While "cut carbs and sugar, compensate with fat, protein and indigestible cellulose" covers a broad and useful category of dietary research these days -- as does much of MDA's exercise and sleep recommendations -- I find Mark's writing style (and that of most paleo writers) extremely offputting. Sexist, racist, smug, dripping with homebrew evo-psych just so stories, selective reading of the anthropology, history, biochemistry and genetics ... and then claiming "it's science so we're right" at anyone who disagrees or claims that, as is often the case, the science is ambiguous and they're just picking the answer they like the sound of best.
Of course I wish you the best of luck, and portions of this kind of advice I take myself (should probably take more); but I wonder if ... you think there's any subset of the recommendations that could be presented in any less irritating a fashion. Like, what's the core (minimal) set of changes you made that made you feel better, and what's the reason you think it works? More HIIT or strength training? Specific dietary adjustments? Getting lots of sleep? Specific avoidance of grains rather than, say, carbohydrates in general?
I agree with you to some extent on the preaching and selective science, but I get that he's selling a product (several, even) and so he's going to be maxing-up every angle to make himself look good. I expect that because it's marketing, and I try to see past it evaluate the good stuff.
I've read quite a lot of material now from the Paleo/Crossfit crowd (the two seem to often go hand-in-hand) and I find Sisson to be on the milder end of the scale. His exercise advice is geared from zero for men and women instead of being condescending toward the presently-unhealthy, and there appear to be many success stories from people trying his program after having tried many others. Of course, he's not trumpeting the failures so I'd be very interested to know scientifically what the hit rate of his program is, but my gut feeling is that it's higher than standard low fat diets, or other fad diets, which appear to depend in large part on genetic luck and shitloads of exercise.
For me the main change has been diet. I haven't really done much different for exercise, I already do the (largely grappling-based) martial arts and the cycling, so the idea of lifting heavy things and low intensity cardio are covered, I just need to focus on working a little more sprinting into my routine.
As a family we were already avoiding as much processed ready-meal style food as possible, avoiding GM, avoiding modified hydrogenated oils and modified palm oil in particular, more fruit and veg, soups, salads, good cuts of meat and so on. The change for me has been in specifically eliminating grains and as much refined sugar as possible. I'm also avoiding other sources of starch including rice and potato. I'm not eliminating all sugars and carbs, the sugars and fibers in fruit and veg are still very much in. I'm targeting around 50g-100g of carbs per day (as opposed to the standard diet of 300+g). There are some "grey areas", such as beans, lentils, soy-based products (not intrinsically bad, just worrying to realize just how much of the soy we eat is GM) and so on, but I'm not too worried about it all really. Stress is the belly-killer, as I have discovered in previous jobs around crunch time.
He is on the milder end of the scale, it's true. The whole thing just reads, to me, like ... one of those "pick up artist" websites or something, a machismo hard-sell soaked in evolutionary fantasy-thinking.
I'll continue to try to reduce the carbohydrate load (within the context of vegetarianism) though, thanks. I hear that theme at least quite consistently from everyone who toys with their diet. Glad you found something that works so well anyways!
With all the evolutionary and biochemical mumbo stripped-away, his essential message is to keep the macronutrient profile as follows:
Less than 150g of carb per day, ideally less than 100g (although any less than 50g and you can end up with bad breath from ketosis, which some people would rather avoid).
* <0.7g to 1.0g depending on exercise level> grams of protein per day, so that your body isn't scavenging from muscle mass to heal itself.
The remainder of your daily calorie needs in saturated fats and oils, especially from things like animal fat (okay not an option in your case), nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut, almond, etc etc etc.
Knowing that protein and carb are both 4 calories per gram, the carb + protein gives me around 800-900 calories per day, so there's a lot of room to manoeuvre there with the fatty foods (9 cals per gram).
The other thing he emphasises that resonates with me is to avoid polyunsaturated fatty acids in favour of saturated or mono-unsaturated. The general idea is that saturated fat oxidizes much less readily so it's less of a cancer/heart disease risk, plus it's a more efficient fuel. Plus plus it's less likely to come from a GM origin. Plus plus plus it's damned tasty :)
Of course I wish you the best of luck, and portions of this kind of advice I take myself (should probably take more); but I wonder if ... you think there's any subset of the recommendations that could be presented in any less irritating a fashion. Like, what's the core (minimal) set of changes you made that made you feel better, and what's the reason you think it works? More HIIT or strength training? Specific dietary adjustments? Getting lots of sleep? Specific avoidance of grains rather than, say, carbohydrates in general?
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I've read quite a lot of material now from the Paleo/Crossfit crowd (the two seem to often go hand-in-hand) and I find Sisson to be on the milder end of the scale. His exercise advice is geared from zero for men and women instead of being condescending toward the presently-unhealthy, and there appear to be many success stories from people trying his program after having tried many others. Of course, he's not trumpeting the failures so I'd be very interested to know scientifically what the hit rate of his program is, but my gut feeling is that it's higher than standard low fat diets, or other fad diets, which appear to depend in large part on genetic luck and shitloads of exercise.
For me the main change has been diet. I haven't really done much different for exercise, I already do the (largely grappling-based) martial arts and the cycling, so the idea of lifting heavy things and low intensity cardio are covered, I just need to focus on working a little more sprinting into my routine.
As a family we were already avoiding as much processed ready-meal style food as possible, avoiding GM, avoiding modified hydrogenated oils and modified palm oil in particular, more fruit and veg, soups, salads, good cuts of meat and so on. The change for me has been in specifically eliminating grains and as much refined sugar as possible. I'm also avoiding other sources of starch including rice and potato. I'm not eliminating all sugars and carbs, the sugars and fibers in fruit and veg are still very much in. I'm targeting around 50g-100g of carbs per day (as opposed to the standard diet of 300+g). There are some "grey areas", such as beans, lentils, soy-based products (not intrinsically bad, just worrying to realize just how much of the soy we eat is GM) and so on, but I'm not too worried about it all really. Stress is the belly-killer, as I have discovered in previous jobs around crunch time.
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I'll continue to try to reduce the carbohydrate load (within the context of vegetarianism) though, thanks. I hear that theme at least quite consistently from everyone who toys with their diet. Glad you found something that works so well anyways!
Reply
Less than 150g of carb per day, ideally less than 100g (although any less than 50g and you can end up with bad breath from ketosis, which some people would rather avoid).
* <0.7g to 1.0g depending on exercise level> grams of protein per day, so that your body isn't scavenging from muscle mass to heal itself.
The remainder of your daily calorie needs in saturated fats and oils, especially from things like animal fat (okay not an option in your case), nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut, almond, etc etc etc.
Knowing that protein and carb are both 4 calories per gram, the carb + protein gives me around 800-900 calories per day, so there's a lot of room to manoeuvre there with the fatty foods (9 cals per gram).
The other thing he emphasises that resonates with me is to avoid polyunsaturated fatty acids in favour of saturated or mono-unsaturated. The general idea is that saturated fat oxidizes much less readily so it's less of a cancer/heart disease risk, plus it's a more efficient fuel. Plus plus it's less likely to come from a GM origin. Plus plus plus it's damned tasty :)
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||your lean mass in pounds|| * ||0.7g to 1.0g depending on exercise level||
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