Monday, October 27, 2008

Cholesterol, it's not a competition

Barry Groves has a new book out which might be worth a look. There is an interesting review in the Telegraph here which gives a little back ground to the author of "Eat Fat Get Thin!", one of my early core LC books.

For those of us worrying about a TC just outside of cardiological nirvana, Barry Groves seems to be doing okay at 8.2mmol/l. Of course that's not quite as cool as 8.6mmol/l, but hey, I've a few years to go before I get in to my seventies...

Peter

22 comments:

Chris said...

Eat Fat Get Thin was a big influence for me too - nice and simple.

His new book arrived from Amazon last week. I've not had a chance to read it yet - just flicked through - but it looks good.

Peter said...

Let us know what you think when you get to read. I'm thinking Winter Solstice present (always a few days late)....

Peter

Neil said...

The article was less shrill than many, seemed to put Barry's point s fairly

Stan Bleszynski said...

Re: Winter Solstice

I too have been celebrating it every year in the last few years. Bonfire at midnight, on the snow...

Makes me wonder, have we got more out that high animal fat nutrition than we bargained for... 8-:)

Peter said...

Heeeeee hee. I'm the only person at work who gets his hair cut at (approximately) the solstices and equinoxes. My boss (Welsh) commented that I just wanted to be a Druid. Shaman would do. Hair is too short for a Druid.

Peter

gunther gatherer said...

Does anyone know how Groves keeps his calorie levels? From his web articles, he recommends "reduced calories for fat loss" even when low carbing. So he's still a proponent of "calories in-calories out" to a certain extent.

I realize he's not doing OD, and seems to eat a fair amount more daily protein than fat (even if the Telegraph portrays his diet as "high fat"), so he seems to be somewhere between Atkins and JK.

Btw Peter, are you still eating up to 3500 kcal a day? I did some calculations with that daily amount, and found it impossible to stick to JK's ratios on that many calories. It came to something like 70-80g carbs, 80g protein, 300g fat on average PER DAY, assuming you don't just eat pure lard.

I really think there's something else to Peter's modified OD diet that's allowing all those calories without weight gain. Even on Atkins, one had to lower calories at a certain point because weight loss always stalled. Seems the same with Groves.

Chris said...

Groves ratios according to Eat Fat Get Thin (e version) are :

Get the ratios right :
For the best of health and for weight maintenance research has shown that you should try for the following ratios of the three macronutrients:
Carbs – 10-15 percent of calories
Protein – 15-25 percent of calories
Fat – 60-70 percent of calories


not too far from OD?

Peter said...

Gunther,

Probably not (3500kcal/d) but I'm still not recording and am running at about 64.8kg at the moment. We've had a set of meals out/parties and stuff recently so I really tend to loose track! I just go for max fat and min carbs and let the protein look after itself, going over is fine occasionally.

I do think that within a given nutritional framework ultimately calories in and out will balance, even if calories out involves UCPs and lots of fidgeting. JK does drop his fat number if people need weight loss...

Peter

Peter said...

Chris,

I believe BG and JK are good friends. They have the same outlook...

Peter

Chris said...

BG is a nice guy - I've emailed him a few times and he always answers (eventually).

.^ said...

By a remarkable coincidence I picked up two second-hand books a couple of weeks ago with almost the same titles: Eat Fat Get Thin by Groves and one called Eat Fat Lose Weight by Ann Louise Gittleman.

I've read the former and found it very good. Yet to read the latter.

gunther gatherer said...

Hi Peter,

Though JK has specific levels for weight loss, the fact is that you're eating way over them and even over his maintenance levels.

But I do agree that the switch to Real Food with high fat soluble vitamin content may create a non-shivering thermogenesis response and/or fidgeting in order to balance the "calories out". Your stories about not feeling cold are perhaps relevant here.

Do you think perhaps your modified OD diet creates a borderline hyperthyroid state, or actively intervenes with UCP1, 2 and 3 to optimize them in some way? You say you're never hungry too, and that you forget to eat on occasion. You may not even think about it or realize it when you're hungry, which is not the case with those eating Civilized Foods, as we all know from experience.

Stan Bleszynski said...

Dodgy paper alert!

Please have a look at the full text if you have the access:

http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(08)01558-7/abstract

Journal of the American Dietetic Association, page 1813, Volume 108, Issue 11, Pages 1881-1887 (November 2008)

"Incident Heart Failure Is Associated with Lower Whole-Grain Intake and Greater High-Fat Dairy and Egg Intake in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study"

Jennifer A. Nettleton, et al

emil henry said...

I had an awful experience today.

I started my day with my usual 2/3 cups heavy cream (with some chilli, cocoa and about 5 grams dextrose), as well as 2 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk. This was around 20:00.

After school I played some video games with my brother. At around 17:00. I probably played for two hours straight, or slighly less. The room was at normal temperature.

After the session, I had the expected headache. But when I got into the couch, my muscles were shaking (like during hypothermia) and I felt cold. They continued to shake for a long time. It was like a shock and went completely away when I had 10 grams of dextrose in water. The headache persists. While the shock was in session, I had two sheets, as well as a thin wool sweater, t-shirt, trousers, and two wool socks on me. I was still feeling cold.

I just had a huge inflammation in my right foot (in the muscle string near the tallus), probably from kicking something in sleep. It started was from the weekend before the spent weekend, starting Sunday, eventually ending on Wednesday the same day.

Any possible explanations? Not ridding myself completely of the inflammation? Also, I haven't been drinking a lot of water recently.

findchris said...

stan, was just going to post the same dodgy article:
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(08)01558-7/abstract

Peter said...

Hi Emil,

Not sure what is happening with the muscle inflamation but the shivers sound suggestive of a hypoglycaemia. Not something I've ever come across I'm afraid... What's the muscle like now? Are you getting your 50g of carbs per day?

Peter

Peter said...

Stan, I've been sent the full text (thanks Sue), fwded to you.

Paper is garbage, both groups had identical carb intakes but the HF group had higher trigs, LDLc, fasting glucose and diabetes. Looks like sucrose or fructose poisoning to me. Nettleton forgot to analyse this aspect. Careless!

Peter

Sue said...

Nettleton was kind enough to forward the paper to me and we corresonded back and forth a couple of times with questions I had. But she suddenly became very quiet when I asked her about the consumption of sucrose and HFCS. She told me that the nutrient database generated from the FFQ did include sucrose but not HFCS. She suddenly became silent when I questioned her how much sucrose each group consumed.

Sue said...

oops I repeated myself at the end!!

Peter said...

Sue,

With information like that you can repeat yourself as many times as you like. Lovely!

Not only interesting from the point of view that she knows exactly what causes heart failure, but she is working from a database which does not include the primary caloric source of a significant proportion of USA citizens (particularly the ones who develop heart failure).

Oh, who would want to be a nutritionist and keep having to side step evidence like that? Did you ask her how she gets to sleep at nights? (oops, sorry, couldn't resist)

Peter

Stan Bleszynski said...

Re: Paper is garbage, both groups had identical carb intakes but the HF group had higher trigs, LDLc, fasting glucose and diabetes. Looks like sucrose or fructose poisoning to me. Nettleton forgot to analyse this aspect. Careless!
Peter


Peter and Sue,

Thanks for the full text. Indeed the results that Nettleton quoted in the abstract do not include diabetes. In the main text she did quote the results with diabetes and hypertention accounted for, but those results become statistically non-significant or are almost marginal.

There is another problem: if you look at the error estimate of the initial input variable such as food intake etc, these error estimates are absurdly low! For example the total caloric intake is claimed to be given with +/-0.3% and +/-1% accuracy, which in my opinion is totally impossible! It is supposed to be based on the self-reported (patient-filled) food questionaires! I suspect had they used a more realistic input error estimates none of their results would have been significant with or without diabetes.

Stan (Heretic)

Anna said...

http://darwinstable.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/toxic-fat/

Anyone see this interview video?