late night" eating is unhealthy and leads to carb cravings. Well, tell that to everyone here that uses an IF approach to eating. Personally, I DON'T have a problem with it and I DON'T crave carbs. In fact, I have no problem whatsoever with hunger. I can easily go 24 hours where I have put in a full day at work, with 1 - 1.5 hour workout, and not feel hungry at all. Like I said before, I don't crave the carbohydrate foods, I simply perform much better on them. The point I was trying to make is that a Paleo diet, by its very nature, would have been fairly low-carb. The cardio I was (and still am) doing was not excessive, its actually just enough to make up for the fact that I sit on my ass in front of a computer for a living now. There is no reason that I can see that it wouldn't provide enough "gas" to get me through my workouts, especially with the high levels of fats from nuts and seeds. Therefore, I came to the conclusion that I should return to a low-fat high carb diet. And don't jump in with the "sweet potato" bullshit....been there, done that, and they don't come close to providing the fuel that grain based products do. While your at it, take a look at the carbohydrate breakdown of sweet potatos. They are high in sugar. Just as modern cultivated fruits are too high in sugar, so are modern cultivated sweet potatos. I don't eat these foods. What do you get when you dry fruit? You get a super-sweet ball of sugar and its no better for you than candy....just a fruit juice, natural or not, is concentrated sugar, no better for you than Pepsi Cola. Now, toss a few more degrees down in your signature block and hit me with your rebuttal.

[Steven Low]

Sounds like you're not going to agree with anyone here, so you might as well stop now.

[Will Moore]

It's not about agreement or disagreement....a forum is a place for an exchange of ideas or debate. Is that now this this forum works? Or is it "agree with the moderators who regularly post here or get out"....that's what it sounds like to me.

[Garrett Smith]

Will,
Have fun with your diet. Don't worry, I'll be making no more comments on your posts at all.

[Allen Yeh]

It's not. I had deleted a response earlier but didn't post it because I didn't think it'd do any good.

The gist was, agree or not let's keep the tone a bit down. I realize being talked down to is irritating, I know I have to habit of doing it to people here and there, I have tried to really reign that tone back. With that said I think what you said to Garrett was out of line.

Some of your posts are very informatative while some of your posts have a very confrontational tone. Which IMO has a "prove me wrong" type of thing. Some people have tried, saying or suggesting different things and sometimes they may or may not get a terse response from you.

I'm not one of those people that feel the need to push Paleo across on the masses, I do try to avoid processed stuff and eating insane amounts of carbs but I've tried to adopt a more laid back approach especially with my family. I try to make sure they get veggies, fruits and meat. If they happen to have some rice/pasta/bread, ok. I do try to steer them away from soda, fast food and things of that nature. I'd much rather my kids have a sweet potato that has 24 grams of carbs with 7 from sugar than 2 slices of wheat bread which has 24 grams of carbs with 2 from sugar, because I just think it's a better idea. The sweet potato is very high in Vitamin A, and C, along with some trace calcium and iron, while the bread might have some calcium and iron in it.

For a while I was very dialed in only upon the macro's, how much protein, carbs and fat did each thing have? I hadn't even thought about all the the things I'd been neglecting like making sure I was getting different colors of vegetables and not eating the same thing all the time. If you find that your diet of low-fat high carb works for you as many others have said more power to you. It seems you to have a fixed notion of what you think the Paleo Diet should be even though there is evidence to the contrary.

[Chris H Laing]

Originally Posted by Will Moore

I "chose" a low-carb approach to Paleo

Why not try a higher carb paleo...Paleo is about food choices so you can still eat a buttload of carbs, just make better choices about how you get those carbs.

What do you get when you dry fruit? You get a super-sweet ball of sugar and its no better for you than candy....just a fruit juice, natural or not, is concentrated sugar, no better for you than Pepsi Cola

But theres no high fructose corn syrup, processed sugar, or any preservatives in fruit, dryed or not.

And whats up with the attack on Dr. G...not cool. I feel like you posted this just so you could fight with people about paleo...

[Emily Mattes]

We understand, it didn't work for you. What you are doing now works for you, and that's great. So what more do you want? Do you want us all to say "You are absolutely right Will, our diets are all wrong, let's go eat a loaf of challah?" Even when many of us have found that to be harmful to our performance?

Understand that your diet is working for you, and that's great. Many, many people have discovered however that type of diet does not work for them, and that's why they switch to something else. The party line of nutrition in our culture is "low-fat, whole-grain, preferably no meat," and it turns out a lot of hungry, fat people. Paleo is another option for them to try. Key word here is "try," nobody is going to pry your oatmeal from your fingers, y'know?

So cool the defensiveness . . . There are ways to disagree without it. And you can argue your point without throwing in extra aggressive comments, like "People who do 90/10 or 80/20 are weak."