Right as we speak I'm watching this documentary on TV - if you haven't seen it, you should, it's wonderful and inspiring.

I've been following a low-carb/Paleo diet since 1 June. I'm 15 lbs down, and I'd like to lose another 25. I feel great, I have lots of energy and my psoriasis seems to be less aggressive.

But I know what you mean. I didn't eat anything today until 2.30, and then it was a handful of nuts and I thought it was too much. I try to eat only one meal containing protein each day (today it was a stir-fry with two boneless, skinless chicken thighs and a ton of veggies) and the rest of the time I graze on fruit and vegetables. I probably eat to much fruit but I love summer fruit.

Fat Sick and Nearly Dead is on my to-watch list. Sounds like a great documentary.

I'm pretty engaged with the Nutritarian diet, which has the advantage of not getting me in the cult mindset or ever making me worried about eating too much. It is three squares a day, and I have found the weight loss on it is effortless and lasting. Even more significant to me is that it caused a huge drop in my cholesterol levels. Sadly, since no restaurant cooks this way, I have given up on being able to follow it when I'm traveling -- then I just aim to keep sugar/salt intake as low as feasible and eat as much whole food as possible.

Hi bearwife. Looks like Dr Fuhrman and my eating plan can agree on one thing at least; that vegetables should be at the base of your pyramid. I think the place Paleo and the Nutritarian diet would have big differences of opinion is in how much fruit to eat (Paleo and low carb communities tend to be wary about fructose)

Dr Fuhrman appears in Fat Sick and Nearly Dead and what he says about the food pyramid makes a lot of sense.

What I can't understand is why everyone doesn't have an eating disorder.

You know, I don't actually eat that much fruit, except in occasional breakfast smoothies. I end up eating lots and lots of cooked and raw vegetables plus. There aren't any formal limits on fruit in the nutritarian diet, but it isn't the mainstay either. What is pretty much completely absent is dairy, added sugar, added fat, salt, and refined grain.

Also, Obscure Reference, I think these days most people do have an eating disorder. Standard diets everywhere are loaded with salt, sugar, and processed food. Besides making us fat, this "normal" is making us sick. And, as Dr. Fuhrman points out, it feeds an artificially created addiction to more, more, more of the same crap.

My favorite thing about becoming a nutritarian -- and along the way just bagging meat, except for occasional fish/seafood -- is not obsessing over what I am and am not eating, and also really not feeling crazy cravings any more.

For those of you that have kicked the crazy cravings - how did you do it?

Because we tried low carb for a while, with cheat days, and the cheat days made me absolutely crazy. and I crave the sugar/bread/etc way more now than I used to, I feel like.

in my case I simply don't do cheat days. It's really tough at first because I was a serious carb-aholic throughout my youth / young adulthood. But after a couple of months of building good habits, I find I simply don't crave at all.

everyone's different. Some people can do the 80/20 thing that Mark Sisson (Primal Blueprint) advocates. Some people are more attuned to emotional / psychological food triggers than that. Because I'm a lot more trigger-y when it comes to comfort food, I just have to abstain.

I would argue that our entire modern diet is what's disordered, actually. We evolved to survive in a climate of semistarvation. In the past century, modern technology has eliminated this, and arguably the human genome simply hasn't had time to adapt.

There's a very real case to be made that modern humans simply eat too damned much and move too damned little. That's not me being judgmental, there's hard evidence out there to back it up.

For me, I try to eat as little processed anything as possible, and limit my simple carbs (sugary fruits, starchy stuff like potatoes) to one meal a day, and then only *IF* I'm doing a harder ride or race where I need that fuel.

If that means no birthday cake at work, then so be it. I used to feel all deprived about that, but you know I've since figured out that isn't my body saying FEED ME ALL THE BUTTERCREAM NAOW, it's actually the sociological pressure from my colleagues. And I did that to myself. They can't actually hold me down and feed it to me, I have to make the choice to go get a slice.

anyhow, that's all a very poorly articulated way of saying: I've had true binge-purge and borderline-anorexia Eating Disorders before, both as a teen and young adult. I know what that kind of food anxiety feels like. Eating a simple, "primal" diet of mostly veg, fish and lean red meat is the furthest thing from that I can possibly think of. The only anxiety it ever causes hinges on whether the mister and I have done a decent job of meal planning for that week. Because it does take arguably more work to plan, assemble and store primal meals from scratch than it does grabbing some species of anutritional Human Chow out of a box and heating it up in the microwave. But if you do it right, all that labor is front-loaded, and then you just grab your tupperware out of the fridge or freezer and bob's yer uncle.

Here, if you want a good argument for Primal methodology, aka land stewardship the way my farming mentors taught me it should properly be done, check out this Atlantic article on curbing / controlling invasive species via using them as food sources.

I did a very restrictive diet for a week - the General Motors Diet - to detox from carbs and once I got over that initial week, it's been a breeze with no carb cravings. Like lfr, I have to abstain, so I have to turn down the Krispy Kremes, birthday cake and all the other office treats. This being summer, people are bringing in punnets of strawberries for a change, which is great.

Starchy/sugary carbs trigger binge eating for me, and that never-full feeling. Today I ate a can of grapefruit for breakfast (in the office), a big bowl of salad (no dressing) for lunch, and I had a handful of nuts and some chicken before I went out this evening. I just got home and I'm having a pear and an apple. I really don't feel hungry at all, because I'm eating food that's giving me 'proper' nutrition.

And, also as lfr said, shopping and cooking for a Paleo diet is a little bit time-consuming, but this week I cooked 5lbs of boneless, skinless chicken thighs on the barbecue, and I do a big shop once a week for most of my fruit and veggies, and buy things that go off quickly (spinach and berries) as and when needed.

lfr has got it, I think, that the whole modern lifestyle is unhealthy. I also agree that since I switched to being a nutritarian, for details on which see the link in my first comment above, the only food anxiety I ever feel is making sure I get set for the next week, in terms of food shopping and cooking, on weekends. And it's more -- do the chore -- than any higher level of anxiety. I actually like buying the food and making the dishes and all that, anyway, so it's a fun chore from my point of view. Re fresh food, I use quite a lot, but I also take advantage of the wide availability of frozen veggies and fruit, and canned (salt free) items like beans.

It is very nice not to feel junk food cravings any more. I just came from a lunch meeting where everyone was eating cheese and meat sandwiches, accompanied by potato chips and chocolate chip cookies. I had a bowl of bean-based soup, and I really enjoyed my lunch. I truly did not want any of the chips, cookies, etc.

For those of you that have kicked the crazy cravings - how did you do it?


it can definitely be tough. I just know that when I start cheating a little bit I careen out of control and get back to normal metabolism with blood sugar rises and crashes so I feel hungry every few hours. It takes a good 3-4 days to get into a low carb metabolism for me so I'm trying to keep it that way once I'm in that zone.

Like Senyar said, staying on low carb has an amazing way of making your appetite disappear

I guess I should explain more. The reason I got convinced of low carb is understanding the relationship between blood sugar, insulin resistance, and carbs. My understanding is that if I eat e.g. a brownie, it will make my blood sugar increase. And as someone who's overweight (and probably insulin resistant), a normal amount of insulin won't get rid of it for me. My body will produce a LOT of insulin until suddenly all the sugar gets pushed out of the blood stream. Then what happens? There's no sugar in the blood, which triggers hunger.

This theoretical idea that the low-carb advocates are into publicizing has borne itself out in spades in practice. When I'm in low carb I don't have energy phases at all. I wake up, work and come home at night in pretty much the same stable energy state! There's no cycling of sugar/insulin like that which would make me feel energy highs and lows

Trying to stay out of this one, but want to point out that the "General Motors Diet" has nothing to do with General Motors:

http://not-that-sane.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/general-motors-diet-is-hoax.html

I know that, TheoEsc, but it's 'become' known by that name now. So now it's easier to call it that than to call it "A Low Carb Diet Developed In India". The comments on that blog about "It's a hoax! Don't try it!" actually ignore the fact that it's a very effective low-carb diet, quite similar to Scarsdale. Just because someone tried to falsely accredit the diet to a large corporation doesn't mean it's not an effective diet.