Fatness Weekly Weigh in Thread

[pdxmike]

aqualicious--read the threads related to the primal diet.  SUP Ninja, SEA, Strand Leper, PonoBill and a bunch of others have lots of good posts.  Also read marksdailyapple.com about the primal diet.  Your recent diet sounds close to it, so maybe you already have read some.  But I wouldn't cut out the nuts or fatty fish--those fats are good for you and will keep you from feeling hungry.  The primal diet is the opposite of counting calories or starving yourself.  When SUP Ninja is doing any kind of fasting, he would be the first to tell you it's for fine-tuning in the context of a basic healthy diet that doesn't rely on restricting calories.  SEA has some good posts (plus good recipes) that are pretty convincing that eating right is more effective for losing weight than exercising. 

It's not that the primal diet is necessarily perfect, it's just that it seems to work for a lot of people, and it is easy to incorporate its main ideas into a daily diet, even if you don't follow it 100%.

In all of this, I mean "diet" in the sense of a long-term way of eating, not a short-term thing you do to lose weight.

[surferkarl]

I agree, the diet sounds good now Aqua, keep eating the nuts and fish.  My mantra is eat less & move more.  If you're not down to the weight you want then eat less & move more. I'm down from a high of 191 to 160 and stable for the last couple of years.  I eat continuously but mostly heathy foods and in small portions.  I never go back for seconds.  Portion size is important. Exercise everyday if possible.  A cheat meal once a week works wonders....again small portion though! 

[Strand Leper]

Aqua,

That last bit is the tough part.... those last few lbs... I was trying to get down to 175... but am holding in the low 180's (I am 6'1" last week 182)... If I ride more bike to try to maybe get into masters cycling races... I am sure that I will go down below 175... but living life like a normal human being, eating right, and exercising properly (2 plus SUP sessions, 2 cycling sessions and walking with the wife and dog), I am pretty comfortable bouncing between 180 and 182... I am certain that I could get down to 175, but can I maintain it... is it worth it... these are the questions that I ask myself...

Good luck in your quest...

Tim

[aqualicious]

Thanks for the feedback guys, all good advice. I read the entire Primal thread and I get that squirrels and alcohol are good, so count me in!

Seriously tho, I reacquainted myself with Primal and rediscovered ketosis. I had tried it ala Atkins, lost significant weight but backed away after I started feel less well. I think that I must have needed more fruits and veggies.

Back in the present, I exercise everyday, so all I need to do is 1)eliminate the few non primal things left in my diet, and 2)eat only enough to not be hungry (portion control) and monitor.  #1 is easy from experience, and #2 is easy if I snack and don't get overly hungry. So anyhow, I got some KetoStix and am going to surf the magic 50-100gram carb zone for awhile and see where it goes.

I'll post results here. Thanks again!

[stoneaxe]

I'm kicking myself for not getting serious about changing how I eat. Had all good intentions when this thread started but never held on long enough for the change to become habit. Saturdays Paddle to the Point was a real wake up. I had 60-70 lbs on everyone else...

I managed to avoid coming in last in the elite class but only just barely. I only entered elite because I was paddling a 14' board...I certainly don't think of my paddling as elite but it was still frustrating, my time was horrible, and I was still sucking wind at the finish. I'll never be real fast with my need for constant balance checks but if I can shed 50 lbs of ugly fat in some other manner than decapitation it will help.

Got to give this a better go.

[aqualicious]

I'm tracking 3 pounds less (on average), after a couple weeks in intermittent ketosis. I've had to stop any hydration formulas with any sugar, all beans and milk for coffee, cut down nuts and really watch the approved fruits to stay on it.

Hydrating with coconut water between 2 2hour hikes knocked me out (of ketosis) for 4 days! So I'm switching to Elete electrolytes (0 sugar/carbs) and will give it a try today while I go whale hunting (for pix ok!) on my Glide.

[SEA]

HERE IS A GOOD READ ON EXERCISING EVERY DAY OR TOO MUCH

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/case-against-cardio/

A Case Against Cardio (from a former mileage king)
We all know that we need to exercise to be healthy.

Unfortunately, the popular wisdom of the past 40 years – that we would all be better off doing 45 minutes to an hour a day of intense aerobic activity – has created a generation of overtrained, underfit, immune-compromised exerholics. Hate to say it, but we weren’t meant to aerobicize at the chronic and sustained high intensities that so many people choose to do these days. The results are almost always unimpressive. Ever wonder why years of “Spin” classes, endless treadmill sessions and interminable hours on the “elliptical” have done nothing much to shed those extra pounds and really tone the butt?

Don’t worry. There’s a reason why the current methods fail, and when you understand why, you’ll see that there’s an easier, more effective – and fun – way to burn fat, build or preserve lean muscle and maintain optimal health. The information is all there in the primal DNA blueprint, but in order to get the most from your exercise experience, first you need to understand the way we evolved and then build your exercise program around that blueprint.



Like most people, I used to think that rigorous aerobic activity was one of the main keys to staying healthy – and that the more mileage you could accumulate (at the highest intensity), the better. During my 20+ years as a competitive endurance athlete, I logged tens of thousands of training miles running and on the bike with the assumption that, in addition to becoming fit enough to race successfully at a national class level, I was also doing my cardiovascular system and the rest of my body a big healthy favor.

Being the type A that I am, I read Ken Cooper’s seminal 1968 book Aerobics and celebrated the idea that you got to award yourself “points” for time spent at a high heart rate. The more points, the healthier your cardiovascular system would become. Based on that notion, I should have been one of the healthiest people on the planet.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t – and that same mindset has kept millions of other health-conscious, nirvana-seeking exercisers stuck in a similar rut for almost 40 years. It’s time to get your head out of the sand and take advantage of your true DNA destiny, folks!

The first signal I had that something was wrong was when I developed debilitating osteoarthritis in my ankles…at age 28. This was soon coupled with chronic hip tendonitis and nagging recurrent upper respiratory tract infections. In retrospect, it is clear now that my carbohydrate-fueled high-intensity aerobic lifestyle was promoting a dangerous level of continuous systemic inflammation, was severely suppressing other parts of my immune system and the increased oxidative damage was generally tearing apart my precious muscle and joint tissue.

The stress of high intensity training was also leaving me soaking in my own internal cortisol (stress hormone) bath. It wasn’t so clear to me at the time exactly what was happening – in fact it was quite confusing, since I was doing so much of this so-called “healthy” aerobic exercise – but I had no choice but to give up racing, unable to train at anywhere near the intensity required to stay at an elite level.

To make ends meet…


…I became a “personal trainer” and I refocused my attention on training average “non-athletic” people to achieve reasonable levels of general fitness and health. Of course, we lifted weights as part of the overall plan (and I will go into greater detail on that important aspect of fitness in a later post), but for the aerobic component of their training, I started doing long walks or hikes or easy bike rides with them. My many clients got the benefit of me actually working out right along side them and I got the benefit of 3 to 5 hours a day of very low intensity aerobic work (well, very low for me anyway). It was refreshing and really didn’t take much effort on my part, but I knew I had to be deriving at least some small benefit from those hours.

Since I didn’t have much time left in the week for my own workouts, once or twice a week I would do a very short but very intense workout for my own benefit, usually sprints at the track or “hill repeats” of 2-3 minutes each on the bike. Lo and behold, within a year, my injuries were healing, I was rarely sick and I was even back to occasionally racing – faster than ever. Something “primal” was happening and it made total sense in the context of the DNA blueprint. I was training like my hunter-gatherer ancestors, building my aerobic capacity slowly and steadily without overstressing my adrenals or my immune system, training my body to derive more energy from fats (and not glucose), requiring far fewer carbohydrate calories from my diet, and building muscle with occasional quick bursts of speed and intensity. I was suddenly both fit AND healthy. My Primal Health system was kicking in and it all made perfect sense.

Humans, like all mammals, evolved two primary energy systems that powered the skeletal muscles of our hunter-gatherer ancestors 40,000 years ago and that would keep us all well-powered the same way today, if we weren’t so bent on circumventing them with our ill-fated (literally) lifestyle choices.



The first energy system relied heavily on the slow burning of fats, keeping us fueled while we were at rest or sleeping, yet also allowing for continuous or intermittent low levels of aerobic activity (think of our ancestors walking across the savannah for hours foraging for roots, shoots, berries, grubs, insects and the occasional small animal). It makes sense. Fats are very efficient fuels that are stored easily in the fat cells and burn easily and cleanly when lots of oxygen is present (as when we are breathing normally). Even if there’s no food in the immediate area, a well-trained fat-burning hunter-gatherer could continue walking and foraging for days without compromising his or her health or efficiency.

The second major energy system we developed through evolution was an ATP-fueled system that allowed for intense loads of work to be done in very brief bursts (think of our hunter-gatherer ancestors sprinting to the safety of a tree to avoid being eaten by a lion). ATP is always sitting right there within the muscle cells, available in a split second, and it is the highest octane fuel we have. In fact, it’s ATP and adrenaline that allow the little old lady to lift the front end of the Ford Fairlane off her husband when the jack fails. Unfortunately, the muscles can only store about 20 seconds worth of this precious fuel to complete life-or-death tasks. If our ancestors survived that quick sprint to safety, their ATP reserves were filled again within minutes using the other energy systems.

Furthermore, that brief burst of intense energy sparked a small “growth spurt” in the muscle, making it even stronger for the next encounter with the next lion – a true survival adaptation.

(Note: While our energy systems are actually quite complex, varied and interrelated, I have simplified things here to make it easier to “digest”.)

Bottom line: Fats and ATP were the two primary energy sources for locomotion: we either moved slowly and steadily or “fight or flight” fast, and we became stronger and healthier the more we used only those energy systems.

But here’s the real take-home message for us: We did not evolve to rely heavily on a carbodydrate-fueled energy system, and yet, carbohydrate metabolism seems to rule our lives today. Yes, carbohydrate (in the form of glucose) can play a major role in the production of energy in skeletal muscle, but it turns out that the heart and skeletal muscle prefer fatty acids (fat) as fuel over glucose.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t regularly ramp their heart rates up for over an hour a day like so many of us do now. Even when the concept of organized hunting came along, it would appear that our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied more on superior tracking ability (using our highly evolved and exceptionally large brains) and walking (using our superior fat-burning systems), rather than on actually “chasing down” their prey. In fact, squandering valuable energy reserves (and increasing carbohydrate [glucose] metabolism by a factor of ten) by running hard for long periods of time was so counterproductive it would have likely hastened your demise (imagine chasing some game animal for a few hours and – oops – not succeeding in killing it. You’ve spent an incredible amount of energy, yet now you have no food to replace that energy. You have suddenly become some other animals prey because you are physically exhausted).

So, what does all that mean for us in the 21st century seeking to maximize our health and fitness?

Well, we know that this current popular high intensity aerobic pursuit is a dead-end. It requires huge amounts carbohydrate (sugar) to sustain, it promotes hyperinsulinemia (overproduction of insulin), increases oxidative damage (the production of free radicals) by a factor of 10 or 20 times normal, and generates high levels of the stress hormone cortisol in many people, leaving them susceptible to infection, injury, loss of bone density and depletion of lean muscle tissue – while encouraging their bodies to deposit fat. Far from that healthy pursuit we all assumed it was! What, then, is the answer?

Knowing what we know about our hunter-gatherer ancestors and the DNA blueprint, we would ideally devise an aerobics plan that would have us walking or hiking several hours a day to maximize our true fat-burning systems and then doing intermittent “life or death” sprints every few days to generate those growth spurts that create stronger, leaner muscle.

However, since allocating a few hours a day to this pursuit is impractical for most people, we can still create a plan that has a fair amount of low level aerobic movement, such as walking briskly, hiking, cycling at a moderate pace, etc a few times a week and keep it at under an hour. Then, we can add a few intense “interval” sessions, where we literally sprint (or cycle or do anything intensely) for 20, 30 or 40 seconds at a time all out, and do this once or twice a week.

If you are willing to try this new approach, but haven’t sprinted for a while, you may want to ease into it. Start with maybe three or four the first time, resting two minutes in between and, after a few weeks of doing this, work your way up to a workout that includes six or eight all-out sprints after a brief warm-up. An easy few minutes of stretching afterwards and you’ve done more in less time than you could ever accomplish in a typical “80-85% Max Heart Rate” cardio” workout. That’s exactly type of the plan I do myself and that I give all of my trainees now.

Let’s recap:

The benefits of low level aerobic work (walking, hiking, cycling, swimming):
- increases capillary network (blood vessels that supply the muscle cells with fuel and oxygen)
- increases muscle mitochondria
- increases production of fat-burning and fat-transporting enzymes
- more fun, because you can talk with a partner while doing it

The benefits of interval training (sprinting in short intense bursts)
- increases muscle fiber strength
- increases aerobic capacity (work ability)
- increases muscle mitochondria (the main energy production center in muscle)
- increases insulin sensitivity
- increases natural growth hormone production

The costs of chronic (repetitious) mid- and high-level aerobic work
- requires large amounts of dietary carbohydrates (SUGAR)
- decreases efficient fat metabolism
- increases stress hormone cortisol
- increases systemic inflammation
- increases oxidative damage (free radical production)
- boring!

[SEA]

Something I forgot to mention is that you want to keep your low level aerobic workout to between 55% and 70% of your max heart rate. It seems easy to do but I would suggest you get a heart rate monitor and figure out your target zone. I try to stay at about 60% of max which is about 130 HB per min. It is easy to get moving and go over your target zone. I do this 2 to 3 times a week. 

Sprinting once a week is HUGE and you will blast that plateau away in weeks.  Once you get up to 8 , 30 second all out sprints with a couple minute rest between , you will see a huge difference in your body composition. Just look at sprinters in the olympics, they look like heavy weight boxers not runners, then look at Marathon runners they look like they have been in a concentration camp for years. 

[surferkarl]

Good read.  I always crack up when I see the same people on the treadmill and elipticals day after day, year after year going full on for an hour or more each workout.  The reason I crack up is they never lose any weight (or none that I can see).  My workouts are short, fairly intense, no resting, light free weights, 15 rep sets....very circuit like and I hit every body part, including abs.  Finished off with 10 minutes of cardio and I'm done.  I try to do this everyday unless I surf, SUP, bike, etc.  Then forget it.  Outdoor fun beats indoor training hands down.  Seriously though, I think the reason the people I see never lose weight is that they eat too much.  I suspect they don't believe they eat too much.  Portion size people!!

[lakesurfer]

portion size has been the biggest thing for me.  I can go primal, but still eat Huge portions of food, which is counter-productive.  I do go all out on veggies, which as far as I know is always allowed.  My problem is with the steaks and chicken, or fish, ect.  I am eating it and say, " this is great, I'll have more".

[aqualicious]

Something I forgot to mention is that you want to keep your low level aerobic workout to between 55% and 70% of your max heart rate.

I'm finding that I can't sustain much more than low/moderate aerobic activity while adapting to a ketogenic diet. I'm also seeing that short term loss of endurance. I ended up cutting my whale paddle from an easy 15 to a bonking 8 miles. Same for hiking. A 2-3 week adaptation period (while maintaining consistent ketosis) is well documented tho, so I'l give it a month.

The marked difference in endurance (even if it's short term) made me curious, so I found this meaty (ha ha) article, Ketogenic diets and physical performance. It's a fun and free read with Arctic explorers, Inuit culture and modern keto studies:
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/2

[Pureadrenalin]

Portion size? You also can gain weight from not understanding carb,fat and protein values. Any amount of over eating carbs or fat and even the wrong food combinations you could gain weight. My wife was the prime example yeaterday. So if you think you know overeating is the problem than the next question should be what are you over eating carbs or fat? You dont need to be specific with counting calories but you do need to fully understand food values. LASTLY you cannot consume two energies carbs and fat it DOESNT WORK.

I Have a question for the PRIMAL community. What happends when your intensity level drops or tapers off with exercise and still consume a high fat diet? Or what happends when you finally add COMPLEX carbs back in your PRIMAL living and continue your high fat consumption? I am looking for personal experiences that real people has experienced first hand not LINKS or QUOTES from MARK SCISSON website.

[surferkarl]

Agreed.  Portion size really pays dividends while eating healthy foods.  That being said, I have to go because I just ordered my weekly cheat food....PIZZA!!! 

[SEA]

I am still in the fat loss stage of Primal diet ( not eating much carbs about 75 grams a day) and am always tinkering with Fat intake according to what my energy output is. When I am doing a race or training hard I up my fat consumption. I went a little overboard and had to back off a little on the raw eggs and coconut oil. But within days I was back on track. Overall I have not lost any energy or intensity in fact I feel like I have gained it when I need it. I have learned to rest more and not be tied down to specific training days. I am sprinting HARD once a week, doing 3 sets of  HITS two times a week and some body weight exercises a couple times a week.  I have just come off a 3 week rest where I did not do much of anything (no paddling) and yesterday I did a Hawaii Kai Run to Kaimana and had tons of energy and maybe one of my fastest times yet. Afterwards  I felt Great. I am down to a size 32 pants and have a lot of energy. I have only increased my stamina and energy and am amazed at how the body functions when properly fueled.

Once in a while I feel a little less energy level and then I just eat some Purple sweet potatoes (not much) maybe half a small  potato at a time for a day or two and then I'm good to go. If paddling a lot I'll eat a few slices of Sweet Potato every other day. Seems to work and not add any fat to my belly.




I think as Ninja said,  you can not be doing this primal diet and eating carbs. 50 to 100 carbs a day when trying tio lose fat and build muscle. After that it's up to you to play with portions during the maintenance portion (rest of life

[spookini]

Can I throw out a totally unscientific and untested theory on "portion control"....let me know what you folks think.

I think your abs (or lack therof) play a big part.  Ppl eat until they are full.  Or at least until they are no longer hungry.  That is natural instinct.

The abs hold your stomach in.  If you have ribbed abs, there is only so much your stomach can expand before you feel full.  W/ a tight set of abs holding your stomach in check, you are not going to be able to eat eat eat to the point of being bloated.  You are going to feel "full" or satisfied, much quicker and w/ smaller portions.

This is only based on my own personal experience of late.  I started on quest to finally get a real 6-pack about 1month ago.  I find as my midsection has firmed up, I really am eating less.  Its like a restrictor plate on my gut...

Anyways, its easy to say "portion control", but really we'll all eat until we're satisfied.  If you've got NO musculature in your midsection (swallowed a basketball?), of course you're going to have to eat more to feel full than a guy who is a ripped size 30 waist.

Ok, that's my $.02, totally unscientific observation.  Any feedback?