Interesting side topic. While I’ve never had weight problems to start with, over the last 2-3 years I’ve gradually adapted some of my diet in a similar way and found the effect on my immune system to be massive.

Likewise, it’s not what you eat, it’s how you eat it. A lot of mainstream sources like seem to vilify certain types of food such as high fat food etc. Personally I believe a lot of down to preparation. If you look at most processed foods, it is done in a way that bulks up the physical mass of the food sacrificing nutritional quality. Chocolate is a excellent example of this, as it is normally processed in a way that renders it into nothing more than concentrated sugar and fat. However raw unprocessed chocolate / cacao is considered a super food. It is all down to preparation, and as some people suggest, the ‘keep it simple stupid’ mantra goes a long way here.

Given that, I personally believe that understanding different qualities in foods goes a long way. A good example is with cooking oil; when you’re in the supermarket just about every oil claims to be the “best”. The reality is that different types of oils should be used in different contexts. (i.e. Extra virgin olive oil tends be best used for dressing, due to strong flavor & low spoke point, rice bran oil is best for frying, sesame oil for stir fries etc).

I thought this YouTube was very intersting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public [7/2009] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 16717]

When speaking about calories, remember that calorie content was determined by actually burning food in furnaces. In the 19th century. See http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/136/12/2957

It’s amazing that the whole food industry is built on the belief that the human cell burns food the same way fire does. If you listen to your body you know that “a calorie is a calorie” is not quite true.

It is possible to add authentic exercise to authentic nutrition. Fitness approaches exercise the way “food science” approaches nutrition — by asserting that the human body is a machine. This model works, to an extend. What I observed in the “natural athletes” around me and later discovered for myself is that physical activity that brings joy results in exercise with a very different quality. For me, that’s dancing and fighting (or, acrobatics and martial arts), both providing excellent body exercise and a pathway to mastery.

The direction and quality of attention is crucial in both nutrition and exercise. Our culture seems to be oblivious to both, so we eat and exercise without paying attention.

For more on the concept of conscious exercise inquire in Feldenkreis and see radicallytransformativefitness.com

It adds one tweak to what you’re doing: the body decides how much insulin to produce at the next meal by the amount of carb in previous meals. By eating two low carb meals in a row, then sneaking your carbs into a one-hour window, the insulin stays low, and the carbs don’t go into storage.

In regard to “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie,” I think that reader may be oversimplifying the argument. (I don’t think) anyone is saying that all calories are equal in every sense of the word, what they are saying is that with regard specifically to weight loss, calorie control and exercise output are the biggest factors affecting how much you lose. That doesn’t mean that eating 1500 calories of Crisco is equally as good for you as eating 1500 calories of a well balanced diet, but both diets would trigger a similar amount of weight loss.

What I’ve been doing to keep my eating habits under control (losing a total of 25 lbs so far) is using a website to track my eating, creating a food/workout/weight log. I was using fitday.com, now I’m using dailyburn.com b/c it’s way friggin cooler. Dailyburn is really nice, because in addition to being a very nice food log, it also lets you compete against other people (I’m in a competition to lose 20% of my weight by the end of the year!). It’s really helped me think about what I eat, and even has an iGoogle app so that every time I go to my browser home page I can see how many days over the past week I’ve met my workout & eating goals. Once a week I get updates on my “Lose 20%” competition.

I think that keeping a food log is absolutely critical for me, personally, and think it might help someone else out there trying to lose weight. It’s way easy to do, taking maybe 5 minutes out of my day, keeps me honest, and provides a sense of competition with a greater community.

Most of the book reiterates the same facts that the authors of Life Without Bread discovered. What I found most interesting was a chapter in the book where the author rejects a few popular diets such as the Atkins Diet and the blood type diet through scientific fact.

Anyways, my two cents. And way to go with choosing to eat healthy!

Lately I’ve been reading about the so-called Paleo Diet, which seems promising. Have you heard of it?

Importantly, eating that many carbs does *not* force the body into ketosis, which is another reason for the recommendation (the jury being out on it).

I think our ability to synthesise carbs is more an indication that if the body does not have access to glucose it dies instantly. I.e. the availability of glucose is critical. This is a feature of all animal life btw, not just humans.

The jury is still out about whether carb synthesis due to low-carb intake should be considered a healthy conversion as it dismantles proteins to achieve this (including essential ones) and takes fat into an alternative metabolic pathway known as ketosis. I can’t say who’s wrong / right, just be aware of it.

@David too right…